Standards for Insuring Objectivity in Profiles of Controversial Historical Figures

+10 votes
857 views

America seems to be waking up to the reality that justice is still denied to blacks even now after 400 years of oppression. Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to proclaim that “black lives matter.” Monuments to Confederate icons are being removed from our public squares.

Please take a look at the profiles of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. These two people led a rebellion against the United States killing hundreds of thousands of Americans to preserve the institution of slavery. These profiles seem to me to be elaborate propaganda pieces in that they distort reality by ignoring the injustices these men committed and sought to perpetuate.

An article published today on the website of History News Network addresses Robert E. Lee:

Robert Lee was the nation’s most notable traitor since Benedict Arnold. Like Arnold, Robert Lee had an exceptional record of military service before his downfall. Lee was a hero of the Mexican-American War and played a crucial role in its final, decisive campaign to take Mexico City. But when he was called on to serve again—this time against violent rebels who were occupying and attacking federal forts—Lee failed to honor his oath to defend the Constitution.

Robert Lee understood as well as any other contemporary the issue that ignited the secession crisis. Wealthy white plantation owners in the South had spent the better part of a century slowly taking over the United States government. With each new political victory, they expanded human enslavement further and further until the oligarchs of the Cotton South were the wealthiest single group of people on the planet. It was a kind of power and wealth they were willing to kill and die to protect.  [https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/173624] History News Network.]

The rhetoric here is a bit too strong. But the fundamental facts stand.

Monuments to Confederate leaders are insults not only to the descendants of enslaved men and women but to all Americans who reject the values of the Confederacy. Those monuments are being rightfully removed. These profiles, as they are written now, are similar monuments and I submit they should be immediately removed until they have been rewritten to accurately describe the evil realities that men like these represented and sought to perpetuate.


 

in Policy and Style by Robert Test G2G4 (4.2k points)
To a foreigner, not a victim of American education and propaganda, it's stunning how the modern rewrite of history is at odds with the historical facts as we find them in contemporary materials.

Before anyone else posts here I'd like to ask that they re-read the Honor Code.
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:Honor_Code

OK, I've reread the Honor Code, and I don't think the following violates either its letter or its spirit, If I'm wrong, flag and hide it.

I'm not going to defend Davis or Lee, but I think the analogy to Arnold is a weak one.

Unlike Arnold, who owned his rebellion completely, they were participants in the rebellion, and leaders of it, but not  the initiators; Davis was a participant in the initiation, but not the only one, and had he opposed it or simply sat it out, it would not have made any difference. Lee did not make his choice until Virginia had already seceded, and Virginia was the eighth state to secede,

Another difference is that Davis and Lee were motivated by principle—albeit a horrible principle—whereas Arnold's actions were motivated by hurt feelings about being passed over for promotion and by a promised bribe.
Please explain how the title of this question relates to its content.  I don't see anything in the question about defining standards, nor about objectivity.  Do you have a set of standards to propose for insuring objectivity, or perhaps a link to an existing standard?
I appreciate the discussion that has followed this post -- some points are quite interesting and some I agree with and some I don't. But no one has actually addressed the issue I raised not in any substantial way. A few have briefly brushed against the issue without fully engaging it.

We all know that all writers have biases, that can get emotionally excited and some can think that morality and legality are just a matter of when and where you were born--that all standards are equal and none should be preferred over others.

My question was much more basic -- Are there any standards on profiles? Perhaps I should have stated the implied followup question: if there are standards who enforces them? But that is a secondary question.

The conclusion I draw from the discussion is that there are no standards. Someone could write a profile of Adolf Hitler praising him for boasting of Aryian supremacy, conquering most of Europe, and murdering millions of Jews. I suspect nearly everyone would be horrified of such a profile and seek to have it removed. But no one has suggested that the profile actually violate any standards of wikitree.

Wikitreers seem to agree that collaboration is efficient at producing accurate accounts of a person's life. I agree with this -- everyone over at ancestry.com posts their own trees and mistakes go uncorrected.

But collaboration is not enough. An edited profile can be re-edited or restored to its original. Labeling Hitler a black sheep is a step in the right direction. I assume the original author of the profile could remove the tag.

In a reply I received by email someone asked if I have any standards to suggest. It should be clear that among the standards I endorse would be that profiles should not praise murder or slavery. If the person they are profiling engaged in those practices the profile should acknowledge it and condemn the practice and criticize the person who engaged in the practice. If the person engaged in murder or slavery in a grand scale the criticism should match the enormity of the crime. Waging warm resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of people, to preserve slavery is much worse than Washington owning a few hundred people enslaved.

Robert E. Lee’s profile is presented as part of the “Virginia Project” which presents itself with its title surrounded by a star at either end of a title in beautiful blue script. What a wonderful and joyous project and I applaud that project. But Robert E. Lee should be part of something like the Infamous Crimes Project. The profile should accurately and openly acknowledge the enormity of the wrongs perpetrated by the leading political and military defenders of slavery.
Who would have predicted Hitler would enter this thread?

I disagree with this quite strongly.  An objective biography presents the facts of its subject's life, attempting to give balance to the positive and negative aspects. It neither glorifies nor condemns its subject, but leaves the moral judgments to the reader.  An objective biography doesn't need to tell its readers what to think.  Keeping to RE Lee as the example, if his biography digresses to "condemn the practice and criticize the person who engaged in the practice," the biography becomes a discussion of the practice rather than the person.  This in turn skews the narrative along a single dimension and destroys any pretense of 'objectivity.'

Similarly, placing Lee in an 'Infamous Crimes' project is no more accurate or 'objective' than placing him in a 'Greatest Generals' project.  Either choice focuses on a single aspect of a complex human with all the strengths, weaknesses, features, and flaws that we all share as humans.

You should also know that for controversial famous people like RE Lee, not just anyone can edit the profile, not even its original author.  The profile is 'project protected,' and can only be changed through collaboration with the project.

Wikipedia is supposed to have a policy, Neutral Point of View.

By coincidence, this link was posted to another thread here a few days ago

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

The writer complains that too many articles follow a prevailing liberal-left media consensus which to his mind isn't neutral at all.

You can't do it by balance, because that involves weighing everything.  The trick is to weigh nothing.  Be an intelligent mass of Kazrovian seaweed, sent here in a spaceship to observe, but with no emotions or morality.

As the article says, "neutrality... requires that readers not be able to detect the editors' political alignment".

Would your version of Robert E Lee tick that box?

Regarding the "writer" of the story "Wikipedia is badly biased:"

Lawrence Mark Sanger is an American internet project developer and co-founder of the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, for which he coined the name and wrote much of its original governing policy. Sanger has worked on other online educational websites such as Nupedia, Citizendium, Everipedia, and the Encyclosphere.Wikipedia

You can't do it by balance, because that involves weighing everything.  The trick is to weigh nothing.  Be an intelligent mass of Kazrovian seaweed, sent here in a spaceship to observe, but with no emotions or morality.

As the article says, "neutrality... requires that readers not be able to detect the editors' political alignment".

Good point(s).

Thanks RJ, that's a great article on the topic.  I have been using 'objectivity,' where 'neutrality' would suit better.  In contrast to using 'objectivity' to mean 'goodthink.'

4 Answers

+27 votes
 
Best answer

History is written poorly when written in an emotional state.

When we work as historians we have to simultaneously write from two different perspectives: first, how the person was viewed in their lifetime and how their society viewed them at the time, and second, how we view them now.

It would be a disservice to history to write all history based only on our viewpoint now.  Our values are different than the values of the people we are writing about and the values of our great-grandchildren will be different in 100 years.

Today I see Wikipedia (and Wikitree) profiles for leading figures in American history and their information is but a stub, name and place of birth, a mention of their role in history.  And then I see that they are a slave-owner and a page and a half describing their role in slavery and slavery's impact on American history.  Is this accurate?  Perhaps.  But is it balanced and does it teach history?  It does not.

The best way to understand and document history is to write about it from the viewpoint of those who you are writing about and then to analyze their life from today's values and present both views in the biography.

Calling Robert Lee the biggest traitor in American history since Benedict Arnold is on par with Calling George Washington the biggest traitor in British history.  While both statements may be true, they are hardly professional, sure to enflame, and do little to teach young people about history.

by SJ Baty G2G Astronaut (1.2m points)
selected by Carol Wilder
Point very well taken.

In one of his volumes on World War Ii, Winston Churchill observed that people are captives of the prejudices with which they are raised, and that absent truly extraordinary political leadership, a society as a whole remains bound by those prejudices. (I'm paraphrasing; I've tried to find the exact quote but have been unable to.)

We are all products of our upbringing. I was not born believing that human slavery was wrong. I was taught it by my parents and my schooling and by living in a society where everyone I knew agreed that it was wrong.

Had I been born in the American South in the 1820s, as were my two great-great-grandfathers who fought for the Confederacy (and paid for it with their lives), I have no doubt that I would have been a defender of slavery. I would have been taught, from the earliest age, that slavery was good for both the slaveowner and the enslaved and that people of African descent were a lesser form of humanity. When I went to church, I would have been told that slavery was part of God's plan.

Could I have overcome that? I very much doubt it.
Downvote counter:  1̶, 0, back up to 1

I would ask that anyone who disagrees, please share your feelings.  I don't learn anything about your point of view from a downvote.

edit: updated the downvote counter
Good points Stu.  It is hard to learn from history if you don't understand it.  It is hard to understand it if you can't have some idea of how the people thought and felt.
Hi SJ!

Sorry, I closed my tab and had to start over typing again. Love it.

So, a short version: I think you're missing out on two major points:

A: "The best way to understand and document history is to write about it from the viewpoint of those who you are writing about and then to analyze their life from today's values and present both views in the biography.". It is also important to consider the viewpoint of others opposing this person at the time they lived, without intermingling it with current-day viewpoints. For mister Lee, for example, you'll find quite some foreign newspapers, slaves and northerners who will have had another contemporary interpretation of his actions. This is important, as these describe history in a way which might remain more constant (as our own opinions change).

B: You write like there is only one current viewpoint and one current set of value's. Obviously, this is not necessary the case. I have noticed most southern US profiles mostly reflect a fairly traditional conservative Christian US view on history, a sentiment which I often see at G2G as well (well, that's where the money and time is, and WT is obviously US based). I think that Robert here is not writing as much in an emotional state as you think he is, but rather representing another totally different point of view. As WikiTree is a world tree I think this point of view should be respected, and incorporated.

Hi Willem, to address your points:

A: I agree with this point fully and I alluded to it in this asnwer but could have done a better job at explaining it as I did in a comment further down this page (see my quote below in this comment).

B: I don't at all think that I wrote that there is only one current viewpoint and one set of values.  To the contrary, I suggested that controversial bios should be written by those who are fans and also by those who are critics.  And if you scroll further down in another answer of mine, you'll see:

Should we not also have a contemporary interpretation of them as well as an understanding of how he thought, how the people of the day thought, and how those he knew (to include those who were enslaved to him) felt and thought?

edit: missing word

Sure enough :-) Have my upvote! Thanks for clearing it up.

Thanks Carol, curious to see how long it will stay up wink

SJ Baty, Your response is most appropriate as people today think in terms of "today's" standards of behavior, living, education, etc. and do not realize that standards of living, education, behavior, etc. were not the same for people who lived 150 years ago and even the standards of behavior, living, education, etc. of 150 years ago were not the same as the standards that people lived with 250 years ago, etc.  Historians do not have the right to re-write history, they should state the facts based on the times that person lived in and how those times have changed.  Our great grandchildren will live in different times than we live in today, all we can do today is to try and improve things for everyone so things will be better in the future.

Great points Carol. Thanks for the star, again. We'll see how long it stays. wink

Thanks for the star Carol (again).  I'm sure 3rd time is the charm wink

+4 votes
Robert, while I agree with you, some will find my lack of faith... disturbing when it comes to the reaction of the Wikitree community and leaders on "sensitive" or "political" subjects. We have people here on G2G who don't like acknowledging that their ancestors owned slaves, and at least one who declared that Native Americans deserved to be genocided because their cultures were "inferior" to that of whites. I have been unenthused by the response of Mentors and other leaders when I brought these topics to their attention. I mean, this site picked a Nazi sympathizer for "Profile of the Week" this week. Balanced, nuanced discussion of such topics is not really something I'm holding out hope for...
by Jessica Key G2G6 Pilot (310k points)

First, for those who don't know, I'm a black man. Second, I'm a descendant of a slave named Wilson Lee, nephew of General Robert - proven by the way. Third, wikitree is multi-ethnic, multi-national, so, many views will be expressed from time to time. We must be tolerant of the views that we do not endorse and remain ladies and gentlemen in our discussions.

Fourth, I'm not sure O.J. killed Nicole and I hate Chris Darden.  angel

I thought profile of the week was about how well the profile was done, not about political alliances.

On a side note I don’t think expunging records of people who were purported to do, or did wrongs, benefits anyone. Truth helps us to learn from the past.

I thought profile of the week was about how well the profile was done, not about political alliances.

commented by Marion Poole

.

This is what I believed, as well. 

You can see what sort of factors go into choosing the profile of the week here: https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1047500/june-2020-example-profiles-of-the-week

Controversial profiles aren't picked on purpose. If you spot an issue with any of the upcoming profiles please say something. 

And remember, WikiTree is a collaborative site so if you would like to improve the profiles to make them more balanced please do. 

On a side note I don’t think expunging records of people who were purported to do, or did wrongs, benefits anyone. Truth helps us to learn from the past.
I truly do not know how you can draw the conclusion from my post that I advocate "expunging records" of people. Like do you think I'm saying we should break into Beauvoir and burn all records pertaining to Jefferson Davis?
Jessica the second part of my comment was an aside , in other words, a separate comment, more related to the general theme of the original post.
I have been thinking about recommending a project dedicated to creating bios around people who have been the victims of prosecution or injustice, it doesn't need to be political, just basic genealogy. Connecting them all to the same tree, a name, a history, a family. Our extended family.

But I am very new here and don't know how to even start. I would love to contribute and be active, the idea of us all being part of the same unified tree is what attracted me to this site.

Hi Andrew, here is how you can start a project: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Starting_a_Project

+4 votes
Perhaps each profile should be written from a strictly genealogical perspective, even for historical figures, to avoid this issue.

As far as this website is concerned, the point of Robert E. Lee's profile is not to discuss his role in the Civil War, but to know who his parents were, who his spouses were, and who his children were and son on.

This might lead to overly bland and repetitive biographies but it's probably necessary to avoid controversy. The consequence of this is that profile managers will no longer be able to share their childhood memories of grandma being an excellent cook, and instead state that she was simply born, got married, had several children and then died.
by James Knighton G2G6 Mach 2 (27.9k points)
Not sure I accept the premise that the role of wikitree is simply to cover the "begats" -- just the vitals and relationships.  Family history includes the stories and other historical data so we can understand the lives our ancestors as well as record their vital statistics. It's why I got into it.

I think we do need to do our best to have a well rounded bio especially for historical figures. This includes the good, bad and the ugly.
James, I'm going to respectfully disagree with you.  If this was the best path, we might as well just delete the biography section and just have bunch of radio button check points for marriage, children, job, etc.  Or, a "fill in the blanks" spreadsheet, "Enter person's name, year born, occupation, year of migration, etc."  

History is a bright and virbrant topic and we can learn so much about our culture, our ancestors, and about ourselves by studying the people and trying to understand what it was like for them to live in their times.

I didn't say, "understand their life facts."  I want to have some understanding of what it was like for them.  Writing "crossed the prairie in 1835," is quite different than putting into context that the area they crossed in was in a state of war and this many battles between colonists and native tribes occured in that time frame.  The reader will better understand the risks taken to migrate and this may give some meaning to how bad it was say back in Ireland that someone would be willing to travel through a war zone to find a new life.

I believe that in a perfect bio of a controversial person, there would be the life basics and then when it comes to an historic perspective of their life, someone who is a big fan writes every other paragraph and someone who is a critic writes every other paragraph.  If we read about a founding father, great statesman, slave owner, should we not understand all aspects of his life?  Should we not also have a contemporary interpretation of them as well as an understanding of how he thought, how the people of the day thought, and how those he knew (to include those who were enslaved to him) felt and thought?

Wikitree is a wonderful place because it relies on collaboration.  Part of collaboration is compromise.  But it is harder to compromise when people are insulting others.  We should not shy away from controversial biographies becuase we have differing opinions.  Indeed, we should use the differing opinions to shape the narrative for a better understanding.

And I would hope that those who have anger in their hearts would sleep on it and come back and comment the next day.
Beautifully stated, SJ.
Wonderful response, SJ. Thank you! And isn't that what makes WikiTree beautiful? We have so many people from so many cultures and backgrounds, so diverse, that in the spirit of collaboration, we should be able to create profiles that are balanced in the way they display all aspects of a person's life, not just the good or the bad.
That was really well stated SJ, thank you!
+6 votes

As a history fanatic, I've read several biographies of Robert E. Lee.  He had reasons to make certain decisions.  I disagree with his reasons, but he is a more nuanced character than you'd suppose.  As someone with a passing knowledge of the subject, I wouldn't presume to put all that nuance into his biography.  

Let's take a subject closer to my own life experience.  Here is a biography I wrote for my uncle:

Dick married twice and had four children.  He was a Korean War veteran who received the Purple Heart.  He was a talented carpenter and was also good at many other trades.  He was also an abusive, mean alcoholic. 

For another uncle, I didn't mention his pedophilia in his biography, but I put it in a research note:

I am not certain that the three children listed as Othney's in his obituary are his biological children. Since I have personal knowledge that Othney was a pedophile, it depresses me to know that he had access to a daughter. More research is required. 

I made these disparate decisions because, for Uncle Dick, his alcoholism was a defining aspect of his life.  It overtook everything else, including his ability to use his vast talents, or to raise his children well.  For Uncle Othney, you might not know about the pedophilia.  It wasn’t a defining characteristic, except for those of us who were children. 

I know you're talking about historical figures, but almost every biography which has more than the facts of birth, marriage, children, death requires similar decisions.

by J. Crook G2G6 Pilot (226k points)
edited by J. Crook

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