There's More Than One Kind of History

"The god of history is an atheist, and nothing about his world is meant to be"- Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The story of progress assumes that every past event is a stepping stone towards the future. However, for Coates, history is not concerned with moving forward. There is no predetermined outcome that dictates that an event will begin or end at a certain point. Coates argues that by inscribing past events as objects that help reach a goal, people forget about all of the individuals- each with their own unique goals and lives- that created that outcome.

As Coates points out, when people ascribe an event to history, every individual is lost in the definition of the event. However, one can emphasize with a single person. Individualizing history makes it personal, makes it not just numbers and masses of unidentified people, but rather someone who was a friend, a family member, who had ambitions and dreams and ideas, who was alive. We learn so much from individual histories- life, love, friendship, compassion, and to be grateful for what we have in are own lives.

Mila and Boris lived near Moscow

In order to help preserve individual histories, this spring students in Humanities core- such as myself- are required to interview a person who immigrated to the United States and has been affected by empire. When asked to pick an interview subject, my mind immediately went to a family friend- Mila- who as my nanny until I was two years old, I shared some of my earliest memories with. Mila and her husband, Boris, immigrated to the US from Russia, seeking a better life and better opportunities for their children, an refuge from religion based discrimination, better technology, a more advanced medical field, and happiness among other things. Of course, I did not know their reasons for immigrating before I interviewed them. In fact, being asked to interview them made me realize how little I actually know about their past.

I’ve known them my whole life, yet never talked about their immigration story or what life was like for them. I’ve learned about the events that occurred in Russia- about the fall of the Soviet Union, the inflation, Putin’s election- in history classes, but that’s all it was- history. However, that history was not Mila and Boris’ history, it was Russia’s history. The generalized, overreaching history is one of war and strife and politics. It glosses over and excludes all the individual histories- like Mila and Boris’s- that tell us what life is about.

On some things, Mila and Boris’s story was what I was expecting to hear, but in many ways it was not. After all, how can someone predict someone else’s life?

They told me that many actions- such as shopping for groceries - were different in the United States compared to Russia, but that one way was not necessarily better than the other. One difference that stood out to me was the difference in doctor-patient confidentiality. In Russia, if a patient is terminally ill (such as 4th stage cancer), the doctor usually will tell the family of the patient that the patient will die soon, but not the patient themselves. Instead, the doctor will tell the patient that they will get better soon, to make it easier on the patient. On the other hand, here in the US, doctors are required to tell their patients the truth about their condition so that they can get their affairs in order, make plans, and assemble their wills. What surprised me was that when discussing differences like these, Mila and Boris had no bias favoring one way or another. However, as they explained to me the different cultural values and contexts that surround such different practices, I realized that both ways make sense.

Talking to Mila and Boris made me realize just how much gets lost in the large, general history. General history lumps people together and gives a general reason for the actions of multitudes. However, people’s decisions are influenced by a myriad of past experiences, influences, and beliefs. There is no one umbrella cause to actions such as immigration. In fact, when I asked Mila and Boris why they immigrated, even they themselves did not have a simple, definite answer.

Learning people’s individual stories is important to understanding the past and how past events have uniquely affected people’s lives. Without them, the history is just events that occurred in the past, distant and separate. People of the past become bricks that pave the road to the future and people forget about how many individual lives were forever changed by the events deemed worthy enough to be recorded in general history.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “Excerpt from Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (2015).” Random House, 2015.

Thompson, Amanda. “Oral History.” 12 Apr. 2019.