Reflection: What we don't always know about our textbooks...

I really enjoyed Ambassador Quainton, our last guest speaker. While I found his entire lecture engaging, one part that really struck me was his explanation of Samuel Huntington's view on American identity. Apparently, Huntington believes that American identity is essentially Anglo-Saxon and that it is being ruined by "people who don't look like us." Only last week, I was reading a book by Huntington- "The Third Wave" which is about the most recent "wave" of democratization in various countries. I did not have any information about Huntington when I read the book. Now that I know about his views on American identity, I see the book in a different light- is he an advocate of democratization mainly because he thinks that it is an Anglo-Saxon/American creation (although that's debatable) and since Anglo-Saxon culture is superior democracy should be exported to the rest of the world? I even started to question why my professor would have assigned a text by such a racist man, although I know that is irrational.

In the future, I plan to look up authors before I read their books. I have only been in the habit of sometimes reading the biography in the back of the book, but of course that is shaped by the way that the author wants to be presented (his/her front!) and isn't reliable. I realize now how important it is to know an author's views before reading, because they often play a major part in shaping the text. While I did learn that sort of thing in High School English with regards to fiction, I didn't really think of it in terms of non-fiction. Obviously Michael Moore and Ann Counter are very opinionated in their writings...but it didn't really occur to me that the guy writing the textbook about democratization is too.