People are often misled to think that anyone who comes into a discussion with strong views about an issue cannot be unprejudiced. The key question is whether the views are justified.
Neutrality, objectivity, and unbiasness are often considered largely the same thing and almost always a good when it comes to teaching, journalism, and writing history.
But, consider the following. Neutrality is a political category, that is, not supporting any factions in a dispute. Holding a neutral stance in a conflict is no more likely to ensure rightness or objectivity than any other and often is a sign of ignorance of the issues. In a recent interview on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!, Howard Zinn put it this way “to be neutral, to be passive in a situation is to collaborate with whatever is going on.”
Absence of bias in an area is not absence of convictions in an area, thus neutrality is not objectivity. To be objective is to be unbiased or unprejudiced.
The spring 2005 newletter of the Pacific Northwest Historians Guild included a brief quote from Zinn that objectivity in scholarship and in the media is not only “harmful and misleading, it’s not desirable.”
The brief quote in the PNHG newsletter is from an interview of Zinn by David Barsamian (founder of Alternative Radio) in 1992. The complete interview is available on the amazing ZNet web site.
Here is a brief excerpt from that interview, in which Zinn makes his case against objectivity:DB: You’ve made the astounding comment that objectivity in scholarship, in the media and elsewhere is not only “harmful and misleading, it’s not desirable.”
HZ:I’ve said two things about it. One, that it’s not possible. Two, it’s not desirable. It’s not possible because all history is a selection out of an infinite number of facts. As soon as you begin to select, you select according to what you think is important. Therefore it is already not objective. It’s already biased in the direction of whatever you, as the selector of this information, think people should know. So it’s really not possible. Of course, some people claim to be objective. The worst thing is to claim to be objective. Of course you can’t be. Historians should say what their values are, what they care about, what their background is, and let you know what is important to them so that young people and everybody who reads history are warned in advance that they should never count on any one source, but should go to many sources. So it’s not possible to be objective, and it’s not desirable if it were possible. We should have history that does reflect points of view and values, in other words, history that is not objective. We should have history that enhances human values, humane values, values of brotherhood, sisterhood, peace, justice and equality. The closest I can get to it is the values enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. Equality, the right of all people to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those are values that historians should actively promulgate in writing history. In doing that they needn’t distort or omit important things. But it does mean if they have those values in mind, that they will emphasize those things in history which will bring up a new generation of people who read history books and who will care about treating other people equally, about doing away with war, about justice in every form.
DB: How do you filter those biases, or can you even filter them?
HZ:As I’ve said, yes, I have my biases, my leanings. So if I’m writing or speaking about Columbus, I will try not to hide, omit the fact that Columbus did a remarkable thing in crossing the ocean and venturing out into uncharted waters. It took physical courage and navigational skill. It was a remarkable event. I have to say that so that I don’t omit what people see as the positive side of Columbus. But then I have to go on to say the other things about Columbus which are much more important than his navigational skill, than the fact that he was a religious man. That is how he treated the human beings that he found in this hemisphere. The enslavement, the torture, the murder, the dehumanization of these people. That is the important thing.
There’s an interesting way in which you can frame a sentence which will show what you emphasize and which will have two very different results. Here’s what I mean. Take Columbus as an example. You can frame it, and this was the way the Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison in effect framed it in his biography of Columbus: Columbus committed genocide, but he was a wonderful sailor. He did a remarkable and extraordinary thing in finding these islands in the Western Hemisphere. Where’s the emphasis there? He committed genocide, but … He’s a good sailor. I say, He was a good sailor, but he treated people with the most horrible cruelty. Those are two different ways of saying the same facts. Depending on which side of the buck you’re on, you show your bias. I believe that it’s good for us to put our biases in the direction of a humane view of history.
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