Considering History: How Being a Dad Has Connected Me to New Aspects of the American Story

This series by American studies professor Ben Railton explores the connections between America’s past and present.

This coming week, my younger son Kyle graduates from high school. As he heads off to college in the fall, joining his older brother Aidan who just finished his own first year of college, I will of course never stop being their father (just as my late dad will always be mine in influential and inspiring ways). But this is still a huge turning point in my life as well as my son’s, and thus one of those moments that leads to lots of reflection. Including, because I’m me, on what being a dad has meant for my work as a public scholar of American Studies.

Of course I had to share some of those reflections with you all, as The Saturday Evening Post and Considering History have likewise been significant parts of my life for much of the boys’ childhoods (including at least one column directly suggested by them!). So here, in honor of Kyle’s graduation and all that’s next for us all, are just a handful of the subjects that being an American Studier Dad has connected me to.

As soon as my sons were born, key aspects of their identities led me to explore American stories that I hadn’t previously given enough thought. My sons are multiracial, and were young kids during the first Barack Obama presidential campaign and term. Thinking about both Obama’s own multiracial heritage and how he was being defined by the media and his political opponents led me directly to the subject of my second book, Redefining American Identity: From Cabeza de Vaca to Barack Obama (2011), in which I argue that cross-cultural transformation is a foundational and enduring element of American identity.

Central to the boys’ multiracial identity is their Chinese American heritage on their Mom’s side. Like most American schoolkids in the 1980s and early 1990s, at least in Virginia where I grew up, I learned very little about Chinese or Asian American history, and I likewise didn’t focus on those subjects in college or graduate school. So it was thanks to the boys that I started to look into the important and inspiring stories that have become so prominently part of my American Studies public scholarship: the histories of both the Chinese Exclusion era and the Chinese Educational Mission that are at the heart of my third book, The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us about America (2013); the story of the Celestials baseball team on which my recent podcast focuses; the life and work of one of my favorite American writers, Sui Sin Far; and many more.

As the boys began to work on their own school projects, I consistently learned about new subjects to explore. My ideas of Revolutionary War spies started and ended with Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold, but Kyle’s poster on the Culper Spy Ring showed me how much more communal and vital that role was. My knowledge of Native American communities was greatly enhanced by both Aidan’s diorama of a Tequesta village (which connected me to the place of whaling in that tribe’s culture) and Kyle’s board game about Sacagawea (which, thanks to a game piece featuring her infant, pushed me to learn about how she balanced new motherhood and her role with the expedition). And Aidan’s state project on Oregon led me to learn more about a very contemporary issue, the ongoing crisis with the state’s previously endangered and still fragile wolf population.

During their time in high school, both boys had the chance to deepen their own historical knowledge, especially through their respective National History Day projects in 10^th grade, and in each case they added a good deal to my own perspective in the process. Aidan’s project, on the February 1865 Hampton Roads peace conference, significantly shifted my understanding of the Civil War’s final year, highlighting both how history could have unfolded in hugely distinct ways and how much Abraham Lincoln’s determination to end slavery shaped the war’s outcome. While Kyle’s project, on the March 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, helped me learn so much more about both that tragic individual event and its inspiring lasting effects, including its key role in shaping Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal through Frances Perkins’s connection to both events.

High school is about much more than simply academics, of course, and a central part of both boys’ high school experiences was their deepening love of running and participation in the sports of cross country and track & field. Aidan is a distance runner, and through finding and sharing with him the story of foundational American distance star Steve “Pre” Prefontaine I was able to think a great deal about the evolution of sports as they relate to both celebrity and business in the second half of the 20^th century. Kyle is a sprinter, and it was thanks to his love for those events that I became far more knowledgeable about both the profoundly impressive achievements and the frustrating American history of racism exemplified by the career and life of Jesse Owens.

As the boys have begun to figure out their next steps in college and beyond, their chosen areas of study have continued to open up new areas of American Studying for me as well. Aidan is studying civil engineering with a minor in environmental studies, and his work has inspired me to learn a lot more about the role that civil engineering projects have played in shaping and reshaping the American landscape, as embodied by the early engineers who worked on the Erie Canal (which turns 200 this year!). Kyle plans to study pre-law and has already had the chance to work extensively with the ACLU, and that connection has helped me deepen my own understanding of that organization’s crucial role across the last century of American history, including its advocacy for Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II.

Just as my role as their dad will never change, so too will I continue to learn so much from the boys. Atop my summer reading list is the contemporary indigenous poet and artist Tommy Pico, whose work Aidan introduced to me after he read Pico in an environmental lit class this past year. I can’t wait to see what Kyle’s first year introduces into my American Studies work, and I promise you’ll see evidence in this column as it does!