Examples Of Multiculturalism In Oral History

Multiculturalism and Oral History
The older position in history is that history should be expressed scientifically with facts and reliable data; however a newer opinion is that all history is subject to vagaries of perception and interpretation. This relativism is the root of most post-modern thought in the field and such relativism is vehemently denied by traditionalists. The issue with relativism is the absurdity that it can take when not restrained by logic; such as refraining to ascribe higher truths to certain histories and insisting on the possibility of exploring every possible gap between the past as it may have been and it’s rendering. In this scenario history could become an endless battle of subjectivity with no acceptance of scientific

Although an interesting read, Beachey treats Africans with derision and rarely considers them at all, preferring to focus on the “British servants of empire.” In fact, the brief acknowledgements of native Africans are riddled with racial stereotypes such as “Hamites,” “pure-,” “half-,” and “Nilo-,” and the discussion of early Kikuyu country entirely ignores discussion of the Kikuyu people. Rather than discuss the impact of the slave trade on East Africa, the emphasis falls on British attempts to remove the trade; the purpose of this book is to demonstrate what foreigners did in the region rather than describe and discuss the region

Not only do oral histories offer a multicultural interpretation of events, but it requires language skills in order to dissect the stories presented in typically oral-only tribal dialects. Traditionalist have long abhorred oral history, as is well noted in Dr. Kesby’s work: disregarding much current historical research in oral traditions, he maintains that East African history begins in the nineteenth century, "before that all is part of the prehistoric era." This view is based on his belief that history can only be properly ascertained through the use of written documents, supplemented by archaeological evidence. This view stems from the requirement of traditionalists to rely on data that is scientific and “absolute,” which of course explains their dismissal of anything remotely post-modern and therefore relativist.
With the use of oral history, the biggest challenge is the chance of subjectivity within the interviewing process itself. The interviewer does not play a role of an outside objective observer because the interview is constructed by both of the interviewing parties. The subject of an oral history interview is not necessarily the interviewee, but the interviewee 's experiences; even in the form of the retelling of a story told once to the