Niki Haley, demonstrating just how far into white supremacy the GOP has fallen, refused to say that slavery was the cause of the American Civil War. Needless to say, slavery was the issue that brought blood to the table during that time period, and the war was most definitely about slavery. She refused to state the obvious because it would make the GOP base angry, which is both understandable as a political maneuver in the GOP primary (as despicable as it might be) and has a silly underlying cause.
Too many whites in this country seem to revere their ancestors, or at least the concept of their ancestors. It makes no sense. You are no more your ancestor than I am the starting goalie for the Blackhawks. (Though. Kyle, if you really want the number one draft pick, I am sure I could help with that. Call me.) The idea that learning the truth about history should make you feel ashamed in the present is nuts. You aren’t your ancestors. You are you — you get no special demerits or points for having been born from a specific bloodline. Because here is the thing: your ancestors were almost certainly assholes. As were mine. As were everyone’s.
I am Polish-American — as in my mom came from Poland when she was a teenager. There is a lot to be proud of in Polish culture. Art, music, literature, a tradition of democracy, four hundred years of resistance to the partitions, etc. There is also a lot to be ashamed of: the food is terrible (sorry, Mom, but it is. Polish food is all apparently based on dares.), pogroms, etc. But just as I get no special ability to play music because of Chopin, I accrue no specific blame because of the WWII pogroms. The reason to learn about these events is not to make people feel bad. It is to remind them that bad things can happen and to not do bad things again.
Because there is no society on Earth whose ancestors were not assholes to a large degree. My Polish family won’t buy German cars to this day. A Korean-American friend’s grandmother’s reaction to our studying WWII in history class was to inform us that not enough nuclear bombs had been dropped on Japan. Generally speaking, every society has been more violent, or repressive, or misogynistic, or unequal, or unjust, or any combination of the above and/or some other flaws this already run-on sentence doesn’t have space for. And that’s fine. The point of history, after all, is not to venerate the past but to learn from it and improve the future. If our progeny doesn’t look back on us and be horrified by some of the stuff we are doing, then it will be a sad day for human progress.
Now, of course, a lot of the resistance on the right to understanding history is a rejection of the idea that anything systematic needs to be done to correct past wrongs. They conflate the idea of correcting the system to make it just is the same as laying blame. It is not, obviously. And some people, people who are held back by other aspects of our system that don’t enjoy as much cachet at the moment as others, think that things like affirmative action or programs designed to overcome, say, redlining, are cutting the opportunity line. And the opportunity line, for most people in the country, doesn’t hardly move at all.
But the solution to that is to, well, make the line move fast. It is not to maintain an unjust system but rather to build a society that is just for everyone — to make sure that everyone in line gets the help and opportunity they deserve. Free health care, social housing for those who need, free education at every level for every kind of work, universal basic income or a jobs guarantee — you may have different approaches, but in the end, the solution to injustice of one kind is not to perpetuate injustices of other kinds. It is to ensure justice for everyone.
Your ancestors were almost certainly assholes. So were everyone else’s. That’s okay. You don’t need to feel guilty over that or think you are a bad person because of it. You just need to ensure that you don’t do the bad things and help build a society where the bad things of the past are mitigated and new bad things are less likely to happen. Your ancestors being assholes only makes you an asshole if you defend them and their actions out of some misguided sense of relative worship.
You are you, and they were them. Learn from the good and the bad they did, and you won’t have anything to feel guilty about. And when someone asks you why the American Civil War started, you can tell the truth and look yourself in the mirror afterwards. Unlike Republican presidential candidates.
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