On Playing Fast and Loose with Slavery and History (AKA, My Sis Rants)
There I was sitting at the kitchen island eating my Cheerios-inspired cereal and listening to Chris Matthews say outlandish things about the history of slavery in America. And I mean flat out incorrect things about the relative responsibility of the North versus the South, who should be apologizing to whom, and other truly flawed arguments. I was shocked, not from what he was saying (I’d heard it all before), but that he had such free reign to say and propagate patently incorrect statements about American history. His voice reaches far and many do not know any better than to take his statements as gospel.
I was going to flex my newly conferred African American Studies degree but found that the article that first brought the video to my attention already did a wonderful job of correcting Chris Matthews’s mistakes. Instead, I have to address what this video and other recent conversation have been making increasingly apparent. In this post-racial society we find ourselves in, there has been an overwhelming attempt to get rid of my history and by extension my race.
Let it be known, I am not a fan.
Chris Matthews went off on his historically suspect diatribe when discussing the apology issued to African America for slavery and Jim Crow. Personally, I still do not know how to feel about it. Apologies are usually more for the benefit for the issuer than the recipient. An “apology” would never suffice and while this is not intended to be a conversation on reparations, a monetary lump sum would not cut it either. But I digress.
It seems to me that this apology is a way to once and for all shed that albatross that is slavery from around of American race relations. Now correct me if I am wrong, but it was my understanding that the albatross was there for a reason, a form of penance. To be fair, forgiveness does fall under the idea of penance but for some reason this apology does not seem like a sincere hope for forgiveness. Instead, it is ceremonial and symbolic. Nevertheless, if one is to take this apology on good faith that it is seeking forgiveness I shall refer them to Aunt ReRe with some minor edits: “Well I may be willing to forgive you, but I can’t forget.” It seems in this post-racial world you want me to forget as well. Put the albatross back on your neck; penance not met.
I say that you want me to forget for two reasons. One reason is this gross rewriting of history that Chris Matthews, and others, engage in when discussing slavery and American history. I know better than most that history is written in the present. That is an obvious statement but a profound one as well. The past is written by and for the present. It makes us feel better about ourselves and allows the past to be something we have moved on from as a way to make sense to our current world view. Those who blame the South, absolve the North, and glorify Lincoln and the Union army as saviors of African America do so because it makes a complicated and interdependent situation discrete and manageable. It is a fiction and a disservice to those growing up with this historical fiction presented as historical fact. It devolves into a blame game that Chris Matthews was all too eager to play and strips black people of their agency, making us passive characters onto which emancipation was bestowed, similar to how this apology was bestowed upon us to accept and cherish.
The second reason I discern a scheme came to my attention through a recent discussion I read regarding Rhode Island and its attempt to change its name. Evidently there is a motion to shorten Rhode Island’s name and remove the “and Providence Plantations” from its official name. According to the article, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Joseph Almeida, argues for the name change on the basis that by removing the name, Rhode Islanders simultaneously acknowledge the fact that slavery existed in Rhode Island and denounce that chapter of history. Your logic, sir, is flawed. History is not there for you to pick and choose what to remember. In fact, by leaving the name as it is, those like Chris Matthews who absolve the North of slavery cannot do so as liberally when it is literally in the name of the state. Those against the name change do not point to this, but to the fact that it indicates the religious tolerance of the state and would ignore a “positive part of history.” Others degrade and derail the entire conversation by inserting monetary inconveniences to the conversation. Money is not the issue; abuse of history is.
These value judgments that encourage line edits of history are not unique to this situation, but they are problematic. Both religious tolerance (which, by the way, only indicates religious intolerance elsewhere and thereby can be negatively connoted) and slavery are a part of Rhode Island’s history as well as America’s. Removing that nominal reminder for the sake of contemporary political correctness ultimately serves a way to forget the past. You must never forget the past. It is, after all, prologue.
Forgetting slavery or treating it as something removed and disgusting is not honoring my ancestors nor bettering my circumstances. I am of the opinion that everything happens for a reason. Therefore, you cannot act as if something that does not agree with your sensibilities did not happen. Slavery did happen. It is our duty to address it, learn from it, and make sure it never happens again. Forgetting it is not the answer and should not even be a part of the question. Political correctness’s army is trying its hardest to make me forget by either blatantly rewriting history or outright striking it from the record. In your good faith, you may not realize that is what you are effectively doing, but I see what you’re doing and I disapprove.
As a good social scientist I agree that race is a social construct. My race, black-African-American for the pc-ers out there-, is largely constructed from our past. If you take that away, you leave us with phenotypical markers of race. No one, especially those historical revisionists and pc-ers , wants to revisit those times when race was a biological fact and I was sub-human. Heed the direction you are heading in when you try to doctor history in a way that suits your needs and undermines the past.
You have to know where you’ve been before you can know where you’re going. We’ve been in some bad places but our progeny must know that. Don’t take that history away from them.
I was going to flex my newly conferred African American Studies degree but found that the article that first brought the video to my attention already did a wonderful job of correcting Chris Matthews’s mistakes. Instead, I have to address what this video and other recent conversation have been making increasingly apparent. In this post-racial society we find ourselves in, there has been an overwhelming attempt to get rid of my history and by extension my race.
Let it be known, I am not a fan.
Chris Matthews went off on his historically suspect diatribe when discussing the apology issued to African America for slavery and Jim Crow. Personally, I still do not know how to feel about it. Apologies are usually more for the benefit for the issuer than the recipient. An “apology” would never suffice and while this is not intended to be a conversation on reparations, a monetary lump sum would not cut it either. But I digress.
It seems to me that this apology is a way to once and for all shed that albatross that is slavery from around of American race relations. Now correct me if I am wrong, but it was my understanding that the albatross was there for a reason, a form of penance. To be fair, forgiveness does fall under the idea of penance but for some reason this apology does not seem like a sincere hope for forgiveness. Instead, it is ceremonial and symbolic. Nevertheless, if one is to take this apology on good faith that it is seeking forgiveness I shall refer them to Aunt ReRe with some minor edits: “Well I may be willing to forgive you, but I can’t forget.” It seems in this post-racial world you want me to forget as well. Put the albatross back on your neck; penance not met.
I say that you want me to forget for two reasons. One reason is this gross rewriting of history that Chris Matthews, and others, engage in when discussing slavery and American history. I know better than most that history is written in the present. That is an obvious statement but a profound one as well. The past is written by and for the present. It makes us feel better about ourselves and allows the past to be something we have moved on from as a way to make sense to our current world view. Those who blame the South, absolve the North, and glorify Lincoln and the Union army as saviors of African America do so because it makes a complicated and interdependent situation discrete and manageable. It is a fiction and a disservice to those growing up with this historical fiction presented as historical fact. It devolves into a blame game that Chris Matthews was all too eager to play and strips black people of their agency, making us passive characters onto which emancipation was bestowed, similar to how this apology was bestowed upon us to accept and cherish.
The second reason I discern a scheme came to my attention through a recent discussion I read regarding Rhode Island and its attempt to change its name. Evidently there is a motion to shorten Rhode Island’s name and remove the “and Providence Plantations” from its official name. According to the article, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Joseph Almeida, argues for the name change on the basis that by removing the name, Rhode Islanders simultaneously acknowledge the fact that slavery existed in Rhode Island and denounce that chapter of history. Your logic, sir, is flawed. History is not there for you to pick and choose what to remember. In fact, by leaving the name as it is, those like Chris Matthews who absolve the North of slavery cannot do so as liberally when it is literally in the name of the state. Those against the name change do not point to this, but to the fact that it indicates the religious tolerance of the state and would ignore a “positive part of history.” Others degrade and derail the entire conversation by inserting monetary inconveniences to the conversation. Money is not the issue; abuse of history is.
These value judgments that encourage line edits of history are not unique to this situation, but they are problematic. Both religious tolerance (which, by the way, only indicates religious intolerance elsewhere and thereby can be negatively connoted) and slavery are a part of Rhode Island’s history as well as America’s. Removing that nominal reminder for the sake of contemporary political correctness ultimately serves a way to forget the past. You must never forget the past. It is, after all, prologue.
Forgetting slavery or treating it as something removed and disgusting is not honoring my ancestors nor bettering my circumstances. I am of the opinion that everything happens for a reason. Therefore, you cannot act as if something that does not agree with your sensibilities did not happen. Slavery did happen. It is our duty to address it, learn from it, and make sure it never happens again. Forgetting it is not the answer and should not even be a part of the question. Political correctness’s army is trying its hardest to make me forget by either blatantly rewriting history or outright striking it from the record. In your good faith, you may not realize that is what you are effectively doing, but I see what you’re doing and I disapprove.
As a good social scientist I agree that race is a social construct. My race, black-African-American for the pc-ers out there-, is largely constructed from our past. If you take that away, you leave us with phenotypical markers of race. No one, especially those historical revisionists and pc-ers , wants to revisit those times when race was a biological fact and I was sub-human. Heed the direction you are heading in when you try to doctor history in a way that suits your needs and undermines the past.
You have to know where you’ve been before you can know where you’re going. We’ve been in some bad places but our progeny must know that. Don’t take that history away from them.