Revision History

Revisionist History

How about starting with an obvious statement - there is a LOT of history in the world!!!

Even in the United States, there is a LOT of history.  

Sometimes we like to ‘clean-up’ history.  Maybe while writing your family's history you came upon Uncle Horus in 1737 who was a horse thief - and you don’t want to include him in your updated family history.  But, the reality is that Uncle Horus DID exist - and that Uncle Horus wasn’t always an honest man.  Maybe your great-great-great Aunt Nellie had two children out of wedlock - and one of them had a black father.  And, that just isn’t acceptable in your family’s history book.

Well, the United States is working on its own errors over the years.

Maybe one of the biggest ‘sins’ we want to gloss over is slavery - from either side of the equation.  When settlers came from England (and Europe) they found a raw land that needed to be tamed.  Today, that would be easier.  Hire a crew with industrial chainsaws, bulldozers, and other equipment and clear the land.  That wasn’t the case in colonial America.  Some areas worked fine with smaller family farms - mostly New England and the Middle Atlantic States.  But as you got farther south, people got big lands grants - or big ‘plantations’.  Yes, you could grow crops or graze cattle, but soon the area was deemed the best at growing tobacco.  And, tobacco was a great ‘cash crop’ - the supply was small and the demand was high - and if a farmer (or, plantation owner) did it right, he (since almost all were men) could get rich - and build a beautiful plantation house.  

Economically, it made sense.  Tobacco required a lot of work.  At that point-in-time, there weren’t tractors, cultivators, and other equipment that we know now.  There were no trucks to take the product to the market.  No electricity.  No easy processes.

And, slaves were a long time solution.  They were property - and property that reproduced more slaves.  

Yes, some slave-owners were good.  George Washington had slaves (seemingly not many, and they were well treated).  Thomas Jefferson had slaves.  

That part of history can not be changed.  And that situation existed for one-hundred years - until the northerners elected Abraham Lincoln who was going to free slaves.  There was a terrible civil war between countrymen.  The end result was a northern victory, the southern army lost - and suffered the status of defeat. As the period of reconstruction continued, southern communities erected monuments to Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, to soldiers that fought on the Confederacy site.  States - where white people had a majority of votes and money, enacted Jim Crow laws - like ‘separate but equal’ - which was separate - but rarely equal.

There have been many other sins on the American blotter.  The treatment of Indians was generally poor.  Women were not allowed to vote.  Justice was blind (as jurors voted their environment, not the truth). Japanese Americans were put into detention camps during World War II.  Columbus could be considered a racist as the Spanish wanted gold.

I just read (for the first time) “To Kill a Mockingbird”.  While the main theme is a girl growing up in rural Alabama, the subtheme of a Black Man accused of raping a white girl.  The all-White jury convicts the Black man - who gets killed.  

Yes, we have many sins!!!  Shakespeare wrote “What’s done can not be undone”; “What’s past is past”. 

Is it good to take down monuments to Robert E. Lee, or Columbus, and to ban the Confederate Flag from NASCAR vehicles, Probably?  Do these monuments honor racism - or do they honor noble men (not many women monuments)? Does the sight of these monuments make some people happy - and some people angry?

Is it time to review the name of teams like the Washington Redskins?  Maybe.  But, to do such actions without appropriate review, might be rash.  

Yes, we can try to be more humane.  We can work on equity.  We can open dialogue between blacks, whites, police,   But, to rewrite history to suggest that our nation's sins didn’t exist isn’t quite right.

In the novel 1984, the protagonist (Winston Smith) has to rewrite (revise) history. Let’s hope that is not our future!!!

Hugs!!

Karen