Friday, June 12, 2020

The Abolition Of History



I don’t count myself as a historian….or a sociologist….but I think we need to watch what is going on around us. History is intended to be studied and interpreted so that past mistakes may never be made again..

Statues of many names from our past are being toppled…There are calls for the renaming of ten current Army bases because they were named after rebel generals…Some are even calling for the dismantling of all memorials to pre-civil war presidents.. and the last straw for me was HBO’s decision to delete “Gone With the Wind” from its catalog. It is one of the great movies of all time, a film which produced the first Oscar for an African American, Hattie McDaniel.

It is not lost on me she accepted the award at a nightclub and not on center stage at the Academy Awards. That was racism.

Every piece of the troubled 18th century in this country is being expunged, leaving no lesson to be learned by future Americans.

I suspect Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is next….or Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Beecher Stowe depicted the miserable plight of slaves, a motivating force for abolitionists.

Racism is a dark and continuing chapter in our evolution. A chapter within a book we simply must show future generations of Americans.

We can not deny our history.

We shouldn’t even try.

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