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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