History You Probably Never Knew
30th December 2023
Far be it from me to waste my time arguing with fools, a bad habit that anyone would be well advised to avoid, but the reality of the modern information system is such that it is dangerous to let folly go unrebuked. When people publish inflammatory and insulting claims, the absence of immediate pushback will lead many observers to think that the claim made is valid, and thus do bad ideas and harmful myths become commonplace. Are black people collectively victims of “inhumanity visited” upon them by white Americans collectively?
This is the implied meaning of Hannah-Jones’s rhetoric, seeking to make personal responsibility disappear by the use of racial collectivism to point the accusing finger at white people. The circumstances of history cannot be changed retroactively, and this guilt-tripping attitude — seeking to impugn white people based on what happened centuries before they were even born — also has the rhetorical effect of implying that no black person can expect success or happiness in America because white people are always inflicting “inhumanity” upon them.
Historically, people who incite this Us-vs.-Them way of thinking have not been viewed as philanthropic humanitarians. Unless you consider Pol Pot to be an advocate for “social justice,” you’d best avoid the kind of blame-game rhetoric that is the stock-in-trade of Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Rooting around in remote history in search of a pretext to hate other people is not just foolish, but wicked. It is un-Christian, to say the very least, and as the descendant of Confederate soldiers — including one who was captured at Gettysburg and spent two years as a prisoner of war at Fort Delaware — I know the importance of letting the past be the past. We should study history with an eye toward finding examples that can inspire us, as individuals, to strive for the best in ourselves and, as citizens, to benefit from what history can teach us about policy.