RE: The Death of History in the USA
I'm not sure why people in America think that committing acts of vandalism is somehow going to change the history of the country.
It's utterly ridiculous.
I'll be the first to admit that there are some ugly things in America's history. However, that's the case with most countries. All we can do is learn from our mistakes and try to right our past wrongs. One thing we just CANNOT do is CHANGE our history because we don't like what happened.
What's next? Rewriting text books to make them contain the history we want instead of the actual history we had?
A lot of people protested the Vietnam War. Does that mean we should knock down the Vietnam Wall memorial and write it out of our history? Yeah let's just pretend it never happened because some of us don't like it.
How FOOLISH! Grow up people!
Well said. I find it bizarre that governments try to hide the history, like it somehow reflects what they are now. Only those with extreme insecurity feel the desperate need to avoid being seen as flawed. British citizens know their country did horrible things, we know we raped and sliced off the breasts of native African women. Germans know the Nazis killed a bunch of people. The people alive today had nothing to do with it, we don't need to apologize or feel guilty.
We learn from is academically and move on.
I agree. I never could understand why different races are still at odds with each other. I don't understand why someone would blame my generation for anything that was done to their people a hundred years ago.
For one thing, I believe in equality for all and I would never have anything to do with racism or prejudice.
I don't know why I should be expected to feel guilty for the actions of my ancestors. I'm not them and I don't condone anything they did.
While I'm sensitive to some of the horrible things that happened in the past, and while I'm sorry that these things happened, there is nothing I can do to change the past.
I can only conduct myself properly and treat people with respect and dignity. People must learn how to move on. We all have to share this planet, so we should learn to drop the grudges and move forward and treat each other with love and respect. Blaming the people alive today for events that occurred 100+ years ago is foolish and will never result in moving forward and improving racial relations.