[THEHILL] The anti-American crusaders’ woeful ignorance of the past goes beyond thinking that Abraham Lincoln owned slaves; that ignorance extends to the present world as well. They have a brittle intolerance of human frailty and of the messiness and complexity of social change. America’s founders made compromises with their own ideals that today we may regard as egregious and unacceptable. But humans are never perfect; history is a record of moral failures as well as triumphs. We learn as much from the former as from the latter; erasing history is simply a power play and an act of sullen revenge.
| The greatest barriers to racial equality today are not statues and patriotic holidays; they are family breakdown and a street culture that regards academic effort and achievement as “acting white.” The time spent spray-painting statuary could be far better spent in the library acquiring knowledge and mastering skills. |
The saddest part of the current rage against the American past is that after the monuments have been removed, the paintings effaced and the nationalistic words banished, nothing will have changed in the status of the self-proclaimed intersectional victims. The academic achievement gap will be intact. The greatest barriers to racial equality today are not statues and patriotic holidays; they are family breakdown and a street culture that regards academic effort and achievement as “acting white.” The time spent spray-painting statuary could be far better spent in the library acquiring knowledge and mastering skills.
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