Knowing Better

Let's talk about tomatoes. There was a time when they were generally considered to be poisonous.  Deadly. They were were classified with Bella Donna and Nightshade and people were warned away from what would surely be disastrous consequences were they to be consumed. Probably no one was harmed by shunning tomatoes. They just didn't know any better. Now we do.

Remember learning about legends in elementary school? Primitive cultures made up stories to explain what nowadays we are able to discern as scientific phenomenon. They just didn't know any better. I'm sure in elementary school we didn't go into the possible consequences of those primitive world views. (Human sacrifice, for instance.)

We just shook our heads and said, "that was a long time ago and they didn't know any better."

Now let's talk about the Nazis. And the Holocaust. We look at the pictures, or look away because we can't bear to look. We know someone who lived through it. Or fought. The thought of the institutional reach of such inconceivable cruelty hits us viscerally. We don't say, "oh, there was a time when some people thought that Jewish people (and others) were inferior and even malevolent so they thought they'd make the world a better place by killing them all. They just didn't know any better. Now we do." Shrug.

We don't do that. We say, "Never again."

Why? Because it is closer in time, and therefore more vivid? Because the victims look like us?

You know why I want to talk about this today, don't you?

Slavery.

Many, many Americans give slavery a pass because they do that disconnect and tell themselves a story that goes like this--

"Once upon a time people believed that slavery was okay. We know better now because we are more advanced. But that was a long time ago and they didn't know any better. We shouldn't judge them. That's just the way people were back then."

Why do we do that?

Is it because it is farther from us in time? Is it because we want to believe that the story of humankind is always a progression of primitive people becoming more advanced and feeling better about themselves?

Is it because the victims don't look like us?

Please, please, please.

It has never, ever, from the beginning of time, been "okay" for one human being to own another, to buy and sell another. Period. It was just as wrong then as it is now. And always will be. 

Slave owners, and those whose livelihoods and well-being depended on the racist systems  codified by slavery, do not get a free pass. That means us, too. If we look at a Confederate monument outside a courthouse and do not feel the visceral wounding of lynchings, and suffering from the lash, or families broken up and distributed like so much grain--there is something wrong with us. Something which ought to be innate in our being has been removed by years of careful upbringing.

This is the inculcation of white privilege whose survival depends on our not feeling that pain.

The sight of Nazis marching with torches has stunned many Americans who haven't been really paying attention up until now. But they aren't really any scarier than anyone who can look at slavery and institutionalized racism and say, "It's not my problem."

If we do that, we lie to ourselves and to others. And the consequences--in our communities, schools, and government--are poisonous and deadly.