The difference of a single letter...i vs o
the country as being founded on a racist past
Lots of us find that statement offensive, and biased. It represents a specific political view, and one I do not share. Change a single letter, and it changes the statement into something I believe is factual and historically accurate. Our country was not founded
on a racist past. Our country was founded
in a racist past.
I never saw this point of view in any of the history texts when I was in school. But that was quite some time ago. Apparently things are viewed differently now?
Yes, many of them were wealthy, but not all. And those elitists risked all they had, and ever would have, in order to create a system based on "all men are created equal", etc. Hardly seems an elitist ideal, that.
It has become fashionable (recently) to denigrate the Founding Fathers, because in their personal lives they were men of their era. The are called racists because some of them owned slaves. Elitists because of,.. I don't really understand why, because they were rich? or because they didn't include a particular group? or ? Focus on males, because women had no public part, implying they were excluded, (anyone who doesn't think the wives of the Founders didn't have any influence has never been married or had a serious relationship
.)
They slap these pejoratives on our Founders, because they are
only looking at what the Founders did
not accomplish, and not at what the did do.
Racist is a fine word. And so popular in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Looking at history, one clearly sees that mankind has been racist from day one. Primitive tribal groups are intensely "racist", except that generally skin color doesn't matter all that much. Other tribes are enemies, because they compete for the same resources. The root word for "stranger" and "enemy" is the same in many old languages.
Tribes became nations, and nations still acted the same way. But the underlying beliefs remained largely unchanged. "those guys on the other side of the hill are different from us. They look different. They talk different. They think different. Heck, the smell different! They are not our friends. They will take from us, kill us if they can. We need to do them first!"
This was (and to some degree still is) the established order of things. One people don't dominate/exterminate another just because they are of different colors, hey do it because one is weaker in numbers, or technology, because they have something the first group wants, and because they can!
Blacks weren't enslaved because they were black, Native Americans weren't driven off their land and killed because they were "redskins". It was done because they were weaker and socially different from those who did it. Claiming it was done because of their skin color ignores the fact that the same things were done to other peoples, by people of the same skin color, in the past. It makes a convenient excuse, and one used by the individuals doing the oppressing, that "they are only ......" and so it was right and proper in their eyes, since their group was superior, that obviously meant that they were "better". The weaker group was only "ignorant pagan savages", and they were "God's chosen" or some variation on that theme.
We have come a long, long way from those days, and we still have a ways to go. Disparaging the Founding Fathers because the were not able to correct all the worlds woes in one fell swoop is just wrong. They were, after all, merely men. To imply that those concepts that they fought, bled, and died for, are somehow less than worthy because those men were not able to implement them completely and instantly is disingenuous.
Nations, like individuals, begin as infants. We learn and grow with time. Pointing out repeatedly how we crapped in our diapers ignores where we are today. Knowing where we came from is important, but where we are is what counts, and where we are going is what matters!