For icons of America’s past, forgiveness is the best path
I am becoming increasingly worried about the culture war that is occurring in America at the present time.
My worry is that the escalation of this culture war is leading to increased polarization, White rage and violence. Could it eventually lead to a civil war or possibly an outbreak of interracial violence?
The Marin Independent Journal ran a front page article on Jan 28 reporting that the
San Francisco Board of Education recently voted to rename 44 of its public schools, including George Washington High School and Abraham Lincoln High.
This is a most outrageous example of contemporary political extremism and it is not the only example. The reasons the board stated for changing the names were that Washington was a slave owner in his day, a fact that I learned in grammar school decades ago. Their charge against Lincoln was even more empty, namely that he mishandled the Minnesota Uprising of 1862. This prompted me to go online and read about the Minnesota Uprising which I had only been dimly aware of. I strongly recommend that everyone read about it.
The Minnesota Uprising was part of an ongoing war between the Native Americans and White settlers moving into the Minnesota territory. It was tragic and there were killings committed on both sides.
In the end a U.S. army tribunal captured and sentenced some 303 Native Americans to death for murder.
Lincoln eventually pardoned most of them and only 38 were executed. All this happened in the fall of 1862 when the Civil War was raging. Lincoln was preoccupied with the war and worried about finding a competent commander for the Union army who could turn the tide against the Confederates.
We must develop real understanding and forgiveness for the icons of America’s past. Washington and the Founding Fathers were born into a world where slavery was normal and had existed all over the world for centuries.
The worldwide slave trade was one of the biggest economic forces in the world in those times, comparable in size and dominance to the oil industry of today. This did not make owning slaves morally right. I am only saying we need to understand what a widespread moral and monetary blight it was at the time.
It is morally wrong and just plain ignorant, cruel and unjust to judge America’s founders and past leaders by the standards of today.
The extremists on the San Francisco school board need to be confronted with their own implicit racism. They need to be stopped from adding more fuel to the fires of hate that are already burning in America and burning dangerously. I am sure they have good intentions but they have a most misguided strategy.
The “anti-racists” have actually become racists in their own way, hiding behind a thin mask of self-righteousness and judgmentalism as they perpetrate their own forms of domination.
The same critique applies to the denigration of Sir Francis Drake. Yes, as a young man looking for a job, Drake worked on two voyages that carried slaves from Africa to the Americas. So what? According to my understanding, he then changed his ways, and spent the rest of his life working and fighting to free slaves held in the Spanish colonies.
I say let us keep the name of Drake High School and emphasize his repentance. For future students at Drake, let us teach the whole picture of Drake’s life and times, including both his positive and negative contributions to the world.
The Sufi meditation master Pir Vilayat Khan said it best: “Understanding is 99% of forgiveness.”
To the San Francisco school board and to Marin educators, I say it is time for real understanding. It is time for forgiveness.
We must develop real understanding and forgiveness for the icons of America’s past. Washington and the Founding Fathers were born into a world where slavery was normal and had existed all over the world for centuries.