Spielberg's Lincoln

[Liz Rosenthal]

I'm not descended from slaves, but *I* resent the fact that the U.S., touted as a beacon of light to the world, started out with 250 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow, something that only ended during my childhood, while the aftereffects linger on. Abraham Lincoln himself wrote to his friend Joshua Speed in 1855 that (I'm paraphrasing) he'd almost rather live in Russia, a country where they make no pretense of liberty, than live in a country that is supposed to treasure liberty but, hypocritically, does not act that way.

If we just "move on," and choose to "forget" the shameful aspects of our history, two things will happen:
**We won't be able to adequately address the lingering effects of, in this case, slavery;
**We will act ignorantly of our history and make similar mistakes again.

Did you know that, the night that President Obama was reelected in November, students at Ole Miss demonstrated against having a black man in the White House, using certain choice terminology that I won't repeat here? Did these students not know of the central place Ole Miss had in the civil rights fight of the 1950s? Perhaps not, or perhaps they live in an atmosphere that trivializes the past.

(02-19-2013 06:06 PM)My Name Is Kate Wrote:  

(02-12-2013 09:58 AM)Liz Rosenthal Wrote:  I seriously doubt that the people whose freedom was guaranteed by the 13th Amendment ever felt that too much attention had been focused on it, nor would their descendants feel that way.

I suspect that many of those most affected by the 13th Amendment resent the fact that it was ever necessary to pass such legislation, and would like to think that they fought and earned their freedom without the help of Lincoln or anyone else, and though there may be some truth in that, it's just not the way history happened. People do things to each other that may be humanly unforgivable, but if wounds are ever to heal, people are going to have to leave the past in the past and move on. Women didn't have it so good throughout history either. Seems I recall reading somewhere a long time ago, that in ancient times, women were considered too stupid and inferior to have souls. But I doubt that most women know or even care that that is a part of history, and it's probably a good thing that they don't.

And I'm not saying let's forget slavery ever happened, or the Holocaust ever happened. I'm just saying that you can't dwell on things like that, and keep throwing it in people's faces because that won't do anything but cause more resentment.