Germany faced its horrible past. Can we do the same? (2021)(washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpost.com
Germany faced its horrible past. Can we do the same? (2021)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/03/slavery-us-germany-holocaust-reckoning/
19 comments
I was taught about slavery & american racism in an american public school about 20 years ago also. These are the main points I remember being made:
* slave owners and, later, segregationists were products of the time and systems under which they lived. their acts were wrong but understanding and grace is necessary to interpret them.
* racism is an act of individual, intentional malice, one person to another. to the extent larger systems play a role it is only by giving leverage to individuals to fulfill their personal racist desires.
* there are no notable current, ongoing consequences of these policies that need to be addressed. sharecropping was a thing for a little while though.
* these problems are gone now and they went away because people are just better to each other now, thanks to the good peaceful works of people like rev dr martin luther king jr.
So I like idk. It doesn't sound like this article is talking about your education experience but it is talking about mine. It's a big country though, there's a lotta schools.
* slave owners and, later, segregationists were products of the time and systems under which they lived. their acts were wrong but understanding and grace is necessary to interpret them.
* racism is an act of individual, intentional malice, one person to another. to the extent larger systems play a role it is only by giving leverage to individuals to fulfill their personal racist desires.
* there are no notable current, ongoing consequences of these policies that need to be addressed. sharecropping was a thing for a little while though.
* these problems are gone now and they went away because people are just better to each other now, thanks to the good peaceful works of people like rev dr martin luther king jr.
So I like idk. It doesn't sound like this article is talking about your education experience but it is talking about mine. It's a big country though, there's a lotta schools.
Very interesting. Essentially the opposite of the narrative that I got.
It's mostly a matter of definition. Was the system in which slaveholders and segregationists lived a "racist system"? If you think racism is defined as being about individual attitudes, then the term makes little sense. And it's certainly true that we have been gradually mitigating these systems of oppression, so their consequences are not what they once were. Of course, this suggests that further progress might also be possible, should we find out that problems still exist (as with police brutality and biases in the criminal justice system). Both perspectives are valid and both should be taught for a full understanding of where we might be standing now.
The civil war is still taught as the "war as northern aggression" in a lot of schools
The United States is still doing horrible shit, we would have to change something about that first.
I would argue Germany hasn't gotten over it, living here now. Also, slave ownership wasn't in the same stratosphere as the Holocaust. Both terrible blights on human history of course, but comparing the Holocaust to whatever other terrible thing is a tired trope.
Germans have loads of memorials, big and small, obvious and subtle, scattered all around the afflicted areas. It's part of frequent conversation here.
Also, there's a cultural difference - Germans are not sensational. They don't let emotion get injected into every news piece or current event. They don't "clap back" or cancel each other. It's not a constant race to see who is the most oppressed.
This is where the difference is. As an American, I can safely say that America has a culture problem that has absolutely nothing to do with racism/slavery/whatever and that is present across the political spectrum. It's not super obvious to most until you leave the American sphere and look back into it from the outside.
Germans have loads of memorials, big and small, obvious and subtle, scattered all around the afflicted areas. It's part of frequent conversation here.
Also, there's a cultural difference - Germans are not sensational. They don't let emotion get injected into every news piece or current event. They don't "clap back" or cancel each other. It's not a constant race to see who is the most oppressed.
This is where the difference is. As an American, I can safely say that America has a culture problem that has absolutely nothing to do with racism/slavery/whatever and that is present across the political spectrum. It's not super obvious to most until you leave the American sphere and look back into it from the outside.
"They don't let emotion get injected into every news piece or current event."
Unless the topic is nuclear energy... It is more like "German susceptibility to hysteria is enormously concentrated in a few topics".
Unless the topic is nuclear energy... It is more like "German susceptibility to hysteria is enormously concentrated in a few topics".
Ah yeah, that's very true. Hugely anti-nuclear here, and very energetic about that.
None of the slave owners are alive so we can't have trials
We have affirmative action
We have civil rights bills
We have a black history month
Seems like we have faced our past.
We have affirmative action
We have civil rights bills
We have a black history month
Seems like we have faced our past.
Tokens of recognition aren't currency that you can use to buy redemption, I find this comment particularly ironic when this other article exists, perfectly capturing a symptom of the state of denial that the US find themselves in wrt to their tumultuous history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30261610
Germany didn't get over their trauma by having "Jew day" and "please stop treating humans like cattle" bill while routinely allowing their members of society to deny education to their children
Germany didn't get over their trauma by having "Jew day" and "please stop treating humans like cattle" bill while routinely allowing their members of society to deny education to their children
I think the school system is a failure for many blacks, but they aren't denied an education. I think we need a system where black parents can send their kids to a better school than their local school.
The problem is this is not a black problem, but a poor problem. Poor areas, regardless of their racial makeup, have worse schools. This has nothing to do with race, but class.
I agree that just giving a day or month or whatever doesn't solve the issue, but when the people involved are all dead, we can't exactly hold a Nuremberg Trial equivalent. We also have a first amendment so we can't ban racism like Germany did with Holocaust denial.
The problem is this is not a black problem, but a poor problem. Poor areas, regardless of their racial makeup, have worse schools. This has nothing to do with race, but class.
I agree that just giving a day or month or whatever doesn't solve the issue, but when the people involved are all dead, we can't exactly hold a Nuremberg Trial equivalent. We also have a first amendment so we can't ban racism like Germany did with Holocaust denial.
The evidentiary standards used at Nuernberg would be problematic in the US today.
Poor Whites and Asians still have better outcomes than similarly poor Blacks.
Poor Whites and Asians still have better outcomes than similarly poor Blacks.
Woman are now doing better in school than men. Does that mean that the school system is sexist against boys?
School haa been remade and reprioritizatized to enable women to perform better.
There is a simple reason: The United States does not yet have the stomach to look over its shoulder and stare directly at the evil on which this great country stands.
Hmm - could be true (sometimes I think this myself), but also kind of unfalsifiable, not really grounded in anything concrete. But, still "keep reading" ...
That is why slavery is not well taught in our schools.
What? It damn sure was in my school. Along with the evils of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, lynchings, and general trajectory of events leading to the civil rights movement. And the eugenics movement, and Indian Removal. And several lectures devoted to the practice and evils of racism as such (and as applied to other group). Along with questions about whether slavery really ended at at all after the Emancipation Proclamation, or just changed form. Yeah, we went there.
Still, I don't know from nationwide tendencies, and who knows what the author means by "well", so keep reading ...
That is why any mention of slavery is rendered as the shameful act of a smattering of Southern plantation owners.
WTF? Absolutely not true, in my lifelong observation. I'm sure it happens, but in an extreme minority of mentions. Essentially every time the topic has come up, it has always been described as an "institution", a systematic evil, absolutely embedded in the fabric of life in the Southern states (and respected by the legal frameworks of Northern states, etc).
There are definitely legitimate questions to ask about whether mainstream America (or even "White America") has sufficiently examined its racist and genocidal past. And yes, about how this shapes policy and debate up until the current day.
But where this author thinks they're going with this train of hyperbole, I don't know - and won't be able to stick around to find out.