Finneran: Additions to History

Finneran: Additions to History

Thoughts are in a collision this morning.

I wring my hands over the surging impulse to delete names and to topple statues from iconic American schools and squares. That impulse reminds me of Lenin and Stalin and Mao and their murderous methods of erasure.

At the same time, I am aware of my ignorance of the full picture of America’s settlement of the continent, its treatment of Native American tribes, its slave trade, and the ugly realities of Jim Crow. True history would share both the noble as well as the nasty motives and deeds of our predecessors.

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Rather than erasure and obliteration from the annals of our country, might we not learn more from additions to our history, additions which add contemporary context to the various personalities, including their many flaws?

To read Thomas Jefferson’s magnificent Declaration of Independence is to read a masterpiece of argument on behalf of human longing and freedom. Yet to contemplate the concurrent reality of Jefferson’s ownership and exploitation of slaves, of his fellow human beings, adds a jarring note to our enshrinement of his legend.    

Black History Month serves a purpose. There is much to learn and we are wise to avail ourselves of the opportunities to do so. Black History Month begins to supply the rightful and necessary additions, the rightful and necessary context to human history.

Please note my reference to human history rather than American history. The additions to the history of which I speak encompass the world and the many virtues and faults of all people. Far too many academics seek to assign racism, exploitation, greed, and criminality as vile traits that are exclusive to the American people. Their “blame America first” attitude is embedded on many college campuses and is rampant in many course catalogs. Such attitudes seem designed to prolong the conflict and to promote the pursuit of victim status at the expense of true learning.

The re-writing of history books is always fraught with tension over which materials to include and which materials to exclude. That tension is understandable and inevitably, someone will be disappointed. Yet it is precisely that tension and that disappointment which argues for additions to our public monuments.

Do not tear down the monuments to Jefferson and Lincoln. Add context to them. Do not tear down the statues of Robert E. Lee and of Woodrow Wilson. Add context to them. Corresponding statues of Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther King would add greatly to the quiet consideration of mankind’s many flaws.

There is no need to patronize Native Americans as living in congenial and peaceful harmony with each other. They were often at war with each other, as were various European, Asian, and African nations. European slave traders made deals and shared wealth with Arab and African slave traders. The common denominator, of course, is a fallen man. It is a universal plague and a reminder that God’s work is never finished.

The obliteration of monuments deprives future generations of the opportunity to learn from the past. We need not mimic Stalin or Mao with their show trials and wholesale liquidation of inconvenient citizens. We’re old enough and hopefully wise enough to acknowledge the warts-and-all nature of mankind.

Let’s talk about addition, not subtraction.

 

 

Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio.