"I take responsibility" (???)

“I take responsibility” is a video on Sam Harris’ website.   I agree that there have been injustices in OUR history.  There are arguments that people use to justify slavery and other injustices in American history. These are based on history, as traditionally presented, not considering the material outside the gathering of the canon of American historical studies. For example, and we have all heard these: Africans were the slaveholders that sold slaves to the white mxn, and the indigenous people in the Americas were already at war among themselves when the white mxn took their land.  There is an article The Unkind Cut, or who invented Scalping, by James Axtell and William C Sturtevant, which outlines the violence that “Indian” people underwent at the hands of whites, French, British, etc.  Chief Cornplanter, of the Seneca tribe illiterates, how “the French offered to furnish with instruments of every kind and sharp knives to take the skins of their [enemies’] heads”  The history of scalping goes back at least as far back as Herodotus, who cited Scythian scalping and that it was used in the late Ninth century by the French and the Anglo-Saxons, according to early anthropologist Richard F. Burton (Axtell and Sturtevant).  

The iterations of slavery, violence, colonization, racism and discrimination (ala Homi K. Bhabha, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGBnkk3-fS0  ) have been more than significant. It is questionable whether a person should take responsibility for things they did not participate in. Are we present-day whites responsible for the actions of the French and British who practiced, according to anthropologist Peter Farb, that “Indian heads were put on pikes there very early, but people got tired of lugging in the heads so soon they just brought in the scalp to show they had killed an Indian” Axtell and Sturtevant indicate that Europeans had the “habit of taking parts of the body in war”  Therefore, the scalping of “Indians” seems to fit the narrative about Europeans scalping indigenous people.  

This blog will spark some reactions among those who do not feel responsible for past injustices.  The question is, how much has each white person done to propel injustices.  White mxn must look deeply into their hearts to consider what they are responsible for and how they can act differently in the future.  This is quite a challenge and one that is worth consideration.  You may not feel responsible for slavery (even though some identify using humxns to supply the daily things used as slavery). How are you responsible for your own actions, and if language is an action, where have you contributed to discrimination that way?

It is no wonder the Left use “revisionist history” to blame all white people for atrocities in the past.  There are sources that have consequences on how history is written that, when taken into account, help us challenge our beliefs.  Do not fear these sources.  History is written by the victor.  The Left wants to push the agenda of Marxism and identity politics as a means to stay in power, and will use history and people (gay, black, indigenous, etc….) to stay in power.  Considering the disparity between the work of “scholars” and, for example, the positions of Candace Owens or Jordan Peterson, it is difficult to be a white mxn these days.

Who does or should “take responsibility” for what? is the question. 

Comments

Anonymous said…
What all this shows is Man's inhumanity to Man. That is exactly the biblical explanation of the troubles in our world: that our human nature is twisted and corrupted. We seek good things, but we depend upon ourselves, often at the expense of others, in order to get them, rather than trusting God with our needs. Yes. North America was settled mostly by people from Europe. But, before Christianity came to Europe, our European ancestors were involved in paganism, including human sacrifice, and warring among the various white European tribes, like the Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, etc. So sin, crime and corruption are not exclusively "white". They are HUMAN problems. What the [one, single] HUMAN race needs is a fix for its broken nature. That is exactly what Christianity offers!
29 October 2022 at 09:15
Anonymous said…
Wow, great reaction and excellent response. This is the type of conversation we need to have . . . it seems as if the uppercase use of humxn is a way to emphasize the salience of your point. Christianity is the solution to such problematic histories. Humxns are broken indeed, the belief in the excellence of humxn nature is a trap that many fall into these days. Ecological humanities now place the emphasis on a balanced order of the natural world and put humaxns at the peril of unimportance, as we have seen in earlier posts about the work of Yuval Noah Harrari, who refers to all of the phenomenal world as being algorithms. Anyways, pinning the blame on humxnity in this scenario is just interesting, that is all. Balance is subjective, it should be noted; in other words, who decides what balance looks like? (a matter for another post)
29 October 2022 at 09:48
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let's spread MISINFORMATION

According to the government 2  + 2 = 5  and Math is racist. Let’s spread the Truth, which is misinformation.  Let’s spread misinformation all over the place, in every household, community, city, state, and nation(s).  We will not cave on the matter of Truth, no matter how much they say 2 + 2 = 5. No matter what the Party tried to press upon the mind of Winston Smith (in George Orwell’s “1984”), Smith would not succumb, until the end.  For us we will not succumb to the lies, i.e. truth is lies; math is injustice; truth is unjust and other opposites that are flipped on their heads, and are made into the real lies that they are feeding the world.  The Left is relentlessly programming young children, to young adults, to you. Media process has you under its spell.  Stop watching TV and movies, please.  You will find only lies there.  So let’s spread misinformation, while the government is calling truth to be lies. Government and media are vacuous ...
Read more

21st century prophecies

In 21 Lessons for the 21 st Century , the GREAT prophet spoke, saying mockingly, “After all, we are God’s nation, so the argument goes, so what’s good for our nation is pleasing to God.  There certainly are religious sages who reject nationalist excesses and adopt far more universal visions. Unfortunately, such sages don’t wield much political power these days” uttering the excellent, profound, and provocative words, “the handmaid of nationalism is religion” as well, “Religions, rites, and rituals will remain important as long as the power of humankind rests on mass cooperation and as long as mass cooperation rests on belief in shared fiction” and “past experiences of the whole of humanity, will become less reliable guides” “The Zionist story fails to ascribe any meaning to Chinese Empires, to the tribes of New Guinea, and to the Andromeda galaxy, as well as to the countless eons that passed before the existence of Moses, Abraham, and the evolution of the apes” and “eternity is at...
Read more

Consider if you will . . . . . . .

Have you wondered why the Left wants to rid us of one nation under God?  It is not only God they want to eliminate; they intend to destroy the idea of “nation.” This is done through praise of everything but nation.  Homi K Bhabha, in The Location of Culture says that he is not challenging only nationalism, but the historical certainty he wishes to distort and destroy, as well. So Bhabha praise immigrant as migrant and criminal as statistic. The criminal is seen as one who awaits release into the nation. Bhabha writes, “I have lived that moment of the scattering of the people that in other times and other places, in the nations of others, becomes a time of gathering. Gatherings of exiles and emigres and refugees; gathering on the edge of 'foreign' cultures . . . the gathering of people in the diaspora: indentured, migrant, interned; the gathering of incriminatory statistics”  “nation fills the void left by the uprooting of communities and kin”  If you want to get a f...
Read more