Sins of the Past

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There is an interesting move afoot to change the past and make it more politically correct.

In other words, putting a 2022 spin on what people did a couple of hundred years ago.

It’s a tad weird only because life went a certain way for those people and things we couldn’t and shouldn’t accept now were a way of life.

For example, the slave owners.

Evidently, all of the men who signed the constitution supposedly had slaves.

It was actually a worldwide fascination.

We look at it now and say, ‘Man, that’s horrible! What a bad man George Washington was!”

Yet, the information isn’t all there, is it?

Why was that the course of doing business back then? 

I’m treading water here because obviously owning slaves is NOT something you want on your legacy resume, but it’s all about the judging of those men, who are long dead, based on what we now know.

I was thinking about this because I heard a story about an older gentleman using miserable words to describe gays.

He said:

“You gotta’ understand, that’s what I heard when I was growing up. We used all the racist words, all the anti-gay slurs.”

“But you know now that it ain’t right.”

“Yeah. I don’t use those words as much as I used to, but I don’t mean nothing by it. They’re just words.”

“Not to the people you’re abusing.”

He waved me off.

“I say it less than my parents. My kids say it less than me, but you can’t completely blame me. It’s what I grew up hearing.”

And I thought about it in relation to my Grandpa and my Dad and me too.

I heard all the racist words and ethnic jokes as I grew up.

I kind of get what the guy was saying:

We did say those words back then. In today’s world, it’s obviously wrong, but back then…

…yeah, it didn’t dawn on anyone that it was wrong!

And it wasn’t all that long ago!

In the 1990’s I worked for a company that referred to black men and women as ‘Negroes’.

That’s what was written in their employee handbook.

Was write for the time when it was written…

…looks ridiculous now.

My Dad and Grandpa weren’t racists, but man, they used some rough descriptions for people of all ethnic backgrounds.

And forget gays!

They were not very gracious in those descriptions.

In 2022, they’d be thought of as horrible people.

Maybe that isn’t totally fair. We weren’t around back then. 

We’ve advanced.

Hopefully.

We’re supposed to!

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