|
I gotcha.
It just seems that in 2004, it's irrelevent WHY anyone hated any other group of people three or four generations ago. Any thinking person should just plain ol' "know better". My dad found papers in his parents' house when his mom died, wills and things, which he saved for whatever historical value they might have. I found it completely shocking to read sentences like "I bequeath to my son John, Nigger Jim, a strapping buck of 26 years..." It just seemed completely foreign to me. I have no more connection to those people, or their lives, than I do to the Pope. What I'm saying is I was just as likely to be born to the family I have as I was to have been born into Russian royalty or a family of bushmen in Africa - I don't see any room for pride there; it's all accidental.
That said, I do enjoy reading those papers, but with no more interest than I would if it were someone else's ancestors. I don't feel pride that my dad's family owned slaves, or that my mother's family were German Nazis. I don't feel shame, either, because it had nothing to do with me. I could have as easily been Nigger Jim's daughter, or gassed in one of Hitler's tyrades.
|