Rejecting history

Slavery is wrong. There were a lot of prominent individuals in America who owned slaves. With ongoing issues relating to race, it has become popular to try to remove these individuals from history.

Everyone has both positive and negative traits. This includes historical slave owners. By attacking the undeniably bad, we are effectively erasing the good as well. If we extended this rejection of historical figures to anyone who ever engaged in wrongdoing, we would effectively wipe out all that's good.

Let me provide a quick example. Good and bad are subjective. I'm not going to tell anyone what their opinions must be of George Washington. What I will say is that he isn't in the history books because he was a slave owner.

What's weird about this rejection of history is that it's mostly from people who don't want to move on from the horrendous mistake that was slavery. These are the same people who insist that our country was founded on slavery, and that the legacy continues to this day. These same people insist that modern-day America must be judged by what we did 400 years ago.

Again, slavery is and always has been wrong. Past generations failed to grasp this reality, and we spent far too long thinking this practice was acceptable. This guarantees that there were people who did good things while also owning slaves. We need to stop rejecting the good just because of the bad.