Earlier this year I was asked to contribute to a series on the West produced by the New Culture Forum. The clip above is from that documentary which is genuinely superb - it’s a real honour to add my thoughts to a programme from which I myself learned a great deal.
Modern society isn't content to simply teach about slavery but also wants to assign blame and then extract punishment. When the blame and punishment is purely based on skin color, that's when the true intentions of "teaching slavery" become apparent.
I was taught about the transatlantic slave trade in school in the late 1960s. I can remember being shocked. But I also remember that our history teacher simply taught us the facts of the matter, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. He also taught us, in similar manner, about the likes of John Newton and William Wilberforce who led the campaign to abolish the trade.
I recall about ten years ago, being instructed by a young lady of the leftist persuasion, that British schools had never taught such matters until recent times. I was happy to offer her the phone number of one of my former school friends who was in the same history class. For some reason, she declined to take up my offer.
Once attended a seminar taught by an Italian American who opened the meeting on the completely unrelated topic of reparations in the US. I asked her how much she was owed and who would pay her as she was descended from slaves herself as are all Italians living today. She was taken aback and changed the subject back to the topic of the seminar. Context matters.
Modern society isn't content to simply teach about slavery but also wants to assign blame and then extract punishment. When the blame and punishment is purely based on skin color, that's when the true intentions of "teaching slavery" become apparent.
I was taught about the transatlantic slave trade in school in the late 1960s. I can remember being shocked. But I also remember that our history teacher simply taught us the facts of the matter, allowing us to draw our own conclusions. He also taught us, in similar manner, about the likes of John Newton and William Wilberforce who led the campaign to abolish the trade.
I recall about ten years ago, being instructed by a young lady of the leftist persuasion, that British schools had never taught such matters until recent times. I was happy to offer her the phone number of one of my former school friends who was in the same history class. For some reason, she declined to take up my offer.
And yet this man earns a living speaking common sense still... Which says a lot about the state of the world...
Knowledge, is valuable
Teach how to think, not what to think.
Once attended a seminar taught by an Italian American who opened the meeting on the completely unrelated topic of reparations in the US. I asked her how much she was owed and who would pay her as she was descended from slaves herself as are all Italians living today. She was taken aback and changed the subject back to the topic of the seminar. Context matters.