Where lies our nobility?

“I don't think people are inherently racist in this country. In fact, I think that we have a pretty noble tradition of the opposite.” Jeb Bush, Sep. 25, 2015

When I first read the above quote from Jeb I thought it was the same level of ignorance that made him say his brother kept us safe (except for that whole 9/11 thing, right?). That he simply didn’t think it through or possibly was so eager to stick to his positive ‘Rise Up’ message that he couldn’t acknowledge the obvious: our history is hardly noble. It is one of slavery and discrimination. Of subjugation and displacement. White people in this country came to power through disenfranchising, marginalizing, ignoring, or outright killing every other race that crossed their path. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered what ‘noble tradition’ he could be referring to, the more I realized he truly believed what he said. And I think I can understand why.

Jeb grew up a rich white kid in the south. He learned his history the way many of us did in school – through a prism that included the truth but really distorted the facts into a world-view that fed into our own beliefs and desires. You see, everyone wants to be great. We want to be a part of something great and to know our ancestors, whether genetic or cultural, were great. We look at history not to see what happened, but to reassure ourselves that our greatness is deserved. We idealize our past so we can assure ourselves of our future. It’s why Donald wants to make American great again – because so many people think that it was.

In school I was taught that the United States was the greatest country in the world. We were the first true democracy. We expanded across a (nearly) empty land and rose through hard work and industrialization to dominate the world economy. We ended slavery, saved Europe in World War I and saved the world in World War 2. And it was white men like me who did it. How proud was I to be the inheritor of all that greatness.

To be fair, I was taught that we decimated the native Americans when we arrived. We treated them poorly, infected them with disease, robbed them of their lands, rounded them up to reservations, and promptly ignored their existence. But that was the past.

We also had slavery – or, more accurately, those Southerners had slavery. I had the privilege of living in a section of the North that could easily toss off any association with the institution. More importantly, we ended slavery. We, as a nation, fought and sacrificed to free the slaves. Sure, it was ourselves we were fighting. We had lived with slavery for centuries. Grown rich and powerful on the backs of slaves. But the point was we ended the practice because we were good white men.

And even if some prejudice remained, it was in the past, before the Civil Rights Act. Once again, we ended segregation and Jim Crow laws. Good for us.

The facts were there. Our terrible history of discrimination. Against blacks, Asians, women, the Irish, Catholics, etc., etc. Our terrible acts of corporate greed – slave labor followed by child labor. Our terrible treatment of the rest of the world, from supporting dictators to ignoring human rights abuses. Yes, we did lots of terrible things. But look how much we accomplished.

The overall narrative always reinforced that the bad things were done in the past, and that we had changed and improved since then. We took the good things and built on them. There is some truth to this – I believe we have improved as a people and a society. But it also feeds into the self-congratulatory concept that we come from good people. People who ended the bad things. We take pride in our history of achievements but leave our guilt over the costs of our success behind, much like a Vegas buffet.  All prime rib, all the time. No broccoli for us.

So in Jeb’s mind, in the minds of most white people in this country, we are good folk. We come from good folk who were noble and righteous. We desperately want to believe that and it’s so easy to do. Just listen to what you’ve been told since childhood.

It takes much more self-awareness and strength of character to accept the grayness that stains our souls. Our country was built on the bodies of the disadvantaged. Since our very start, we have raped the land, killed those who were here before us, dragged our labor here in chains, repressed the voices and rights of those who looked different or were born the wrong gender. Our true greatness lies not in what we accomplished in the past but how much we have grown and changed from those times. We are not perfect but we are better. That is something rare and worth celebrating.

But we do not have a noble history as a nation. None do. Any current claim of nobility rests not only on our actions today but in honestly admitting the mistakes of our past. Our willingness to sweep the dark spots of our history under the rug is an inherently racist action. It hurts those who have already been hurt, it denies their truth and perpetuates a system that exists to placate those who have the power and gained it so dishonestly. The fact that so many of us choose to willfully ignore our past, that we seek praise for ceasing to perpetrate evil, that we blithely dismiss anyone who dares to suggest we are not the rightful heirs of manifest destiny  – that’s what reveals who we really are. It’s not the second line of the quote that is the big lie. It’s the first.