A little light culture: Moral mythology

Most of us imagine that we would have been the ones to have been different had we lived "back then". "Transport me back to 1831 and I would have grasped the human dignity in everyone and spoke out against racism." The truth is, almost certainly not. If you had been alive in the 19th century, you would have been a racist. If you'd been an adult in 1954, you would have had all the sexist attitudes of the era. If you'd been either a Protestant or a Catholic in the 17th century, you would have been baying for the blood of the others.

Which is all another way of saying: If you and I had been present at the crucifixion of Jesus, we wouldn't have done a thing to stop it and might well have cheered it on.

It's so easy to forget this and to transform history into an occasion for dividing the sheep and the goats. You can see that attitude at work in a post about the American South following Civil War that Ta-Nehisi Coates has up today. It's not any particular argument or factual claim that is wrong with it. It's the deep need to cling to history as the justification of current political attitudes.

Coates writes:

When Kushner says the Ku Klux Klan came out of an unwillingness to forgive the South, I don't know what he means. The Klan was founded in 1865. Johnson was still president. There was nothing "unforgiving" about his posture to the South.

Well, yeah, I can sorta see that. But I can also see how the Reconstruction could easily have been more generous and how that might have made a big difference. Kushner is perhaps wrong but her isn't crazy and the level of outrage Coates displays here tells us more about him than anything else.