Lebell...
I think you may misunderstand the history of the non-hero. What i have always taken it to mean is that Great Men do not occur in vacuums. That indeed, nothing does. Hitler didn't just wake up one morning and inspire fanatics, he was part of a long chain of anti-Semites, and traditions of anti-Semitic violence in Christendom. The history isn't just Columbus landing on the beach, but what that looked like from Arawak eyes as well. Why is the story told from white eyes? Are invaders or explorers always given precident? Then why are Moslem advances on Europe told as the "defence" of Europe? Or is it that we always tell history from whiteness?
I dispute none of your points about what various individuals have done to contribute to history, but retain my caveat that they do not happen in isolation, and that they are not the sole legitimate focus of historical inquiry. Elizabeth is a particularly good example, as her government was particularly dependant on a broader spectrum of the population in a way that other monarchs had not been, by virtue of the gender issues of the day. It makes sense to study that, and ask what goes in to the equation from both sides...not just the elite.
Quote:
Indians can fail because the White man stole their land and forced them on reservations and made them drunk.
Blacks can fail because they were slaves and they never got the hand up they needed and because there is still prejudice.
To me this is exactly identical to Pan's addict that continues to blame his current failure on the past. It is identical to the convict/criminal that continues to blame his drunk dad or the boss that hated him, or the other bad breaks for the fact that he is a criminal.
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You're shooting the messenger. When people are telling you "this system is unjust" or "there needs to be conscious action taken to counteract white privildge" your response is accusatory. I think you owe it to them and to yourself to do a better job of listening. I see your project to be the construction of a defense of white privildege...to feel comfortable about the ways that doors simply open for you and people of similar heritage. (They open for me, as well...i'm middle class and ethnically German and WASP)
They don't open for some folks. To bring it back to topic, some people don't see themselves in history books. you think for one second that if something like that had happened to a european nation that it wouldn't have been front and center in history? Why is that? Why is Pearl Harbor a major event in a way that the US invasion of Mexico is not? Why are victims white and agressors non-white? All of these things point to method failure, where the cultural assumptions of our culture have short circuited the quest for history. Seeing these things can be a painful process...but it makes sense to try to see them.
I'm all for progress, moving forward, and all that. But what are we improving from? What is it that we're trying to fix? What
exactly has gone wrong?