Reacting to the fairly new and growing trend to remove
monuments and other reminders of certain famous Americans from the time of the
American Revolution when our nation was born, former Secretary of State Condoleeza
Rice appeared on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” one morning last May to take issue
with that movement. Newsmax.com reported that she said it is a “bad thing.”
She was asked about her recent book, "Democracy:
Stories from the Long Road to Freedom," and about how she sees herself as
a black woman in today’s United States.
Co-host Brian Kilmeade asked: "When we look at nine of
our first 12 presidents as slave owners, should we start taking their statues
down, saying we're embarrassed by you?" She answered that, no, we
shouldn’t. "I'm a firm believer in keeping your history before you."
"I don't actually want to rename things that were named
for slave owners," Rice continued. "I want us to look at the names
and recognize what they did and be able to tell our kids what they did and for
them to have a sense of their own history. When you start wiping out history,
sanitizing history to make you feel better, it's a bad thing." History, properly
told, presents the good, the bad and the ugly.
Providing an illuminating lesson about our history she noted
that the Constitution originally counted black slaves as "three-fifths of
a man," and then gave examples of how America has evolved since. "In
1952, my father had trouble registering to vote in Birmingham, Alabama," she
said. "In 2005, I stood in the Ben Franklin room, [named after] one of our
founders, and I took an oath of office to that same Constitution and it was
administered by a Jewish woman Supreme Court justice. That is the story of
America."
"They were the people of their times," Rice said, alluding
to the fact that few if any alive at our country’s birth had ever lived at a
time, or in a place that slavery was not reality. As bad as that was, it was
the way things were.
In fact, Anthony Johnson, a black Angolan who achieved
freedom in the early 17th-century Colony of Virginia after serving his term of
indenture, became a property owner, and was one of the first slave owners in
Virginia.
"I wish [all the Founders] had been like John Adams,
who did not believe in slavery,” Rice continued. Another Founder who was not a
slavery supporter was Benjamin Franklin, who in 1787 began serving as President
of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.
“I wish they had been like Alexander Hamilton, who was an
immigrant by the way, a child of questionable parentage from the Caribbean. I
wish all of them had been like that, Jefferson in particular. There were a lot
of contradictions in Jefferson ... we should celebrate the Jeffersons,
Washingtons, slave owners. Look where we are now."
America’s path from slavery, to freeing the slaves, to today’s
circumstances has been long and often troubled. But today, we see people like
Condi Rice who have risen to the heights of our country. America’s history of
slavery and the long, difficult struggle to finally end it 150 years ago is
also her history, and the history of most black Americans. The list of black
Americans who have achieved great things is long, indeed, and includes people in
government, such as Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Ben Carson,
Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, and more than 30 current members of Congress
elected by their constituents to represent them.
In addition, there are also hundreds of black professional
athletes – including those who feel led to take a knee in protest – as well as
musicians, actors, entertainers, television personalities, and those in the
professions.
Rice also noted that owning slaves was only one part of the
lives of the Founders. So many things that these former slave owners did that
were positive and contributed so much to our country are overlooked by their
critics. Perhaps it’s because they are not aware of these beneficial acts, or
maybe they simply believe no positive aspect of their lives is sufficient to
overcome their involvement in slavery.
Today, people want to remove monuments recognizing our
Founders, and sometimes take illegal, destructive actions against them, all because
they owned slaves more than 200 years ago. Nothing else about them matters.
What needs to be done is to not tear down reminders of
America’s history of slavery – which at the time existed not just in America,
but all over the globe – but instead to learn about and celebrate America’s
progress since that time.
Slavery is thousands of years old. Athenians had slaves as
long ago as the sixth century BC. And it exists still. According to an article
on BBC.com, “there are, shockingly, more people in slavery today than at any
time in human history - but campaigners think the world is close to a tipping
point and that slavery may be eradicated in the next 30 years.”
Wouldn’t a more productive use of these anti-slavery sentiments
be to focus on ending slavery around the world?
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