Oh God, spare me

My cultural geography professor really irritates me sometimes. First of all, he's short tempered and gets all pissed off at little things. But that's not the point.

Today he said some things that really just rubbed me the wrong way. To give you a little background, he's a white guy from Michigan that seems to be ashamed and feel guilty for being a white guy from Michigan. He's said a lot of questionable things before, but today I nearly had a stroke.

We were talking about the difference between high school and college educations, and he said this: 'In high school, for example, you learn that Thomas Jefferson was a founder of this nation that wrote all these great essays and documents that just happened to own slaves. But in college, you learn that Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner that just happened to be a founder of this nation and write a bunch of great documents.'

What?! What kind of logic is that? I mean, by that reasoning, Abe Lincoln was just a slave free-er that happened to be president during the civil war. That's very well the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

Why is it that historical figures should be defined in terms of their slave ownership? That's ridiculous. We can't apply today's morality to the morality of 3 centuries ago. Those that owned slaves didn't do it out of malice, it was just a common economic practice of the time. They didn't hate their slaves, they just incorrectly viewed them as inferior. And those who didn't own slaves generally didn't do so because of some moral aversion, but rather because they simply couldn't afford it. Yeah, slavery was a terrible thing, but it was born out of ignorance and stupidity rather than evil and hatred.

It really bothers me when people, especially those in educator positions, try to assign motives to our forefathers according to the current political norm. And can we please stop acting like every white person in America is personally responsible for slavery? Slave owners were actually rather uncommon as it was incredibly expensive. My family never owned slaves, but because I have less melanin in my skin than Jesse Jackson, it's my fault and apparently I owe him money (more commonly known as reparations).

I wouldn't be as opposed to the idea of reparations if it wasn't reduced to 'white people giving black people money'. I mean, if you can trace the relatives of who owned slaves and the relatives of those who were slaves and have them work it out, that's not as bad. But the movement now totally ignores the fact that millions of whites actually fought and died to end slavery, never owned slaves, etc. but yet are still included in those 'responsible' for it.

All in all, we need to get away from this whole victim mentality. No one alive today was a slave, or even knows anyone who was a slave, and likewise for those who owned slaves. And if there's a black person in this country that can prove that they would be better off if slavery never happened, I'll give them the keys to my car. So can we please get over it?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go write up my proposal for reparations from eastern Europe for the religious persecution of my ancestors. On second thought, maybe I'll just write them a thank you note. If it weren't for them I'd still be somewhere east of Prague hoping to freeze to death before I died of starvation. I much prefer America. America kicks ass.