Lest We Forget

Here's another idyllic sight that isn't as idyllic when you know the story.

The year was 1830, and the place was Georgia. The Cherokees lived in log houses and farmed their land. Many Cherokees spoke both English and Cherokee, and they even had their own alphabet and newspaper. And they wanted to live in peace with their white neighbors.

But some of their white neighbors didn't see it that way. As more settlers poured into Georgia, they wanted the prime farmland that belonged to the Cherokees. The white man's greed increased when gold was discovered on Cherokee land.

The State of Georgia tried to force the Cherokees out, but these Native Americans didn't put on their war paint. Instead, they took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court--and won.

An illusory victory. White men wanted the Cherokees off that land, and the white man in the White House held the power. As President Jackson is reported to have said, "Marshall made his decision, now let him enforce it."

When the U.S. government offered to relocate the Cherokees to Oklahoma, some thought it better to give in and move out peacefully, while others wanted to stay and resist. So the first group left "voluntarily," if not happily, and the second group stayed until 1938, when soldiers came and forced out the more than 16,000 who remained. Most of these Native Americans were interred in a stockade for the winter, where approximately 500 died from illness. Then the soldiers forced the survivors to march 800 miles under harsh conditions, losing another 4,000 people before reaching Oklahoma.

I took the picture at Missouri's Trail of Tears State Park, which is located where most of the Cherokees crossed the Mississippi River on their forced march from Georgia to Oklahoma. Majestic and peaceful as the site is now, it nonetheless reminds us that white Americans are no better than anyone else. The number of deaths from the Trail of Tears may not come anywhere near the number from the Holocaust, but the prejudice and greed that caused them are the same.

And it could happen again, especially if we forget and grow complacent.

As George Santayana said over 100 years ago, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

I shudder at the thought.

Our Politically Incorrect Heritage

The Nina and the Pinta sailed into our marina last week. Okay, so they are just replicas, but they were interesting all the same.

They also got me thinking about Christopher Columbus and other men and women who put their mark on this country. And about how different it would have been if those men and women had been politically correct.

Before I go there, I'd better define what I mean by "politically correct." I found dozens of definitions on the web, and they differ substantially. The one I'm using is from Encarta's online dictionary:

deliberately avoiding offense: relating to or supporting the use of language or conduct that deliberately avoids giving offense, e.g., on the basis of ethnic origin or sexual orientation.

Notice that the reference to ethnic origin or sexual orientation is just an example. The definition itself is much broader than those two contexts.

Under this definition, our nation's heroes were not politically correct. They knew they couldn't change the world without offending someone in the process, but they went ahead anyway.

Although born in Genoa (now a part of Italy), the adult Columbus lived and worked in Portugal, which was a bitter rival of Spain. So it wasn't politically correct for Columbus to sail under Spain's flag and claim the New World for Spain. But Portugal wouldn't fund the voyage and Spain would, so what was he to do? Give up? Someone else would have made the trip eventually, but it would have changed the course of history.

It wasn't politically correct for the founding fathers to sign the Declaration of Independence and participate in a revolt against the country that ruled the colonies. The loyalists in the colonies and many people in England must have been greatly offended. But the founding fathers thought the existing government was tyrannical, so they made a conscious choice to do something they knew would offend. If they had been unwilling to make that choice, we might be living in a monarchy.

It wasn't politically correct (at least among the Southern slave holders) for a woman named Harriett Beecher Stowe to write Uncle Tom's Cabin. In spite of the current controversy over stereotyping, the novel was meant to help black people by depicting the horrors of slavery, and it fueled abolitionist sentiment. We'll never know for sure, but slavery might not have ended as quickly if Stowe had worried about offending members of her own race.

It wasn't politically correct for Susan B. Anthony to organize women to fight for the right to vote. Some members of both sexes were offended at the time. Anthony died before her dream became a reality, but if she hadn't been willing to offend those who favored the status quo, would my mother have been able to vote when she came of age? And would the U.S. Supreme Court have any female members today?

It wasn't politically correct for Martin Luther King, Jr. to march through the streets and protest laws that treated blacks as second-class citizens. He offended many whites and even broke some laws in the process. Yet, looking back, how many of my readers wish he had been politically correct? Probably not many.

It is impossible to live a life that offends no one, and the person who tries will never be an agent of social change. I'm not advocating prejudice or speaking without thinking or insensitivity to other people's feelings. Those things have always been wrong and always will be. (See Titus 3:2, for example.) But given the choice between being politically correct or changing the world, I know which one I'd choose.

How about you?