{"id":6848,"date":"2011-07-19T09:23:30","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T16:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=6848"},"modified":"2022-10-11T08:05:44","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T15:05:44","slug":"the-stain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=6848","title":{"rendered":"You Can’t Read That!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I started reading a thick paperback yesterday around noon … it looked to be a 400- to 500-pager … but it turned out to be written in blank verse, with just a few words per page.  Including breaks for errands, dinner, and the Rachel Maddow Show, I was done by seven.  The book was Crank<\/em> by Ellen Hopkins, a young adult novel about drug addiction, one of the banned and challenged books on my read & review list.  I’ll post my review in the next You Can’t Read That!<\/a> banned book news roundup.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I’m drawing a bit of heat over my comments on slavery in my most recent banned book review<\/a>.  I said that one reason so many books about blacks’ experiences under slavery have been challenged and banned, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin<\/em> right up to the present day,  is that they make whites look bad.  And this: “Of the many stains on white mens\u2019 souls, slavery is one that can never be scrubbed away.”<\/p>\n

Ain’t no stain on me, one reader comments.  He points out that slavery was once universal.  True, and it remained so well into the middle ages, with whites enslaving whites, blacks enslaving blacks, browns enslaving browns.  It remained a widespread practice well into the 19th century, and even persists, here and there, today.  He asks me, “Paul, are you arguing that we are collectively tainted for the ‘sins of our fathers’ ?<\/p>\n

Actually I think we are.  I’m not saying we should feel guilty about it.  Rather, I believe humbly acknowledging the sins of our fathers motivates us to not repeat history.  It helps us remain mindful of the evil we’re capable of, and the importance of trying to improve society so that we move ever farther away from the bad old days.  It helps us perceive the ever-so-slight bend in the arc of history, the one that trends toward justice.  I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  The Church certainly doesn’t, for what is the doctrine of original sin if not a constant reminder of our base nature and a spur to encourage us to overcome it?<\/p>\n

I remember listening to a call-in radio show a few years back.  The topic being discussed was, I think, southern white resistance to integration during the civil rights era.  A woman called in to ask why the host was “stirring up all this stuff again.”  One hears variations of this all the time.  One variation is to label any such discussion “PC.”  Another is to invoke the Rush Limbaugh trope that to talk about black\/white relations in America is to advocate reparations.  I’m not saying my commenter is motivated by anything like that; he’s an old friend and I know him well enough to know better.  But many are.  Talking about slavery, Jim Crow, or the civil rights era makes us uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

Almost everyone has strong feelings about the history of black and white relations in this country.  Almost no one is indifferent to it.  That tells me I’m not far off the mark in saying it’s a stain that won’t scrub away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I started reading a thick paperback yesterday around noon … it looked to be a 400- to 500-pager … but it turned out to be written in blank verse, with just a few words per page.  Including breaks for errands, dinner, and the Rachel Maddow Show, I was done by seven.  The book was Crank […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,412,64,2,30],"tags":[46,48],"class_list":["post-6848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banned-books","category-books-reviews","category-history","category-personal","category-reviews","tag-books","tag-censorship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6848"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31881,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6848\/revisions\/31881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}