Last week, most likely in response to the Charlottesville attack, musician and singer Lorde tweeted out this tweet:
In summary, she blamed the highs and lows of history and society on "white people." Lorde, in case you're reading this (and I know you're probably not), I understand the sentiment you wanted to convey through this tweet. However, this baseless assumption and accusation that white people are to blame for everything wrong with society is ridiculous to anyone who has ever sat in a history class. A general rule of thumb is that blanket statements of any kind are usually bad and hurtful to everyone, and this is just another example of that.
But more than just a tweet, this brings up a serious issue that is slowly but surely growing in radical leftist ideology: the idea of white guilt. White guilt is the concept that basically anyone that counts as white (whatever that is even supposed to mean) should feel guilty and at fault for institutionalized slavery, imperialism, society, and basically the world today.
If any of these people who claim that white people are to be blamed for the state of the world today bothered to crack open a history textbook, it would be made appallingly obvious that this is not the case.
Let's break this down. One by one.
Slavery has been part of human history since we became civilized. At some point in time, one race was enslaving another or enslaving members of their own race. At the same time that African slaves were being taken in by the Europeans, the Barbary pirates were taking white slaves and practically anyone else as slaves as well. These Barbary pirates were mostly Muslim, but Europeans participated as well. Many slaves would die on board the ships to North Africa, and if they survived they would be worked to death.
How about the Russian slaves? the Russian world "slav" literally means "slave" and these white slaves often worked as house servants. Russians also did not discriminate with their slaves, capturing Germans, Lithuanians, and Poles. They also sold white slaves to Muslim Barbary pirates. Moreover, during World War II, the Japanese took prisoners of war and made them slaves as well, forcing the women to become "comfort women" or sex slaves.
And then there's the African slave trade. I distinctly remember learning in history class that Africans were as involved in the enslavement of their kin as Europeans were. African tribe leaders were often bribed with guns and alcohol and other European goodies in exchange for other Africans in the tribe. These tribe leaders were subsequently responsible for the shipping and enslavement of millions of black slaves.
But if we go even further than that to medieval times, it gets even more interesting. During the Dark Ages after the fall of the Romans, feudalism was a major part of most European countries. Because of the lack of towns and a decrease in advancements in technology, society, and innovation, most countries came to rely on subsistence farming to get by. This led to most of the population of a country becoming serfs, peasants, or in simpler terms, slaves. Serfs tilled and harvested the fields relentlessly and most of the food they gathered would go to nobility, leaving them often starved and overworked. Feudal society was practiced in Europe and Asia for centuries before radical revolutions and coups would eventually overthrow them.
Going with the same logic, white people are also not at fault for the results of imperialization. Every country, race, empire, or culture has at one point tried to imperialize another. Land is a prized commodity in our world, and it represented power to many of our ancestors. So it made sense as to why they saw imperialization as a way to achieve power. The Japanese ruthlessly imperialized Southeast Asia from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, colonizing China, Korea, and other islands. The Mongols conquered so quickly that to this day they are the largest empire in history, at one point stretching from Korea to Turkey. The Roman Empire easily conquered and imperialized Europe and allowed the inhabitants of the conquered countries to live peacefully during their glory days. During all these imperial exploits, countless died as collateral damage and countless others were enslaved and tortured.
Finally, we have society. Western society is praised as the most opening, accepting and tolerant society to this day. In India, women are sold into prostitution because they are seen as a burden to their families. In some Islamic countries that practice Shari'ah law, honor killings of women are practiced and homosexual relationships are illegal and punishable by death. In North Korea, most of their citizens are still considered slaves for the government. Does Western society still have problems? Yes, and we're working on them, but compared to other societies around the world, I'm glad to be living in this one. Blaming white people for Western society is essentially a compliment to them for making the freest society there is.
Lorde, I think we can all agree that what happened in Charlottesville was horrendous and heartbreaking. But the solution to these attacks isn't blaming an entire group of people for crimes that every race has committed. We shouldn't be held back because of what our ancestors did in the past, and we shouldn't have to apologize for them either (in North Korea, citizens are punished for the crimes committed by their ancestors or family members).
In the end, we are our own people and what our ancestors did or did not do is independent of who we are now. This clean cut dichotomy of history is just inaccurate. Human history is messy and riddled with mistakes and crimes on all parts, and to blame one group for everything wrong today greatly overlooks the complexity of our own past.
