So I go out scanning the national headlines via Yahoo News, like I do every morning when I don’t see anything in the local/State media that really piques my interest, and lo and behold I find this article on the front page of yahoo.com.
Here’s the history of Rhode Island I learned back in elementary school/middle school: Back in the 17th Century, in the colonial days of this Great Nation, some of the settlers in Massachusetts had a religious fight and banished a dude from the state. That guy went over to some nearby land and started his own colony. He founded it in part on the separation of church and state – more than a century and a half before the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. I was told back in the day that this guy (and I’m sure I was told his name was Roger Williams, but I had forgotten that until I read this article) founded Rhode Island, but apparently that was slightly simplistic, per the article above.
Apparently, the colony was called ‘Rhode Island and Providence Plantation’ in its original Royal Charter, which was used as its Constitution until the early 1840s – in other words, for the first 200+ years of the now-State’s existence as a political entity. After the State developed its own Constitution in the 1840s until the present day – nearly 400 years since its founding – it has retained the official name of ‘Rhode Island and Providence Plantation’.
Now, some black lawmakers up there want the ‘and Providence Plantation’ dropped because it could refer to slavery.
Folks, its time for the black community to get over itself on this one. I am 26 years old, I was born in 1983 – nearly two decades AFTER the Voting Rights Act was passed. All of my life, everyone in this Great Nation has had exactly the same opportunity for success as I have. Some have capitalized on that to a FAR greater extent than I have, others have not.
Regardless, slavery itself was ended here more than 150 years ago, and even Jim Crow died more than 50 years ago. That era of our history is dead, and it will be buried over the next few decades as those old enough to have memories of it die out.
It is time for ALL of us to look at ourselves first as the reason we succeed or fail. Blaming others, and particularly those that are long dead, serves no purpose other than to hold us back.
Closing, I heard a preacher named David Ring speak on several occasions growing up in North Georgia. What makes this man relatively unique is that he has cerebral palsy, yet he is a VERY well respected preacher who has touched thousands of lives. One of his mottos was always this, and it is what I leave you with:
“I have cerebral palsy. What’s your problem?”
The Legalized buying and selling of human beings ended in this nation well over 100 years ago. However, it IS a fact of our history just as the fact that the Civil War (War of Northern Aggression to many Southerners) really did happen and in happening continued to define us as a nation.
We can’t change our history like the did in China some years back. Nor do we want to be like Iran’s public reporting that all is well in the country and always has been.
Slavery happened, people. In WWII we grabbed Japanese people (American citizens at that) and tossed them into “relocation camps”. That and slavery were reprehensible parts of our history but they ARE still history.
Someone famous (senior moment) once said that those of us who choose to ignore the past are destined to repeat it.
So, while some in Rhode Island want to change to name (to pretend slavery never happened?) and others want reparations for slavery (I never owned a slave or treated someone as a slave), These are the cold, hard, facts of our history.
We take the good but we also have to remember the bad so we don’t make those mistakes again.
Let’s deal with social security and health care and the wars we are involved in and the economy.
As Jeff said, all of us need to “get over” ourselves and move on.