In 1997, Hugh Thomas published "The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870."  I suspect today's historians in the US think that's the whole story.  What happened in the US and maybe in early modern Europe.  But did you know that slavery goes back to the beginning of civilization some 10,000 years ago.  All societies engaged in it.  All races and ethnicities were its victims.  Does presentism account for that?  It strikes me that the historians who think all US history must be rewritten to atone for slavery are imposing morality on the past and then claiming that they deserve reparations for those sins.  But they're not slaves today.  They hold PhD's and have privilege that their ancestors couldn't even imagine.  They are not actually doing anything about the inter-generational poverty in Baltimore or Chicago or Los Angeles with all this moralizing and lying about when the US began.  They aren't doing anything about the fact that there are only 29 black-owned banks in the US as of 12/31/21, which is up from 15 a couple of years ago and down from 26 in 2015.  With all the black millionaires today, there is no shortage of investment capital.  But moralizing doesn't require them to explain that.  Because they hold a privileged position.  That's what presentism has become.  A means of establishing an oligarchy in the university.  And putting out history that doesn't seek to explain what really happened.

In 1997, Hugh Thomas published "The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870."  I suspect today's historians in the US think that's the whole story.  What happened in the US and maybe in early modern Europe.  But did you know that slavery goes back to the beginning of civilization some 10,000 years ago.  All societies engaged in it.  All races and ethnicities were its victims.  Does presentism account for that?  It strikes me that the historians who think all US history must be rewritten to atone for slavery are imposing morality on the past and then claiming that they deserve reparations for those sins.  But they're not slaves today.  They hold PhD's and have privilege that their ancestors couldn't even imagine.  They are not actually doing anything about the inter-generational poverty in Baltimore or Chicago or Los Angeles with all this moralizing and lying about when the US began.  They aren't doing anything about the fact that there are only 29 black-owned banks in the US as of 12/31/21, which is up from 15 a couple of years ago and down from 26 in 2015.  With all the black millionaires today, there is no shortage of investment capital.  But moralizing doesn't require them to explain that.  Because they hold a privileged position.  That's what presentism has become.  A means of establishing an oligarchy in the university.  And putting out history that doesn't seek to explain what really happened.

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