By Scott Harvey
In a recent issue of The Loop, a January 17th Seattle Times article was quoted by author Michael Shook. According to Rev. Leslie Braxton, “[America’s] reality was enslavement and injustice and discrimination. America was founded and grounded in racism. And anybody who says differently is being intellectually dishonest.”
In the present day, I believe most people would agree enslavement, injustice, discrimination, and racism are wrong and unacceptable. However, what about historical slavery, injustice, discrimination, and racism? If you consider the last 6,000 years of history, you discover that such behavior was not good or bad, it just was. Every “great,” powerful empire acted in this manner on the way to becoming powerful.
Let’s start by substituting easy-to-recognize empires instead of the United States in the paragraph above. Today we have Russia and China. In the 19th-20th centuries, you had the Japanese and German Empires. Before America existed, you had the British, Spanish, and French Empires. The Viking Empire (Scandinavia) was smaller, but still formable from the 8th to 11th centuries. The Holy Roman Empire, covering most of Europe, also was happening.
The mega-empires were earlier, with the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) lasting six centuries and including North Africa, East Asia, and Europe, and the Mongol Empire extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Of course, don’t forget the ancient civilizations of Rome and Egypt. What was a major source of resources for all these empires? Slavery, which created injustice, discrimination and racism.
We also should be clear about indigenous peoples. The Incas and Aztecs used slave and even human sacrifices. Slavery also was common among many Native American and first Nations tribes to the north, via tribal warfare. It should be noted that most of the slaves for the New World were provided by black Africans.
So, in reality, all civilization is based upon slavery and its related injustices. While it is important to note historical slavery, should people or persons who employed slavery have their historic, sometimes heroic, efforts be diminished because they participated in what was “normal” behavior at the time?
Let’s consider America. While racism and discrimination still exist, it continues to decline. What of this country is “grounded in racism?”
America welcomes more documented immigrants every year than any other nation, averaging over one million annually, most of whom are people of color. If not for America’s participation in the two World Wars, there would be no socialist countries in Europe, which would be entirely under fascist German rule. Afterwards, America rebuilt Europe using The Marshall Plan. Since then, America’s defense spending of 3.4% of GDP, and participation in NATO, has allowed European countries to spend more on social programs, while investing less than 2% of their GDP in defense spending.
And what about charitable cash donations by individuals in different nations? According to a report by the Charitable Aid Foundation in 2016 titled, “Gross Domestic Philanthropy,” the US was the number one country at 1.44% of GDP, with New Zealand second at 0.79% of GDP. Individuals donated over $258 billion, more than three times the total donated ($81 billion) by the next 23 nations (UK, Germany, Russia, China, etc.) COMBINED. Keep in mind these figures do not include the billions spent by the federal government.
There is no perfect country, and the US is far from it. However, in modern history America has remained “Great” for more than a century, regardless of who was president.
