David Brion Davis, author of the new book Inhuman Bondage, writes about the "Importance of History." Excerpt:
I’m concerned with the erosion of interest in history -- the view expressed by even some leading teachers and intellectuals that we should “let bygones be bygones,” “free” ourselves from the boring and oppressive past, and concentrate on a fresh and better future.
I’m passionately committed to the cause that distinguishes us from all other animals -- the ability to transcend an illusory sense of NOW, of an eternal present, and to strive for an understanding of the forces and events that made us what we are. Such an understanding is the prerequisite, I believe, for all human freedom. In one of my works on slavery I refer to “a profound transformation in moral perception” that led in the eighteenth century to a growing recognition of “the full horror of a social evil to which mankind had been blind for centuries.” Unfortunately, many American historians are only now beginning to grasp the true centrality of that social evil –- racial slavery --- throughout the decades and even centuries that first shaped our government and what America would become.
The goal of much of my work since 1994 and what led me to write my current book, Inhuman Bondage, is to “de-localize” the central AMERICAN, not Negro, problem; to find ways of envisioning and understanding what I term THE BIG PICTURE.
Read the whole thing.
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