{"id":36755,"date":"2024-03-15T10:52:49","date_gmt":"2024-03-15T17:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36755"},"modified":"2024-03-15T12:01:13","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T19:01:13","slug":"truth-herein-lies-buried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/truth-herein-lies-buried\/","title":{"rendered":"“Truth” Herein Lies Buried"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nigel Biggar’s work, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning<\/em>, is an ambitious, thorough, and all-encompassing analysis of Britain’s historical relationship with colonialism. I can understand why the book has received mixed reviews. It was a complex undertaking, and I consider myself just a few inches left of the center. However, rather than go point by point with what I thought was factually wrong or discuss the issues that were false equivalent comparisons or the instances of exaggerated equivocation, I’ll highlight a few more significant issues. The first issue is the unwillingness to accept one’s history and the resulting negative implications. Secondly, the re-emergence of book banning. And thirdly, the extreme and intentional undertakings to attempt to rewrite history in favor of an ideology or some other self-proclaimed “savior complex” mentality.<\/p>\n

James Baldwin, an American author, wrote, “To accept one’s past\u2014one’s history\u2014is not the same thing as drowning in it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

In politics, history, and particularly race relations, some people have difficulty accepting the truth of the past. Whether it conjures feelings of guilt or causes one to fear that people experiencing poverty will take their wealth away, who knows what is going on in someone’s mind? But I was taught that you will repeat the past if you do not understand it. I like how the scripture tells us in Nehemiah 1:6 (NIV), “I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you.”<\/strong> There are many clear examples in our faith where we are encouraged to confess our sins, not deny, or try to change our sins or past, hoping others will look kindly upon us. One of the reasons America and other colonial empires, like Great Britain, have not been able to move forward on race issues is the lack of acknowledgment and repentance. But I digress since this is not a Bible study class. Alan Lester, in his article, The British Empire in the Culture War: Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning<\/em> states, “There is an area of disputation, occupied by historical scholars, that different interpretations of the evidence allow… but Biggar’s and others’ culture war interventions have nothing to do with the practice of the historian’s craft… They are egregious distortions, motivated wholly by politics and patriotic emotion rather than any desire to understand the past.”[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Nigel Biggar mentioned in an interview with John Anderson that his initial publisher chose not to publish his book because of the backlash from the George Floyd murder and the potential of offending a particular group. He stated that he was concerned about the implications for a “liberal, free, and open society.”[3]<\/a> The implication one can draw from his comment is that there could be a chilling effect on freedom of speech, freedom to publish, or freedom to read certain types of books. This implication leads to my second issue: the current environment we are in, where we are banning books based on what some people think is inappropriate. In an open debate on book banning, Yascha Mounk stated, “Once we allow the idea that “inappropriate” or “problematic” books should be banished from libraries, the question of which ones will be made to disappear becomes a sheer competition of power. That is why everyone should resist this kind of censorship as a matter of principle.”[4]<\/a> While I disagree with Biggar’s publisher’s commitment not to publish his book, it is ironic that he experienced this backlash. Let me explain. In America, by most accounts, those who are championing book banning are the extreme far right. Based on Biggar’s work and the interview, he fits the profile of someone on the far right, or at least sympathetic to their overall ideology.<\/p>\n

The last issue that gives me tremendous pause is the blatant culture war of rewriting history. Notice I did not say attempts to rewrite because it has been going on for so long that the truth is buried under centuries of whitewashing, erasing, twisting, and, at times, just plain lies. However, when people say we’ve come so far with race relations, my question is, if so, why do we still try to deny the truth of what happened? There have been so many scholarly books and articles that have uncovered the truth about colonialism, racism, and empire building; some make it to the bestseller list, but how many new books, as a backlash, are written to dispute or negate the truth because it doesn’t fit a particular narrative? Recall the 1619 Project?<\/p>\n

I’ll end with this thought. Some of us complain that many young adults lack a solid understanding of history or how governments work. Yet, how can we expect others to respect our history if we continue to demonstrate our blatant disregard for it by banning books, especially historical ones, or if we continue to spew out misinformation and, at times, disinformation? One particularly poignant illustration is from Not So Black and White<\/em>. On page 35, the author writes about a Harvard anthropologist who gave up on finding objective categories on race and made up arbitrary categories and wrote a 600-page book. The author profoundly states, “The acceptance of something that did not exist became the starting point for proving that it did.”[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

I started with a quote by James Baldwin, and it is fitting to end with one of his quotes.<\/p>\n

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” \u2015 James Baldwin.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time<\/em> (United States: Dial Press, 1963), 81.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Alan Lester, The British Empire in the Culture War: Nigel Biggar\u2019s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning<\/em>, \u201cThe Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History,\u201d 51:4, (2023): 765, DOI: 10.1080\/03086534.2023.2209947.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Nigel Biggar, \u201cColonialism: A Moral Reckoning<\/em> | Nigel Biggar,\u201d interview by John Anderson, June 20, 2023, video, 7:34, https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EhNonmBA0Lo.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Yascha Mounk@Yascha_Mounk<\/a>, X post, November 1, 2021, https:\/\/twitter.com\/Yascha_Mounk\/status\/1455299147070836740?lang=en<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Kenan Malik, Not So Black and White<\/em> (London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd., 2023), 35.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name<\/em> (United States: Dial Press, 1961), 170.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nigel Biggar’s work, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, is an ambitious, thorough, and all-encompassing analysis of Britain’s historical relationship with colonialism. I can understand why the book has received mixed reviews. It was a complex undertaking, and I consider myself just a few inches left of the center. However, rather than go point by point with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2309],"tags":[3126,3120],"class_list":["post-36755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership","tag-dlgpo1","tag-biggar","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36755"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36759,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36755\/revisions\/36759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}