Somewhat masochistically, I now keep an eye out for uses of my least favorite phrase. In case you're interested, here are some recent gems:
(As an aside: while my frustration extends equally to anyone making claims about the right or the wrong sides of history, the latter formulation seems more popular these days. We are clearly feeling less triumphant and more reproachful.)
In every instance, "the wrong side of history" could be replaced with a simple normative statement and the sentence would be all the better for it: "defending a unjust position, even in defense of a just cause, is still wrong"; "the statues should come down because they honor men who fought for an unjust cause"; "but then, Google might want to do the right thing," etc, etc.
Clearly the authors are uncomfortable with making simple judgments about right and wrong. I sympathize: it's often hard to demonstrate why something is wrong. So they appeal to history instead, as though doing so would definitively show the reader how people ought to act now. But most people have no idea what to do when confronted with political or moral dilemmas, and history (at least none that I've read) does not give us any reason to believe otherwise.
Yes, slavery has been eliminated, the confederacy was defeated, and scientific sexism and racism have been proven wrong, but that doesn't mean we've moved beyond injustice. The one thing history does show is that humans are brilliant at finding new and interesting ways to torment each other.
- From HuffPost, "Donald Trump once again cemented himself on the wrong side of history, pleading Tuesday not to remove statues honoring the Confederacy."
- From the NYTimes, "Sometimes standing on the wrong side of history in defense of a cause you think is right is still just standing on the wrong side of history."
- From Vice, "Let's keep it simple: The statues should come down because they honor men who fought on the wrong side of history."
- From The Cut, "But then, Google might simply want to be on the right side of history. Using science to explain the differences between groups of people is a look that has never aged well."
(As an aside: while my frustration extends equally to anyone making claims about the right or the wrong sides of history, the latter formulation seems more popular these days. We are clearly feeling less triumphant and more reproachful.)
In every instance, "the wrong side of history" could be replaced with a simple normative statement and the sentence would be all the better for it: "defending a unjust position, even in defense of a just cause, is still wrong"; "the statues should come down because they honor men who fought for an unjust cause"; "but then, Google might want to do the right thing," etc, etc.
Clearly the authors are uncomfortable with making simple judgments about right and wrong. I sympathize: it's often hard to demonstrate why something is wrong. So they appeal to history instead, as though doing so would definitively show the reader how people ought to act now. But most people have no idea what to do when confronted with political or moral dilemmas, and history (at least none that I've read) does not give us any reason to believe otherwise.
Yes, slavery has been eliminated, the confederacy was defeated, and scientific sexism and racism have been proven wrong, but that doesn't mean we've moved beyond injustice. The one thing history does show is that humans are brilliant at finding new and interesting ways to torment each other.
1 comment:
Perhaps more consequential than the abolition of slavery for your argument was the re-establishment of slavery in the first place. We had already abolished slavery. Then we brought it back. History was like, oops.
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