"They are asking me to lay aside my old effort to tell the truth, as it is given to me by my own knowledge and judgment, in order to take up another art, which is that of public relations."
Says Wendell Berry, quoted in "Wendell Berry’s Advice for a Cataclysmic Age/Sixty years after renouncing modernity, the writer is still contemplating a better way forward" by Dorothy Wickenden in The New Yorker.
Berry's wife Tanya said "It’s too late for it to ruin your whole life." (He's 87.)
He was talking about his forthcoming book, "The Need to Be Whole," which some of his friends "urged him to abandon." It it, "he argues that the problem of race is inextricable from the violent abuse of our natural resources, and that 'white people’s part in slavery and all the other outcomes of race prejudice, so damaging to its victims,' has also been 'gravely damaging to white people.'"
Berry summons writers, from Homer to Twain, who extended “understanding and sympathy to enemies, sinners, and outcasts: sometimes to people who happen to be on the other side or the wrong side, sometimes to people who have done really terrible things.”
In this spirit, he offers an assessment of Robert E. Lee, whom he calls “one of the great tragic figures of our history.” He presents Lee as a white supremacist and a slaveholder, but also as a reluctant soldier who opposed secession and was forced to choose between conflicting loyalties: his country and his people.
“Lee said, ‘I cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children,’ ” Berry writes. “For him, the words ‘birthplace’ and ‘home’ and even ‘children’ had a complexity and vibrance of meaning that at present most of us have lost.” Berry wants readers to hate Lee’s sins but love the sinner, or at least understand his motives. War, he suggests, begins in a failure of acceptance.
Having gotten into one of the worst fights of my entire life by taking the position that the subordination of women is also gravely damaging to men, I can imagine the storm that awaits Berry upon the publication of "The Need to Be Whole."
Somehow, an awful lot of us have a deep aching need to be half.
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Not obsessing about race for a while would be a good policy, but saying that would probably get Berry cancelled.
Wendell Berry is right about many things, but he's in danger of becoming a plaster saint. Getting cancelled might actually be a better fate.
Whites were slaves too. Blacks sold their own into slavery. Slavery sucks, but you can't pin it on any one society when they ALL did it, and SOME still are. Stop with the blame game in America. NONE of us were slaves, had slaves, or sold slaves. China has slaves, and our elites have NO problem with it. It is said that Obama's very own family sold slaves in Africa. So was his white half guilty of that?? So sick of people spewing RACE into everything.
He is on the right track except on race. The ancient tradition had no racial prejudice. The current obsession with race is just that - current. It will not last because it is a Marxist lever to break down western societies that will be overcome by reality just as class divisions have been. On the ground, people of all races are getting along better and better over time, as reflected the the growing number of marriages across races. Marxist levers are needed by the globalists in their pursuit to become the new dictators. Individual rights enshrined in America’s Constitution and to a lesser extent in the constitutions of western democracies stand in their way, As Barack Obama famously gave away the game years ago when he called the Constitution a document of negative rights, I.e., it precluded the government from doing things it wanted because of our individual rights. Make no mistake, globalists want to erase our individual rights, just as Democrat leaders did for a period of time under emergency powers due to COVID. Trudeau pushed the envelop further in Canada for 10 days but his senators were on the brink of voting down his dictatorial power grab so he dropped his invocation of the emergency powers act.
To this author my great sin is being born a white male. I cannot change that. I have done nothing to harm anyone else except exist, and now it seems my existence is an abomination. If you truly want to make an enemy out of me, you are going about it the right way.
You could let the past bury the past, or you can have the sins of the past carry on for generations to come.
Your choice. Choose wisely.
>He presents Lee as a white supremacist and a slaveholder,...Berry wants readers to hate Lee’s sins...<
Lee was White and, as everyone/anyone knew, they *were* supreme. They "earned" that over the course of several centuries; it didn't just randomly happen to them. That was not - and is not - a sin. I doubt that Lee went around thinking about how supreme he was.
His being a slaveholder, yeah, that was a sin in my estimation. OTOH, it was nothing that human beings hadn't done since the dawn of man. It was the norm (yes, in transition) which sort of takes the edge off the transgression - unless of course we lazily judge it by latter day standards, as we are speciously wont to do.
More power to him. I appreciate his bravery, and his desire to be true to himself. An artist with integrity.
But all the positive acclaim and good will he has received over the years (he seems to be embraced by people on the right and the left) is about to be eliminated by our Orwellian society. He is very likely to become a pariah. People who have never heard of him will place him in the category of old straight white man who is actually a Confederate sympathizer. Quoting Mark Twain, who previous generations respected, will not work anymore. After all, Twain used the n-word.
It sounds like a good book he's written. Will it be available on Amazon?
I find the hatred of Robert E. Lee puzzling and -even weirder -its gotten more virulent the farther we are away from the Civil war. I assume its because midwits just chant whatever is popular. When Lee was admired in the 50s the midwits praised him, now that the academic elite attacks him, the midwits express hatred.
Lee wasn't a politican. He was a soldier. Like almost all well-to-do Southerners he thought his first loyalty was to his state. And he believed in the right to secession. Nowhere in the Constitution or in the notes to the Constitutional convention does it forbid secession. The right was a matter of dispute. Blame the early 19th century politicans and the founding fathers for the Civil War. They could have made the matter clear, but refused to do so.
Anyway, Lee was admired by the North after the war, because he was a man of noble character who fought for the "wrong side", a great general, and accepted defeat and tried to bind up the nations wounds.
Compared to him, his critics are pissants.
"and that 'white people’s part in slavery and all the other outcomes of race prejudice, so damaging to its victims,' has also been 'gravely damaging to white people.'"'
Looking at the current phenomenon of "woke" and the obsession with race, I'd say it appears to have driven some white people insane. I suspect if it wasn't race, however, they'd have latched onto something else to rail against.
Are any of these people aware of the long history of enslavement that existed for hundreds of centuries by and between people of all colors? The Ottomans, Arabs, Indians, Africans, all of them. Was it gravely damaging to just one select race, most of whom, not being wealthy, or being morally opposed, never engaged in the practice?
Oh, and I see Stan is going on about women again. Loretta, sorry. Graveness there too. Dude see graves everywhere.
"Having gotten into one of the worst fights of my entire life by taking the position that the subordination of women is also gravely damaging to men" Link?
Having gotten into one of the worst fights of my entire life by taking the position that the subordination of women is also gravely damaging to men
That surprises me. How is it even controversial? When Martin Luther King said it 60 years ago, people put it on posters.
"The need to be half" is brilliant.
Berry's a bold man with an attitude like that; maybe it's not bold so much as a gallant rearguard action for a dying form of understanding the past and the foreigners who lived there.
What's old is new -- like this meditation on the destructiveness of mortal sin, especially to the sinner. When those old religious ideas are reimagined in today's secular terms (and this focus on race/sex/gender is the ne-plus-ultra case in point), what's missing are the atonement rituals available in the religious context by which the sinner can be cleansed and forgiven. Without those rituals, the substitute becomes a sacrificial stoning -- today's virtual death by cancellation, shunning and excommunication. Only by that means can the debt be paid, and atonement by the sinner achieved.
Somehow, an awful lot of us have a deep aching need to be half.
Y’all are a stiff-necked people.
Women subordinate themselves by seeking what men are interested in instead of what women are interested in.
'white people’s part in slavery
Slavery was practiced by every race of people, on every continent of the world, so this guy sounds like just another standardized anti-white racist.
That all seems like a drawn-out and self-congratulatory way of saying, "people are complicated."
How bold. What courage. Trying to out-woke the woke.
I was ready to go "Oh no, not even Wendell Berry, until I read the passage Ann quoted. Leave it to Berry to understand the duty and honor of a man such as Robert E. Lee. A man of his rapidly ending time, crushed by the forces of modernity. Berry has for years been writing about the dignity of rural people, those often mocked by the scribblers of big city life. I always loved him for that.
People of white stood with people of black long before the nation was conceived, birthed, against the progress of slavery and diversity, inequity, and exclusion. That said, diversity (i.e. color judgment, class-based bigotry) denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, and normalizes color blocs (e.g. "people of color"), color quotas (e.g. "Jew privilege"), and affirmative discrimination. Lose you religion. #HateLovesAbortion
Yes, being an oppressor is also damaging to oneself. That is fairly basic Jewish and Christian teaching. How that relates to violent abuse of our natural resources is less clear. I suppose cutting down a tree or a stalk of wheat is violent, yes.
Yet in both cases it is fair to ask "compared to whom?" What other peoples in the history of the world were not oppressors when they had a chance and did not violently dig in the sacred earth or put an arrow in animals? Therefore, how do we measure what damage these things have done to those who did them? We don't have a control group.
While I readily acknowledge that the general treatment of women looks more like oppression than equality in all places, I also find that it gets very sticky in the long run to define exactly what we mean in the context of coevolution. Even beyond the cutesy or misogynist answers, it is hard to say who is taking advantage of whom.
The idea that bad behavior damages both the object of the behavior and the perpetrator of the behavior is such a commonplace among people older than, say, 20 years, a fundamental belief of religions around the world, and basic understanding of humanity that to present it as a breach of political etiquette makes me laugh aloud at the idiocracy criticizing the concept.
Having gotten into one of the worst fights of my entire life by taking the position that the subordination of women is also gravely damaging to men…
Thank you for providing me this source of gratification for taking the path I have chosen…
What men are mostly do is let women be women. They read them as women, though.
It won't read as subordination when women do something as good as what men do, when women are imitating men.
I was really surprised that didn't turn out to be a quote from Laurence Tribe.
White people, specifically the Anglo/American version ENDED slavery. Nobody else did it. We did it.
You're welcome, you ungrateful children!
Saying "'white people’s part in slavery " is a perfect example of racism – i.e., blaming all members of a group for the actions of some members of the group. This is pretty easy to understand.
Good read about a great writer. Thanks Professor.
"'white people’s part in slavery and all the other outcomes of race prejudice, so damaging to its victims,' has also been 'gravely damaging to white people.'"
Most white people played no part in slavery in the U.S. even when it existed, much less in Europe. From a prog point of view, the situation is even worse than he describes: the outcomes of prejudice do not matter to "white people." Of course, that is the damage progs hate most: that white people do not think of race 24/7, give little thought to "all the other outcomes," which they do not perceive as such "outcomes in the first place, and would like to get along with everybody regardless of race, as actual people, judged by the content of their character.
"taking the position that the subordination of women is also gravely damaging to men"
Fair point. In the West, women's subordination allowed them to focus on the home and children, or domestic labor for some, without having to do dangerous, back-breaking work, or fight other men, and bear responsibility. Male privilege was a downer for most men. Still is, judging by life expectancy, average health, and risky occupations.
For the record, Robert E. Lee did side with his country. The name of that country was “Virginia.”
Lee fought well and honorably for a very bad cause.
If there is an exaggerated hatred of Lee now it may have something to do with the earlier exaggerated worship of the man. A more critical attitude was certainly called for.
So "the problem of race is inextricable from the violent abuse of our natural resources," meaning that Whitey pollutes the earth. But our country is the cleanest it's been in at least the last hundred years. Now the ChiComs aren't white, but they pollute as though there was no tomorrow.
Sebastian said...
"'white people’s part in slavery and all the other outcomes of race prejudice, so damaging to its victims,' has also been 'gravely damaging to white people.'"
Most white people played no part in slavery in the U.S. even when it existed, much less in Europe.
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Au contraire. A white northerner or European of the time gets up in the morning, pulls on some cotton underclothes, eats cream of wheat with sugar on it at breakfast, and heads for work, smoking some tobacco on his way. All products produced by slave labor. Slavery was interwoven into the economy of the civilized world, and all were involved, indirectly.
And in the North, white people sent escaped slaves back to slavery. And until the 1850s, the consistently elected Presidents sympathetic to slavery, and Congresscritters who voted to maintain slavery in the South. It is precisely because the people of the North were willing to profit from slavery as long as it wasn’t in their back yards that makes me feel such sympathy for the Confederate soldiers I would have been shooting at if I’d been alive then.
Berry summons writers, from Homer to Twain, who extended “understanding and sympathy to enemies, sinners, and outcasts: sometimes to people who happen to be on the other side or the wrong side, sometimes to people who have done really terrible things.”
This type of thinking used to be quite common in Western thought, sadly those times are long gone.
Fraudulent people are fraudulent at heart, whether they abjured modernity 60 years ago or not.
I hope in his remaining time the old fraud tries to say true things. Greater miracles have occurred.
Lee fought well and honorably for a very bad cause.
He fought for separation, which could be justified on diverse grounds. He also fought, by choice, or implication, for slavery and diversity, inequity, and exclusion.
rcocean said...
Nowhere in the Constitution or in the notes to the Constitutional convention does it forbid secession.
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The Founders didn’t forbid secession because reality forbade it. They knew that in a world of monarchies, with Britain hostile to the U.S. long into the 19th Century, they could not exist as separate sovereignties. That’s why the Article of Confederation’s full title is “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union,” why the Constitution makes it clear it is continuing and strengthening the Union, and why the Constitution is the Supreme Law, and gave the Union the right to ensure state govts. would be republics. It’s why there was such concern at the ratification conventions about possible tyranny under the new, strengthened govt. the Constitution set up; it’s why, as far as I can determine, not a single person at any of the ratification conventions ever said anything like “Well, if we don’t like this new Constitution, we have the right to secede;” it’s why Madison told the NY convention that the other ten states that had ratified had done so “unconditionally and forever,” and that was the only way they’d be admitted; it’s why Rhode Island folded when it was told that if it couldn’t pretend to be an independent state half the week, and part of the Union the other half.
You’re only independent if you can maintain that independence against those who dispute it. As Madison said in his letters, to secede you must either persuade the Union to let you go, or beat it in the ensuing war. And, he made sure to add, the Union had the legal right to wage said war for the retention of the would-be seceding state.
Even the would-be Confederates knew it. The first thing of substance they did after proclaiming themselves seceded (and explaining they were doing it to save slavery), was send delegates to Montgomery to form a substitute Union. And the new Confederacy, after provoking war with the Union, sent diplomats to Europe in the hope of getting the powerful ally who would make their rebellion successful.
The right to secede does not exist. As a modern secessionist myself I don’t like this, but it is reality.
Aren’t Ukrainians Slavs? And aren’t they the good guys at the moment? But then Russians are Slavs too. And they’re the bad guys.
Maybe it’s time to take away the inherent virtue of the slave and just judge people for their personal level of assholery. I mean, for 35 years I was a slave to the classroom bell. And I can assure you, I was far from virtuous.
Bigotry and hatred do hurt the bigot or hater, but intergroup relations are complicated and can't always be reduced to bigotry or hatred or chauvinism or supremacy or oppression.
For a current US army opinion on Lee, see Gen. Ty Siedule and his book Robert E. Lee and Me. Youtube him you can.
There is a LOT of anti-CS sentiment and related political gamesmanship (IMO) in our modern milleytary, in my hopefully fairly-well-informed outsider's opinion.
That little word 'truth' trips me up every time. I'd never assume, as Berry does, that my knowledge and judgment lead to the truth, and not simply a private truth but a broad, public truth that all must assent to and submit to. This assumption seems ridiculous, and yet it is as common today as water.
I'm just a youngster at the end of my eighth decade, yet I remain cognizant enough to know these people are certifiably insane.
Wendell Berry is such an insubstantial writer that he's left grasping for the golden ring of race guilt. I imagine he'll fail as badly at that ambition too.
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