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" The people we find truly anathema are the ones who reduce the past to caricature and distort
it to fit their own bigoted stereotypes. We’ve gone to events that claimed to be historic fashion
shows but turned out to be gaudy polyester parades with no shadow of reality behind them. As
we heard our ancestors mocked and bigoted stereotypes presented as facts, we felt like we had
gone to an event advertised as an NAACP convention only to discover it was actually a minstrel
show featuring actors in blackface. Some so-called “living history” events really are that bigoted.
When we object to history being degraded this way, the guilty parties shout that they are “just
having fun.” What they are really doing is attacking a past that cannot defend itself. Perhaps
they are having fun, but it is the sort of fun a schoolyard brute has at the expense of a child who
goes home bruised and weeping. It’s time someone stood up for the past.
I have always hated bullies. The instinct to attack difference can be seen in every social
species, but if humans truly desire to rise above barbarism, then we must cease acting like beasts.
The human race may have been born in mud and ignorance, but we are blessed with minds
sufficiently powerful to shape our behavior. Personal choices form the lives of individuals; the
sum of all interactions determine the nature of societies.
At present, it is politically fashionable in America to tolerate limited diversity based around
race, religion, and sexual orientation, yet following a trend does not equate with being truly
open-minded. There are people who proudly proclaim they support women’s rights, yet have an
appallingly limited definition of what those rights entail. (Currently, fashionable privileges are
voting, working outside the home, and easy divorce; some people would be dumbfounded at the
idea that creating beautiful things, working inside the home, and marriage are equally desirable
rights for many women.) In the eighteenth century, Voltaire declared, “I disagree with what you
say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.”3 Many modern Americans seem to have
perverted this to, “I will fight to the death for your right to agree with what I say.”
When we stand up for history, we are in our way standing up for all true diversity. When we
question stereotypes and fight ignorance about the past, we force people to question ignorance in
general. "
― Sarah A. Chrisman , This Victorian Life: Modern Adventures in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Cooking, Fashion, and Technology
110
" She said that we didn't know anything, either as children or now, that we were therefore not in a position to understand anything, that everything in the neighbourhood, every stone or piece of wood, everything, anything you could name, was already there before us, but we had grown up without realizing it, without ever even thinking about it. Not just us. Her father pretended that there had been nothing before. Her mother did the same, my mother, my father, even Rino. And yet Stefano's grocery store before, had been the carpenter shop of Alfredo Peluso, Pasquale's father. And yet Don Achille's money had been made before. And the Solaras' money as well. She had tested this out on her father and mother. They didn't know anything, they wouldn't talk about anything. Not Fascism, not the king. No injustice, no oppression, no exploitation. They hated Don Achille and were afraid of the Solaras. But they overlooked it and went to spend their money both at Don Achille's son's and at the Solaras', and sent us, too. And they votes for the Fascists, for the monarchists, as the Solaras wanted them to. And they thought that what had happened before was past, and in order to live quietly, they placed a stone on top of it, and so, without knowing it, they continued it, they were immersed in the things of before, and we kept them inside us, too. "
― Elena Ferrante , The Story of a New Name (The Neapolitan Novels #2)
114
" Life, how I have dreaded you," said Rhoda, " oh, human beings, how I have hated you! How you have nudged, how you have interrupted, how hideous you have looked in Oxford Street, how squalid sitting opposite each other staring in the Tube! Now as I climb this mountain, from the top of which I shall see Africa, my mind is printed with brown-paper parcels and your faces. I have been stained by you and corrupted. You smelt so unpleasant, too, lining up outside doors to buy tickets. All were dressed in indeterminate shades of grey and brown, never even a blue feather pinned to a hat. None had the courage to be one thing rather than another. What dissolution of the soul you demanded in order to get through one day, what lies, bowings, scrapings, fluency and servility! How you changed me to one spot, one hour, one chair, and sat yourselves down opposite! How you snatched from me the white spaces that lie between hour and hour and rolled them into dirty pellets and tossed them into wastepaper baskets with your greasy paws. Yet those were my life. "
118
" I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I hated you already because of the lies I had told you. Because I only like playing with words, only dreaming, but, do you know, what I really want is that you should all go to hell. That is what I want. I want peace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I always get my tea. "
― Fyodor Dostoevsky , Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
