If we are going to judge people for their behavior, we must put it in perspective. The perspective must consider not only the situation in which the person found themselves but also the times in which they lived. Social norms and expectations have evolved over time and it is a disservice to not only the person whom we might be judging but also to ourselves if we try and place our expectations on someone who lived in a different time period or situation.

We are watching the cancelled culture remove names from buildings and tearing down statues of historical figures because they have one part of their life that we deemed to be unacceptable. Normally that has been tied in some way to slavery or bigotry. We are ignoring every other aspect of their contribution to society no matter how dominant it may have been in their life or how beneficial it was to society. Instead of using this as a teachable moment we are wiping them from history which means we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of history.

The same mistake also makes it difficult to have honest conversations about the status of discrimination and bigotry in our country today. Someone of my generation or a bit older remembers what institutional racism meant through the decades of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Laws were promulgated in many states to keep races separate or to make it difficult for minorities to vote. We remember watching the KKK March in huge numbers in Washington DC with the support of governmental entities. We remember seeing or reading about the deaths of minorities and the show trials that let their murderers get off scott free.

We do not have that type of institutional racism today. So maybe we see things a little differently because we don't believe that what happens today when there truly is racism from a governmental body, as institutional racism. A younger generation that has not been taught about what happened previously believes this is institutional racism in its worst form. I would suggest that both sides temper their viewpoints a little bit in order to have the conversations that need to be had.

When we remove historical names from our public view we also ignore the fact that they are redeemable. Many of our founding fathers knew that slavery was not a good institution but compromised that belief in order to form a new government and country. They did put into place mechanisms by which we could progress as a nation to remove those blights from our country. In other words we were redeemable as a country and as a society.

I listened to two prominent former professional athletes on ESPN talk about the hiring of a strength and conditioning coach by the Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL. This person had been let go after 20 years at a college level because players complained of inappropriate and insensitive comments towards minorities. Never mind that they interviewed two prominent minority players who had worked with this person previously and both said they never saw any inkling of racism in his conduct. The idea that anyone would hire someone who had been accused of racism believing they were redeemable was abhorrent to these two former professionals. Of course this has become a favorite tool of the political class on the left side of the aisle to destroy their opponents. It is now seeping into society in general.

Things will not get better until we do learn to put everything into perspective and understand the perspective of others. That means we must accept that others will have different opinions than we do and we must be willing to listen to them as much as they must be willing to listen to us. It is only then that we will begin to remove the roadblocks that are currently being put up and stopping this country from continuing to better itself.