By Stephen Smoot
As summer in Harrison County wanes, attention turns to two great Mountain State traditions. At about the same time in late August, crowds will gather at high school and Mountaineer football games – and also the West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival.
Heritage derives from history. Heritage is how individuals, groups, and societies interpret their own history. The Italian heritage in West Virginia focuses on coming to a new land, working hard, taking advantage of opportunities to grow, and building a dynamic and successful community with deep pride and tradition.
History of Italian immigration includes every detail of that, but also includes the mixed welcome shown to immigrants. Some communities welcomed the industrious, family-oriented, religious immigrants. Others feared that developing Communist and Socialist movements in Italy before, during, and after World War I would accompany immigrants and become implanted in America.
The same immigrant families might be welcomed into a Baptist church to conduct Mass until they could have a Roman Catholic church of their own, then, later on, face down burning crosses in their yards for being “papists.”
Heritage has a place and so does history.
The teaching of history has degenerated in recent years as Leftists seek to weaponize it against certain groups in American society. Groups that Leftists seek to attack have negative aspects of their culture and traditions cherry picked and held up as shining examples of a secular version of the concept of original sin.
Those with Confederate ancestors, for example, they believe always carry the stain of that choice made in 1861 even if they constantly engaged in Stalinist style self-criticism, continually denouncing their people, their families, and themselves for any evil perpetuated in the distant past.
Similarly, many Americans do not understand why Japan may have a legitimate right to move on from their responsibility for starting World War II in the Pacific, even though all who chose to launch conflict have lain dead in the ground for decades.
History taught correctly recognizes that every nation, every ethnicity, every culture, every people has much more on the positive side of the balance sheet than negative. The “usual suspects” of historical guilt include Japan, Germany, and the former Confederate States of America, but focusing on what bad acts were committed and leaving out the big picture of these people’s contributions does history a disservice.
It also discourages people from looking deeper, researching more, and finding the details of the past that can change perceptions. It was once commonly known that Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson opposed slavery, which creates evidence that undercuts the current narrative that the alpha to omega cause of the US Civil War was slavery, which is extremely simplistic and fails to tell the full story of why those states chose to leave the Union.
With notable exceptions, such as National Socialist Germany and the Communist states such as the Soviet Union and Red China, most countries come to history as neither white nor black hats. The countries mentioned went above and beyond the standards of their times using murder, fear, and destruction as a way to forge new societies, earning the asterisk to the general rule. Most countries, societies, and peoples
That said, centuries of German history are not eclipsed by the relative handful of years under National Socialism. Russian history is far more beautiful and incredible than their sterile temporary prison under Communism. The American South brought positive contributions that are much bigger and more important than the historical stain of slavery.
True history embraces the beauty and contributions of each society over time in a beautiful quilt of nations, peoples, and cultures. Certainly bad decisions leave blemishes here and there on the fabric, but they do not outshine the good done by every people throughout their history.