Lately, it seems that if a person (celebrity, politician, public figure, sports star, actor/actress, online personality, etc) – anyone remotely in the public eye – if they have done ANYTHING in their past that is now considered untoward, we must fire them from their current job and scrub their name from history.
I get it – we don’t want to hold up a negative example that people might then try to emulate. But here’s the thing… who among us has NEVER done anything wrong? Did you ever do something that at the time you thought was OK, and later realized that is it not OK? Should our mistakes define us?
If our mistakes should define us then Martin Luther King, Jr. was a wife beating alcoholic. Should his speeches and efforts towards social harmony mean nothing? Should they be scrubbed from history, schools and streets? Should statutes of him be torn down? I hope not. Because he really had something to contribute to this world, despite his mistakes.
We all have something to contribute to this world, despite our humanity.
How should a human being be remembered? By their mistakes or by their contributions? I would suggest that we remember both, lest the next generation think it’s not OK to be imperfect. Let’s account for a person’s entire humanity truthfully, and celebrate their contributions.
Similarly, let’s account for our society’s history in full colorful truth. Instead of scrubbing away the names of those who owned slaves, let’s seek to find out the names of those slaves and give them public credit for the plantations, farms and industries they bolstered. Shine a light on these individuals as real people and give them human dignity.
In my family’s history there is a woman – a second generation slave – who never got credit for the child she bore and whose name we will never know but she lives on in our genes and I have to believe that aspects of her are alive within me today.
Now before you go casting stones, let me clarify that if someone were to do something illegal or immoral in the present, it may be in their employer’s best interests to part ways to save their own reputation. And it certainly makes a difference if they regret their actions that harmed others. All of this should be taken into account.
But a social media dominated society demands authenticity, and judges you for your authentic mistakes while presenting only its own perfect moments. There are a lot of glass houses out there. How do YOU wanted to be remembered? What do you do today that is perfectly normal but in 150 years might be considered horrible and immoral?
Think about it. And then judge others as YOU would like to be judged…. or here’s a better thought – don’t judge others at all.
