By Daniel Cano
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| Appreciating the past, the present, and the future |
Historians say we can't understand
the present without knowing the past. The problem is many people don’t want to
know the past, or they only want to know enough of it to benefit their
thinking. Of course, there are those who could care less, which then gives some
credence to George Santayana’s statement, “Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.”
I am assuming Santayana meant to remember as
much of the past as possible, and why presidents often turn to scholars for
advice, which often they ignore. It kind of reminds me of a quote by Eleanore
Roosevelt: “There are those who make things happen, those who watch things
happen, and those who wonder what has happened.” I find a lot of people in the
last category.
Today, I hear people argue vociferously
about politics, and I can tell by the evidence they present to substantiate
their positions, they depend on limited sources, mainly their favorite
television news stations or online programs. So, inevitably they go round and
round. They also fail to adhere to the main tenet of argumentation: if you know
you can’t change a person’s mind about a topic, and he or she won’t change
yours, don’t argue. You might end up saving a friendship or relationship.
Then, there are those who want to know as
much as possible, to form an educated opinion about a subject, even if it
means, gasp, changing their minds. It’s like people arguing about the conflict
between the Israelis and the Palestinians and only going as far back as October 6-9.
If you don’t understand the history of the Ottoman Empire, Zionism, and European
intervention and colonization in the 19th and 20th
century Middle East, you can’t understand the position of the Arabs or Jews, or get the most out of the movies >Exodus or Lawrence of Arabia. Some argue, to truly understand the conflict, you need to understand the Bible.
I asked my grandson if he watched the
Super Bowl half-time show, featuring Kendrick Lamar. He said he did, and it was
great. I told him I didn’t think the majority of Super Bowl fans had ever heard of Kendrick Lamar. He disagreed. “Do they live under a rock,” he said, more a statement than a question. He said they might not know his music, but they know
his name. I told him a lot of people didn’t like the performance. He said, “That’s because they don’t know the lyrics or understand the context.”
That answer surprised me. It was like he was telling me to best understand the performance, you had to understand or be exposed to the history and culture of rap, hip-hop, the blues, Motown, African Americans in Los Angeles and in the U.S., the 1965 uprising in Watts, and again in 1992, the LAPD, the personal feud going on between Lamar and Drake, and the myriad of cultural and historical references Lamar uses in his lyrics.
I asked, “Do you know the lyrics?” He
replied, “Yup, all of them. That’s why I thought it was a great show.”
I’m sure he had a limited knowledge of
Lamar’s music, and the context, but, it seemed, he had a lot more than I did
and that was enough for him to see the performance in the different light. Personally, I like Kendrick Lamar’s music, but like many, I, too, was lost during the performance, but I don’t blame Lamar, I blame my own lack of
knowledge and context.
Even if Chris Stapleton, a giant in country music, had
been up there singing, and I enjoyed his show, I wouldn't have the total context since I don’t understand the deep South as I'd like, nor do I have knowledge of rual Kentucky, but I do know Stapleton attended Vanderbilt University to study engineering, which helps me understand the sophistication to his songwriting. Context helps me better understand the work of
Kendrick Lamar, a high achieving student at Centennial High in Compton, who earned A grades in poetry, so he understands prosody and lyricism, which led to his being the first rapper awarded a Pulitzer Prize in music.
I also wonder how some audiences fully appreciated Bob Dylan's bio pick,
A Complete Unknown, without understanding the enormous influence Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Odetta, Dave Van Ronk, and the early labor movement had on folk music. It helps me understand Seeger's passionate plea for Dylan to reconsider going electric at the Newport Folk Festival. For Seeger, it wasn't just about rejecting rock 'n roll music but about respecting and saving a sacred musical tradition, and trying to hold back a materialistic future that, inevitably, turned workers into robots for the almighty buck, everything Guthrie sang to avoid, probably even sacrificing his health, and landing him in that hospital bed where Dylan sang to him early in the movie.
As a former teacher, an avid reader, and a self-proclaimed lifelong learner, I know context is crucial to understanding any subject. The methods the U.S. has used to address unwanted immigration, for example, go back to the first mass deportation of Mexicans in the 1930s, up to the 1950s Bracero Program through Ronald Reagan and up to the present. I know enough Latin American history to understand much of the problem lay in our history, going back to Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor,” policy, maybe even even further back to James Monroe’s "Monroe Doctrine" to James Polk's "Manifest Destiny," which opened up the "American" continent to U.S. adventurism, exploration, and exploitation. If it's God's will, the theory goes, it's not only our right but our obligation to take Indian and foreign lands.
The genocide (a word used by many Latin American historians) of Indians in Central
America, especially Guatemala, by U.S. trained, and corporately funded (consider the United Fruit Co.), militias and death squads, from the 1930s to the 1990s, devasted the Indian population, their farms, hamlets, and provinces, opening up
their lands to foreign cultivation of bananas, cotton, cattle, and oil. Where do they go after losing everything they owned? They come to the U.S., whose employers welcome them with open arms.
Yet, when too many come or there is an
economic crisis or a politician needs a scapegoat to win an election, undocumented immigrants have always been a convenient target. We demonize them, identify them as the root of the problem, and, address the problem the same old
way, generation after generation, deport them, today, bound in chains, but like Santayana tells us, since we don’t remember the past, or worse, choose to ignore it, we are condemned to repeat it, and we welcome the next waves of caravans, hail them “essential workers,” as they toil at the worst jobs and the rest of us safely quarantine, isolate, and lockdown.
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