Time is neutral. History isn't. Part I

Welcome to Hard-G History’s new home! Same as the old site but now with less oh-god-am-I-helping-nazis-and-fascists dread.

New platform, new subscriber options, and a new motto: “Time is neutral. History isn't.” Allow me to explain what that means to me, in two parts. First: Time is neutral.

If you’ve been reading me for awhile, you know I’m big on busting the myth of inevitable progress (with apologies to Laurie Anderson and Walter Benjamin) and the misuse of “the arc of the moral universe” popularized by Martin Luther King Jr. That’s because my first lesson about history came from King himself, when I read his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in high school.

If you haven’t read it (you really should), the gist is that King is describing his frustration with white moderates and liberals who keep telling him they agree with his anti-segregation objectives, but not with his confrontational tactics.

He writes:

“I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. ... Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.”

This probably isn’t a very surprising revelation today, given the rise of fascism in the last decade, but as a teen in the 1990s, I was jolted by King’s declaration that time was neutral, because I recognized myself. Didn’t I believe that old bigotries were dying out, and that things would slowly and inevitably get better for gay people, for women, for racial and religious minorities? What if the world sometimes got worse? The white moderates in King's day were obviously wrong about inevitable progress, but what about now? Was time still neutral?

When I first read the this letter, I was living in an abusive household. Lots of young people keep the abuse they suffer secret, or they don’t realize they were abused until they’re adults, but that was not my experience. I always knew, and from age 13 on, I shouted it from the rooftops: “I am being abused! I need help! Please make it stop!” I told teachers, counselors, neighbors, extended family, my juvenile probation officer, a random woman sitting next to me on a flight, and, most of all, parents of friends. Lots and lots of parents of friends.

The response from the adult world was: Well, they’re your parents. Or: You’re no angel, you know. Or: Be grateful it’s not as bad as it used to be. Or, from the really compassionate parents, on whose doorsteps I regularly showed up barefoot and sobbing, begging to let me come live in their guest bedroom with promises of rent money and good behavior: We feel bad about what you’re going through, but we just don’t want to get involved in another family’s stuff. Keep your head down and it’ll get better when you’re 18, okay?

No matter what I said, I couldn’t get them understand that I might not make it to 18, that I didn’t deserve to bear it another day, even if I could, that even if trying to help me didn’t work, I wished they would at least try.

Let me be clear: I do not and will never understand what it is like to be Black in America. As for frustration with nice people who recognized a wrong but would rather believe in a passive, inevitable fix down the road than answer an uncomfortable call for help right now? Why yes, I’d felt that frustration, so I knew time was still neutral, progress still not inevitable.

I’ve kept this idea close over the years, in my study of and writing about history, where I’ve found in every corner people who didn’t passively accept the times they lived in, and in my personal life, where I’ve so often been suffused with fear about family curses, addictive urges, and the hope against hope that my fate might also not be inevitable.

Here’s what I know: Time is not on our side. It isn’t against us either, because time is neutral.

Time does not heal all wounds, because time is neutral. An untended wound can fester, break open again and, with time, kill. To heal, wounds need air, cleansing and attention as much as time.

Time is not the wisest counselor, because time is neutral. Counsel needs time to reshape understanding and action, but there are good counselors and bad. The more you hear of one the harder it becomes to believe the other.

History doesn’t have to repeat itself. There’s a feedback loop for sure, but people outrun personal history everyday. They change, in small ways at first, rarely with confidence, no outcome guaranteed. Still, when enough people change over enough time, history doesn’t repeat itself. Because time is neutral.

Thank you for reading Hard-G History. Next time, we’ll explore how history isn’t neutral. Gird your loins, there will be Woodrow Wilson.