11/21/2022

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal begins with Elliott Drago’s article that summarizes his new book, which has just been published by Johns Hopkins University Press, “Street Diplomacy: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom in Philadelphia, 1820–1850.” Labeled as “the most northern of southern cities” by one historian, Philadelphia hosted numerous street battles in the antebellum period that took on “many forms, from fugitive slave rescues and the kidnapping of free blacks to vicious riots that led to the wanton destruction of black Philadelphia,” Drago writes. These conflicts “became inextricably fused to state and national politics,” Drago continues, “as white politicians’ ability to classify enslaved African Americans both as property and as human beings represented a fundamental tension throughout the United States.” As “Americans increasingly rejected being beholden to slaveholders who hoped to spread slavery,” they elected a Northerner as “president in 1860 who refused to accept the expansion of slavery as the true mission of the U.S.”

At RealClearBooks&Culture, Richard Gunderman writes about the history of victimization in the United States, arguing that victimhood can often be “treated as a credential that lends credence and moral authority to a particular person, group, or point of view,” a phenomena that cuts across all political boundaries. And victims may be ones by choice rather than fate. He recalls one such episode during the 45^th Academy Awards ceremony in 1973, when “Sacheen Littlefeather appeared in full Native American garb” and declined “the Best Actor Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando.” “There was just one problem: according to her sisters, Littlefeather, whose birth name was Marie Louise Cruz, was not Native American,” Gunderman notes. He concludes by explaining what we should do to banish a culture of victimhood: “we ought gradually to reorient ourselves toward moral excellence, pursuing fairness, resilience, and compassion, recognizing that victimhood is not a virtue.”