We don’t live in a truly color-blind era, do we?

The recent flap over a Cal State San Marcos sorority’s ill-advised theme party and their concomitant slap on the wrist from the university’s PC police focuses attention yet again on race and ethnic identity in what is supposed to be an era of colorblindness.

It seems that the more we strive for equality the further from it we seem to get.

The question in my mind, though, is whether much of this indignation hasn’t been stirred up for the attention it confers on the group doing the protesting. Would it have been seen differently had the women in question dressed as Goths?

The conversation over the right of various groups to protest has expanded in some cases to include the notion that their historical mistreatment by a more powerful group (generally referred to as Americans, more specifically Americans of European descent) confers on them a right to redress.

I recently watched a news segment discussing the Mexican-American War. In it they interviewed a university professor who described the war as the United States’ only war of aggression to seize land — the land in question being what is now the southwestern United States, including California.

This may in fact be the case, but I do seem to recall in my reading of history many of the residents of this region were less than thrilled with Mexican rule and requested U.S. intervention.

The point the good professor tried to make is the absurd case that our current immigration problems could be partly explained as Mexicans trying to take back land that was taken from them.

People viewing history through a 21st-century lens cannot get a proper perspective. Trying to correct the problems of today by rewriting history is a foolish proposition.

Even if we accept the idea that we, the United States, were the conquerors of Mexico’s northern states, Spain conquered Mexico first. The Moors conquered Spain.

Similar excuses, of course, have been trotted out for the anti-American crowd in the Middle East, most notably the Islamic terrorists who use them as cover for their evil deeds.

Human history is replete with wars of conquest. The peoples of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East especially fought for centuries over territory, riches, and religious ideology.

At one time Muslim Turks ruled vast areas of Eastern Europe and threatened Italy and Germany. France and Spain had claims on Sicily and Naples and Germany was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire.

In the 15th century, Franciscan friar Juan Capistrano, sent to Germany to recruit fighters for a crusade against Ottoman Turks who were marching on Belgrade and threatening Italy, marched his volunteers the 500 miles to Serbia and joined forces with a Hungarian general and a Spaniard cardinal to defeat a vastly superior Turkish army. Their improbable victory was declared a miracle by Pope Calixtus III and led to the good friar’s eventual canonization.

Further back in time, of course, Romans ruled Britain and France.

In another time, Norsemen laid siege to the same regions.


