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.

While many of us may be able to claim European ancestry, given the tangled history of the continent, I doubt any of us can say with any degree of certainty where our true roots lie. And that’s just as well.

To try to conjure some form of redress for sins of past generations makes no sense. When you examine history through the context of the times, it’s hard to see clearly how things could have, or would have, been done differently than they were.

More importantly, what point in history does the “wrong” address? Using the Mexico example, it was a colony of Spain before the United States took its action. Should natives of what is now Mexico seek redress from Spain? Should Spain seek redress from us?

The same holds true for the Middle East, of course, and all those who would seek to erase the past to correct the present. Looking at history in the context of the times, it would be hard to determine who the conqueror is and who is the conquered. That is one of the lessons here.

It’s a simple fact: You cannot rewrite the past. Whether it is something as seemingly innocuous as a sorority party or of far greater significance, such as the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, the lessons of history are always the same — learn from them so they might never be repeated.

Effinger writes from San Marcos. He can be reached at: kirkinsanmarcos@att.net