I don't understand this really

[james_davis_nicoll]

But apparently white people whose relatives were progressives back when that was dangerous get full credits for that even if they had no choice in the decisions or actions involved (In my case, because I was not born yet). Yay me! I can claim at least two generations of social liberals on my father's side and while I have never done anything of note in this field [1], at least I have not been an active impediment.

I understand that those people who were denied the basic rights due any human are supposed to be grateful to that handful of oppressors who somehow managed to meet the minimum level of human decency and who worked to mitigate some of the obvious social inequities of the time. Will the oppressed know to bask in the pearly white glow of my good luck in picking my relatives or will I need to hand out cards announcing that that my ancestors weren't the complete assholes most of the rest of their social class were at the time?

What else is covered by this policy? Can I claim to be an important engineer because my father and grandfather made notable (but distinct) contributions to that field?


1: I have voted for politicians who grudgingly did the right thing once the polls made it obvious which way the public leaned and after the courts made it clear they had no real choice in the matter.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Alexander Koblentz was born in Latvia, played chess for the (then independent) Latvian nation in the 1930s, wrote books in Latvian, trained Mikhail Tal, the Latvian world chess champion, and generally organized and worked in chess in Latvia for decades. When Latvia became independent he was denied a place in Latvian chess. He wasn't, you see, *Latvian* enough, never mind that his ancestors had lived there for centuries.

He lived out his years in Germany, as for that matter did Tal. Oh, the irony!

On a related note, a gentleman with a Georgian last name was about to win the chess championship of Georgia (some time in the 1970s) when he got a phone call the night before the last round to the effect that no Jew would win the Georgian championship, and live. He made sure not to win, and emigrated.

Serbian grandmaster Matulovic was sentenced to three years in prison for running over a pedestrian in the 1970s. He protested at the length of the sentence on the grounds that it was "only a Bosnian", a remark I had cause to remember when Yugoslavia broke up.

There is much you can learn from chess, indeed.

William Hyde