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“Bullies are always to be found where there are cowards.” —Gandhi
Few would argue with this observation of Gandhi’s or with many of his other profound statements, which we cite in order to define the leader, political activist, and advocate of non-violent protest.
Yet recently, students and faculty at the University of Ghana outed Gandhi as a racist and successfully petitioned the university to remove a statue of the peaceful-protest leader for Indian independence.
And had this not happened, supporters of the Me Too movement might have done some backward glancing of their own and exposed some of his… “unusual” sexual practices.
What to make of this looking back, with its call for accountability in the present? Should, and under what circumstance(s) should, backward glances come to comprehensively redefine an individual, re-evaluating and re-assessing the whole of their character (even, perhaps, reinterpreting a public figure’s contributions to culture)?
One way to consider this question is to ask another: Should we remove the word hermeneutics from the dictionary?
Hermeneutics is a theory and method of interpretation that seeks to understand historical texts (primarily the Bible) by situating them in the cultural context in which they were written, and from which it is possible to grasp and resolve ambiguities and seeming contradictions.
Hermeneutic principles, applied to the statements in conjunction with the actions of historical figures, allow us to view their lives as texts, to translate the whole of their lives into the context of historical narratives. Norms, linguistic usages, and reigning worldviews (that undergird morality) illuminate statements and behaviors, lessening ambiguities, inconsistencies, and apparent contradictions.
Backward glancing that fails to incorporate hermeneutic principles will lead to single-minded re-evaluations of many historical figures. Consider:
Christopher Columbus was a child trafficker, mass murderer, and a slave trader. Should we strike this national holiday from the calendar (which has, in fact, been proposed for years)?
JFK had a sexual voracity; he was even, perhaps, a sexual predator accused of serious sexual improprieties on at least one occasion. (Even more damning, at the time of his "dalliances," adultery was against the law, and as of 2017, it was still illegal in 20 states). Should we rename schools and boulevards, cast down busts, and stop issuing the 50¢ coin?
MLK’s (illegal) extramarital affairs were well known, and he stands accused, by his Pulitzer prize-winning biographer, of sexual improprieties, including witnessing a rape. Should we rename expressways and airports and topple statues?
And the Prophet Mohammed has some question marks after his name.
It would seem that many historical figures engaged in offensive, even illegal, behaviors that have, at their root, some form of domination or bullying. Are they all, then, cowards?
Few would rush to pin that label on any of the cultural heroes named above. To do so would imply that we should, on the heels of the Me Too movement, begin lowering the stature (if not the statues) of JFK, MLK and others.
And, by the same token, not to do so suggests that these leaders (but not contemporary men of note, like Al Franken, Leonard Lopate, Garrison Keillor) be given a pass, as their contributions to culture outweigh the crimes for which they would today stand accused.
Guided by a single agenda (e.g., racial or sexual oppression, which presupposes bullying), backward glancing takes on the character of a witch-hunt, looking only to exonerate or damn. Contextualization, in this context, is equivalent to "rationalizations that are the basis of excusing unacceptable behaviors." Yet in ignoring cultural nuances, we run the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
So perhaps, in 2019, modified questions might be posed:
1. Can hermeneutics provide useful principles in assessing “recent” history (even our penal system takes "motivation" into account)?
2. What might those principles mean in the age of social media?
In an age where sensationalism is prized, and the retributions accorded public accountability (not the least of which is humiliation) may lead, circumvent, or dismiss legal culpability altogether.
The power of social media demands that we establish levees that safeguard space within the public arena where “innocent until proven guilty” retains some degree of currency; a place where “trial in the court of public opinion” does not preclude hermeneutic principles.
This is difficult in our age of immediacy, where bytes of “knowledge” on the information superhighway usually preclude nuanced considerations. Our social-ly media-ted world raises the question of legal and social accountability in cyberspace, where outcries readily parallel "Wild West" renegade justice. On these bygone frontiers, righteousness was in the hands of victims, and the adjudication of grievances had nothing to do with hermeneutics or due process.
If we fail to negotiate “safe cyberspace” where hermeneutic principles inform social adjudications, we become monstrous bullies, browbeating the accused, publicly humiliating them, and cutting them off from their pathos of redemption and readmission to culture.
In short, if hermeneutics, no less than the unregulated power of social media, are not considerations that influence our assessments, re-evaluations, and demand for accountability in the present, we may well stand accused of clamoring for a reality in which the past can never be past; one that, in the present, one must pay (and pay?) for choices that at that time/in that place, the behavior reflected norms less egregious than the standards of today.
(How many among us never joined in the ostracization and rejection of a former classmate? Complicity in their humiliation was a passport to belonging, as well as a social challenge to formal authority.)
A reality perilously close to the infamous “White Bear” Black Mirror episode, or even the third episode, “Shut up and Dance.”
A world in which forgiveness and redemption are no longer possible.
