Letter: It may surprise some that even white people deserve freedoms

Posted 7/8/21

In his last letter, Stephan Brigidi shared (in both the Phoenix and Providence Journal) his impressions of Juneteenth at Linden Place , where a “slave medallion” was installed.

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Letter: It may surprise some that even white people deserve freedoms

Posted

In his last letter, Stephan Brigidi shared (in both the Phoenix and Providence Journal) his impressions of Juneteenth at Linden Place, where a “slave medallion” was installed.

Although Mr. Brigidi hypes “[o]ur native brothers and sisters” as soulful exemplars of “our common humanity,” he’s describing people who still divide themselves into tribes. In 2017, for example, during Ousameequin’s repatriation at Burr’s Hill, the Wampanoag shut the Pokanoket out of the ceremonial rent-a-tent over the latter’s inability to collect from the Bureau of Indian Affairs; and the Pokanoket, in turn, not only claimed the deceased as their direct ancestor but accused the Wampanoag of identity theft and cowardice during King Phillip’s War. Big of them to bury the tomahawk for an afternoon and harangue the palefaces together.

Unlike Memorial or Veteran’s Day, beside which Mr. Brigidi slips this bogus holiday like a cuckoo egg, Juneteenth doesn’t remind us of timeless virtues such as honor or courage, but admonishes us of slavery, conquest and other banalities in world history. (Didn’t his CRT instructrix ever tell him that Europeans first bought slaves from Africans who had conquered and enslaved their “brothers” already?)

But if Juneteenth is, as Mr. Brigidi writes, “an opportunity to look at our past, with shameful deeds done,” then Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, presumably in town because he forgot the way to Bailey’s Beach Club, was the keynote speaker — the skeleton of 15-year-old Jennifer Rivera being a permanent fixture in his closet.

The slave medallion at Linden Place is one of several white-guilt stickers popping up throughout the state. Funded by grants from Bank Newport, Channing Memorial Church and Heritage Harbor Foundation (and by donations coffered at radical-chic cocktail-soirees), the Rhode Island Slave History Medallion organization awards these trophies for shame to trendy, liberal boards of directors who are struggling to disembarrass themselves of our historic properties.

Rather than set anything in stone, which risks offending someone later, these medallions feature QR codes linked to online resources, where the left’s nebulous bafflegab can continue to mutate to sweet-talk the next victim of the week.

Mr. Brigidi argues that Linden Place, “built from the profits of slave trade,” deserves such a blemish, but would he say the same of Touro Synagogue, whose construction was majorly supported by the richest man then in Newport, slave-trader Aaron Lopez? Indeed, will Rhode Island Slave History Medallion founder Charles Roberts be dropping one of his calling cards there to tell us, as his website declares, “a more complete story of the cultural and economic development” of the state?

Mr. Brigidi’s letter stinks of the posh ethnomasochism touted by our ruling class and their fluffers: if only we white people would give up our political power, our wealth, our institutions, our culture, our language, our towns and our countries — and apologize for catalyzing civilization as we know it — then there’s a slim chance the rest of the world might forgive us our success and we could all get along.

It may surprise Mr. Brigidi, however, that even white people deserve “to be free and live unencumbered.”

Zachary Cooper
Bristol

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