Mis-Written Histories

Scapegoating is the popular misapplication
of cause and effect, where when the speaker
speaks they knows that they are mistaken,
but finds greater serenity in self interest.

From Cain slaying Abel onward,
scapegoating has been the subtext
for all 'popular history', to the point
where how life was arranged
when we were more united
is a mystery we decline to account for.

The history of slavery is the example,
par excellence, of how when one group
gets scapegoated by another, the winners
frame the narrative to refer only to themselves,
leaving the losers the weakest of explanations
to account for them being where they are.

Never was this truer than with the evangelists
who bargained with white plantation owners
that even their black slaves needed salvation
and to read The Bible daily, where to be as obedient
to the plantation owners as the slaves were
the evangelists gutted and miswrote their most holy book.
removing  everything that was even slightly seditious,
to placate the plantation owners fear of their slaves
rebelling from the servitude, for being able to read.

For more about it this misbegotten
episode of church, and human, history
please left click and read in full The Slave Bible.