Holly Mathnerd is the pseudonym of a fascinating substacker with keen observational and analytical skills. Reminding me once again that even the wisest and most intellectual astute of us can have major fissures in our competence and gaps in our understanding, Holly posted today a long essay that was, as all of her efforts are, interesting, amusing, frank and provocative, yet disturbing none the less.
In “At the Time, It Was Just Tuesday” (what “Roots” made me think about), Holly revealed that she watched “Roots” for the first time, prompted by Lavar Burton’s autobiography. (Lavar Burton’s life story gets a “Kaufman” from me. What would prompt anyone to take the time to read that minor actor’s almost certainly ghost-written bio in lieu of a major sock drawer clean-up? A “Star Trek, the Next Generation” obsession?) She reveals that she didn’t really appreciate how bad slavery was until she saw “Roots,” which itself is gobsmacking: Holly’s got to be in her sixties or fifties at least. She also reveals herself as a consumer of woke cant or at least not sufficiently resistant by referring to slaves as “enslaved people.” This is a recent imposition of decreed politically correct language that I only started noticing a few months ago. “Slaves” is out, “enslaved people (or persons)” is the respectful term to use. In my argument with my woke ethics colleagues, I also learned that “alcoholism”is now disfavored, with the term “alcohol use disorder” taking its place because Clinicians and support networks now prefer it “to avoid moral judgment or defining someone entirely by a medical condition.” It’s an offshoot of the “no human being is illegal” crap. They can all bite me.
Back to Holly’s lack of knowledge about slavery: she explains that she was, to say the least, maleducated:
