The Wrong Side of History

Will history be the judge? Does the arc of history bend? Figures of speech both reflect and shape our expectations.

My constitutional law professor thought the courts should have ended “separate but equal” education not by finding it unconstitutional, but by enforcing equal funding for all schools, making segregation financially unsustainable. It is easy from this distance to consign him to the wrong side of history. We call “the right side” the one that wins out in the long run as accepted and wise. Three problems with this notion:

1. Accepted and wise may not match. Thoreau wrote, “Our inventions . . . are but improved means to an unimproved end.”
2. Hindsight helps. Had the Civil War, World War II, or the Cuban Missile Crisis ended differently, might that change how we judge the strategic choices leading up to them?
3. The long run doesn’t exist. Years move on, we bumble along, and judgments can shift as we see what happens next.