Making sense of all what? — Making Sense of it All

As we close out the first full week of 2021, I find it hard to make any sense of what has happened in our country.

The week began on a hopeful note that Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock would be successful and they were. But then we experienced one of the darkest days in America’s recent history. I don’t need to recount for you the facts (particularly since we are learning more and more) or name the traitorous individuals who wrought such horrifying chaos and violence in a coup attempt fomented by Trump. But I do want to express what has been roiling up in my head and heart.

First, we have to get through the next eleven days and make it to the inauguration (Yay Joe and Kamala). After that, we need a national reckoning to determine how we got here and how to fix it. While I certainly don’t know how we are going to fix this, I do think history can provide some of an explanation as to how we got here.

From what I can see, we got to January 6, 2021 through a history of extreme racial inequity and the man who paraded through the Capitol with the Confederate battle flag encapsulated, in that one moment, what I am talking about.[1] The dichotomy between the police response to what happened on the 6th and what happened all over the country during the BLM protests is no coincidence.

Can we connect the dots from the Revolution to the Civil War to today? Yes.

As we all learned in elementary school, when this nation was founded slavery was (for too many) an accepted “fact” of life. What you might not have been taught in elementary school is that many of the southern colonies advocated for revolution in part to perpetuate slavery, fearing Great Britain would abolish it.[2] While some of the founding fathers voiced objections to slavery and they tellingly avoided using that word in the document, they enacted numerous provisions in the Constitution to protect it (more than just the three-fifths clause).[3]

Since I grew up and went to college in the Northeast, it wasn’t until I moved to the Midwest that I discovered there are people who believe the Civil War was fought for “states’ rights.” If by that they mean the “right” to own slaves, I guess that’s true. Let’s put a lie to this argument here and now with the words of Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy from his “Cornerstone” speech of 1861:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [of equality of the races]; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.[4]

So where did all this “state’ rights” bullshit come from?

Have you heard of “The Lost Cause”? It is one of America’s most successful disinformation campaigns. While the Civil War devastated Southern cities, it also shattered the Southern psyche. Believing that they had the superior society, Southerners searched for a substitute for military victory and created an image of the war as a “great heroic epic” to save the true (i.e. White) America.[5] The most notable propaganda used to rewrite the Civil War was the “states’ rights” argument plus the roughly 700 Confederate monuments across more than thirty-one states and the District of Columbia erected well after the war ended.[6]

On Wednesday, Senator Ted Cruz advocated for a “compromise” similar to that which settled the disputed 1876 presidential election. Ironically (or not), this compromise lead to a much-too-early end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Jim Crow era.

Fast-forward to Brown v. The Board of Education.[7]

We know that the Brown ruling ordered an end to segregated schools, but it was also a catalyst for no less than a “fifth-column assault on American democratic governance.”[8]

Really Cele? Come on. Be serious.

Oh, I am serious. While I can’t articulate it as well as Nancy McLean has (see footnote 8 and read that book), here it is in a nutshell: Brown showed that the federal government would no longer defer to “states’ rights” and would enforce democratic standards of fair treatment and equal protection under the law. This gave rise to what is euphemistically called “Libertarianism,” but meaning at its core unrestrained capitalism and the takeover of public institutions by corporations with the goal of radically reducing the freedom of the many.[9] Their success in this endeavor has resulted in, among other things, the crippling of trade unions, deregulation of corporations, shifting of taxes to the less well-off, and voting restrictions. “Libertarians” will say “I just want us all to be free – you don’t control me and I don’t control you.” But by “you” they mean the majority of Americans and what they really want is a return to oligarchy, specifically, White oligarchy.[10]

Then there was the “Southern Strategy” of Nixon and his ilk.

Then there was Ronald Reagan’s vilification of “welfare queens.”

Then there was George H. W. Bush’s Willie Horton campaign.

In furtherance of White oligarchy, Republicans have waged a wholesale P.R. campaign to associate public goods and services with “undeserving” communities of color.[11] When they argue for privatization it is fundamentally a code-word for segregation.

Now to the rise of Donald Trump. Sure, he had been on T.V. and was made to look like a successful businessman, but his political ascent started with “birtherism,” the lie that Barack Obama was not born in Hawai’i. Did he pursue this because he didn’t like Obama? Who knows? What we do know is that he knew that this false claim would resonate with a large number of White Americans. He continued down that path when he came down the escalator in 2015 pushing another lie that “Mexicans” were to blame for America’s troubles. Lie after lie after lie, during these past four years, Trump has fed the irrational fear of the far-right and White supremacists’ of losing status, wealth, and political power.[12] By targeting the Black communities of Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Milwaukee with false voter fraud claims, Trump and the Kraken team exposed their goal of suppressing Black voters.[13]

Now that the Trump administration is ending, we will not heal by just turning the page. Our problems are greater and more long-standing than Trump: White supremacy is a deep iceberg that has been intentionally grown over time. The extreme violence unleashed this week is just the tip of that iceberg and it is high time we stop it from hiding under the surface.[14]

The only way we have been able to combat racism in this country has been through strong federal intervention which is one reason why the right has continually tried to weaken the federal government. Given the recent court-packing, will we be able to find accountability and justice?

Only if we demand it.

Do not forget. Do not forgive.

These are the right words: Treason. Sedition. Fascism.

If they are not held accountable, they will do it again. Chavez and Hitler didn’t succeed the first time.

“Those who were part of the problem are not part of the solution.”[15]

Laugh at (or better yet, ignore) the WSJ editorial page, Fox News, Newsmax, OANN and the rest. Give them no quarter.

Fight voter suppression. The organization Let America Vote can help you get informed and take action. Go to https://letamericavote.wpengine.com

Learn (along with me) how to be an antiracist.[16]

Keep the faith.[17]

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[1] The painting he is strutting past is that of Republican Senator Charles Sumner, the Massachusetts abolitionist who was severely beaten by pro-slavery Representative Preston Brooks on 22 May 1856. Wikipedia.org, “Caning of Charles Sumner,” 08:28, 7 January 2021; Clint Smith, “The Whole Story in a Single Photo,” The Atlantic, 8 January 2021.

[2] Simon Schama, “Dirty Little Secret,” Smithsonian Magazine (May 2006) (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/dirty-little-secret-115579444/).

[3] Steven Mintz, “Historical Context: The Constitution and Slavery,” History Resources (no date) (https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/teaching-resource/historical-context-constitution-and-slavery).

[4] “Modern History Sourcebook: Alexander H. Stephens (1812-1883): Cornerstone Address, March 21, 1861” Fordham University (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1861stephens.asp).

[5] Mitch Landrieu [Mayor of New Orleans], “How I Learned About the ‘Cult of the Lost Cause,’” Smithsonian Magazine, 12 March 2018 (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-i-learned-about-cult-lost-cause-180968426/).

[6] Far exceeding the eleven states that seceded. Becky Little, “How the US Got So Many Confederate Monuments,” 12 June 2020, History.com (https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments).

[7] Not to ignore that era, but others have written so much more eloquently than I ever could.

[8] Nancy McLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Penguin Books, 2017), xxxii.

[9] Ibid., xxx.

[10] See also, Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (New York: Doubleday, 2016); Stuart Stevens, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020); Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Let them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in and Age of Extreme Inequality (New York: Liveright Publishing Corp., 2020).

[11] Brittaney Cooper, “Segregationists never went away: We just call them ‘small government conservatives’ now,” 27 May 2012, Salon.com (https://www.salon.com/2015/05/27/guardians_of_the_new_segregation_the_wicked_truth_about_the_rights_small_government_crusade/).

[12] Rhae Lynn Barnes and Keri Leigh Merritt, “A Confederate Flag at the Capitol Summons America’s Demons,” Action News Now, 8 January 2021 (https://www.actionnewsnow.com/content/national/573551792.html?ref=792)

[13] Am I saying all Trump supporters are racists? No. Some voted for him for tax breaks, others because they are anti-choice and maybe there were other reasons. But, they all were willing to tolerate racism to achieve their goals. To them I say three words – Babies. In. Cages.

[14] For my Black readers, I know this has certainly NOT been under the surface for you.

[15] Frank Rich, “The Trashing of the Republic: The only response to the carnage in Washington is to banish Trump and his traitorous collaborators from civil society,” 8 January 2021, New York Magazine (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-trashing-of-the-american-republic.html). I am echoing many of Frank’s thoughts from this well-written piece.

[16] Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist (New York: One World, 2019).

[17] If you want to fight me on this, you’d better be prepared with the data, the facts, and supportive documents. I am a genealogist and isn’t documented it isn’t true.