race Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

The Civil War is not over

163 years and counting

The Civil War is not over. I’ve known this for a while, but something triggered this reaction. Doug, the Weekly Sift guy, gave a sermon at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois on May 5, 2024, titled Hope, Denial, and Healthy Relationship with the News.

I related to this part particularly. “Today… I’m talking about an experience that I know is personal, but I’m only guessing about its universality… The experience is an intense spiraling downward that gets triggered not by anything in my personal life, but from my interaction with the news. I hear about something in the outside world, the public world that we all share, and then the walls come tumbling down.”

Frank’s trigger was Robert Hur’s investigation of “President Biden’s unauthorized retention of classified documents.” While he “found nothing that would justify pressing charges,… along the way, he took a swipe at Biden’s mental competence,” and others piled on.

“And that’s when the bottom fell out of my mood. The effect lasted for several days. I would seem to be coming out of it, but then something would remind me and I’d sink back down again… that experience, that sudden mood collapse touched off by something in the news. The something doesn’t have to relate to politics or elections. It could be about climate change, the Supreme Court or what corporate capitalism is doing to our culture or whatever else you happen to worry about.

“One minute, you’re sailing along calmly, thinking, ‘Yeah, there are problems, but we’ll be OK.’ And then you hear or see something…
And in an instant, the bottom falls out… I experience this as depression and despair, but I know other people for whom it manifests as anger: How can so many people be so stupid, self-centered, or short-sighted?”

Mine

For me, it was something that, in the grander scheme of things, isn’t desperately consequential. But it hit me. A Virginia school board votes to restore Confederate names to two schools.

There had been an acknowledgment that the war was fought over the issue of slavery. And oh, and by the way, slavery was BAD, despite the attempt of some to put lipstick on a pig; “They learned marketable skills!”

But the “school board members who voted to restore the Confederate names said the previous board ignored popular sentiment and due process when the names were stripped.” Yeah, their “heritage” was intruded upon.

So that war which killed over six hundred thousand Americans, the deadliest military conflict in US history, is still being litigated. In the Gettysburg Address, Abe Lincoln noted, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Shortly after that awful war, Memorial Day was established, “honoring and mourning the U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.”

As we relitigate voting rights and other issues of once-settled policy, it makes me feel what Doug feels, “depression and despair.” The mourning isn’t for the dead per se as much as it is a feeling that in some substantial way that I would not have expected twenty years ago, the fight continues.

Lydster: two decades

cleaning the wound

This is the second part of the daughter at two decades extravaganza.

One of the mild life frustrations I’ve had is that my daughter didn’t get to know my birth family nearly as well as she related to my wife’s family. My father died in 2000 before she was born. While she did meet my mother a few times, most recently in 2009, she didn’t get to know her well. She had seen her cousin Rebecca on the TV show Wipeout but never in person until my mother’s funeral in 2011. In part, that’s why she and I went to Carnegie Hall in 2022 to see my sister Leslie sing, before which we experienced an … interesting… taxi ride.

But it’s nice that she has seen my wife’s family regularly. Though my wife’s brother John died in 2002, my daughter has gotten to know her grandparents before her grandpa Richard Powell died in 2020. I think my daughter “supported” John McCain in 2008 for President because he vaguely looked like Richard. Her grandmother now lives in Albany County.

She knows her mother’s other two brothers, their wives, and their three daughters. One family, with twin girls, lives in Catskill, about an hour away, though one of the daughters is now in NYC. The other family lived in Massachusetts, but now in southeastern Pennsylvania, a fair distance but a lot closer than Charlotte, NC, and San Diego, CA. She’s attended several Olin family reunions.

Self-advocating

She became more confident in many areas. It used to be that when we went to a restaurant, she wanted one of her parents to tell the server that she had a peanut and tree nut allergy. Then, about five years ago, she insisted on doing it herself.

During COVID, she would spend hours in her room. It was difficult to ascertain whether this was a function of the pandemic, the phase of being a teenager, or both. This eventually passed.

Early on, I wondered how to introduce issues of national and world events to her. As it turned out when she was about nine, I’d be watching the TV news in the living room; she was paying attention while in the dining room.

Her parents talk with her a LOT about whatever she asks, including issues of race. It’s impossible to protect one’s child from bigotry. When there were vigils after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, she organized a regular event in our neighborhood for about two months; as it was her gig, I only went once or twice.

Column A or Column B

There is a loose demarcation of what she will ask which parent. Her mother tends to get questions about cooking, cleaning, and first aid. Indeed, when one of her friends was mildly injured at college, she used tips her mother taught her to clean the wound.

I tend to get the music, movies, and politics questions. Also, because I am a librarian, she asks me college-related questions about finding citations, attribution, and the like. Both of us might field questions, such as relationship issues and money, though I tend to be more available as a retiree.

In her first year in college, she’d call or text now and then. This year, she phones more often. She called just to talk recently, and we were on the phone for an hour and a half.

We tell her we love her, and she reciprocates, which is very nice.

“America is Not a Racist Country”

“It took America a while to get that right.”

Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is quoted several times as saying, “America is Not a Racist Country.” I’m inclined to believe that what she says is sincere. So, I read this THR interview with her with great interest.

She notes that she spent much time discussing race relations in a recent interview with Charlemagne. “What I said was, I’m not denying that there is racism in America.” She noted, “We should stomp it out every time we see it, and I did that as governor, and I did it as UN ambassador, and I will do that in everything I ever do.”

Here’s her nuance on the topic. “I said America is not a racist country, and my reasoning for that is I don’t think that America was intended to be a racist country. All men were supposed to be created equal with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It took America a while to get that right.”

Ah, that’s an interesting take on the Founders. My rhetorical question: And when was the point she believed that the goal was achieved? I’m not trying to be pedantic here. Was it after the Civil War, maybe with the Civil War amendments? (And BTW, I didn’t care much about her muddled comment about whether slavery was the cause of the Civil War.) Or perhaps a century later? Or 2008?

The discussion is relevant about how we see our nation and what we should address if there are things to fix. Unfortunately, that question was not asked. But I think we’re dealing with definitional differences.

Try that in a small town.

She noted, “As a brown girl who grew up in a small rural town, if my parents had told me that ‘you were born into a racist country,’ I would’ve always felt like I was disadvantaged. Instead, my parents always said, ‘You may encounter racism, but there’s nothing you can’t do, and you should work twice as hard to prove to everybody that you deserve to be in the room.'” Hmm. That sounded like the message that black kids of my generation always heard. So, she experienced individual racism.

In The Breakfast Club discussion, she stated that the division of the people over race started with Barack Obama because he used executive orders extensively. Since the Tea Party and its ilk arose, the Republicans failed to compromise or work with him. They wanted to make him a one-term president.

My take is more in keeping with what William Spivey suggested, that Obama’s election sparked the “fourth wave of white supremacy.”

“The general election [of 2008] removed any pretense that race was not a factor. Surrogates for John McCain depicted Barack and Michelle as monkeys. Obama faced birtherism charges of being born in Nigeria, Kenya, or maybe both, led by Donald Trump. Racist memes flooded the Internet… One might think things would have calmed down [after he was elected], but there were outbreaks of racism and race-based attacks throughout the country well before Obama took his oath of office.”

I give Nikki Haley props for “removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House following the racially charged murder of nine Black parishioners at Mother Emanuel Church” in 2015, after defending the flag as part of the state’s “heritage” five years earlier. But I find her thoughts on race in America less compelling than I had hoped.

Color blindness as “the best form of antiracism”?

Wendell Phillips

On the first day of Black History Month, the Boston Globe posted a piece entitled “Color blindness remains the best form of antiracism.” It may be behind a paywall.

“Coleman Hughes is an author and podcaster. This essay is adapted from his book ‘The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America,’ to be published on [February 6] Tuesday by Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House.”

The subtitle of Hughes’ article was, “Of course we all see race. But it’s a bad basis for determining how to treat people or craft public policy.”

Part of his argument points out an earlier definition of color blindness, which is better enuciated in a TED talk called The Case for color blindness.

He notes that the adverse “reaction to color blindness is actually a fault of its advocates. People will say things like, ‘I don’t see color’ as a way of expressing support for color blindness. But this phrase is guaranteed to produce confusion because you do see color, right? “

An observation here. Small children likely see race and pick up cultural values about it much earlier than we might have believed. This is why I believe discussing race is essential, just at the point that there are forces in the United States that want to ban books dealing with race, gender identity, and the like.

19th-century roots

Hughes is correct when he says we should eliminate the phrase “I don’t see color.” Instead, we should “replace it with what we really mean to say, which is, ‘I try to treat people without regard to race.'”

He makes an interesting historical observation. “The philosophy of color blindness… actually comes from the radical wing of the antislavery movement in the 19th century. The earliest mentions of color blindness come from Wendell Phillips, who was the president of the American Anti-Slavery Society and a man whose nickname was ‘abolition’s golden trumpet.’

“He believed in immediate full equality for Black Americans.

And in 1865, he called for the creation of a ‘government colorblind,’

by which he meant the permanent end of all laws that mention race.”

Of course, we know that did not happen. Jim Crow, sunset laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, restrictive housing covenants, etc., etc. And actions that didn’t have to mention race, such as lynchings.

Sidebar

Speaking of Plessy, I’ve discovered that John Marshall Harlan’s dissent in that case was rather narrow. From this journal article: “The consensus
regarding the then-extant legal understandings of ‘rights’ in post-Civil
War America are on display in Justice Harlan’s opinion.” In other decisions, “Justice Harlan recognized and accepted the legal distinction between civil rights and social rights, a distinction ‘mark[ing] a sphere of associational freedom in which law would allow practices of racial discrimination to flourish.'”

And “in a passage containing his well-known metaphor of a
colorblind Constitution, he stated:

“[I]n view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this
country no superior, dominant ruling class of citizens. There is no
caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor
tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all
citizens are equal before the law.

“This call for civil-rights colorblindness was immediately preceded by this
passage:

“‘The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country.
And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth,
and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it
remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of
constitutional liberty.” Thus, the definition of the term color-blind was not universally understood.

I think Hughes’ point that having policies meant to reduce inequality be executed based on class instead of race has merit. But maybe it is more of a “both-and” thing. How do we address the loss of generational wealth resulting from previous discrimination? The risk to pregnant black women’s health when dealing with the medical establishment appears to be irrespective of the prospective mother’s socio-economic status.

Coleman Hughes has added to the discussion. I haven’t fully embraced his POV, but that’s okay.

Radical Republicans, SCOTUS, and justice

Reconstruction

For Constitution Day, which is September 17, I want to discuss the Radical Republicans. No, not Gym Jordan, Elise Stefanik, and many in the current GOP, who are indeed radical but not for justice.

On August 15, Professor Stephen E. Gottlieb, professor emeritus at the Albany Law School, presented a talk, Should We Abolish the Supreme Court? He referenced his book Unfit for Democracy. and The Case Against the Supreme Court by Erwin Chemerinsky.

Professor Gottlieb noted that those in his party who put Abraham Lincoln’s feet to the fire were labeled Radical Republicans. Gottlieb remembers this designation was offered as pejorative when he attended public school. My recollection of my school days is the same.

“The American Battlefield Trust preserves America’s hallowed battlegrounds and educates the public about what happened there and why it matters.” The organization offered up this article.

“The Radical Republicans were a group of politicians who formed a faction within the Republican party that lasted from the Civil War into the era of Reconstruction. They were led by Thaddeus Stevens in the House of Representatives and Charles Sumner in the Senate. The Radicals were known for their opposition to slavery, their efforts to ensure emancipation and civil rights for Blacks and their strong opinions on post-war Reconstruction.”

After engaging in a bloody Civil War, incrementalism was not on the minds of many Republicans, whose party was only about a decade old. “While President Lincoln wanted to fight the war largely for the preservation of the Union, the Radical Republicans believed the primary reason for fighting was for the abolition of slavery.”

The Civil War amendments

It would have been impossible for the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to have passed without the Radical Republicans. “The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was an effort by the Radical Republicans to reinforce the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery and had been passed the year prior. With this Civil Rights Act, the radicals were also taking steps towards establishing citizenship for Blacks by defending their civil rights and granting them equal protection under the law. In 1867, they were successful in passing the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship to Blacks…

“New Reconstruction Acts were passed and called for each rebel state to draft a new constitution as well as ratify the new Fourteenth Amendment… Congress, meaning primarily Radical Republicans, would then have to approve these new state constitutions before readmitting the rebel state back into the Union… Furthermore, they deployed military troops to the South to maintain order and to protect the rights of Black citizens. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was passed, granting Blacks the right to vote.”

The legislation inhibiting Andrew Johnson’s ability to remove his own cabinet members, which led to the impeachment of the President in 1868, was an overreach. While the Radical Republicans dominated the late 1860s, their power dwindled in the early 1870s. Corruption seeped into the party, including fights over civil service reform. Beyond that, figures like Sumner “believed that the era of Reconstruction was successfully completed and no longer needed Radical supervision.”

Then the Tilden/Hayes election of 1876 killed Reconstruction, and Jim Crow ruled, not just in the South.

A century later

The justice that was supposed to have been codified in the 1860s and 1870s had been thwarted, in large part because of the Supreme Court’s decisions such as the “separate but equal” Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

As a result, civil rights for Black people had to be relitigated, mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. It was addressed in legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

But it was also manifest in decisions by the Warren Court (1953-1969), not only overtly about race (Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Loving v. Virginia), but cases of justice regardless of race. Professor Gottlieb suggested that this period was the highlight of the Supreme Court’s history.

“In 1961, Mapp v. Ohio strengthened the Fourth Amendment’s protections by banning prosecutors from using evidence seized in illegal searches in trials. In 1963, Gideon v. Wainwright held that the Sixth Amendment required that all indigent criminal defendants be assigned a free, publicly-funded defense attorney. Finally, the 1966 case of Miranda v. Arizona required that all persons being interrogated while in police custody be clearly informed of their rights—such as the right to an attorney—and acknowledge their understanding of those rights—the so-called ‘Miranda warning.'”

More recently

This reminded me of the SCOTUS decision by the Roberts Court in June 2013, which “struck down a section of the Voting Rights Act, weakening a tool the federal government has used for nearly five decades to block discriminatory voting laws.” It was as though the justices decided that “we have overcome.”

Many, including me, were then SHOCKED when SCOTUS provided a significant victory for voting rights in 2023. “It handed down a 5-4 decision in Allen v. Milligan that preserves longstanding safeguards against racism in US elections, strikes down a gerrymandered congressional map in Alabama, and all but assures that Democrats will gain at least one congressional seat in the next election from that state.”

The arc of the moral universe is undoubtedly long. Whether it bends towards justice, I’m less confident.