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theblacktivity-blog · 7 years

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Racism Is Not Incidental Or Accidental.

There is something that all citizens of the United States whose eyes have somehow reached this post should know. Racism is not incidental, nor is it accidental. The American republic (or democracy depending on which day of the week it is) did not come into being despite slavery and hierarchal raced based inequity. It was precisely this inequity that was necessary to ensure the formation and maintenance of the country. This is a fact that has been well documented and has been studied in great length and at varying levels for centuries. We know now that a key driver for getting southern states and their delegates to get on board with the ratification of what was then the new constitution, was the issue of being insured that the slave state apparatus would be maintained. For quite a time, this was such a big deal that many southern delegations didn’t show up and when they did often viewed the proceedings with an acute level of suspicion. This is put into context when one realizes that slavery as vile and dehumanizing an enterprise as it was accounted for just about all the south’s economy and those often representing the interest of the south were themselves land and slave owners. We know this and it is a fact. It is also a fact that northern states represented a much smaller portion of the slave holding population but nevertheless thrived in the industrial and textile arenas given the access to the cheap raw materials produced by the slave holding south. It was the threat of this business arrangement that accounted for the so-called more “liberal” states turning a blind eye to the issue of human bondage. We also know that there is a very distinct dichotomy that exist in plain view today, but which has its roots in this portion of America’s cultural genesis, the intellectual vs. the anti-intellectual, urban vs. rural, the enlightened (who were then as they are now called “elites”) vs. the yeoman. The intellectuals represented those well versed in the “classic” languages of Greek and Latin. They were highly educated men who were either from privilege or whom had ruggedly pulled themselves to a level of urbanity noted enough to allow them to participate in law, civics, science, politics, and more. These men make up most of the “founders” of the nation such men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Paine, and a host of others. Such men were often renaissance men who excelled in multiple disciplines and were considered by most to be the ones most capable of decision making in society. As educated as many of these men were, most were just as much a product of the times and were themselves, slave holders (to varying degrees) except for Thomas Paine (a true patriot that chastised slavery and slave holders to the bitter end and died in all but exile for that among other perceived “radical” stances). The yeoman were the farmer and plantation class of society. They were known for among other things, their staunch opposition to anything that would destroy the livelihood of the plantation state and that included the abolition of slavery. In their minds, intellectual and liberal ideas were to be theorized, not practiced. Often such men were not as educated or at least as classically trained in affairs as the intellectual class. This was a source of resentment by many within this group and it was viewed that the great equalizer between them and the intellectual class was the fact that they owned the land which provided the sustenance that powered the nation. Not every yeoman was a large plantation or estate owner, in fact, most landowners held titles to small acreage plots in which they lived in close proximity to their slaves. Nonetheless, there were those among the planter class who were met with a great deal of wealth…a wealth created by an ungodly institution and enforced with terror and many among this group went on to become statesman as well, the easiest example is Thomas Jefferson (whose party the democratic-republicans were the party of the yeoman, even though he was considered by many of this fellow farmer class of being too intellectual). The tension that arose from the contradiction of the nation’s enlightened ideas and its reality would continue into the period that led up to the Civil War. A war that has often been framed as a “war to end slavery” was, when one simplifies the matter, no more than a war that was the outward combustion of the forces involving much of the same dynamics but in more economic terms; the rural southern economy vs the industrial northern economy. While the north did boast several abolitionists, the war to end the institution of slavery was always a grassroots movement of the bonded themselves, with benevolence from some white spaces whose motives ranged from the ideological to the political. Yet and still, at this point it was more than agreed upon by most in the nation that freedom or slavery notwithstanding, Blacks were to occupy the space “intended” for them on the bottom of America’s ladder. The fog of war however, would provide an opportunity for slaves to at the very least participate in the dismantling of the institution even if that was not the intended origin, and Black regiments beginning with the 54th Massachusetts Infantry would play a major role in decisive victories until the surrender of the confederate forces at Appomattox on April 9th 1865. The defeat of the confederates one must imagine, was not only a blow to the southern white aristocracy militarily, but a complete upending of the only world they knew. A world in which murderous terrorizing of Black slaves and unjust hierarchies upheld an economic system beneficial to whites in general (though slavery did much to undercut job opportunities for poor whites by replacing wage labor with “free labor”, it nevertheless provided such positions as “overseer” and “slave poacher”: the origin of the modern police force, to poor whites who approached such “jobs” with an almost psychotic fervor). However, in defeat the south found its economy in shambles and its caste system overturned with the arrival of America’s Reconstruction period. For African Americans, this short-lived period would be one of our brightest in which it finally appeared as if the ideals of the nation had finally caught up to real life. It was during this period that African American’s (or “Negroes” as we were known then) began to more or less reap the benefits yielded by years of intellectual, military, emotional, religious, and revolutionary equity put in by our enslaved forbearers and for a short time we ascended, much to the chagrin and jealousy of the defeated whites. Blacks became businessmen, clergy leaders, teachers, university professors, farmers, voters, civil servants, and politicians and it was as if the pieces were finally pulling (however slowly and ruggedly) together. Further the creation of the Freedman’s Bureau as well as the Freedman’s Bank did little to ease the resentment of whites who now saw Black men and women not only as beneficiaries of a military “coup”, but as legitimate economic and civic threats to them as well. And who saw the creation of such bureau’s and protections for African American as an infringement upon “state’s rights” (a coded term of the white supremacist lexicon). As the bitterness of whites swelled and the speculative financial entanglements of the Freedman’s Bank and Bureau began to multiply, and Union troops were withdrawn from southern states, these whites saw their opportunity for a rejuvenation, and it would come first in the form of even more intensified terror. It was also during Reconstruction that the Ku Klux Klan came to the fore as an organization committed to the violent re-establishment of racial caste. It would first be through campaigns of lynching, rape, bombing, mutilation, burning, and other forms of unconscionable intimidation, that the resentful whites of the south (and Midwest) would stake their claim. Later, it would be through the re-vamping of customs, codes of so-called “etiquette”, laws, and institutions of all kinds that the maligning of Blacks would be continued. Not only this, but these so-called laws and customs would do much to re-establish a form of de jure slavery, terror, torture, murder, subservience, and blockades to upward mobility known as Jim Crow. Under this, slavery would be re-established in a penal system in which Black men would be charged for crimes often created out of thin air, overblown, or perceived, with harsher sentences resulting in being subject to forced labor camps. Black women were marginalized by once again being relegated to positions that reinforced the racist archetype of Black female domesticity in service of white comfort. Black children were left entrenched in an education system that at best used dated textbooks and crumbling classrooms to reinforce concepts of domination (from career prospects and civic engagement to home life). At worst, the educational system was often inadequate to prepare them at all. Lines of demarcation existed in every area of life from religious centers, to public restrooms, to train cars, and water fountains, and the cost of not knowing or paying attention to those lines could render a Black person killed. All the while, legislative, judicial, and even executive branches of government turned a blind eye to the severity of such and unjust system whether for political “expedience” or the fact that most bodies of government were once again made up of white men who shared many of these beliefs and practices. And so, it is that this has been the ebb and flow of the nation since its very founding. With each gained made by African Americans (as well as other minority or disadvantaged groups) there has been a fundamental revamping or reinforcing of the hierarchal ideology and status quo in response. The knee jerk reaction to anything that is perceived to be a threat to white domination has been either to react with a vitriolic intolerance, a subtle and crafty intolerance, or most times a cocktail of both. This has been the case. It is a fact. It has been a fact since the very cornerstones were put into this nation and every century, generation, and decade or so the convulsions of backlash that we see on public display are but ones triggered by the gap that has long existed between the country’s ideals and its very real (and to white people) very important reality of structural inequity and injustice. Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and the so-called “alt-right” are but the latest “standard bearers” of white resentment and backlash. There is nothing to really speculate about it. It’s been repeated all too often. It is very simple. Racism is symbiotic to America. As the skeleton is designed to hold the human body upright, so is racism and hierarchy to America. Racism is America’s cultural legacy. Let what has been said in this piece be a very brief point of departure for the perplexed, or for those pretending to be confused.

#racism trump slavery jimcrow thenewjimcrow unitedwestand blacklivesmatter racism101

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