On a the contradictions of a [slave-owning] nation conceived in liberty
We are in the midst of a dedicated push on the part of some politicians to remove "critical race theory" (CRT) from our schools. My question to those politicians: where is CRT being taught in K-12 schools? I was an American Studies major in college and CRT was never a part of the curriculum. It is not part of the curriculum my children have learned in their school. I am not sure why Republicans have decided that CRT is the bane of our existence and the reason for white people to feel bad about themselves, but that's where we are today and they are working hard to ban CRT from schools.
In my own state of North Carolina, the NCGOP is working to pass legislation that would ban affirmative action and prevent teachers from "''indoctrinating' students with Critical Race Theory concepts."
WHO is claiming that America is "an irredeemably racist and sexist country"? Again, anecdotally, I don't hear ANYONE claiming this. I DO hear people discuss the history of racism and sexism in our history. It is a fact that Susan B. Anthony tried to vote in 1872 and was arrested for her efforts. Women were not granted the right to vote until the 19th Amendment passed in 1920. Blacks were considered sub-human and after emancipation, faced enormous challenges in voting until the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed. Until that point, voting was nothing Black Americans could take for granted. And since SCOTUS rolled back VRA protections in the Shelby vs Holder case, Black voters can no longer take their voting rights for granted. (NC was among the first states to pass legislation targeting Black voting patterns with "surgical precision.")
Just who is teaching children that "people solely due to their race or sex should feel guilt, anguish or discomfort"? I don't know the answer to that question - do you?
As I noted, the schools in my district do not cover CRT as part of their curriculum. Anecdotally speaking, I have never seen teachers "indoctrinate" children with pernicious theories - not as my experience as a student nor as a parent of students. The hatred for teachers and public education is alarming, however. NC Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, however, is heading a task force investigating the indoctrination of our children in schools. One of the complaints he's received: a student was asked to read a story about a transgender person and his family decided to pull the student out of school as a result of this assignment.
So what exactly is CRT? According to "A Lesson on Critical Race Theory," an article by Janel George published in January 2021 on the American Bar Association's website, CRT is "a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship." In other words, it is an examination of how race and racism have impacted our society. I do not see how anyone can avoid the unpleasant and uncomfortable truth that race and racism have had an enormous impact on our society. Nor do I see issues with students learning about the racism that has impacted our history.
However, in September 2020, President Donald Trump did assert such a claim when he issued an executive order "combatting race and sex stereotyping" that prohibited contractors from providing diversity and inclusion training to their employees. In this order, the president speaks of "many people" who are promoting "the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country...."
WHO is claiming that America is "an irredeemably racist and sexist country"? Again, anecdotally, I don't hear ANYONE claiming this. I DO hear people discuss the history of racism and sexism in our history. It is a fact that Susan B. Anthony tried to vote in 1872 and was arrested for her efforts. Women were not granted the right to vote until the 19th Amendment passed in 1920. Blacks were considered sub-human and after emancipation, faced enormous challenges in voting until the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed. Until that point, voting was nothing Black Americans could take for granted. And since SCOTUS rolled back VRA protections in the Shelby vs Holder case, Black voters can no longer take their voting rights for granted. (NC was among the first states to pass legislation targeting Black voting patterns with "surgical precision.")
Our problem today is not that some companies provide diversity and equity training, or that academics and lawyers engage in an academic examination of the role of racism in American society. The problem we face today is that America is a nation born of a terrible and divisive hypocrisy - many of those who declared "all men to be created equal" were in fact slaveholders or supporters of slaveholders. So many of the founding fathers owned human property - and yet they went to war against England to defend their own individual liberties.
And slavery haunts the early years of the nation. It haunts the Constitution - you can see this in Article 1 Section 2 of this important founding document: representation and taxation would be determined by the number of free persons and "three fifths of all other persons." It was a brilliant way for slave-holding states to game the system.
To own people, to hold people as property, one must develop a peculiar pathology - one must believe in the diminished nature of the "beast" one owns. Thomas Jefferson spoke in detail about the differences between Blacks and Whites in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Of course that did not stop him from having children with Sally Hemings, a Monticello slave whose father was also Jefferson's father-in-law.
And slavery haunts the early years of the nation. It haunts the Constitution - you can see this in Article 1 Section 2 of this important founding document: representation and taxation would be determined by the number of free persons and "three fifths of all other persons." It was a brilliant way for slave-holding states to game the system.
To own people, to hold people as property, one must develop a peculiar pathology - one must believe in the diminished nature of the "beast" one owns. Thomas Jefferson spoke in detail about the differences between Blacks and Whites in his Notes on the State of Virginia. Of course that did not stop him from having children with Sally Hemings, a Monticello slave whose father was also Jefferson's father-in-law.
That racism was bred into southern plantation life for centuries - and insinuated its way into northern sensibilities as well. How else can it be that slavery was allowed at all in the new nation devoted to freedom and individual liberties? Though Thomas Jefferson found fault with slavery, could his Monticello have been built without slave labor? Could he have had the time and energy to ponder the nature of liberty without slaves to take care of his every need? Imagine the additional debt he would have acquired had he been forced to actually pay for labor!
Reconstruction failed not just because Andrew Johnson was the weakest president we've had. It failed because a seam of racism runs through the core of our nation. It failed because the founding fathers did not have the courage to eliminate slavery from a nation "conceived in liberty." It failed because we went to war to preserve the union - and in doing so, we won the right to maintain citizenship with those who believed fervently in their right to own people. Instead of slicing slave states off the American border, we fought long and hard for the right to call them our fellow Americans.
Reconstruction became an impossible dilemma. A nation tired of war, devastated by war, consumed by mourning the hundreds of thousands who had died in that war, had to continue the war that actually had begun some four-score years earlier when the founding fathers seceded from England to create a [slave-owning] nation devoted to the principles of liberty and freedom.
What to do with slaves and their owners was a complex problem that vexed some of the very best minds of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Reconstruction under Johnson was an abysmal failure. But the question lingers: in the absence of Lincoln and the "better angels" his nature, what leader implementing what policy would have bound the nation's wounds in ways that healed instead of continued the division?
Reconstruction failed not just because Andrew Johnson was the weakest president we've had. It failed because a seam of racism runs through the core of our nation. It failed because the founding fathers did not have the courage to eliminate slavery from a nation "conceived in liberty." It failed because we went to war to preserve the union - and in doing so, we won the right to maintain citizenship with those who believed fervently in their right to own people. Instead of slicing slave states off the American border, we fought long and hard for the right to call them our fellow Americans.
Reconstruction became an impossible dilemma. A nation tired of war, devastated by war, consumed by mourning the hundreds of thousands who had died in that war, had to continue the war that actually had begun some four-score years earlier when the founding fathers seceded from England to create a [slave-owning] nation devoted to the principles of liberty and freedom.
What to do with slaves and their owners was a complex problem that vexed some of the very best minds of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Reconstruction under Johnson was an abysmal failure. But the question lingers: in the absence of Lincoln and the "better angels" his nature, what leader implementing what policy would have bound the nation's wounds in ways that healed instead of continued the division?
Today, rather than silence the discussion of racism in American history, we should be discussing the issues racism has created in our society and celebrating the heroes who have moved us closer to our founding ideal that "all are created equal."
Comments
It was the only one that I completely agreed with, so I wanted to see if you still write.
It’s been 13 years since that comment, funny how the internet is forever.
I think I want to follow you on Twitter if you use it