Civil rights demonstrator attacked by a police dog on May 3, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama
Stephanie McCurry, Professor of History at
Columbia University, taught History of the Slave South on Coursera a few years
ago. In her conclusion she said:
"The Confederate States of America was transformed by war, and the Confederate political project was undone … when the 4 million African Americans born enslaved in the United States seized the opening history offered.
When they rose on the plantations. When they grabbed up their children and poured into Union lines. When they insisted that the Union reformulate policy to account for their historic mission of emancipation. When men, women, and children alike, risked all to turn the war in the right direction. When they made slaveholders ask for the first time, what do the slaves want? …
And given the pro slavery, white supremacist and anti democratic aspirations of that nation, there was a certain justice, I think, in that."
A certain justice, but not enough to
exorcise the racism ingrained in so many that less than 50 years after
the Civil Rights era, white supremacists are on the ascendancy again and the alt-right has dictated the next American president, who is now choosing racists, bigots and warmongers for his crew. Salon.com has an excellent piece on Senator Sessions, Trump's choice for AG. And as Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) said of him:
"If you have nostalgia for the days when blacks kept quiet, gays were in the closet, immigrants were invisible and women stayed in the kitchen, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is your man. No Senator has fought harder against the hopes and aspirations of Latinos, immigrants, and people of color than Sen. Sessions... He ran for the Senate because he was deemed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as too racist to serve as a federal judge. He is the kind of person who will set back law enforcement, civil rights, the courts, and increase America’s mass incarceration industry and erase 50 years of progress."
Divisions in American
society run terribly deep, and hard as people have tried to believe that
America, with all its diversity is at heart homogeneous in spirit, it's wishful thinking, and usually on the part of liberals.
Abusers, in politics and even in
relationships, get away with a lot as their generous-spirited victims give them
chance after chance after chance, desperately holding onto the belief that everybody
is intrinsically good if you just give them understanding. Finally there comes
a point when the victims face reality. Understanding sometimes does nothing
more than enable more abuse.
And so abusive spouses face divorce, abusive
friends find themselves friendless, revolutions get rid of dictators. But
still, even as history teaches us at a personal and societal level that early
warning signals, if ignored, always lead to dangerous eruptions, liberals try
to make peace with bigots and racists in the name of democracy and
inclusiveness. But liberalism is intrinsically about ensuring that everybody has equal rights. When those who oppose that
idea act out their beliefs and in doing so strip others of their rights, they
give up some of their own. Basic human rights come with moral
accountability.
It's how society operates and stays
moderately functional. So when millions of people vote in a deeply racist demagogue
who has whipped up hatred and fomented intolerance until manifestations of it start returning America to pre-Civil Rights days, the last thing liberals
need is to try and make peace with those voters.
The alt-right rationale is that their anger has its roots in being excluded. Have they been excluded? No they haven't. They
got a superlative president who, more than any Republican president
before him, truly believed in his heart of hearts that his presidential
responsibility was to everybody, not just those who voted for him. But he wasn't white and those
conservatives voted in a GOP Congress who made it impossible for the president
to help them in the way that he wanted to.
So no, I don't buy the idea that middle
America has been excluded. Middle America has excluded itself. If you want to be part of the human race dialogue and you want to benefit from others' desire for equality, you have to want it yourself and fight against that which thwarts it, not vote it into office.
When good people
do nothing, evil prevails. Trying to make friends with supporters of Donald
Trump is the equivalent of doing nothing. And we need to face it; evil is prevailing right now. It's not something that might happen next month or next week. It's happening now. And anybody who does anything other than help to strengthen Democrats in this time of crisis is adding to the problem.
