The GOP can no longer see the difference between racism and pragmatism. They use the former to accomplish their goals and see it as the latter. They are not alone, unfortunately. An example is the debate on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and others in the Senate. Democrats have the power to pass the bill by getting rid of the filibuster but don’t have the will to do so. The same is true with voter suppression bills, equity in income, education, and God forbid. . . reparations. The history of the Democratic Party is more racist than the modern-day Republicans. Democrats are the better current choice, to be sure, but they can be just as pragmatic in the chase for power and allow racism when it meets their needs.
The cover photo is from the 1963 March of Washington, DC. A close read of the signs shows Black Americans protesting for “Equal Rights,” “Decent Housing,” “ An End to Police Brutality,” “Integrated Schools,” “Full Employment,” “First Class Citizenship,” and more. Since that historic march, exactly none of these, including integrated schools, have come to pass in the fifty-eight years. The reason is that white people, some of whom don’t realize it, benefit from all these things being in place. The lack of equal rights for Black people means superior rights for white people. Inferior housing for some translates to better housing for others. Police brutality is police performing their original functions, patroling slaves and immigrants, and protecting the property of the white elite. You’ve probably noticed the trend; everything withheld from minorities leaves more for white people.
All of these situations could have been fixed by laws and courts if desired. But the people that devise and enforce the laws and those who dispense justice in the courts have a self-interest in preserving the status quo. Things are a little better than the 1857 Dred Scott Decision, which stated Black people had no rights the white man was bound to respect.
“They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” — Chief Justice Roger B Taney
The Supreme Court now recognizes Dred Scott as one of the worst decisions in the Court’s history. Not necessarily because it was racist and unjust, but because they said the quiet part out loud, putting in writing what many white people believed to be true. Twelve of the first eighteen Presidents of the United States owned slaves. A similar number of the first Supreme Court Justices did as well. Nobody kept a tally of how many justices enslaved people. We know that the majority (five) of those who decided Dred Scott enslaved people. The first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, owned many slaves though he did lead the effort to ban slavery in New York and released many of those he owned during his lifetime.
The majority of the Founders who gave us the Constitution owned slaves. Those that didn’t were part of the compromises to protect enslaving people like the Electoral College, Three-Fifth’s Clause, and the Second Amendment to make legal those slave patrols, well-regulated militias indeed. America’s most revered institutions have racist beginnings, but we can’t say that, so we have to either omit that part of history or change it. Texas has done that to their school books and imposed their will on surrounding smaller states without the resources to make up their own history.
The thing about institutional racism in America is that it involves every institution. The armed services didn’t fully integrate until an Executive Order by Harry Truman in 1948. Truman disappointed many of the Democrats that elected him, who expected him to uphold his previous racist stances.
I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman… I am strongly of the opinion that negros (sic) ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.
What Truman responded to was pressure from Civil Rights leaders who kept pointing out the numerous lynchings of Black men returning home from serving their country. The integration of the armed forces mostly ended segregated units and found Black and white men serving side by side. That began the movement of racist Democrats to the Republican Party, which went full steam ahead after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 pushed through by Democrats (with some Republican help).
To be fair to Truman, he made a much different statement than what he wrote to his wife in the earlier quote when he was twenty-seven years old. When he received reports of the beatings and lynchings of Black service members, he wrote:
My stomach turned over when I learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of army trucks in Mississippi and beaten. Whatever my inclinations as a native of Missouri might have been, as president I know this is bad. I shall fight to end evils like this.
Still, white people have always controlled the military, and white enlisted men have always disproportionately been members of white supremacist groups. I’m not talking about ancient history. In 2019, 36% of active-duty troops surveyed said they had witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideological-driven racism in their units. Their superiors did nothing to address it, and only now are attempts being made to face up to the problem. The brass intentionally ignored the high percentage of racists in the ranks because addressing it would have reduced the number of recruits they could accept or maintain. It was pragmatic to ignore the racism, and the Black and brown troops just had to deal with it.
I need to fit in somewhere that the GI Bill, signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, is credited for forming the middle-class in America. It enabled soldiers to buy homes with zero percent down and funded higher education and unemployment benefits. The problem was that most Black veterans were denied these benefits. They were either made ineligible by given a dishonorable discharge or, if accepted for a home loan, unable to find a lender to work with them. It benefitted only white people; a detail mostly left out in the telling.
The Courts are perhaps the best at saying one thing while doing another. They are practiced at defending their rulings while ignoring the impact. Are we to believe they were unaware of the sentencing differential by race they routinely dispensed? The process by which federal judges and Supreme Court Justices are appointed guarantees an ideological result. And despite their lifetime appointments which were supposed to guarantee free will as opposed to partisan loyalty. They rarely fail to deliver.
Did you know that there have been seven other Civil Rights Acts in addition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964? There have also been several Voting Rights Acts and Amendments. The large number isn’t because Congress kept thinking of new rights; it’s because the Supreme Court weakened or found unconstitutional, each and every one.
They gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in 2013 by taking away preclearance and enforcement provisions. Just as bad is allowing clearly racist redistricting and gerrymandering, making the excuse that racism had to be the intent and not simply the result. The ones supposed to uphold the law used it to reach the political end they were appointed to achieve.
Law enforcement in America has always been pragmatic and remains true to its original goals. Police forces were created to help enslave people and catch runaways, control immigrant populations, and protect the private property of companies and the rich. The motto, “To Protect and Serve,” is pretty accurate as long as you recognize who they cater to and who they suppress. Between contracts negotiated by police unions, qualified immunity, and a presumption in their favor by those who recommend prosecution. A police officer is rarely found guilty of the murder of a citizen.
At this moment, Officer Garrett Rolfe is back on the payroll of the Atlanta Police Department with full restitution after having murdered Rayshard Brooks who fell asleep in a Wendy’s drive-thru line. He was fired by the Mayor but had his job restored by a Civil Service Board who said he wasn’t afforded “due process.” Rashard Brooks didn’t get due process but won’t be getting his life back. Officer Derrick Chauvin, who knelt on George Floyd’s neck until he was dead and was convicted on three charges related to that murder, has appealed the verdict asking for a new trial and/or a reversal of the verdict.
There is much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in some circles that it will be harder to recruit police officers who might be concerned they could be accused of murdering the people they might murder one day? I think it’s good that some people stay out of law enforcement if their goals include abuse of power, ego gratification, and committing crimes without punishment. Controls are yet to be put in place to keep bad officers from moving to new locations after wearing out their welcomes.
I can’t think of a major institution that isn’t thoroughly tainted with systemic racism? Perhaps in some cases, the rules were made to cater to rich people that happened to be white, but they were white all the same. Banking, finance, real estate, the military, education, government at all levels, medicine, and more. Some have made more progress than others in leveling the playing field; most can’t/won’t acknowledge their racist (I mean pragmatic) roots and don’t see the need for change. All can explain away their current disparities by insisting their rationale for having done and continuing to do racist things had nothing to do with racism but were pragmatic in nature.
One of the things pragmatics do best is absolving themselves of racist behavior. They relegate it to being a thing of the past or excuse it on another basis. One way that racism will be eliminated to address it head-on. Admit it, isolate it, and cure it. Another (which may arrive first) is when the population is so cross-bred that nobody is white any longer. There are brown babies (much to the consternation of some) popping up in the British monarchy, so there’s nowhere to hide.
Racism is as prolific right now as at any time in the last fifty years. There used to be a shame to it. People didn’t necessarily mind being racist, but nobody wanted to be called racist. It’s now like a badge of honor to display your racist flag, share racist memes.
“Let them call you racist. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor. Because every day, we get stronger and they get weaker.” -Steve Bannon
Doing obviously racist things like attempting to suppress minority votes in forty-seven states is okay as long as you declare another intent. It’s only political or simply pragmatic. The worst of the worst have gotten quite good at rationalizing away their racism. They don’t even try to hide it anymore. It’s not racist. . . it’s just pragmatic.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Unseen Histories on Unsplash