Its been a bit more than two
weeks since Dylan Roof murdered nine members of the Emanuel AME Church in
Charleston and the questions of racism and white supremacy continue to
reverberate. Certainly, as the President suggested in his eulogy for the Rev.
Clementa Pinckney, the last thing Roof
thought (assuming he had a thought) was that his murderous act would ignite a
debate that has seen --- finally -- a
recognition that the battle flag of the Confederacy --- the Stars and Bars -- is a continuing simple of hatred and
bigotry that no longer has a place in today’s world.
What his act and
the ensuing national discussion has also done is expose a seemingly incomprehensible
resistance of the Republican Party and those running to be nominated as the
party’s standard bearer in 2016 to acknowledge that racism continues unabated
in this country. That the media has so blithely passed over the refusal of any
of the Republican candidates and the bulk of the party to offer this acknowledgement is not surprising…the
media having long ago surrendered its responsibility as the fourth estate. What
remains surprising is how dedicated
Republicans and their candidates are to their denial of anything that
even remotely suggests or admits that racism continues. Discuss the issue and
you are immediately accused of “playing the race card” or injecting racism into
the nation’s politics. A white supremacist murders nine black people because “you
rape our women” and the Republican response ranges from calling it “an accident”
as Rick Perry did to blaming the victims for having brought it on themselves as
did one of the officers of the NRA. None, however, admitted that the act was an
act of racism or, as importantly, that the act reflected a deep and unrelenting
problem in this country that needs to be addressed.
I understand that the
historic roots for the current Republican agenda are tethered to the very
issues over which the Civil War was fought. The current battle cry of a small
federal government and the rights of the individual states to decide for
themselves how they should be governed were the very fundamental issues over
which the War was fought. There is no doubt that slavery was a central issue
over which the war was fought but not the reason why those first shots were
fired at Fort Sumter in April 1861. That War, at least at first, was not fought
to enforce a moral imperative but to bring to heal southern states and, more
accurately, the southern aristocracy which controlled the southern economy and refused
to yield to a central federal government the fruits of that economy. Slavery
was integral to that economy and thus
became intertwined with the roots of the rebellion and the federal governments
efforts to counter that rebellion. While Lincoln certainty should be credited
with pressing forward first with the Emancipation Proclamation and then the
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution and for ultimately bringing to an end
the institution of slavery the purpose for his doing so, however well
intentioned and despite its consequences, was first and foremost an effort to
destroy the southern economy, put an end to the conflict and bring the southern
states back into the Union.
While the strategy
worked it nevertheless left open wounds which continue festering to this day. Though
slavery itself has long since disappeared the attitudes that made slavery
possible and as natural to the southern elite as breathing continue as does the
belief that despite the outcome of the War the southern states should
nevertheless be allowed to decide for themselves how they should be governed
without deference to a central, federal government. The “States Rights” cry
continues unabated to this day and has over past thirty years or so become the
cry of a Republican party which seized upon that undercurrent of dissent to
devise a strategy for turning the south, which had historically been dominated
by Democratic legislators and voters, into bastions of Republican dogma.
While the southern
economy has long since shifted somewhat from agrarian to industrial the issues
of self-determination by those states remain and continue to drive the
discussion about the size and strength of a federal government. By seizing upon
this one fundamental issue – the demand for the right of self-determination – the Republican party has succeeded in gaining
support from those individuals who are most in need of a strong centralized
government that can and has provided subsidies for food, jobs, education,
infrastructure and security. The incredible result is that tens of millions of
southerners vote against their own self interest by siding with a political
party that has flexed its political muscle by awakening the ghosts of those
plantation owners who so long ago controlled the southern economy and fought
the federal government to keep the fruits of slave labor on the backs of poor
southern whites who fought under the banner of the Stars and Bars.
Having successfully
pressed this strategy in the south I suppose it is understandable, at least
from an intellectual standpoint, that the Republican party would resist any
pressure to acknowledge that what they are actually supporting when they stand
with those southerners still lamenting loss of their “way of life” is a way of
life built upon the backs of black slaves and the attitudes which fostered that
way of life. While support for that way of life has waned in southern urban centers it remains alive and well in the rural south where those populations are most vulnerable to a "the-South-will-rise-again" pitch because educational opportunities have been reduced by Republican governments that press for smaller governments at the expense of those most in need. With such fertile grounds to conquer, the Republican party continues to press a fight over long-since
resolved grievances and, in so doing, finds itself standing with those who
continue to long for a way of life which has long since passed from our
national experience.
Perhaps it is this
alone which drives the Republican refusal to acknowledge that the racism which
sprung from that way of life still exists fearful that by doing so it will lose
the support of this “base” which it has worked so hard to cultivate. Perhaps it
is also its many patrons who continue to pour tens of millions of dollars into
campaign strategies that continue to target these states as essential to any
strategy for regaining the White House.
Nevertheless, all
intellectual conjecture aside, it is beyond reason and understanding why the
party of Lincoln, of all people, refuses to acknowledge that which is so
obvious. In the long run, any hope of overcoming justified perceptions of who
and what the Republican Party represents demands that acknowledgement be made.
Until then is certainly no hope for reasserting its moral compass and if
successful in regaining the White House no hope for the country.
