I just want to post a link here to an important, must-read essay by Adam Serwer at The Atlantic, regarding our nation's poor civil rights history, and the chance we face today of making good on the promises of the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era:
Trump was elected president on a promise to restore an idealized past in which America’s traditional aristocracy of race was unquestioned. But rather than restore that aristocracy, four years of catastrophe have—at least for the moment—discredited it. Instead of ushering in a golden age of prosperity and a return to the cultural conservatism of the 1950s, Trump’s presidency has radicalized millions of white Americans who were previously inclined to dismiss systemic racism as a myth, the racial wealth gap as a product of Black cultural pathology, and discriminatory policing as a matter of a few bad apples...
The conditions in America today do not much resemble those of 1968. In fact, the best analogue to the current moment is the first and most consequential such awakening—in 1868. The story of that awakening offers a guide, and a warning. In the 1860s, the rise of a racist demagogue to the presidency, the valor of Black soldiers and workers, and the stories of outrages against the emancipated in the South stunned white northerners into writing the equality of man into the Constitution. The triumphs and failures of this anti-racist coalition led America to the present moment. It is now up to their successors to fulfill the promises of democracy, to make a more perfect union, to complete the work of Reconstruction...
You need to read the whole thing. It's arguably one of the most important works on modern racism - and its long deep roots to a failed Reconstruction - since Ta-Nehisi Coates' tenure - especially his brilliant argument "The Case For Reparations" - at that magazine.
1 comment:
While I agree that the excesses of the Fergus maladministration have likely pushed public opinion away from rather than toward his racist world view, I fear that it will subside again with the inauguration of a Democratic administration, and much like 2009 when it was just assumed that Obama would somehow just magically fix everything, that public will lose interest and if legislation is not immediately written, it will again lack the public demand it enjoys now.
This is what they do to us every damn time: We have so much work to do in our eighteen months with a (gods willing) favorable congress that our own agenda won't get nearly the consideration it deserves.
I sincerely hope that I'm wrong about this.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Post a Comment