Post-racial dreaming: One Step Forward and One Step Back

By Allen C. Guelzo – Christian Science Monitor
Gettysburg, Pa. – “I am no minister of hate,” wrote the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass in 1871. But as he watched Northerners in the years after the Civil War turn to teary-eyed embraces of their former Confederate enemies at postwar reunions and veterans’ meetings, he was appalled. “May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I forget the difference between ... those who fought to save the Republic and those who fought to destroy it.”
Douglass can be forgiven a certain measure of resentment toward the Confederacy. After all, he was born a slave in Maryland, escaped as a runaway in 1838, turned to a public career as an abolitionist newspaper editor and lecturer, and sent two sons to fight in the Union Army.
But he had a point that Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) might have been wise to ponder before Tuesday, when he proclaimed April as Virginia’s “Confederate History Month.”
Just what is it, exactly, that Governor McDonnell is proposing to honor?
McDonnell’s proclamation is actually a comparatively bland statement, asking Virginians to acknowledge those “who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today.” Absent were any endorsements of states’ rights and the “Lost Cause.” It was simply a declaration that Virginia’s decision to secede from the United States and attach itself to the Confederacy in 1861 “should be studied, understood and remembered by all Virginians.”
The problem lies with something else McDonnell airbrushed out of his initial proclamation: slavery.
The proclamation describes the Civil War as “a four year war between the states for independence.â€
The proclamation only raises the question of why Virginia and the other confederate states should have yearned for independence in the first place. Twist and turn as we may, the answer to that question always comes back to this: the enslavement of 3.9 million black people.
This is not to say that other factors didn’t come into play.
The Southern states had serious grievances with their Northern counterparts over economic policies. Foreign visitors and commentators noted that Southerners had developed a distinctly different regional culture. And there was a long history of disagreements about how much political autonomy individual states possessed within the federal Union created by the Constitution.
But if slavery was not the only issue that went into the making of the Confederacy, it was unquestionably the paramount one.
None of the others would ever have brought matters in 1861 to civil war had it not been for the razor-edge given them by slavery. And you do not have to dig very far into the letters, diaries, and speeches of Confederate soldiers and civilians to find out how important the defense of slavery and white racial supremacy was to them.
“Slavery is the only base on which a stable republican government ever was or ever will be built,” announced a Nashville newspaper on the eve of secession. Although only a third of white Southern households owned slaves at the outbreak of the Civil War, as many as 50 percent of Southern households had owned a slave at some time.

As indicated by the above excerpt by author Guelzo for the Christian Science Monitor, it is quite clear that all of the brouhaha found in the term "post-racial" is not simply noise, but it is noise that needs to get a gripe on reality. When brouhaha is meets reality, you don't have look hard to find that there are those still sentimentingabout the 'good' old days where people were stuck in bondage in the guise of state rights.



The recently elected Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell(R) seems to have tested the waters by declaring a April "Virginia Confederate Month" with a nary of mention about the heinous crime of slavery and the pivotal role in played in the Civil War.



As America has made significant steps in eradicating any remnants of racial strife, it is clear that the scars of this long episode in infamy remains in the veins and lives of of society. The systemic effect's are alarming.



Even as laws have been passed over the years that function to prohibit discrimination and racial bias (especially in public places and activities) I for one refuse to fast-forward to declaring that we live in a society that is not race conscious--one where minority people are reminded everyday of their powerlessness.



Powerlessness does not mean that people don't have rights that are supposedly protected by law, but it means the failure to our society to be able to create laws that fail to cover all aspects of human livelihood is how one can clearly see how pervasive how race is still able to play an unequivocal role in lives.



The law could never prove that one is not hired because of one's color, or one is not promoted for the same. The heinous nature of racism is so intertwined in our cultural, political and corporate infrastructure's that why there are sure cases where discrimination has been prosecuted, there are probably many times that number that fails to reach the legal docket.



When people are scurrying to overcome the one of the largest economical downturns in our history, the wise, observant and investigative student of justice and equality is able to identify the uptick that are taking place that reveal just how far we have come as a nation.



People who did not give the Governor of Virginia a free ride in casually mocking the progress of racial relations can be considered those wise, observant and investigative student of justice and equality. The news is that Governor's declaration represents a "head" --and where there is a head there is a "tail". In race relations, both the tail and the head have not been severed from each other.

'NEWS UPDATE-

NJ teen told blacks to leave Whole Foods

04/12/10

EDGEWATER, N.J. – Police in northern New Jersey say a 14-year-old girl grabbed a supermarket microphone and announced, "All blacks leave the store."
The case is nearly identical to what happened on two occasions at a southern New Jersey Walmart.
Edgewater police say the new case is being investigated as a possible "copycat" situation. They say they were called after the girl made the announcement over the Whole Foods Market's public-address system Saturday afternoon.
The girl, whose name was not released because of her age, is charged with bias intimidation and harassment.
In the Walmart case, a 16-year-old boy faces the same charges after police said he twice ordered all blacks to leave the store.
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Information from: The Record of Bergen County, http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_re_us/storytext/us_whole_foods_racial_comment/35796767/SIG=10sjiqfha/*http://www.northjersey.com

Links:

Mississippi school district ordered to end racial segregation