I’m sure that there are those who will read this title and find it terribly pessimistic or unnecessarily provocative. Others may find it false because you believe America has ascended to that nebulous state of being “post racial.” However, my title is not meant to be inflammatory nor is it false. It is the unfortunate reality I am forced to accept the deeper I delve into my work as a civil rights advocate. I draw this conclusion largely from a persistent observation: America’s inability to acknowledge how the past presently impacts race relations.
How many times have you heard this retort during a discussion of race and slavery: “That’s in the past,” or “I didn’t own slaves. You weren’t a slave” or something akin to this? I have heard these types of comments in court from opposing counsel during a discrimination case. While we sought to contextualize race and racism in America, the opposing attorney responded that he found it “offensive.” Another attorney did not find history to be relevant. It is glaringly apparent that America does not want to discuss its past despite the well-known quote that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Running from our history is dangerous. If we briefly remove the historical argument from the context of race and place it into that of medical care, then this point is obvious. If you visit a primary care doctor for the first time, one of the first things the doctor will have you do is complete your patient history. Included in this history is not just information about you, but about your parents, siblings and grandparents. Why is that? Because in order for the doctor to be able to properly and more effectively treat you, he or she needs to know the particular issues that may or may not have affected your family. This is not meant as an indictment on you, but is crucial to properly treating you. Only a foolish patient would deny their doctor that information by claiming that it’s not relevant, or arguing that what her parents did has nothing to do with her. To not consider your history, is to impede your healthcare.
Likewise, for America to not meaningfully engage its past when addressing the issue of race, is to impede the creation of solutions. Unfortunately, that has not been the practice of America. Instead, America has engaged in a practice of minimizing its history, and has done so since shortly after the end of slavery. Within 18 years from the end of slavery, when former slaves were still alive and carried the horrendous memory of slavery in their minds, this country began to deny the connection between slavery and discrimination. In the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3,24-25 (1883), the U.S. Supreme Court made the following statement when it ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional:
After giving to these questions all the consideration which their importance demands, we are forced to the conclusion that such an act of refusal [i.e. discrimination] has nothing to do with slavery or involuntary servitude…It would be running the slavery argument into the ground to make it apply to every act of discrimination….When a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his rights as a citizen, or a man, are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men’s rights are protected…
Here, not only is the Supreme Court arguing that slavery was unconnected to the discrimination faced by Blacks, it was essentially stating that Blacks needed to get over it and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The court believed that Blacks had been the “special favorites” of the law far too long and should be held to the same standards as “other men.” Similar to the arguments you hear against affirmative action, the court believed that Blacks no longer needed legal protections, even though slavery ended only 18 years prior. They weren’t talking to descendants of slaves, but former slaves. The court so desperately wanted to move beyond the stain of slavery, but in so doing they only made the stain larger. What followed after this court decision and later in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) was not racial equality, but segregation and Jim Crow.
Presently we continue to refuse to connect our past, and this is what compels me to write. I write not to demonize one racial group, but to raise awareness about the inevitable train wreck awaiting us. We stand at another pivotal moment in America where racial issues are rising to the surface in a manner reminiscent of the civil rights movement. We cannot assume simply because these issues have not come to a head in a greatly destructive manner that this will always be the case. If we look historically we find that America has utilized at least two methods of solving our race problem: through a civil war and through protesting during the civil rights movement. Sadly both methods ended in the bloodshed of innocents. Even now the bloodshed of innocents has already occurred with the lives of those like Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and Sandra Bland. I do not want matters to escalate. I want desperately for my title of this post to be wrong. However, in order for that to happen, we must first deal with our past, until then, the title will remain true.
–Until Next Time–
Palooke
