Look Closer — Our Original Sin
American history relevant to this national moment, in about 1,500 words. And what we can do next.
“This morning I woke up in a curfew
O God, I was a prisoner, too — yeah
Could not recognize the faces standing over me
They were all dressed in uniforms of brutality.
How many rivers do we have to cross
Before we can talk to the boss?
All that we got, it seems we have lost
We must have really paid the cost.”
Burnin’ and Lootin’, by Bob Marley and the Wailers
In 1776 we declared ourselves an independent nation, with these words: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Except in reality we really only meant white men, not black men or brown men or any women at all. Some of our Founding Fathers did argue for an end to slavery with the founding of our nation, like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, but they were in the distinct minority.
The failure to do the right thing regarding slavery was a festering wound for the United States through 1860, probably the number one source of internal contention among the states and our Congress for the first 84 years of our union. But when the anti-slavery constituency finally neared a critical mass, the slave states instead broke the union, prompting a Civil War. This was the most deadly and destructive chapter in our national history, thus far.
The union won the Civil War, first because Abraham Lincoln had the will to press his superior resources, and he convinced the Union of the righteousness of its cause. He is rightly venerated as probably our greatest president. But a few days after the surrender at Appomattox, Lincoln was assassinated by a white man who firmly believed slavery should stay legal, and our chance for true reconciliation was probably lost with Lincoln’s death.
Meanwhile, the former Confederacy began the false narrative of the noble lost cause. Their true will to maintain white male supremacy at all costs had been shown even as the Civil War neared its inevitable end, by their continued insistence on maintaining their “traditions” and “way of life” as a condition of surrender, and President Jefferson Davis’ hope that even after Appomattox the Confederates would continue to press their cause as a guerilla army.
In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes traded Reconstruction for the presidency, and a virtual apartheid was codified throughout the former Confederacy for the next 88 years. If you’re counting, that’s 89 years of institutionalized slavery for the U.S. South (preceded by more than 150 years of colonial slavery), 11 years of Reconstruction enforced by military occupation, and then 88 years of Jim Crow oppression of all but the white people, and again, mostly only the white males.
In 1920 women finally received the right to vote, 144 years after we declared that all men are created equal with certain unalienable rights. But it’s not like white men suddenly said, “You know, women should be able to vote. Yeah, that would be cool.” No, women had to march and protest and be called names and anti-American, and had to sustain a fight to vote over the course of generations, decades.
In 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, thus ending, at the Federal level, the virtual apartheid the white man had enforced throughout the former Confederacy since 1876. Again, it wasn’t like the white people suddenly said, “Yeah, I’d love it if my kids went to school with the black kids and we all sat at lunch counters together.” The opposite, in fact. One southern governor declared “Segregation now, segregation forever!” President Lyndon B. Johnson noted that he thought the Democrats had lost the South for at least a generation. He underestimated.
After 1964, the two-party system of our United States slowly developed a cancer of polarization. What was once effectively a two-party system with four intermingled constituencies — socially progressive, socially conservative, fiscally progressive, fiscally conservative — devolved, as the socially conservative Democrats and fiscally conservative Republicans gradually consolidated into the modern Republican party. Probably not coincidentally, the Republican party is also largely white. Overwhelmingly white. When once it was the party of Lincoln.
In 2008 America elected its first African American president, Barack Obama. In 2010 Republicans became the majority in Congress and went on to set new records for filibustering and obstructing Obama’s legislative priorities and judicial nominations, culminating in the unprecedented refusal to even hold a hearing for his final Supreme Court nomination. Opposing the Democrats at all costs and on all fronts has been the governing philosophy of most Congressional Republicans since 2008. Maybe the fact that Obama is black was purely coincidental.
In 2016 Donald Trump lost the national popular vote but won the presidency due to a narrow victory in the Electoral College, a vestigial organ of our Democratic Republic that was put in place, along with the two senators per state, to satisfy smaller states at our Constitutional Convention, and thus giving an anti-majoritarian slant to our Democratic playing field. Since election, President Trump has distilled the very worst aspects of our America: unchecked capitalism topped off with plutocratic corruption; a spiteful, boundless mendacity never before seen in the presidency, even with Nixon; a zero-sum worldview led by a philosophy of dominance, not mutual good; overt racism; and a malignant incompetency in his administration given his value of one-way loyalty above character or expertise. Our president is a malignant narcissist with clear sociopathic traits. Three years of Trumpian leadership and we have the worst public health crisis in 100 years, the worst economy in more than 80 years, and now the most civil unrest in more than 50 years. We white people put this man in power, willingly, even joyfully.
Here’s the thing: America is either going to become the first majority-minority democracy in world history, or we are going to fall into some version of authoritarianism, with the white, Trumpian Republican party staying in charge despite our ever-growing national diversity. The Trumpian Republicans are barely even pretending to be democratic anymore.
The battle of our times is not to let the people decide between the fully Trumpist Republican party or the Democratic alternatives; the people’s voice is clear there, by a consistent majority. The people favored Hillary Clinton. The people have voted in a Democratic House despite Republican gerrymandering. Votes for Democratic Senators far exceed those for Republican Senators, but two Wyoming Senators still equals two California Senators. The people continue to narrow the Electoral College path for Trump, and no serious observers believe he can actually win the national popular vote in 2020.
But voice does not equal power. The Trumpian Republicans have the power. The battle of our times is whether the true will of the true majority of people can overcome the will of the Republican party to hold power at any cost: obstructions to voting; obscene gerrymandering; trampling traditional democratic norms; fear-based and fact-free propaganda. I hope Virginia has set an example the nation can follow, where an increasingly engaged, informed, and diverse electorate eventually outvotes the Republicans by enough to overcome the anti-majoritarian power structure that party has erected. In truth, “the people” deciding may be what Republicans fear most.
Our current historical moment, our ever-deepening national nightmare, is one price we are paying for our original sin of placing white male interests above all else.
So what are we going to do about it?
We are going to vote our values. We are going to help others vote. We are going to support causes of justice, of science. We are going to work to counteract our national sins of racism, gerrymandering, unchecked capitalism at the expense of national health, the greatest economic inequality of more than a century. We are going to keep learning how to be better people. We are going to remember the golden rule. We are going to speak up when we see injustice, racism, willful know-nothingism, political corruption.
We are not going to tolerate police brutality.
We are going to love our neighbors as best we can. We are going to revisit and relearn our national history from perspectives other than the white males. We are going to accept we are a global community. We are going to learn to value the inherent worth and dignity of all people.
We are going to vote out the hate. We are going to work every day to choose love over fear. We are going to remember there are more of us, if only we act.
To quote UVA basketball coach Tony Bennett, “Unified diversity is powerful and right, and the prayer of my heart for these times.”
“Saruman believes that it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I’ve found that it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.” From The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey. Screenplay by Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Fran Walsh.
P.S. Thank you for reading. I have written about American themes many times in the past, including the themes of slavery and immigration in Our Bold American Experiment, Parts 1 & 2. The Tenuous Threads That Bind Us examines our American commonalities. I wrote about the challenges of parenting in our current era in Hope and Sustained Effort. Small Town, Small World looks at our connected global community. Freedom and Sundays With No Football looks at kneeling during the national anthem. Our Long Walk to the Polls covers voting through the years. America’s Best Self contrasts America’s ideals vs. our reality. And finally, one of the more widely read pieces I’ve written was about the importance of the small choices we make every day, Shannon Hoon, Leaving a Mark on the World, and the Ripple Effect of Our Choices.
If my writing speaks to you, if it gives some voice to what you yourself feel, then I can think of no higher honor. Thank you.
