White Man’s Burden

From the NCR, via Thought Criminal:

I admit that I do not know what the next four years of a Trump presidency will hold. I do not feel safe or welcome in a country that would elect someone so blatantly racist, misogynistic and fascist. But that's the point. It has always been an inconvenient truth that Native people, Black people, immigrants and women are the backbone of this country even while being unapologetically unwelcome in it. White men reap the reward. 

Since I have studied and written about American history, Catholic history and African American history, I am not surprised by the election results. As Ta-Nahesi Coates wrote in We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, "I don’t ever want to forget that resistance must be its own reward, since resistance, at least within the life span of the resistors, almost always fails." I do not believe I will see the end of racism or sexism in my lifetime. 

I do not believe that the American dream is attainable for everyone who simply "works hard enough." Yet my faith in a God who is always on the side of the oppressed, marginalized and persecuted will remain unchanged. God will continue to liberate, to care for and to love everyone, without exception — even when the majority of Americans choose not to. I will hold fast to my faith in such a God because, to paraphrase the great Black gospel artist Donnie McClurkin, when you've given your all and there's nothing left to do: just stand.

Again I would point out the margin of victory was a slim one. But I’d also point out the number of post-mortems which argue “we” just need to do a better job of making “them” the unacceptable “other.”  You know, people who don’t think like us! And by doing that we’d be appealing to who, exactly? We’d be “taking back” the country from…white people?

The essay points out the victory went to a voting bloc of whites and Hispanic/Latinos, who mostly aren’t “white” because of last names, or something. But then so were the Irish, and the Italians, and the Poles, “not white” at one time. Just to name a few.

Same as it ever was.

I learned, through seminary and pastoral ministry, that culture is the defining factor and source of identity for people. A culture of small groups, like a church congregation. A culture of regional groups, like the “areas” of a major urban city; the culture of nations. Lots of ways to group ourselves and identify ourselves, and in America the most dominant culture is “white.”

America was founded by colonization, attempted genocide and forced displacement of Native people, followed by the brutal enslavement of people of African descent for 246 years and apartheid-like Jim Crow segregation from 1877 until all Black people could freely vote after the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I was watching “Free State of Jones” on Netflix yesterday. It’s about a handful of Confederate army deserters in Mississippi who rebel against the Confederacy and the war they started because it’s a rich man’s war and they are poor farmers. (The war was to protect the economic system of slavery. I was taught it was to protect a “way of life,” but certainly not slavery or a culture built on blatant racism). The story continues through the end of the war, and the heady days when it seems equality and liberty might finally be at hand. Especially with the passage of the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote to all Americans, regardless of race or former servitude.

Except there is no enabling legislation. When our heroes go to vote for the first time: former slaves and a few white men with them, it takes the right threat of violence to get them access to the ballot. And then those ballots are simply not counted.

They vote Republican, by the way; the new party of Lincoln, v. Democrats, the old party of the South. That began to change in 1965, when LBJ definitively acknowledged the sins of our national past by signing the only legislation to give true force of law to the 15th Amendment. And then John Roberts said we don’t really need that anymore. Much the way they discarded Roe; much the way they gave Trump immunity. White man’s burden: to make sure white men stay in control.

So, sure, let’s “other” some group and make them “non-white.” And, what? Get white people on our side? Which side is that? Who are we taking the country back from? For whom?

This is the old struggle for change, the one between Dr. King on one side, preaching the power of powerlessness through moral example; versus the power of brute force. Except the brute force is all in the hands of the government; and Dr. King’s efforts got the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act passed. True, the VRA needs to be reformed in this post-Holder world, but where is the new MLK-like movement to get that done? What other avenue do you see being effective?

The abolitionists were based in Xianity, too. Their moral efforts failed when it became solely about political power. When Dr. King’s movement ended, and it became solely about political power again, what else was accomplished?

Maybe there’s a lesson here?