Celebrating Racism as part of the rich American Tapestry

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Newt Gingrich says the HCR bill will demolish the Democratic Party, much as the 1960s Civil Rights bills did.

This is heard as a savvy political observation rather than a straight-up celebration of racism.

But why? After all, implicit in Gingrich's comment is his view that it was desirable that the Democratic Party lose the south for all time.

And the cause, the reason, the Republicans gained the solid-south was about racism. (And, in fairness, the reason the south was solidly Democratic before that was also about racism.) This goes on a lot... treating current and historical organized racism as an unexceptional aspect of our politics.

Where does this stuff come from?

Starting in the very early 20th century we, as a society, decided that healing the Union required that the Civil War be treated as a misunderstanding of some sort. It was essential that we cast slavery as, in effect, an issue about which reasonable people could disagree. (!)

(Biggest movies: Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind. Grant became our worst president ever. Sherman became like Pol Pot. Confederate soldiers were heroized several times a year on covers of The Saturday Evening Post, the top-circulation magazine, while union soldiers were not. The top decade for lynchings was the 1920s. Terrible race riots throughout the 1910s. etc. The conventional wisdom became that the south had been the more admirable, civilized side and that the loss of their 'genteel' life-style was a national tragedy... and a national loss of innocence!)

The history of the Civil War was so successfully rewritten that even here, on a highly progressive web-site, many would argue that the causes for the Civil War were many and complex... that saying the war was about slavery is simplistic.

But the war--the actual 600,000 people dead event--was about slavery. Of course there were nuances and complexities and regions disagreed about various things then as now. But every dispute over trade policy and allocation of resources and political representation was negotiable and endless generous compromises were offered on all those issues. The north really wanted to preserve the Union if at all possible. The only unsolvable threat to unity that left war as the only option was slavery.

(Thought experiment for those who think it wise to say the war was not caused only by slavery: Would the war have happened had slavery been adopted in all states and territories in 1860?)

Saying the war was about something other than slavery is like saying hatred of Obama in Alabama is about concern for the federal deficit. It is considered polite to pretend.

Anyway, there was no hope of unity if the southern cause were considered evil. It followed from that that organized oppression of black people was, to paraphrase Dan Quayle, "Just another life-style choice"... an unexceptional political stance like opposition to high-speed rail or favoring tariffs on steel.

And this continues. If enough people hold a shocking immoral view that view must be mainstreamed for the sake of unity. Next thing you know we are talking about the Republican "southern strategy" as if it were an abstraction... a chess gambit.

It was, and is, accepted that southern states do not (in aggregate) think that black people should be able to vote. Hatred of Barack Obama throughout the white south is treated like rooting for LSU over U-CONN or preferring Pepsi to Coke.

"Hey, people are different. Whatever floats your boat!"

We pretend that racism is merely a marker for other attitudes, like patriotism and faith and morality. We accept that "solid Americans" are racist without irony.

The fact that the south became entirely Republican as a result of a Democratic President being associated with the cause of allowing back people to work and vote and pick which neighborhoods to live in and what stores to patronize is not an abstract historical wrinkle.

It is what it is and what it is is shocking.