Of Racism and Hate...
Of Racism and Hate...
In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville this past weekend much has been posted on social media about what happened up there. One comment in particular caught my attention. One of my good friends from high school had posted a thoughtful response to Charlottesville, and that led to many, many comments and what was, by Facebook standards, a reasoned conversation in the many comments that it engendered. Even where the posters didn't agree, their comments to each other were remarkably restrained and civil. One comment caught my attention: "we do not have a racism problem in this county."
I know the county of which he speaks and, unfortunately, unless the residents there have overcome original sin it, like every other county in the country, has some degree of racism. I've seen it and heard it. As a white male born in the South, there is some racism present that I would not recognize because I haven't been the target of it. We are now fifty years beyond much of the structural racism that once existed in the U.S. Relegated to museums and history books are "colored" entrances to restaurants, water fountains, restrooms, etc. Long gone are legally segregated schools, poll taxes, and literacy tests for voting. Unfortunately, the more difficult work of changing attitudes and perceptions is much harder than repealing or enacting laws. The very fact that the Ku Klux Klan exists even now in 2017 is proof enough. (Don't even get me started on the logical absurdity of a Neo-Nazi party in America when the ideals of the two are so very different.) The long work of changing attitudes and perceptions is always the harder job and is something far bigger than whether there is a monument to Confederate dead on a town square. If one could instantly remove all vestiges of the antebellum and wartime era in the South (which would be unwise in my opinion as a "once upon a time" historian) prejudicial attitudes would still be just as strong.
The unfortunate truth is that our country has a another problem along with lingering racism. It is a hate problem beyond racial hatred. The bitter divisiveness in our politics are a symptom of this. The murder of police officers in Dallas a year ago in the aftermath of several questionable and/or wrongful police shootings is symptomatic of it. The inability that we have as a society to interact peacefully with each other on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media is symptomatic. A professor at the University of Arkansas was targeted by social media lurkers for bitter attacks, death threats, and calls for his dismissal because someone who looked like him was photographed among the racist thugs in Charlottesville. The fact that he was a thousand miles away at the time didn't seem to matter. As a society we must learn to love each other and live with each other. If we are to continue to live in a free republic we must be able to respect those who look different and respect those whose politics are different. A free republic depends on being able to sit around tables together, sit in halls of state legislatures together, and sit in congress together. If we cannot do this we are ungovernable and this "great experiment," to use de Tocqueville's phrase, will collapse into anarchy or despotism. Benjamin Franklin wisely put it this way. When asked by a woman in Philadelphia what had been produced at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he responded by saying, "a republic, madam, if you can keep it."
Racism, that great evil where people are treated badly not because of actual wrongdoing but simply because of skin color, is all too real and has been for centuries under presidents and congressional majorities of parties. Distrust, hate, intolerance beyond race is also alive and well. The solution to both is to love each other. This is both simple and difficult. The Christ about whom I preach each Sunday said this, "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." That means that we should pray for the racist groups that assembled in Charlottesville, and also pray for the counter demonstrators. It means that conservative Republicans should have been praying for President Obama, and that liberal Democrats should be praying for President Trump. It means that we must be twice as quick to listen and understand as we are to judge- whether in conversation, on Facebook, or on Twitter.
One of the ironies of the the sad saga in Charlottesville concerns the statue they were debating removing. Though he died only five year after the war ended, Robert E. Lee was easily the most revered man in Virginia and the South in those years. Using that status, he probably did more than anyone to promote reunification and to end sectionalism in the state. He wrote to a bitter Confederate widow, "dismiss all sectional feeling, and raise your children up to Americans." Joseph Johnston, who as a Confederate General had been a rival and nemesis of Union General William T. Sherman, took ill attending Sherman's funeral on a bitterly cold February day in New York in 1891. One of Johnston's friends advised him to put on his hat, but he refused out of respect for his old enemy, and replied, "if I were in his place and he were in mine he would not put on his hat." He subsequently developed pneumonia and died six weeks later. Blind hatred led to a carnage between 1861 and 1865 that left some 620,000 dead on this continent. As years passed, the veterans from both armies grew to respect their former combatants and the one-time foes gathered on reunions on the same fields that had witnessed slaughter. If one time adversaries on the field of battle could learn to love and respect each other, we must do so as well.
In the wake of the violence in Charlottesville this past weekend much has been posted on social media about what happened up there. One comment in particular caught my attention. One of my good friends from high school had posted a thoughtful response to Charlottesville, and that led to many, many comments and what was, by Facebook standards, a reasoned conversation in the many comments that it engendered. Even where the posters didn't agree, their comments to each other were remarkably restrained and civil. One comment caught my attention: "we do not have a racism problem in this county."
I know the county of which he speaks and, unfortunately, unless the residents there have overcome original sin it, like every other county in the country, has some degree of racism. I've seen it and heard it. As a white male born in the South, there is some racism present that I would not recognize because I haven't been the target of it. We are now fifty years beyond much of the structural racism that once existed in the U.S. Relegated to museums and history books are "colored" entrances to restaurants, water fountains, restrooms, etc. Long gone are legally segregated schools, poll taxes, and literacy tests for voting. Unfortunately, the more difficult work of changing attitudes and perceptions is much harder than repealing or enacting laws. The very fact that the Ku Klux Klan exists even now in 2017 is proof enough. (Don't even get me started on the logical absurdity of a Neo-Nazi party in America when the ideals of the two are so very different.) The long work of changing attitudes and perceptions is always the harder job and is something far bigger than whether there is a monument to Confederate dead on a town square. If one could instantly remove all vestiges of the antebellum and wartime era in the South (which would be unwise in my opinion as a "once upon a time" historian) prejudicial attitudes would still be just as strong.
The unfortunate truth is that our country has a another problem along with lingering racism. It is a hate problem beyond racial hatred. The bitter divisiveness in our politics are a symptom of this. The murder of police officers in Dallas a year ago in the aftermath of several questionable and/or wrongful police shootings is symptomatic of it. The inability that we have as a society to interact peacefully with each other on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media is symptomatic. A professor at the University of Arkansas was targeted by social media lurkers for bitter attacks, death threats, and calls for his dismissal because someone who looked like him was photographed among the racist thugs in Charlottesville. The fact that he was a thousand miles away at the time didn't seem to matter. As a society we must learn to love each other and live with each other. If we are to continue to live in a free republic we must be able to respect those who look different and respect those whose politics are different. A free republic depends on being able to sit around tables together, sit in halls of state legislatures together, and sit in congress together. If we cannot do this we are ungovernable and this "great experiment," to use de Tocqueville's phrase, will collapse into anarchy or despotism. Benjamin Franklin wisely put it this way. When asked by a woman in Philadelphia what had been produced at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he responded by saying, "a republic, madam, if you can keep it."
Racism, that great evil where people are treated badly not because of actual wrongdoing but simply because of skin color, is all too real and has been for centuries under presidents and congressional majorities of parties. Distrust, hate, intolerance beyond race is also alive and well. The solution to both is to love each other. This is both simple and difficult. The Christ about whom I preach each Sunday said this, "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." That means that we should pray for the racist groups that assembled in Charlottesville, and also pray for the counter demonstrators. It means that conservative Republicans should have been praying for President Obama, and that liberal Democrats should be praying for President Trump. It means that we must be twice as quick to listen and understand as we are to judge- whether in conversation, on Facebook, or on Twitter.
One of the ironies of the the sad saga in Charlottesville concerns the statue they were debating removing. Though he died only five year after the war ended, Robert E. Lee was easily the most revered man in Virginia and the South in those years. Using that status, he probably did more than anyone to promote reunification and to end sectionalism in the state. He wrote to a bitter Confederate widow, "dismiss all sectional feeling, and raise your children up to Americans." Joseph Johnston, who as a Confederate General had been a rival and nemesis of Union General William T. Sherman, took ill attending Sherman's funeral on a bitterly cold February day in New York in 1891. One of Johnston's friends advised him to put on his hat, but he refused out of respect for his old enemy, and replied, "if I were in his place and he were in mine he would not put on his hat." He subsequently developed pneumonia and died six weeks later. Blind hatred led to a carnage between 1861 and 1865 that left some 620,000 dead on this continent. As years passed, the veterans from both armies grew to respect their former combatants and the one-time foes gathered on reunions on the same fields that had witnessed slaughter. If one time adversaries on the field of battle could learn to love and respect each other, we must do so as well.
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