The Myths on the Right re: Race, Slavery, Apartheid, Social Justice

We've all seen Michele Bachmann making a fool of herself during her disastrous presidential campaign on this topic.

The right is divided on the topic of modern slavery-lite: apartheid. We see this with Erik Rush over at the RWNJ publication WND, as caught by Wonkette. We see it in the right wing support for Reagan vetoing Apartheid sanctions. The right also continues to defend historic slavery as 'not that bad', as we have seen recently in the kerfuffle between Sarah Palin and MSNBC commenter Martin Bashir that led to the resignation of Bashir - but no correction in the position of Palin, who apparently continues to believe false equivalencies between actual slavery, and debt between nations. Bashir's point, however crudely made in his outrage, was that Palin lacked any valid knowledge or appreciation of the historic reality that was the oppression of slavery.

 

And we have seen similar ignorant comments made that slavery wasn't that bad from other figures on the right; it is a deeply revered myth that is completely counter to reality, but remains a tenet of right wing ideology. Here is an example of what drives the right wing mythology, a perfect example of their revisionist history. If you don't think slavery was that bad, how can you think it is right or necessary or important to fight apartheid - or honor those who did? If you don't believe that slavery or apartheid was bad, or worse, that it was good and just, then how can you oppose modern racial inequality or social and economic injustice? From the Wilkens biography of Robert E. Lee, Call of Duty: The Sterling Nobility of Robert E. Lee, a book that Michele Bachmann extolled during her failed presidential campaign:

Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith. . . The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.

Imagine first the wounds, and then having salt rubbed in them

Apparently this is some people's notion of mutual respect, without animosity.......

That reflects the thinking and the factually deficient revisionist history education of not only Bachmann, but also Sarah Palin.   The historic reality is that our Founding Fathers were the product of the Enlightenment. Knowledge had not advanced under the Enlightenment to present a more accurate and less superficial understanding of race. It was not an ignorance restricted to our understanding of human beings; there was a lack of clarity not only on matters of race and gender, but also about the notion of species and what constituted breeds of animals as well.

The cold, hard, unpleasant reality from our safe position of hindsight is that even the most liberal and educated Founding Fathers -- and for all intents and purposes they were primarily 'Fathers ' - male, and affluent white male at that - accepted the prevailing wisdom that women were inferior and incapable of dealing with weighty matters like voting or holding office, and they were far from confident that people of other races were equal to themselves, and in some cases believed that not only like women they were inferior human beings, but not entirely clear on whether or not people of color were perhaps less than fully human.   Those who opposed slavery did not necessarily see the slaves as their equals, nor did they consistently advocate for equality of property ownership or voting rights for slaves, any more than they did so for women. When Chief Justice Taney wrote the horrible Dred Scott decision in 1857, less than 75 years after the ratification of the Constitution, he wrote that the Founding Fathers believed black slaves were:

"beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

We recognize that Taney was horribly wrong, but as he was born in 1777, he lived through the Revolution as a very young child, but was old enough to remember and understand the issues and mindset surrounding the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution (drafting 787, ratification 1789) and the subsequent addition of the Bill of Rights (drafted 1789, ratified 1791). He was not writing a decision merely from second hand history; he lived in the same era as those Founding Fathers, and was brought up in the prevailing understanding as regards equality between the races and the genders. If we are going to be fully honest, Abraham Lincoln himself did not believe black people were the intellectual equal of white people EITHER. In the famous debate in Charleston, S.C. in 1858, he made the following statement:

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.” “I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. [Cheers and laughter.] My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have never seen to my knowledge a man, woman or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between negroes and white men.” [Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 3, p. 146]"

Now, to be fair to Lincoln, he also made the following statement, two months before the Lincoln Douglas debate:

“My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man—this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position—discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.” [Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol 2, p. 501]"

Even those who in the 18th and 19th century were against slavery were not automatically in favor of full social, economic, or political equality.
They were more in favor of something akin to apartheid, a 'natural order' reflection of racial superiority / inferiority. If you look at their political positions, our fellow Americans on the radical right are still struggling with accepting the full legal, political, social and economic equality of people of color, women, and our fellow men and women on the basis of sexual orientation.   Michele Bachmann, with her usual ineptitude, got wrong who among our founding fathers worked to end slavery - and how hard they did or did not work at that. I had an interesting exchange on a right wing media site (Newsbusters) where a commenter listed as the Founding Fathers who fought tirelessly as 'abolitionists' to end slavery these men who were more appropriately included as Founding Fathers than John Quincy Adams:

• Aaron Burr,
• Benjamin Franklin
• Alexander Hamilton,
• John Jay
• George Mason
• Benjamin Rush

All but Benjamin Rush at some point in time, owned slaves. (Benjamin Franklin named his two, respectively, King and George.) While they DID all, in some capacity, work to end slavery, they cannot, I would argue, be construed or represented as working TIRELESSLY to end slavery, if in the course of doing so, your approach is "but YOU first", rather than immediate emancipation of any you inherit, and if you don't voluntarily acquire any in the first place. It is far more accurate to assert they were conflicted about slavery, but not rushing - TIRELESSLY - to end it. But even then, opposing slavery did not equate to an automatic or synonymous belief in racial equality.   We still see that thinking on the right; this is an example of the comments on the pros and cons of apartheid :

"Its all very simple. Blacvks have followed the White man all over this World because they realise they need Whitey to survive.Where they have got rid of him then you create a Zimbabwe,Somalia or just about any other African Country you can mention. Thus they sat in their caves in Africa and cast an eye on South Africa and Rhodesia and thought they would like some of that but as ever they want it for nothing.They are not prepared to work for it and neither do they have the ingenuity to build it.Professor Richard Lynn of Leeds University in an academic study found that Sub Saharan Africans have on average intellect scores of 67.In the West anyone with a score of less than 70 is regarded as retarded so that in a nutshell tells you everything."

and

Not thousands, but millions. And millions of illegals lived and worked during apartheid. The reason was because South Africa had lots of job openings, high salaries while the rest of Africa had no work. Apartheid was bad but it wasnt that bad. Aslong as you kept your mouth shut about the government you could live a pretty good life. There wernt people starving and high crime rates and no jobs like there is now in South Africa.

I've seen similar comments on a variety of right wing web sites. It is paralleled by the thinking on immigration that similarly slanders and devalues Hispanics and Latinos as inferior in IQ, and more prone to criminal activity. It's not hard to find similar work that discredits and devalues African Americans. It's totally junk science, but the right loves it, and believes it, because it fits their prejudices and biases against the dread 'other', the 'them' of us versus them. Some on the right actually believe that South Africans were there first, and that it was the indigenous black population who were the interlopers. And there are those who continue to assert that white rule and apartheid were better, because the modern government of South Africa is struggling with some of the same problems that other new nations face (and some not so new), including problems with corruption.   Those who support Reagan's decision to withhold sanctions on the basis of claims of communism among those rebelling against the racism of Apartheid fail to acknowledge both how genuinely horrific the oppression was under Apartheid, but also fail to acknowledge how dependent on the U.S. the White South Africans were to continue that oppression. From the Stanford website on the history of Apartheid:

As the managing director of the South African subsidiary of Burroughs Corporations said, We are entirely dependent on the U.S. The economy would grind to a halt without access to the computer technology of the West. No bank could function; the government couldn't collect its money and couldn't account for it; business couldn't operate; payrolls could not be paid. Retail and wholesale marketing and related services would be disrupted.

The reality is that U.S. corporations were making money from Apartheid - and not just IBM or other tech companies. It was true of Coke, and Ford and many others. Reagan didn't want to rock the boat, and Reagan also benefited from pandering to the racist right that continued than and continues now to struggle with acceptance of real and full equality. Reagan, had he been the great mind that the right claims, could and should have opposed Apartheid, supported sanctions, and further, sought a third alternative to the options of pro-Apartheid or pro-Communism.   ONE of the reasons for Nelson Mandela to be so celebrated as he is, is that HE made the outreach to Americans, in spite of the support that this nation provided to the white South African Government. Mandela had the capacity to think outside the polarized box that trapped Reagan. So long as we have revisionist history, be it old history, of the Founding Fathers, or more recent bogus revisionist history about Reagan, or modern junk science that tries to justify blacks or Latinos or any other group as inherently inferior, the right continues to embrace inequality, and social, economic and political injustice.   We need to fight back, and fight back hard, against that revisionist history AND against the deeply rooted systemic racism and sexism of the right. Until they embrace reality, including non-revisionist history, that accept the remarkable accomplishments of our Founding Fathers without having to re-write who they were into something false and mythic, the right will continue to be pro-disparity, and even pro-oppression. They will continue to perpetuate the myth that inequality is deserved, and that they are the guardians of truth, light, and an America that never existed.