Is America A Racist Nation?

Since the aftermath of the 2020 election, the press, especially the Washington Post, has slowly fallen into the trap of trying to define Pandemic America in the context of race. This argument has become quite fashionable. George Floyd's death and trial has stained and strained the nation in countless ways. Perhaps without George Floyd and COVID Donald Trump would still be president. In many respects, the press realizes its role in making Donald Trump president and the majority are apologizing. At the same time, that majority is justifying the election of Joe Biden. Race, however is only one reason, not the sole reason for Biden's victory.

The left-leaning press wants to see America as having deep racist tendencies and the right-leaning press wants to suggest that America is free of any form of racism. One does not need to be woke to see that America is not free of racial contention. We are the product of Anglo-Saxon heritages that used race to conquer various parts of the world. Our British forefathers, for example, used racism to gain success in Egypt, India, South Africa, Australia and countless other places.  And many of those same tactics were perfected in the United States. 

An outsider might contend that systemic racism runs through each nation that was a part of the British Empire. Scholars might argue that forms of systemic racism linger even following independence. However, in our American elementary educations we have been taught that people are not racist. Racism, per se, is a tool of the state. To be racist is to have power. Individuals, therefore, discriminate. Students learn that Americans are not racist, but simply for various reasons discriminate against other Americans. Using that logic, American racism, if it ever existed, ended long before the Civil War. American discrimination, which has endured, has been described as a milder form of racial hatred. In essence, this argument insists that the long Civil Rights Movement was an attempt to overturn discrimination not systemic racism.

I beg to differ. Questionable teaching and understanding, not historical facts, are the root of America's problems. This debate clearly centers on slavery and aftermath of the Civil War. Senator Mitch McConnell's recent attack on the 1619 Project highlights the fears of sharing other interpretations of the American experience. His shrewd defense of the South is more political than personal. The issues of American racism can be witnessed in his own household. He is quiet on anti-Asian violence while married to an Asian American. His political task is to simply cast President Biden and the Democrats as the morality police. In turn this becomes an argument over supporting the police, Black Lives Matter and the January attack on the Capitol. McConnell, who on face value might be seen as the contradiction to the old southern ways, turns out to be the defender of the very groups that would have lynched him in the 1950s. 

The contradictions are glaring. Southerners, mainly Republicans in Red States, live in fear of being singled out as racists for defending slavery and the Confederacy. Yet to be a southerner does not mean that you have supported slavery. Indeed, many of America's contemporary southern population are transplants from other nations and people of color. So why are McConnell and others really such staunch supporters of the old Confederate narrative? The historians, who McConnell and others frequently name, that don't like the 1619 Project, also do not like the more conservative 1776 Project either. 

The crux of the matter is that neither the right or the left really understands the damage that this fight over being a racist nation creates. Yet it continues with reckless abandon.

Glenn Kessler's April 23rd Washington Post article, Tim Scott often talks about his grandfather and cotton. There’s more to that tale expands the boundaries of this fight. By analyzing the legacy of Senator Scott's heritage on the eve of his address to the nation, the right saw it as an attack. However, the GOP placed Scott in the difficult position of being an African American defending a political party that increasingly gives favor to white supremacists. 

Senator Scott often repeats the story of his American success - how his grandfather was poor and undereducated and from that place of poverty, he became a United States Senator.  Despite his efforts Tim Scott cannot channel a Booker T. Washington narrative. Scott's "American miracle" was criticized because the senator did not acknowledge that his great-grandfather owned significant amounts of land. The underlying point was that the family's land should have provided an advantage and that Scott was minimizing his economic background.

Senator Scott used the Republic response to the President's Address to Congress to refute the Washington Post's criticisms of his generational narrative and its portrayal of America. One of his talking points pronounced that "America was not a racist nation!"  However, for those following the debate between the senator and the newspaper, the senator gave the newspaper and liberal critics all of the ammunition it needed to make the counter argument. Land in America only has value when coveted, seized, settled or owned by whites. Senator Scott's family lost acreage over time and the property value was never of economic importance.  Although they were land owners, the senator's family still had to work on other people's land to survive. (History informs us that race does make a difference as most Negro landowners were poor Negro farmers regardless of how many acres they owned. The story of the twentieth century is that many southern states illegally stole land from black farmers. Was Scott's family land stolen? The Kessler article hints at that possibility.)

Senator Scott also used his speech to discuss that he was a victim of discrimination. That he was mistreated by the police, not treated fairly in department stores, and not given his full citizenship. He acknowledged that he fears being stopped by the police. The senator also attacked his own and suggested that being called an "Uncle Tom" by his own people was another act of discrimination. But he insisted that America is not a racist nation. In response, I can only stress that Senator Scott's word usage is incorrect. The discrimination he experienced in stores, from the police and others was not discrimination but racism. I would also posit that being called an Uncle Tom is a sign of inter-racial racism, something more than an act of discrimination. Tim Scott's America is an accurate picture of this nation. He just refuses to define it as a racist one. 

America is still celebrating the slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and resistance to the Civil Rights Movement in a series of hostile confrontations disguised as holidays. President Trump's convention mis-steps touched upon various dates that most Americans selectively forgot including Juneteenth, the date of the Tulsa Riots, and Axe Handle Day.  Southern states still celebrate confederate related holidays such as the birthdays of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Alexander Stephens. Recently, Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi declared April to be Confederate Heritage Month.

If we ask our Canadian, Australian, South African, Indian or Egyptian allies if they have racial problems in their nations they would say yes. They could share commonalities with Anglo/American stories and they could highlight differences. If the minorities in these nations were polled, they would state that their nations are racist. Few would take the position offered by Senator Scott. Additionally, they could easily point to intra-racial and inter-racial racism within the United States that rivals anyplace in the world. 

The United States records bias crimes and racially motivated crimes. These crimes are not listed as acts of discrimination. Right now a young white, Latino or African American male might be attacking an Asian American woman or elderly Asian American man out of hate not discrimination. This hate was not learned at birth but by calculated and historical factors. A brown, black or white police officer might statistically shoot a black person to a far greater degree than a white person. This too, is a learned behavior.  New immigrants to America learn and use racist and ethnic slang within weeks of arriving on these shores. Racism, of various types, is prevalent in the United States. 

Neither the left nor the right can win this battle.

So what are we fighting about and what does this prove? I want to suggest it proves nothing more than this is a nation in chaos. Neither side will surrender or accept an aspect of the other's perspectives. Americans look like idiots to everyone but themselves. The rest of the world knows the truth. Americans are as racist as every other nation.  And to some nations, we even more racist than the rest!