The 6-3 SCOTUS decision in Louisiana v. Callais, essentially gutting the Voting Rights Act, adds a new verse to a very long and sad song. Here we are, 250 years into this experiment we call the United States of America, and we’re still unable to erase the stain of slavery from our collective soul.
Unlike every other immigrant group, who came of their own free will to find a better life, black Africans were brought here without their consent, treated like cattle, and destined to die in bondage, without hope. Slavery created an overclass and underclass that persist to this day. Virtually every evil that has befallen this country since its beginning can be traced to that single root, the idea that not all men are created equal, and that the color of your skin determines your lot in life.
There is a saying: “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.” The U.S. Constitution, despite the hagiography built around it by originalist Justices who should (and probably do) know better, fits this warning to a tee. Thirteen colonies, all different in their economies and cultures, needed to band together to rid themselves of their British overlords. At the time of the Revolution, slaves outnumbered whites in South Carolina and were a significant fraction of the population in other Southern colonies. In order to bring the South into the fold, the Electoral College and the three-fifths compromise came into being. These did no good, however: Less than 100 years later, slavery tore the young nation apart. The argument that the Civil War was about “state’s rights” is true only in the sense that it was about the right to own slaves and treat humans as property. Read these excerpts from the South Carolina document of secession:
“The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor……Those (free) States … have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.”
The South lost the Civil War, but one can see the Confederacy’s long shadow in the rise of Donald Trump. No Republican Presidential candidate in the last 70 years has gotten elected without appealing to white supremacy, however obliquely. Think “silent majority”, “welfare queens” and Willie Horton. Trump gained control over the GOP simply by breaking that dog whistle and saying out loud what white voters wanted to hear. Whispered code words justifying the resentment of a white majority on its way to becoming a minority are no longer sufficient to get elected; one must out-Trump Trump in order to ingratiate a candidate with his MAGA worshipers. Still, even those of us who are horrified by the excesses of Trump get uncomfortable thinking about how far we have yet to go in order to atone for our nation’s original sin.
Note in proof: This started out as a much longer and more personal piece, so I decided to move some of it to the next installment. This part may seem a bit dry, but don’t worry, the next piece will not be.