It is often the case that folks who call themselves “progressives” eschew so-called identity politics for economic populism. But hear me well. The American white working class, from Maine to Mississippi, is just as entangled with slavery as are blacks. They just don’t know it. The culture of most (but of course not all) white working class folks (male and female) is neo-confederate populism. It is segregated. It is predicated on a value system that measures success calibrated in how many notches it rises above the level of blacks. And of course, these whites are just another identity group. While based in the South, the fact that they are so prevalent throughout the country is thanks to the disseminating power of right wing talk radio. (Afterall the Nashville sound in country music doesn’t just hang around Nashville).
Slavery ended a century and a half ago. So, why do folks (like me) keep bringing it up. The Evangelical Christian moral authority that justified slavery, and later lynching, segregation and now Donald Trump was never invested in the Enlightenment concept of liberal democracy. How could it be, given its dependence on slavery. The civic values it passed down intergenerationally were authoritarian, anti-intellectual, and held to an epistemology that defined reality as malleable, being whatever the patriarch or political leader said it was, despite the evidence of one’s own eyes. It was also more tribal than materialistic. They would rather not have health care than see blacks and other minorities have the same entitlements that they have. That applies to jobs, and every other economic opportunity you can think of. Loyalty to their community, and status within it are the measures of success, i.e. white-skin privilege.
Progressives who have been led to believe that America is like Europe’s class -stratified societies and that the stain of slavery is ancient history have been told a malicious lie. Our institution of slavery made America’s history unique among western nations. It tainted everything, even religion. Evangelical Christianity had been strongly abolitionist in the early 19th century. But as it moved into the South, it reinvented itself. In order to argue against abolitionism, its slave-owning theologians developed the new theology of Biblical literalism and inerrancy. Making reference to the many times slavery was mentioned in the Bible because it was practiced 2,000 years before was their way of countering the Golden Rule Christianity emerging from the Enlightenment. Biblical inerrancy is the moral authority upon which Trump core supporters still depend.
It would be nice if progressives could fix this rot at the core of our nation’s soul. But to pretend it isn’t there is what gave us Trump in the first place.