the fallacy of Presentism
I am reminded this past week that we give the current Republican party too much credit for perpetrating “the big lie.” The opposition to the teaching in our schools of critical race theory suggests that our view is distorted by a case of presentism—an uncritical and faulty reading of the past through our current lens. The vehemence of the push back after the National Educational Association endorsed teaching about the history of racism in our nation from the start is an indication of how much this curricular enhancement is needed. The big lie of today is a continuation of the lie we as a nation have lived with from our colonial days.
Before we accept the complaints that its inclusion in our schools’ curricula somehow harms the history of our nation’s story, we must first consider the storyteller. A portion of that history is stained with its embracement of racism which was brought to the colonies with the first settlers. As noted by Crystal Ponti in her article (www.history.com/....) “America's History of Slavery Began Long Before Jamestown”:
Some experts, including Michael Guasco, a professor at Davidson College and author of Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World, caution about placing too much emphasis on the year 1619.
“To ignore what had been happening with relative frequency in the broader Atlantic world over the preceding 100 years or so understates the real brutality of the ongoing slave trade, of which the 1619 group were undoubtedly a part, and minimizes the significant African presence in the Atlantic world to that point,” Guasco explains. “People of African descent have been ‘here’ longer than the English colonies.”
Kernels of truth
Indeed, the lie begins here. Those Europeans who decided to brave the wilds of the New World were not necessarily all searching for religious freedoms and spending Thanksgivings with their Native American pals. There were fortunes to be made. The beginnings of capitalism were born in England and the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries. Feudalism which defined the economic and social structure for centuries was supplanted by a rising merchant class:
The relatively static feudal way of life, which had endured for centuries, began to break down at the beginning of the 16th Century. A primary cause of the shift away from feudalism was increased foreign trade, which led to the emergence of a new class of merchant capitalist. These new merchants amassed great fortunes by purchasing foreign goods cheaply and selling them on at huge profits to Europe’s aristocracy.
Our Founders were the descendants of this movement and as men of their times, most were wealthy white men who were accustomed to the fruits of the economic system that had advantaged them. Jefferson, according to our telling of history, included the phrase “all men are created equal...” meaning well. We have been taught that “the times they lived in” dictated the limitations of their thinking on race. The enlightenment had simply not caught up with a more nuanced recognition of human rights. Just ask the Native Americans who greeted Columbus and endured the genocidal racism he exported from his European sponsors—white Europeans, and now some of their white supremacist descendants in the U.S., have a problem with “the others.” From the times when they were the immigrant seeking fortune and security to their modern aversion to others wanting the same, they embrace the inhumanity of racism. Their whiteness is their excuse for the ignorance and depravity of their actions towards others.
the first lies
In order to excuse the southern planters who demanded that slavery be protected in the founding documents, one had to ignore the arguments made by those who contended that slavery was antithetical to their new nation’s principles (13 of the signers did not own slaves). There would have been no need for the “three-fifths compromise” in Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution if that very issue wasn’t the subject of debate and contention among the founders. Slavery was crucial for the South both politically and economically. If slavery was abolished southern planters would have to pay for the labor that filled their coffers. And if slaves were not counted for the purposes of representation in the governing bodies, the more populous north would have leverage over the South in policy matters. The creation of a bi-cameral legislative body with equal representation for all states in one body (the Senate) offsetting the less populous southern states’ representation in the House of Representatives was part of this political calculation made necessary in part by the continuation of slavery.
The lie continues with the myth that the founders had planned for an end to slavery at some future time, but that ending it abruptly as we first celebrated our independence from England, would jeopardize that victory over our British overlords. In this telling of history, slavery was a “phase” that white Americans had to bear for the good of our national development. Sixty years later, Lincoln in his Peoria speech in 1854 arguing against the Kansas-Nebraska Act trotted out the conventional theory of how Jefferson worked to end slavery through attrition:
Thus, with the author of the Declaration of Independence, the policy of prohibiting slavery in new territory originated. Thus, away back of the constitution, in the pure fresh, free breath of the revolution, the State of Virginia, and the National congress put that policy in practice. Thus through sixty odd of the best years of the republic did that policy steadily work to its great and beneficent end. And thus, in those five states, and five millions of free, enterprising people, we have before us the rich fruits of this policy.
— Lincon’s Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854
The conventional wisdom was proven false seven years later as Jefferson’s Virginia led the seditionist southern states in a war to maintain slavery as a national institution. Virginia offered Richmond as the capital of the rebellious South whose armies were led by a Virginian general who at his core was a white supremacist. Robert E. Lee, a slave owner, in a letter written just before the start of the Civil War, encapsulated the southerers’ thinking and the lie they employed to mitigate the horrors of slavery:
“I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy.”
--Robert E. Lee letter, 1856, from Adam Serwer, The Atlantic, June 4, 2017
facing truth
The lie has continued through the 20th century and into the present, famously as many white southern politicians of both parties rallied to try to defeat the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 -65. The theory of the slow steady process toward the promise inherent in Jefferson’s phrase recognizing the inextricable bond that equality has with humanity had still not resonated with his southern (and many northern) descendants. The lie persisted as buses taking black children to their schools were stoned and whites fled those schools that had become integrated,
It continued as Ronald Reagan infamously opened his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, catering to a racist crowd with his not-so-subtle “states rights” pledge in the county in which twenty years earlier three civil rights workers were murdered by the racist KKK. Reagan later cynically declared that “Government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He spoke that lie at his first inaugural.
And so the lies continue...
- the Birther lie that was mounted against the first Black president...
- lies surrounding the murders of young black men and women at the hands of the police….
- the lie that Republicans recite every day in their perverted pledge of allegiance to the president who lied every time he opened his mouth or thumbed a tweet.
This is the history that critical race theory threatens with truth. Remarkably, it is an affront to American conservatives to combat the history of systemic racism upon which this nation was in part founded. The greatness of America does not depend on its military accomplishments—although they have been many. The sacrifice of those who wore a uniform to stand up to the enemies of freedom is a testament to our nation’s virtues. Their fight against the fascists abroad is being undermined by fascists at home. The lie that divided a constitutional convention has grown and threatens the nation it created.
The bigger lie is that we can’t face our past, that we are slaves to our mistakes. Had our forefathers been able to see the future and how their decisions would impact their Republic, would they have chosen to institutionalize slavery knowing it would divide our loyalties for more than two centuries? Would they have thought it worth the turmoil and pain inflicted on generations of their heirs? Today’s Big Lie is in service to our original self-deception.
Denying others their rights and humanity diminishes our own. When the denial is purposeful and is attached to generations of privilege and advantage, truth suffers and history becomes the lie. This is the lesson that needs to be taught because it is that truth that will truly set us all free,