The Mental Infliction of Racism
A guy named Dennis just called the Stephanie Miller Show, complaining we were lamenting them flying the Confederate flag above South Carolina's capital. He put forward the claim that it was to honor those who fought in the Civil War, or as he might call it, the War of Northern Aggression!?" (ha, right)
OK, why is it we're celebrating this four year period, or people who were fighting it to keep human beings enslaved, doing the work and not getting paid, doing the work and not being able to buy property, or accrue wealth through generations since the 1600's when they were first brought here by whites, who kidnapped them from their homes in Africa??
There are plenty of things we can commemorate. We can talk about southern cooking, as there's nothing like good old country cooking. We can talk about the heat, if you enjoy it. I don't, but some seem to love a burning hot day at the beach, and a nice sunburn, with a side of BP oil. Not me. We've got lots of trees,you don't have to worry about slipping on snow, and for the most part, people can be pretty friendly here. We've been known to wave at people, just because they're there, or walking along the road.
But slavery? Nope. The first step to getting over racism is just to admit it. Slavery was wrong, it was, and where it is still practiced, is still horribly wrong. Our forebears that practiced it might not have been total assholes, but to fight for this right, or to have ever used it, or treated humans in this way, was wrong. OK, I'll give it to them that there is a context--the preachers taught it was OK, it was normally done, and was widely condoned, and it happened in the North too. It wasn't exclusively Southern. It was everywhere. The North just shook the habit a little sooner, probably because of it being less agrarian. Even with all of that, you have to think that deep down, perhaps not even that deep, these slave owners knew it was wrong. They knew at some level they were kidnapping, and engaging in buying and selling of people simply unfortunate enough to not have good weapons to resist.
So don't commemorate--reject the slavery. There was nothing honorable about fighting a war about this. And this war, like all other wars, was a war the rich wanted to fight in the South. Like most wealth these days, most slaves were owned by the top 25% of the population. Many white people suffered in lesser ways, but trying to grow products to sell, based on the labor of themselves, and family, who had to compete with those who had a 100 slaves, like Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. They took less money for their cotton, because Plantation owners incorporated slave labor to do their work for them, driving down the price of cotton, and other products. Many southern families still hold the wealth, those who came before them, gained on the backs of slave labor.
The first step back from bigotry is to just admit, our ancestors, all of them, that owned slaves were horribly wrong, knew to some extent they were wrong, and let's not look at them as if they should be celebrated in any way. And while you're at it, acknowledge the lynchings, and other killings that have come since then. Acknowledge the job discrimination they've suffered at the hands of white people, the continued terror instilled by whites that started and ran the KKK, and other organizations dedicated to instilling terror. Add red-lining, the refusal of white bankers as a policy to loan money so blacks could buy property, instead of renting at a higher cost. Add absolutely using legal systems to seize property. So much has happened to bring shame. While we're at it, add the racial killings of cops, or this guy in the church, bombings in Birmingham of four little girls. How deplorable. Despicable. There aren't enough adjectives to describe how badly our ancestors acted. Admit that, and racists might be able to come back from their malady. And yes, it is a malady, a severe and continuing problem of the mind.
It isn't a Mental Illness, but a "Mental Infliction."
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