May 7, 2017
As William Faulkner famously stated, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Anyone doubting the truth of Faulkner’s maxim need only look at the tragic events of the past week. By now, everyone is familiar with the horrific murder of Jordan Edwards, the cheerful, studious 15 year-old Black boy murdered in cold blood while leaving a party. Jordan was murdered in front of his brothers, who were then detained for hours by the police after witnessing that murder.Taylor Dumpson’s story may be less familiar to some of us. Taylor is the first African American woman to be elected president of American University’s student government. Taylor is also a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Black sorority, chartered in 1908 at Howard University. On the first day of Taylor’s tenure as student body president, she was greeted by bunches of bananas hanging from nooses around American’s campus, marked with the letters ‘AKA.’ When the story came to light, Ms. Dumpson received further threats from white supremacists, necessitating police protection for her and her family.
These two horrific stories are two sides of the same coin, evidence of the rampant criminalization of blackness and the intolerance of Black excellence and leadership. If we are to understand how we got here, and if we have any sincere desire to progress beyond this place, we must examine our history. We cannot afford the sunny optimism born of amnesia.From this country’s founding, Black people have been singled out as not fully human in order to justify the “peculiar institution” through which America was built into a global economic superpower. After Emancipation, this country erected the ironclad barrier of Jim Crow to blunt Black advancement. A cottage industry of pseudoscience endeavored to “prove” that Black people were inherently lazy, immoral and prone to criminality in order to provide the justification for Jim Crow in the South and over-policing in the North.
These distorted beliefs bled into mass culture, from minstrel shows to “Birth of a Nation,” poisoning successive generations of Americans with a firm belief in Black inferiority and a violent reaction to any Black person whose existence challenged that belief. Over the ensuing decades, the justification for discrimination against Black people morphed from a scientific basis to a sociological one. Belief in genetic inferiority gave way to the belief that Black people suffered from a “culture of poverty,” conveniently ignoring the many contributions of Black people to American culture, from blues to jazz to rock and roll and more importantly, erasing the state’s substantial role in ensuring that every avenue of economic mobility was closed to African Americans.When the Social Security Act was passed in 1935, the two categories in which the overwhelming majority of African Americans could be found, domestic and agricultural workers, were explicitly excluded from its protection. The Federal Housing Administration, another New Deal program, issued regulations, along with “redlined” maps, explicitly prohibiting the provision of mortgages to Black people or to property in Black neighborhoods. This practice was not halted until passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968, a mere 49 years ago.
The ruthlessly efficient propaganda machine of white supremacy served a dual purpose. Not only did it prevent African Americans from competing for opportunity on a level playing field, it enlisted poor and working class whites as the architects of their own oppression. As LBJ drolly observed, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
The Republicans eager to weaponize racism to cement their power know this. As we look at our country, more in sorrow than in anger, we must implore and challenge our fellow citizens who are white to join us in the hard work of dismantling the corrosive edifice of white supremacy to save this country. The survival of our republic depends on it. Trust me, any discomfort that they endure will be a fraction of the danger Black Americans face every day.