Two Connected Threads

Today, I wanted to share a pair of Twitter threads that complement each other.

The first one is by the great Nikole Hannah-Jones, writer for the New York Times Magazine:

I've been spending the last few weeks working on a book chapter about white opposition to black people establishing schools right after slavery, and in light of people's response to my tweets on the Vox study, it's making me really mull a few things.

Our country has done a vast disservice in how little we are taught about the role racial caste and racism has played in every aspect of our society, because folks - liberal and conservative - don't have the background in order to grapple with its complexity.

The racial and economic anxiety of white Americans cannot be disentangled, because the *sense of* economic well-being for white Americans has always been determined by their perceived status relative to black people specifically, people of color in general. For instance, most white Americans - North and South - viciously and violently opposed education for black children following the Civil War, not because it was coming at the cost of their own kids. Most of these schools were privately funded or funded with money strictly from black taxes. They opposed these schools because of the sense that schooling for black children would put those children on similar footing with their own children; black advancement was believed to mean a diminishment of whiteness. The anxiety was not about economics, but status. But that racial status was intertwined with economics but white people were supposed to *always* be better off in terms of education, position in society and, yes, economically. They did not want the competition for status OR wages.

Could one label the animus to black schooling as economic anxiety - well, certainly, black people were never supposed to be able to compete economically with white people. But it was not based on white people feeling like they could not get ahead in life. It was based on white people believing that no matter where they were economically, black people would and should always be below them, both economically and in terms of status.

So, to say white people who by all measures were doing better after Obama left office than when he came in, are simply voting on economic anxiety is denying the way our country and whiteness function. Listen to their words - they are worried about what they see as an ascendancy of people of color. That something, much more than financial stability, is being taken from them. The recession Obama inherited led some to crossover, oh so briefly, but seeing a black family in the White House reminded them of what they believed was their declining status. And regaining that sense of status, that being top of the racial hierarchy that began in 1619, overcame everything else.

And, the last thing I will say on this: the fact that it is not Trumpers but white progressives in my timeline downplaying the role of race in this election speaks to how history shows white people in general have always been invested in downplaying race, no matter their politics.

At the end of slavery, you literally had some white progressives arguing that the Freedmen's Bureau, literally created to help people who had been held in bondage for 250 years with no legal rights, property, clothes or food, should spend some of its funds on poor white people because, well, there lives had not been easy, either. And this is the fundamental flaw, and this is why we continue to make so little progress when it comes to addressing racial inequality. This constant need to #AllLivesMatter everything, going back even to slavery.

The second thread is by @LouisatheLast, who started out replying to a tweet by Missouri journalist Sarah Kendzior, who wrote:

I wrote an article [link] about murdered journalist and abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy two years ago. It's on the danger and duty of journalism in times of tyranny. As Lovejoy said: "I can die at my post, but I cannot desert it."

Louisa the Last mused on that tweet:

You know, I had never heard of Lovejoy before this, and that’s a terrible shame. He was a hero and a martyr. It always struck me as odd that most white opponents of slavery and Jim Crow are barely known in this country. We only really talk about two - Lincoln and John Brown.

Lincoln, of course, was a reluctant sort of abolitionist - he thought it was the right thing to do, but also that the country wouldn’t stand for it. And of course, it didn’t. John Brown had no reluctance, or chill, and he is still a controversial figure in America in ways that we don’t hedge and mutter disclaimers about resistance/freedom fighters from other countries. We don’t harrumph about the methods of German or Polish resistance fighters. We understand those stakes were too high.

I puzzled over why we don’t talk about Thaddeus Stevens or Charles Sumner while we incessantly discuss Robert E. Lee. Why I was well into adulthood before I knew the names Viola Liuzzo, Andrew Goodman, or Michael Schwerner. You’d think we’d be proud of good white people, right? You’d think we’d brag about them. You’d think there would be a street named after John Brown in every city, the way mine has a Columbus St, a Washington St, a Patrick St AND a Henry St. Or even, yes, a Robert E. Lee Highway. All those slave owners. Where’s the freedom fighters?

Then it dawned on me. For us to revere white freedom fighters more than we revere white slave owners and upholders of Jim Crow, we would have to admit how bad it was. How complicit all our “heroes” were. And most important: we’d have to admit that white people knew better.

See, the usual defense is that someone was “a person of their time” when it came to recognizing the humanity of Black people. That’s the excuse for all manner of sins. No one knew any better. Crying shame! What can you do? Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater,

But the existence of white people who not only knew how wrong things were, but put their bodies and careers and reputations on the line to stop it? That would imply that it was possible to know better. Because they were “of their time” too.

And so we have this weird, crooked version of history taught to us, where the only white people we get to learn about were generally pretty awful, and the white people we like to think we would have been, had we lived back then, are skimmed over.

Because holding them up as examples of how to be would require us to do too much national soul-searching. If you admit that John Brown was fighting for a righteous cause when he and his men sacked a slave-owning town, what do you admit about your ancestors?

Anyway. Something to think about. I think white people need to cherish our abolitionists and Freedom Riders, as well as condemning those they opposed. THAT is a heritage to be proud of.

Louisa doesn't mention the term "race traitor," which as I understand it generally refers to white people who work against white supremacy. It's a heavily freighted term: a "traitor" is never a positive thing to be, right? She also doesn't give a full picture of just how crazy John Brown is portrayed as being. What little I learned about him, that's the main impression I got, and his supposed craziness creates a diversion for people wielding the "person of their time" excuse. ("You had to be nuts to think anything different, see?")

Still — good thoughts. White people working against racism and white supremacy need heroes and role models.