Some Consequences of the Confederacy

E. M.Armstrong, Sr.'s (partial) letter to Baker W. Armstrong, Dec. 20, 1884

Update below
Over the past couple of weeks, I have been immersed in reading letters written by Tom's great-great grandfather and his family, all of Virginia. Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., had been a prosperous merchant in Romney [now in West Virginia] before the Civil War. His father, William Armstrong, had immigrated to America from Ireland as a young boy, settled in what was then Virginia, and eventually represented Virginia in the U. S. Congress.

In 1861, Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr.  was elected a delegate to the Virginia Convention of 1861, a convention in which delegates were to discuss and to vote on whether or not Virginia would secede from the Union. He was among those who voted against seceding from the Union. Both representatives of Hampshire County, Virginia--Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., and David Pugh--voted no. But the Ordinance of Secession eventually passed, and a majority of the citizens of Virginia ratified the vote.

We have no letters of the Armstrong family from before the Civil War or from during the Civil War, so I have little insight into why Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., and several of his sons from his first marriage to Hannah Pancake, decided to fight for the Confederacy. One son, Isaac Armstrong, was mortally wounded in the battle of Gaines Mill; lingering for weeks, he finally succumbed to his wounds. I suspect, though, that like many Southerners who weren't connected to the plantation system, the Armstrongs joined the war out of loyalty to their state, to their region, to a sense of place. That doesn't make the decision right--for the Civil War was about slavery--but it makes the decision more understandable to those of us on the other side of Civil Rights.

After the war and now with children from a second marriage joining those from the first marriage, Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., moved to Salem, Virginia. He was never again to be as prosperous as he had been before the War; his last years were spent farming and worrying how to support his family. He also was a board member of the Union Theological Seminary, then associated with Hampden-Sydney College, which today remains one of the few all-male liberal arts colleges.

The letters that Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., wrote his son Baker White Armstrong, the son who moved to Texas and who became my husband's great-grandfather, reveal the man to be kind, generous, loving, and very religious. That he fought for the Confederacy does not make him a bad man; it makes him a misguided man, misguided by the zeitgeist of the plantation economy:  the idea that some people are more equal than others, that some people deserve privileges bestowed on them by an accident of birth and the color of their skin, that some people, by that accident of birth and/or color of skin are providentially destined to be either leaders or laborers. He serves as a reminder of how good people can be persuaded to fight for bad causes--and of how religion can also be used as a tool for a bad cause.

In his letter of October 5, 1883, Edward wrote his son Baker:

I heard a splendid speech from Major Daniel last Monday. He had a full House, and many Re-Adjusters to hear him -- I think it highly probable that this country will gain a democratic majority this fall --Many of the old democrats who were enticed off by re-adjusterism have returned to the democratic fold, [and] others will follow. Mahoneism is a disgrace to our old state, and I can but hope there will be good [and] honest people enough found to throw off the party shackles and redeem the state at the Nov. elections.

The politics behind this letter are murky, the waters muddied by individual expectations and needs and the wider politics of a state that had lost the War. The politics have to do with railroads and debt and government services and the rights of poor whites and blacks freed by the defeat of the South. "Mahone" is William Mahone: he had been a slave owner, he had backed secession, he had been in charge of Virginians who massacred Union Colored Troops, and he moved up the ranks in the Confederate Army to major general. He was also a railroad tycoon, and after the Civil War, he fought to build railroads that would also provide profit for his railroad. Here is where E. M. Armstrong's personal desires probably intersected with politics, for Armstrong had bought land near Salem, hoping to profit from the Norfolk and Western Railroad's building yards, shops and a roundhouse in Salem. This didn't happen, and the family was reduced to what some call "genteel poverty." Perhaps William Mahone's financial success had something to do with E. M. Armstrong's failure to profit from his land acquisition.

During Reconstruction, the Virginia Constitution of 1870 provided suffrage for all men, black and white, over the age of 21, and also instituted state-funded public schools. Later, however, Conservatives used the state's war debt as a way to argue for cutting social services, and thus the access of blacks to education. William Mahone used this argument over debt vs. services as a way to gain political power. He created a biracial coalition of Conservatives and Republicans, and in 1881, was elected to the U. S. Senate. This coalition led by William Mahone was known as the "Readjusters," for its focus on "readusting" the state's war debt downward; this group of uneasy alliances also passed legislation that "abolish[ed] anti-black regulations, establish[ed] Virginia State University, increas[ed] financial support to public institutions, and charter[ed] labor unions." Mahone raised the ire of many Virginia voters, however, by caucusing with the Republicans, and his leadership tended to be autocratic.

A riot in Danville, Virginia, on November 3, 1883, gave Conservative Southern Democrats--the Democrats of the Old South-- the extra fuel they needed to ignite their political campaign to re-take state offices. Some reports describe a scuffle that broke out between some black men and white men after a meeting of prominent white men who were determined to defeat the government of the Readjusters. Other reports describe the riot as having started when black residents failed to give way to white residents on the sidewalks of the town. Whatever the specifics, the riot was obviously the result of the uneasy relationship between white and black citizens, and the repugnant idea of white supremacy. Several people were shot and killed, and the Conservative Democrats used this incident to incite "the fears of white voters."

William Mahone lost the 1884 election to another former Confederate officer, John W. Daniel, the man Edward Armstrong, Sr., had mentioned in his letter of October 1883, to  his son Baker. By the election of 1884, however, Baker W. Armstrong had moved to Bryan, Texas, to seek employment as a druggist with a drug store there. His brother Robert provides the news of the 1884 election, in a letter of November 10, 1884:

"Old Va" I am glad to say went Democratic on last Tuesday, [and] I cannot but hope that Mahone is "done for."

And in a letter written the 20th of December of that same year, E. M. Armstrong, Sr., tells his son Baker:

I wrote to Major Daniel requesting him to send you a copy of his Richmond jollification speech, and, if he could conveniently, his photo which I hope you will receive and appreciate.

And so the experiments in white and black coalition governments in the South came to an end, with the stoking of racial fears. Major John W. Daniel was also to serve as a delegate to Virginia's 1901-1902 Constitutional Convention, the focus of which was to disfranchise African-Americans. Conservative Democrats had campaigned for the convention, touting the need for "electoral reform and better state government," code words then --and even now-- meant to obscure the marginalization of a minority group. But make no mistake--disfranchisement of African-Americans was the convention's main goal:

The main question for the delegates was how to eliminate the black vote without violating the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Eventually they proposed that under Virginia's new constitution, a man would be eligible to vote if he could satisfy one of the following three requirements: he could read or understand the state constitution; he had paid taxes on property worth at least $333; or he was either a U.S. or Confederate veteran or the son of a veteran. All three conditions were loopholes designed to protect white voters. Further narrowing the pool of possible voters, minimum requirements were set for age, residency, and literacy, and a poll tax requirement was also instituted.[ "Virginia's Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902", on the web site of the Virginia Historical Society]

To make sure that blacks would not be able to vote on a constitution that would disfranchise them, "the Convention instead took the unusual step of proclaiming it the law of the commonwealth." ["Virginia's Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902," on the web site of the Virginia Historical Society]

And so are good people manipulated and deceived through fear, personal interest, and a misguided sense of superiority.

Unfortunately, plantation politics continue today, and the myth of the Lost Cause obscures the horrors of slavery, of the debasement of one people to the enrichment of another.

Election "fraud" is still used as an excuse to make voting more restrictive even when the "fraud" is practically non-existent. [See "UFO Sightings are More Common than Voter Fraud," Hamed Aleaziz, Dave Gilson, and Jaeah Lee, Mother Jones, July/August 2012.]

And yesterday the politically-evenly split Virginia state senate pushed through a re-districting map while one of their Democratic colleagues (a civil rights veteran attending the presidential inauguration)  was absent and then afterward adjourned their session on Martin Luther King Day by paying tribute to Confederate General Stonewall Jackson. Perhaps there is a way to honor "good" men who fight for bad causes. This is not the way: publicly honoring a white man who fought for the enslavement of African-Americans on a holiday established to honor a black man who fought for the political and social freedom of African-Americans. This was also the day our first African-American president was inaugurated for his second term. Anyone who sees such actions as purely accidental and devoid of political motivation is willfully blind or ignorant. [For more juicy details, see: the blog of Blue Virginia, "Breaking: While Dems Distracted by Inauguration, Virgina Senate GOP Stages a Coup," in which Republican state senator Deeds is described as "rambling" on about Stonewall Jackson's love of peaches, lemons, and women.]

The poisonous fruit of the Confederacy continues to blossom. Let's hope that good men and good women are not deceived. The murky waters of politics require an alert and engaged citizenry.


UPDATE:
As one of the readers of this post has noted, although Edward McCarty Armstrong did vote against secession, he eventually did sign the ordinance to secede. The majority of the delegates elected to the convention were Unionists, and the debate'"raged on for months." You can read about that debate on the Encyclopedia Virginia website here: "Virginia Convention of 1861".

Writing for the Encyclopedia Virginia, Nelson D. Lankford describes how the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Fort's surrender and then Lincoln's proclamation "calling for all loyal states to send their militias to put down the Confederate rebellion" swayed many of these southern Unionists to change their vote. They had withstood months of prolonged debate and the fiery rhetoric of secessionists, but in the end:

[t]he tragedy of the Unionist majority in the convention was that, though its members loathed the thought of leaving the United States, in the end they could not countenance fighting against fellow white Southerners. [Lankford, Nelson D. "Virginia Convention of 1861." Encyclopedia Virginia. Ed. Brendan Wolfe. 23 Jan. 2013. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. 5 Apr. 2011 .]

See a copy of the Ordinance of 1861 here: Virginia's Ordinance of Secession.

The Republican Nominee Depresses Me, Too

Matt Taibbi, in comparing Mitt Romney's address to the NAACP and later to a "friendlier audience" in Montana:

So now this is the message: I tried to reason with the blacks, I really did, but it turns out they just want a free lunch.

How’s that for bridging the racial divide? Time to wake up the Nobel committee in Oslo!

As far as free lunches go, we of course just witnessed the biggest government handout in history, one that Romney himself endorsed. Four and a half trillion dollars in bailout money already disbursed, trillions more still at risk in guarantees and loans, sixteen trillion dollars in emergency lending from the Federal Reserve, two trillion in quantitative easing, etc. etc. All of this money went to Romney’s pals in the Wall Street banks that for years helped Romney take over companies with mountains of borrowed cash. Now, after these banks crashed, executives at those same firms used those public funds to pay themselves massive salaries, which is exactly the opposite of “helping those who need help,” if you’re keeping score.

That set of facts alone made the “free stuff” speech shockingly offensive. But the problem isn’t just that Romney’s wrong, and a hypocrite, and cynically furthering dangerous and irresponsible stereotypes in order to advance some harebrained electoral ploy involving white conservative voters. What makes it gross is the way he did it.

Romney can’t even be mean with any honesty. Even when he’s pandering to viciousness, ignorance and racism, it comes across like a scaly calculation. A guy who feels like he has to take a dump on the N.A.A.C.P. in Houston in order to connect with frustrated white yahoos everywhere else is a guy who has absolutely no social instincts at all. Someone like Jesse Helms at least had a genuine emotional connection with his crazy-mean-stupid audiences. But Mitt Romney has to think his way to the lowest common denominator, which is somehow so much worse. [Matt Taibbi, "Romney's 'Free Stuff' Speech is a New Low," 13 July 2012]

Quote for the Day, Ta-Nehisi Coates

"...I can only stop talking about racism, when it ceases to be a significant force in our politics. When the mere act of being white gives Obama's opponent "a home-state advantage nationally," I can't stop. It would be deeply wrong to stop." Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Toward a Politically Correct Conservatism, cont.," posted online at The Atlantic, 20 June 2012.

Racial Stereotypes

Reading about the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia reminds me of a craft booth I saw yesterday in a local arts and crafts festival here in Louisiana on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain. The vendor, who was white, had created all these "Mammy" items and had them proudly displayed for sale. I don't know if anyone bought anything. I quickly walked past the display, startled and shocked--though I shouldn't have been shocked. Maybe I should have stopped and asked the vendor a few questions to try to discover her reasons for using such stereotypes in her craft or to discern whether or not she even realized these were racist stereotypes. But I just didn't have the heart at the time for any kind of confrontation.

If you're white, and especially if you're from the South, confronting racism in others dredges up so many uncomfortable memories and experiences. Suddenly you're confronted with your own racist past and with the struggle you might have had to try to get beyond it. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, a church whose hierarchy and congregations sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War. As a child, I thoroughly took to heart the hymn we sung about Jesus loving the little children...all the little children, and I struggled to harmonize the beauty of that belief with the reality of our worship. My childhood church had an all-white congregation; the only time African-Americans attended our church on the Gulf Coast of Texas was during Vacation Bible School or a community gathering at Thanksgiving. In 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention finally got around to apologizing for its racist past, but by that time I had already left the church.  I might have left sooner had I not gone off to college and joined a large university church with a more liberal-minded pastor.

If you come from a family that didn't have much to pass down to succeeding generations, it's a little easier to wipe the memory slate clean concerning any racist past. All the bad stuff gets edited out in the oral stories of the family: until one day, someone lets slip that a great-grandfather fathered a child or children with an African-American woman--yes, I was recently told this, but I don't know the accuracy of the story--and suddenly you're questioning your family's past and whether or not one continues to be responsible for that past, for the actions of others long dead. Are there cousins the family didn't or won't acknowledge? Should you try to locate them? Would they want you to or care?

If you come from a Southern family that kept records in letters and memorabilia, however, it's more difficult to ignore those records that detail racist attitudes: the description of theatrical events where great-grandmother dressed in black face and wrote and recited poetry in a Southern black dialect; the high society programs describing the wait staff at such events as "sons  of Ethiopia"; the recipe booklet from a great-grandmother's collection with its "Mammy-shaped" cover.

What do you do if this is your family's past? If you are like me and my husband, you recognize and acknowledge that past. You cannot deny its existence and the corrosive power of the its values, but you repudiate those values. And you do your best to pass on different values to your children.

In his collection of items that reflect the Jim Crow era of the South, David Pilgrim reminds us that we are so very little removed from our racist past. It stares back at us every day, from the products on our supermarket shelves to the crafts on a table at a local festival.

"The Liars Win" when Propaganda is Conflated with News

E. J. Dionne's editorial in The Washington Post today accurately describes what is happening in the media today as propaganda and outright lies are being treated as "news." (hat tip to Steven Bennen for the link) There has long been a tradition in the media (if imperfectly executed) to provide "both sides" to the story. This approach works if both sides act, at least relatively, in good faith. But people with an agenda can take advantage of this approach by promoting lies and propaganda as news. As long as citizens can recognize the difference, the republic stands. However, in recent years, the liars seem to be winning.

The first step, it seems to me, was to fuel people's fears that journalists could not be fair if their personal views leaned in one political direction. This, of course, meant completely denying the professionalism of journalism. So the meme has become "the liberal media"--and in spite of all evidence, the public at large believes that this "liberal" media is bent on promoting only its "side." Yet as many analysts have pointed out, the talk shows on radio, the guests invited to speak on those Sunday shows, the folks interviewed on the major networks are most often conservatives. Just look at how often John McCain, a twice-failed candidate for president, gets a slot on those shows. Mike Huckabee gets his own talk show. Did John Kerry get his own talk show? Or Howard Dean? But if you can convince the public that "the media" is "liberal," then you have convinced the public not to trust journalists' pursuit of truth--and then you can take advantage of that mistrust by promoting your own "truth."

The firestorm over the Journolist (a listserv for journalists) is the latest attempt at totally annihilating trust in journalists. "Journolist scandal proves media bias" screams a headline--and people fall for it without reading any more of the details. Tucker Carlson, a conservative pundit, has been milking this "scandal" for all its worth--but he refuses to release the full e-mails on which he is basing his claims of a liberal conspiracy among the members of that listserv, a listserv that included one of his own conservative reporters (so how conspiratorial could the listserv be?!). Ezra Klein, the creator of Journolist, explains why he created the listserv here: on his blog for The American Prospect. Most of the members on that list lean center-left, but their participation was not conspiratorial but empirical: they needed a place to discuss their ideas and to access experts who might be less willing to answer questions elsewhere. (The thing is, most of the public probably doesn't even know what a listserv is--and how many there are for every subject and interest.) Sure, ideas were raised that others in the listserv shot down--but Tucker Carlson and his ilk don't reveal the shooting down, the consequences of debate. Of course, right-wingers love conspiracy theories (uh huh, and left-wingers do, too, but for some reason, the left-wing doesn't carry the day, does it? Does anyone with any sense REALLY believe the Bush administration orchestrated 9/11? Oh, but how many on the right believe that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States--and that he's a commie pinko?) To further support their view of the leftist conspiracy of Journolist, radicals claim that liberal pundits such as Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann were on the list. Not so, says Klein. But who's listening?

And that's the point, isn't it: to get people to stop listening, to stop thinking. When the majority of the public believes that journalists cannot be trusted, then the power-hungry win. The liars win.

This trend to conflate propaganda with news is evident in the recent Andrew Breitbart/ Shirley Sherrod episode. And here, the purpose was not only to conflate propaganda and legitimate news but to push the idea of the equivalency of white racism and black racism in this country. The NAACP had called on the Tea Party to repudiate racist elements in its ranks. Now, anyone who has listened to Tea Party participants in interviews and who have watched videos know that there are racists in the party. That's not to say that every person involved in the Tea Party is a racist. A radical group is going to attract un-desirable elements. But wouldn't it be best for the country if a group such as this said, "We're in opposition to the government led by a black man, but we're not against a black man being president. Racist literature, signs, and statements are totally out of character in our movement." But instead of doing that, radicals such as Andrew Breitbart go about trying to prove that white racism can't be so bad because there are black racists, too: the stupid (yes! stupid!) argument of equivalency. It's the childish argument that what I'm doing isn't so bad because others--especially those who claim some kind of moral superiority--are doing it, too. Only in this case, Breitbart chose a woman who was communicating exactly the opposite of what he purported that she was communicating. Here was a woman who had experienced racism of the worst sort--the kind that led to a miscarriage of justice. Yet here she was, telling her audience of how she rose above hate and how she believed that they should all work together to create a society where people of all ethnicities could live in better communities. And her audience demonstrated their understanding of her message with "uh huhs" and "alrights" and "amens" and their sympathy with her feelings and experience, likewise.

Here, again, the purpose is to call into question any sense of fairness and justice on "the other side"--and to use race to do that. The far-right has the media and the government so scared of being accused of unfairness, that they bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of unfairness and thus give credence to lies. Breitbart got what he wanted: a larger audience, a national presence in the media, and more white followers who believe that they are just as discriminated against as blacks in this country--contrary to evidence. Because, guess what, they've been gradually led not to believe in evidence, to conflate propaganda with news.

Without journalists being able to ask hard questions, without people having some trust in the professionalism of journalism, a country's citizens are at the mercy of the powerful. Just look at dictatorships such as Burma, which routinely arrests journalists and passes jail sentences of twenty years on those who speak truth to power. The rodeo clowns win; the man (or woman) in the saddle loses.

More Conflation, Propaganda vs. News, black racism vs. white racism

• "Fox News, the DOJ Pseudo-Scandal, and White Racial Hysteria," Jonathan Chait, at The New Republic
  
  
• And now the back-tracking to find SOMETHING to hang around Shirley Sherrod's neck: "Defining Lynching Down," Adam Serwer, on Jeffrey Lord's claiming that Shirley Sherrod lied when she described Bobby Hall's being beaten to death by Sheriff Screws and his colleagues as a "lynching." Disgusting. Having been called out for lying about Sherrod's hopeful message, the right now is looking for any mud to sling on the woman.

Unreconstructed Lying

When the Shirley Sherrod story broke, I was in the middle of attending freshman orientation with my daughter at a state university in Georgia, and so I came in on what seemed to be at the time the tail-end of the story: a tape of Ms. Sherrod's speaking at an NAACP dinner had been edited to suggest that she was a racist; it had been published on Andrew Breitbart's website; after Breitbart and his ilk created a firestorm, administrative officials panicked and fired Ms. Sherrod without researching the truth. It was finally revealed that the tape had been edited to grossly mislead (and that Brietbart had had it in his possession for several weeks before posting it).

I learned that, at first, Breitbart and other far-right bloggers yelled foul over Ms. Sherrod's words, claiming that here was a prime example of an African-American woman in a position of power (USDA's Georgia state director for rural development) who admitted to failing to help a white farmer. It was a nice story to use to claim the equivalency of black racism and white racism in this country, that there was no foundation for criticizing all those white Tea Party people showing up with racist signs. Only that was a lie. Now Breitbart is claiming that he posted the video not because it reveals Ms. Sherrod's racism (racism which the unedited tape clearly refutes) but because it reveals the racism of the NAACP members listening to Ms. Sherrod and clapping at times in her speech when she is describing her previous attitudes. Only that's a lie, too, now that I have listened to the whole damn tape, to five sections that Breitbart has now posted on his website, probably believing that most people won't take the time to listen to it. And as there are only 8 comments on that site (as of 2:00 p.m. today), I think it's safe to say that most of Breitbart's loyal listeners and readers will not view the entire tape and will accept Breitbart's continued unreconstructed lying.

What Ms. Sherrod does in her speech is put one of her past actions in context. First, she tells the crowd about her father being murdered by a white man and the family never receiving justice. Anyone who knows anything about the African-American experience, especially in the South, will know that it was not unusual for a white man to murder a black man and not suffer any legal consequences. In addition, Ms. Sherrod describes a time when a bunch of white men showed up at her home and burned a cross on the front yard. Her mother--then a widow--was home alone with the baby boy born just weeks after his father's murder--and a couple of other children. The family was in danger, but several neighbors--all African-American men--showed up with their shotguns. They didn't fire a shot, and they allowed the white men to leave, but their show of unity prevented further violence. This background puts everything else into context.

Ms. Sherrod describes how she had wanted to leave the South, with its terrible memories, but that she finally decided to stay to help create change, and so, long before her tenure as a government official with the USDA, she worked for a non-profit to help farmers. But she said that when she "made that commitment [to stay in the South and to create change], [she] was making it to black people, and to black people only...But you know," she went on to say, "God will show you things and he'll put things in your path so that you realize that the struggle is really about poor people." [Here the silence is broken by affirmative responses: "all right, all right."] And that's her preface to the story of when her attitude changed. In the edited tape, these words are missing--Ms. Sherrod's indicating to her listeners that she was to change her mind about helping "her own" alone. The audience did not clap when she said that her first intentions were to help black people alone. There were no "amens" there. So Ms. Sherrod tells the story that most people have heard totally out of context, of how a white farmer came to Ms. Sherrod for help and how when he had spent a great deal of time showing he was superior to her, she wasn't inclined to help him as much as she should have, so she referred him to a white lawyer because she figured he could get help from "his own." When the white farmer came back to her and told her that the lawyer had not helped him, she realized that she had been wrong. Sherrod then helped the white farmer get what he needed, and she goes on to say some really inspiring words:

I've come a long way. I knew that I couldn't live with hate.... I've come to realize that we have to work together. And it's sad that we don't have a room full of whites and blacks here tonight 'cause we have to overcome the divisions that we have. We have to get to the point where, as Toni Morrison says, 'Race exists, but it doesn't matter.' We have to work just as hard. I know it's, you know, that the vision is still here, but our communities are not going to thrive, you know, our children won't have the communities that they need to stay in, to live in and have a good life if we can't figure this out, you all. White people, black people, Hispanic people--we all have to do our part to make our communities a safe place, a healthy place, a good environment.

After viewing this entire tape, it's clear to me that the folks in that room were receptive to Ms. Sherrod's message. They weren't applauding her racism; they were applauding her altruistic ideals to overcome racism and to make the world a better place. As Ms. Sherrod says, the problem is poverty; the problem is the haves and have-nots; the problem is that those in power want to keep power, and they keep that power by dividing us. In posting the edited video and in continuing to spew lies, Andrew Breitbart and others like him are counting on perpetuating those divisions.

[After writing that last sentence, I came across this video of Anderson Cooper's interview with Ms. Sherrod. Breitbart himself might not be racist, but he is using racism to make a political point (albeit, unfairly, and with lies), and he certainly doesn't care one iota about who gets hurt. His cynical manipulations, however, are no better than racism. And he needs to be called out on this!]

More Here:

• "Some Find Irony in Shirley Sherrod's USDA Incident," by Krissah Thompson, Washington Post, 23 July 2010.
  
  
• "Amen Canard," by William Saletan, Slate, 23 July 2010.

From the Kitchen to the Oval Office

Yesterday's Washington Post has an article about Eugene Allen, an 89-year-old black man who served in the White House for over thirty years, from 1952-1986. He started out washing dishes and shining silverware at $2,400 a year and was promoted over the years to butler and, in 1980, to maitre d'. The reporter interviewed Allen and his wife, Helene, for their observations on the presidential inhabitants of the White House. The article also briefly describes the attitudes toward African-Americans in the White House, including a story of President John Kennedy's distress when Sammy Davis, Jr., who, invited with 800 other blacks to attend a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, showed up with his white wife, May Britt:

Louis Martin, a Democratic operative who helped plan the function, had placed the names of entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. and his wife, May Britt, on the guest list. The White House scratched it off and Martin would put it back on. According to Martin, Kennedy was aghast when he saw the black and white couple stroll into the White House. His face reddened and he instructed photographers that no pictures of the interracial couple would be taken.

This past week, Eugene Allen cast his vote for Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States.

For the full story, go to: Wil Haygood's "A Butler Well Served by this Election," Washington Post, Friday, November 7, 2008; Page A01. (Hat tip to Scientific's Blog at Talking Points Memo Cafe)

How far we've come in my lifetime: from blacks washing dishes in the kitchen of the White House to a black man in the Oval Office. But we still have quite a ways to go to achieve true equality in this country. The overt reactions of some white people to this election remind us of the racism that remains; our more subtly-expressed attitudes in conversation and everyday choices remind us that we fall short of social equality.

Has My Vote Been Counted?

Georgia went for John McCain. No surprise there except for what I just read online at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

With nearly 90 percent of the state’s precincts reporting, McCain had a huge lead: 56 percent to 44 percent for Obama and less than 1 percent for Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, the former Georgia congressman. But those figures included fewer results from metro Atlanta and apparently none of the ballots cast in metro Atlanta during massive early and advance voting. [my emphasis] More than 600,000 ballots cast before Tuesday in Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett were to be counted after the live Tuesday votes.

The rest of the article can be found at: "Georgia Voters Apparently Came Through for McCain," by Aaron Gould Sheinin, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, and updated Nov. 5) And, of course, the majority of those early voters were Obama supporters.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editors asked their readers to reply to the question: What Does This Moment Mean to You? Many of the comments would be unbelievable if we hadn't heard this kind of poison before: the claims that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a socialist, a dictator, a terrorist, an anti-Christ, etc. And other comments which are quite racist. The majority of Georgia's voters went for McCain, all right, but evidently some of those voters weren't moved by McCain's gracious concession speech.

Update: Jim Galloway, in his Political Insider column, describes how the Atlanta metro-area votes affect the final results of the Chambliss/Martin race. As those votes are counted, Saxby Chambliss's lead over Democratic challenger Jim Martin "has been nearly cut in half," at 187,513 ballots, with Chambliss's early lead of 55% down to 51.2%. So Jim Martin came much closer in the race than earlier reports suggested.

New Update, 2:30 a.m. : Chambliss's lead has slipped again as those votes continue to be counted:

2:20 a.m.: Republican Saxby Chambliss now clings to a 50.4 percent lead in the U.S. Senate race, a cushion of only 144,410 votes. A handful of missing boxes in both Carroll and DeKalb counties may give us the answer of whether we have a Dec. 2 runoff. Democrat Jim Martin is at 46.2 percent. (from Jim Galloway's column Political Insider, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Wednesday, Nov.5, 2:27 p.m.)

Small-Town Values?

Recently, political campaigners have been extolling the virtues of small town America. I grew up in rural America; I've lived in small-town America. And take it from one with wide experience, small-town America has no corner on virtue. Needing emotional support, one of my daughter's friends e-mailed my daughter last week. This friend of my daughter's lives in small-town Texas, the small town where we lived before moving to the big city four states to the east. She constantly feels as if her values are under attack.

My daughter's friend attends a Presbyterian church, is the daughter of a church youth leader, and has been very active in youth work camps. She is appalled by the narrow-mindedness of her classmates; the presidential campaign seems to be exacerbating some of these attitudes. One day in a history class, several students were loudly discussing the election. "Hey," said one guy, "someone ought to organize big chicken fries during voting hours so black people won't come out and vote." Everyone laughed.

Another day, several teenagers piled into a car to drive to a local restaurant for lunch. My daughter's friend was part of the group. As everyone piled in, some sitting in other kids' laps, the driver of the car exclaimed: "Hey, if we were Mexicans, we would feel right at home crowded up like this!"

My daughter's friend hates the racial attitudes these statements illustrate, and she feels lonely because she sees around her a majority of people who own those racial attitudes. And while racism is not confined to small towns, it often is found in such places where minorities are few and thus unknown and misunderstood--or hated because their difference threatens the dominant culture, admits change to that culture.

When my daughter attended the same school as her friend in Texas, she would often come home upset with something that a teacher had said in class. Her English teacher, for instance, openly proselytized far-right conservative views. Once she spent most of class time criticizing the "evil liberal media" and praising the Bush administration. She told her students that Democrats were "all right" if they weren't liberal. She lashed out at gays and gay marriage, called Cindy Sheehan "crazy," and by implication suggested to her students that anyone who criticized the government--particularly the Bush administration--was either crazy or unpatriotic.

My daughter looked around the classroom and saw that all of the class was either agreeing with the teacher or pretending to agree. No one felt free to offer another view.

We should be careful about extolling the virtues of small-town values. Just what are those values? Are we using coded language for "white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant"? Or are we extolling values of community, of people caring for people even when they differ politically, racially, religiously, ethnically? Are we extolling the values of hard work, of recompense for that work? The values of community support?

In his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, Barack Obama extolled those latter values:

For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga.

A belief that we are connected as one people. If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandmother. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It's that fundamental belief — I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper — that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family. "E pluribus unum." Out of many, one.

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America — there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

That's the America I believe in. It's the America my daughter and her friend want to believe in. It is NOT small-town America. It's any-town America where people continue to believe in real freedom.