W.E.B.
DuBois
The
Souls of Black Folk
On
yet another level, we must question where race relations stand in America
in the late 1990s. To be sure, the days of legal segregation are a thing
of the past. But if America is not segregated by law, then is it not quite
possible that we in America are segregated by heart? Is the ideal of integration,
so prominent in the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights
leaders during the 1960s also a thing of the past? In 1997, President Bill
Clinton summed this sentiment up best on the 40th anniversary
of the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, when
he said: “Today children of every race walk through the same door, but
then they often walk down different halls. Not only in this school, but
across America, they sit in different classrooms, they eat at different
tables. They even sit in different parts of the bleachers at the football
game. Far too many communities are all white, all black, all Latino, all
Asian¼Segregation
is no longer the law, but too often it is the rule.”
The
view one thus gets of race relations in America and the place of African
Americans within the current political framework is opaque at best. Progress
has occurred; but if there has been progress over the course of the twentieth
century, it has been uneven, occurring in fits and starts. In this current
political climate, where race-based affirmative action policies in employment
and education have been rolled back or done away with altogether, where
Congressional districts drawn to increase minority representation in our
national government have been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court, and where black unemployment is still twice the national average
in a period of unprecedented economic expansion but is not discussed by
our elected leaders, it behooves us to rededicate and commit ourselves
to the meaning of equality in all of its various shades. Equality of opportunity
is an honorable goal; but lucidity demands that we also pay keen attention
to outcomes, consequences, and results. For, equal opportunity - and democracy,
for that matter - means nothing if we remain two nations, black and white,
separate, hostile, and for the most part unequal.
On
the precipice of the twenty first century, perhaps DuBois’ question of
1903 - “how does it feel to be a problem?” - has been superseded by Rodney
King’s of 1992, implored with a surprising eloquence through the flames
that engulfed L.A.: “please, can’t we all just get along?” At the very
least, these two questions frame the twentieth century - they are its bookends.
And we Americans - all Americans - must share collectively how best “getting
along” might be attained if we are to prevent the problem of the color-line
from persisting and tearing asunder the fabric of the country.
This
volume, while not necessarily providing answers to these questions, seeks
to bring about at the very least a lucidity of the mind, and a clearness
of thought, such that the questions broached above can be addressed in
a reasonable manner. Before we know where to proceed in American politics,
we need to know what stands immediately before us. In other words, a comprehensive
look at the current state of American politics and the place of African
Americans within it. This topic is not without interest to any gentle reader
who, as DuBois put it, is “seeking the grain of truth hidden here.”
What
follows is an overview of the place of African Americans within American
political life on several levels. First we look at the place of race and
racism in American political culture. Next we turn to a brief historical
survey of the way race has impacted American political development and
the struggle African Americans have undergone for inclusion into the system.
Finally, we close with thoughts on the ideal of “colorblindness” in a society
that is, for all intents and purposes, overly color-conscious.
Race,
Racism, and American Political Culture
America
since its inception has been characterized by most political theorists
as the quintessential “liberal” society. Though not a unified body of thought,
liberalism can be defined as a set of social and political beliefs, values
and attitudes which assumes the universal and equal application of the
law and existence of basic human rights superior to those of state and
community. Any liberal society therefore embodies a specific set of principles
or values, albeit in varying levels: liberty, equality, democracy, individualism,
and constitutionalism or rule of law. However, this characterization immediately
raises a red flag when we consider the plight of African Americans and
the sordid history of slavery and subsequent discrimination in the United
States. The question, put simply, is this: how can there be a history of
slavery, discrimination, and persistent racism in a society that calls
itself “liberal” and which embodies all of the principles listed above?
Is it possible to resolve the tenets of a liberal society with the dogged
tenacity of racism in America, both of which were already present at the
nation’s origin?
We
should be clear that the question of racism in American society at this
level is a problem of American political culture - that set of beliefs
and values to which the larger society aspires if not wholeheartedly subscribes.
When race and racism in American are approached in this manner, two avenues
of inquiry, two ways of looking at the problem, are opened to us. Borrowing
from Jennifer Hochschild’s The New American Dilemma: Liberal Democracy
and Social Segregation, we may call these avenues of inquiry the Anomaly
Thesis and the Symbiosis Thesis.
The
Anomaly Thesis.When
asked to reconcile racism with American political culture, our first response
might be to say that the two are incompatible. In other words, racism is
anomalous to the principles of American liberal democracy, that in essence
it never was or never should be part of our liberal American Creed. We
call this the Anomaly Thesis. It holds that racism is akin to weeds in
a garden, and it is only through eradicating this pesky entity that the
garden of American democracy can grow to its full potential.Institutionalized
racism found in the United States for the better part of its history -
a racism that implored blacks to respond to the question: "How does it
feel to be a problem?" - is not part of American liberalism because the
principles of liberty, equality, and democracy cannot be squared with it.
The
Anomaly Thesis has its origins in Enlightenment thought that deeply influenced
Americans and Europeans during the eighteenth century. In our context,
it finds its clearest articulation in the principles set forth by Thomas
Jefferson in The Declaration of Independence:
We
hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among
these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Enlightenment
thinkers such as John Locke asserted that human beings lived in a mythical
state of nature before the formation of society and government whereby
a state of perfect freedom and equality existed. In Two Treatises of
Government, Locke argued that individuals were reasonable creatures
capable of improving their social existence. In other words, human nature
was malleable because individuals could alter their circumstances. Further,
individuals were self-interested, concerned with their own well-being.
Human beings formed a contract amongst themselves in order to protect in
society what they had been endowed with by their Creator in the state of
nature: life, liberty, and property. The freedom and equality found in
the state of nature was not only approximated but also protected in political
or civil society.
Locke
and other Enlightenment theorists deeply influenced the men of the Revolutionary
Era, most notably Jefferson himself. Yet, these men were also troubled
by the apparent contradictions between the belief that all were given the
gift of reason and what Jean Jacques Rousseau called “perfectibility,”
on the one hand, and the practice of chattel slavery that denied the natural
equality of all persons on the other. How could one stand for the unalienable
rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, only to turn around
and deny slaves the opportunity for mental and moral improvement?
In
fact, no one manifested more clearly the contradiction between the ideals
of the Declaration of Independence and the ugly realities of slavery than
Thomas Jefferson himself. Jefferson certainly abhorred slavery as a matter
of principle, so much so that strong language of his on the issue was removed
from an earlier draft of the Declaration by proslavery southerners for
fear that it went too far. Jefferson wrote that King George was waging
“cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights
of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended
him, captivating and carrying them into slavery¼[H]e
is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase
that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on
whom he also obtruded them.” Even though the rhetoric of the Revolutionary
Era used the language of “slavery” to describe the treatment of the colonists
by the English crown, this language could not be carried so far as to call
into question completely the actual practice of chattel slavery - at least
not by the large landowners of the South who had a vested interest in overthrowing
the British monarchy on the one hand, but also maintaining slavery on the
other.
In
Notes
on the State of Virginia, written in the decade after the Declaration
of
Independence, Jefferson was still afflicted with moral ambivalence over
slavery when he wrote concerning its continued practice, “Indeed, I tremble
for my country when I reflect that God is just.” However, the same Jefferson
apparently resolved the dilemma when he concluded in the same work:
I
advance it as therefore as a suspicion only, that blacks, whether originally
a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior
to whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience
to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the
same species, may possess different qualifications¼This
unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful
obstacle to the emancipation of these people.
At
the very least, this explains how the writer of the Declaration of Independence,
the ardent defender of the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, could keep nearly two hundred slaves at Monticello
until his death on July 4, 1826 - 50 years to the day he penned the words
of the Declaration of Independence.
At
any rate, one can say that with Jefferson the Anomaly Thesis - the contradiction
between racism and American political culture - made its appearance for
the first time in full force. Later writers also touched upon the contradictions
between the liberal democratic values of American society and the persistence
of slavery/racism. In the 1830s, the French political philosopher Alexis
de Tocqueville traveled across the United States and observed that the
“basic fact” of American life was its “equality of conditions.” Egalitarianism
defined American political culture for Tocqueville. However, the eye of
a visitor is always more perceptive than that of one who lives daily in
his environs, and in the 1830s - a full generation before the Civil War
- Tocqueville saw clearly what was on the horizon for America, and what
the men and women down the road would experience to their horror:
The
most formidable of all ills that threaten the future of the Union arises
from the presence of a black population upon its territory. The whites
and blacks are placed in the situation of two foreign communities. These
two races are fastened to each other without intermingling; and they are
unable to separate entirely or to combine.
Going
further still, Tocqueville predicted conditions of segregation for blacks
in the United States once slavery ended. “If I were called upon to predict
the future,” he began, “I should say that the abolition of slavery will,
in the common course of things, increase the repugnance of the white population
for the blacks. The danger of a conflict between the white and the black
inhabitants perpetually haunts the imagination of the Americans, like
a painful dream” (emphasis added). Part of this assessment rested on
what he saw in those parts of the country where slavery had been abolished;
concerning conditions of blacks in the antebellum North, Tocqueville asserted
that, “The prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that
have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere
is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known¼Thus
the Negro is free, but he can share neither the rights, nor the pleasures,
nor the labor, nor the afflictions, nor the tomb of him whose equal he
has been declared to be; and he cannot meet him upon fair terms in life
or death.”
Tocqueville
brought to light, not only for Americans of his generation, but for succeeding
generations of Americans, the character of this Anomaly Thesis we have
attempted to draw out here. Tocqueville indicated forcefully that there
is a fundamental break between the ideals, principles, and values of American
democracy and its practices. Yet, perhaps nowhere was this sentiment articulated
more powerfully than on July 4, 1852 in Rochester, New York, by Frederick
Douglass to an all white audience. In the decade before the Civil War,
when the slavery issue was tearing both the political party system and
the country apart, Douglass admonished his audience:
“Americans!
Your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly
inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization,
and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation,
as embodied in the two great political parties, is solemnly pledged to
support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen¼You
discourse eloquently on the dignity og labor; yet, you sustain a system
which, in its very essence, casts a stigma upon labor¼you
notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred) all men whose skins are not
colored like your own. You declare before the world¼that
you “hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal”¼and
yet, you hold securely in bondage¼a
seventh part of the inhabitants of your country.”
Much
the way Martin Luther King would do over a century later, Douglass called
upon Americans to live up to the principles they cherished by articulating
the differences between those principles and the practices at the time.
The
Symbiosis Thesis. A
second response to the problem of racism in American political culture
is to say that racism is every bit an ingredient of American liberalism
as those lofty ideals of the American Creed. Racism is not only part of
the American Creed, it is also part of the larger thought of the Enlightenment
from which the American Creed was born. For, the notion of universal equality
that lay at the foundation of Enlightenment political thought actually
rested on the idea that innate differences existed between races and cultures.
In short, universal equality existed only among those of a certain
race or stock of people, not between
those of a certain race or
stock of people. Thus, the Symbiosis Thesis asserts that the tenets of
a liberal society can only be maintained if there is one group or class
which maintains its superiority over another group or class.
In
particular, the Symbiosis Thesis in America has its origins in a long line
of thought traced back to a mythical past and to a mythical people, the
Anglo-Saxons. In Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of AmericanRacial
Anglo-Saxonism, Reginald Horseman traces the history of this thinking
from its beginnings in sixteenth century England to its culmination in
United States in the mid to late nineteenth century. Horseman explains
that the Englishman who settled in America at the beginning of the seventeenth
century brought with them “a clearly delineated religious myth of a pure
English Anglo-Saxon Church, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
they shared with their fellow Englishmen an elaborately developed secular
myth of the free nature of Anglo-Saxon political institutions.” Anglo-Saxon
England before the Norman Conquests a millennium earlier had enjoyed freedoms
embedded in the political institutions of the time unknown to date. Originally,
defenders of Anglo-Saxonism glorified the character of the political institutions
erected before the 8th
and 9th
centuries. Over time, however, the emphasis on political institutions soon
turned to an emphasis on the innate quality of race, where only those of
certain (Anglo-Saxon) bloodline carried with them the capacity to sustain
free and democratic political institutions. Horseman’s point is that colonial
thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries came to focus more
on the founders and protectors of free political institutions (i.e., those
of Anglo-Saxon descent) than on the actual political institutions themselves.
In other words, innate qualities had become more important than nurturing
a good and virtuous citizenry.
Not
surprisingly, then, the men of the Revolutionary Era were influenced by
the rhetoric of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority - perhaps just as influenced
by this line of thinking as by the rhetoric of universal equality. And
here we have to return to Thomas Jefferson once again, for Jefferson stands
at the center of Anglo-Saxon thought in America as well. A month after
writing the Declaration, Jefferson asked: “Has not every restitution of
the antient [sic] Saxon laws had happy effects? Is it not better now that
we return at once into that happy system of our ancestors, the wisest and
most perfect ever devised by the wit of man, as it stood before the 8th
century?” Jefferson’s interest in Anglo-Saxon England was to stay with
him throughout his life: in the Revolutionary period he wrote a simplified
grammar of the language in the hope of making it more accessible to all
Americans; later, he included Anglo-Saxon as part of the curriculum at
the University of Virginia; and a year before his death, he commented that
the study of Anglo-Saxon “is a hobby which too often runs away with me.”
It
is important here to understand the nature of the influence that Anglo-Saxonism
had on the men of the Revolutionary Era, Jefferson included. As resentment
grew among the elite in the colonies over British policies, the argument
was made that the “People of the Colonies” were no longer English but a
“distinct People,” a people charged in fact with bringing about the divine
mission of Anglo-Saxonism - a Protestant millennium designed to overcome
Papist tyranny. The “golden age of Anglo-Saxon purity and freedom” (in
Edmund Morgan’s words) was upon the men of the Revolutionary Era; they
must act, for they had a distinct aptness for liberty that was biologically
definitive of their race. Indeed, God had ordained it. In 1765, John Adams
remarked that “the settlement of America [is} the opening of a grand scene
and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation
of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”
In
other words, the Americans had - to borrow a phrase from Gordon Wood -
become “more English than the English.” Furthermore, that the “golden age”
was upon the men of this generation is made clear in Jefferson’s pamphlet
“A Summary View of the rights of British Americans,” written in 1774, where
Jefferson argued the “Saxon ancestors” of the colonists gave them the right
to free government and trade. However, nowhere is the notion of the “Chosen
People” made more clear than in Tom Paine’s “Common Sense,” written two
years later. Paine argued that those in America, and not the British, were
the proud heirs of the Constitutional republics of the Israelites of the
Old Testament. The Revolution was the crowning achievement for the Chosen
Ones: “The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth,” Paine argued.
“Tis not the affair of a city, a county, a province, or a kingdom; but
of a continent.” The Revolution marked the beginningof
a new civilization and the apex of world history. For Paine, as for Adams
and Jefferson, a new figure had appeared on the stage of history: In Hector
St. John Crevecoeur’s phrase, this “new man, the American” was to be a
beacon of freedom for the rest of the world.
Yet,
at the same time this “new man” was of a certain breed or stock, and it
is no coincidence that the Anglo-Saxon centered view of a civilized nation
left out peoples of darker skins (or women for that matter). Given this
background, it no longer strikes us as a coincidence that Jefferson could
write in his Notes on the Sate of Virginia that “This unfortunate
difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to
the emancipation of these people.” For, Jefferson, like many men of the
Revolutionary Era, at once held to the principle of the unalienable rights
of all and the belief that only a certain few were destined to enjoy the
fruits of these rights - to be, in other words, part of the Chosen.
Thus,
the belief that Americans were the distinguished descendants of the Anglo-Saxons
grew in the period after the Revolution. This argument was used increasingly
by the defenders of slavery in the South in the antebellum period as the
abolitionist movement became more visible and influential. Southern thinkers
in the antebellum period actually made the case that there was in fact
a "nurturing" role played by slavery: Thinkers such as John C. Calhoun
and George Fitzhugh made passionate if not completely impertinent justifications
for slavery’s existence. Calhoun argued on the floor of the Senate in 1837
that slavery “is, instead of an evil, a good - a positive good.” He further
reasoned that slavery had done much to daily comfort the Negro: “In so
few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little
exacted from him, or¼more
kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age.” Slaves are,
in other words, treated better in slavery than the poorest of the poor
are treated in freedom in the North and in Europe. Calhoun concluded with
arrogance: “I fearlessly assert that the existing relation between the
two races in the South¼forms
the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable
political institutions (emphasis added).
Calhoun
exemplified and drew out in detail white supremacist thinking in the antebellum
period in several ways. First, rather than toiling in misery, slaves were
actually treated well - much better than free laborers in the North. In
other words, slaves were content in slavery, and any effort to undermine
that would disrupt the natural order of things. Second, anystable
society such as the South, with its “free and stable political institutions,”
was founded upon “the peculiar institution” of slavery, and at least for
Calhoun and other defenders of slavery there has always existed in history
“a wealthy and civilized community in which one portion did not live on
the labor of another; and¼the
form in which slavery exists in the South is not but one modification of
this universal condition.” Such reasoning prompted Richard Hofstadter to
call Calhoun “the Marx of the Master Class.” On the eve of the Civil War,
George Fitzhugh would add a third component to white supremacist thinking
as it related to American democracy by arguing in Cannibals All! Or,
Slaves Without Masters that slavery actually fit seamlessly within
the notion of a Christian ethic. Fitzhugh explained that
the
interests of all the members of a natural family, slaves included, are
identical. Selfishness finds no place, because nature, common feelings
and self-interest dictate to all that it is their true interest “to love
their neighbor as themselves,” and “to do as they would be done by,” -
at least within the precincts of the family. To throw off into the world
wife, children, and slaves, would injure, not benefit them¼Christian
morality is neither difficult nor unnatural where dependent, family, and
slave relations exist, and Christian morality was preached and only intended
for such.
For
Fitzhugh, slavery was an integral part of the Golden Rule of Christianity.
The
point here is that white supremacist thinking, and the racism it engendered,
in the period leading up to the Civil War was a direct outgrowth of a line
of thought that had its origins in Anglo-Saxonism during the colonial period,
such that by the middle decades of the nineteenth century the case could
be made (however erroneously) that: 1) blacks were happy and treated well
under slavery, 2) that a sound political order rested on the belief that
one race of people necessarily existed in servitude at the leisure of a
dominant class, and 3) that slavery was “naturally” part of “Christian
morality.” This defines the Symbiosis Thesis at its core, and exposes to
a full viewing the dark side of our American political culture. We pointed
out earlier that Frederick Douglass brought to light the contradictions
between slavery and the ideals embedded in the Declaration on the eve of
the Civil War. Several decades before, David Walker, in his Appeal To
the Colored Citizens of the World, indicated the nature and extent
to which racism was embedded in American political culture when he fumed:
The
Christians, and enlightened of Europe, and some of Asia, seeing the ignorance
and consequent degradation of our fathers, instead of trying to enlighten
them, by teaching them that religion and light with which God had blessed
them, they have plunged them into wretchedness, and to add to their miseries,
deep down into which they have plunged them tell them, that they are an
inferior
and distinct race of beings¼For
coloured people to acquire learning in this country, makes tyrants quake
and tremble on their sandy foundation. Why, what is the matter? Why, they
know their infernal deeds will be made known to the world¼The
bare name of educating the coloured people, scares our cruel oppressors
almost to death.
To
both Douglass and Walker, American political culture in all of its ambiguities,
contradictions and inconsistencies was nonetheless crystal clear. And throughout
its history America has struggled with the Janus-faced nature of that political
culture: on the one side, attempting to live up to the self-professed ideals
of equality and liberty for all; on the other, struggling to overcome the
demons of white supremacy and what DuBois called the “psychological wage
of whiteness” so deeply embedded in the minds of many Americans. Forever
two warring ideals in one nation.
Institutionalization
of Race: The Constitution and American Political Development
From
the moment a slave ship reached North American borders in 1619 with approximately
two dozen indentured servants from the West coast of Africa, race became
a significant part of the landscape of American politics. By the mid seventeenth
century, hereditary life-time African slavery was instituted through several
of the colonies; by the end of the century most of colonial America had
hereditary life-time African slavery, replacing the earlier practice of
bond servitude which held individuals of both African and European descent
in forced labor for a certain amount of time. Gary Nash has demonstrated
that the fight for independence during the Revolutionary period and the
democratizing forces unleashed then led many to question the entire practice
of slavery. However, with the drafting of the Constitution in 1787, race
was institutionalized and seared into the fabric of the new nation. And
with it the indubitable problem of the color line.
The
Constitution is curious for the way it addresses the issue of race - or
perhaps more accurately, the way it does not address the issue of race.
On the one hand, the Framers sought to fashion a series of compromises
on the issue of slavery; on the other, these compromises aspired to defer
the problems slavery might create between North and South into the future.
The word “slavery” does not appear in the original document, and would
not appear until 1865 with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment at
the end of the Civil War. To be sure, the absence of the term lent more
ambiguity to the issue, for both proponents and opponents of slavery argued
that the Constitution firmly supported their position. The problem here,
of course, is that both sides were correct to an extent. On one side, the
system of slavery was protected, as we shall see; on the other, nowhere
in the document does it expressly state that slavery is constitutionally
the law of the land. The period of American political development from
the drafting of the Constitution to the Civil War is testament to this
legacy of ambiguity, compromise and deferment: the Fugitive Slave Laws
of 1793; the Missouri Compromise of 1820; the Compromise of 1850; the Kansas-Nebraska
Act of 1854; and even the Dred Scott case of 1857 are all attempts by the
federal government to appease each side on the question of slavery - all
of which really had the effect of appeasing no one. After the Civil War
and into the present, race has played a major factor - if not the most
important factor - in the political development of the nation.
Realizing
that drafting a new Constitution would be impossible if compromise over
slavery was not crafted, the Framers went to work to appease both Northern
and Southern delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia
in the Spring and Summer of 1787. Article I, Section 2 states that “Representatives
and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may
be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which
shall be determined by adding the whole Number of free Persons, including
those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed,
three fifths of all other Persons.” Known as the Three Fifths Compromise,
this provision allowed states and the federal government to count every
five slaves as three persons for taxation and representation purposes.
The reason is clear: 90% of all blacks lived in the South in 1790, the
year of the first census. Blacks made up 30% of the population of the 6
“Southern” states - North and South Carolina, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia,
and Georgia. If the slave population was not counted at all, the South
would only receive 41% of the original 65 seats apportioned in the House
of Representatives; if slaves were to be counted as “whole” persons for
representational purposes, the South would receive roughly 50% of the seats
in the House. Thus, the Three Fifths Compromise gave the South 47% of the
seats, a compromise both Northern and Southern Framers could live with.
Article
I Section 9 of the Constitution contains another compromise set forth by
the Framers. It states that “The Migration or Importation of such Persons
as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not
be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred
and eight , but a Tax or dutymay
be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”
This clause referred to the African slave trade, and it banned Congress
from even touching the issue through statute for twenty years after the
Constitution was drafted. Importation of new slaves from the West African
coast caused heated debate between each side of the slavery issue. However,
by 1807 Congress had passed a law banning the further importation of slaves,
though some 250,000 were still imported after its passage.
Article
IV of the Constitution contains a compromise over slavery that constitutional
scholars have argued is implicitly contradictory to itself. Section 2 of
Article IV reads: “The Citizens of Each State shall be entitled to all
Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” However,
it continues: “No Person held to Service or Labour in One State, under
the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law
or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour; but shall
be delivered up on Claim of the Party whom Such Service or Labour may be
due.” Fugitive slaves seeking freedom in Northern states could make the
claim that, as a resident of that state, they were entitled to the rights
that any other resident were entitled to. On the other hand, Southern slaveholders
could make the case that the “Fugitive Slave Clause” compelled Northern
states to return fugitive slaves to their rightful owners. The ostensible
contradiction between these two clauses in the Constitution formed the
basis of the famous Dred Scott v. Sanford case of 1857.
The
legacy of the Constitution was such that race became woven into the fabric
of the new nation at the outset. Writing two hundred years later to commemorate
the bicentennial anniversary of the Constitution, Justice Thurgood Marshall
reflected on race and the Constitution and how the Founders dealt with
the issue, but also what that meant for America in 1987. "For a sense of
the evolving nature of the Constitution," stated Marshall, “we need look
no further than the first three words of the document's preamble: 'We the
People'. When the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787, they did not
have in mind the majority of America's citizen.” Marshall pointed out that
the Framers' words did not coincide with their deeds, and that this was
intentional. Through a series of compromises, Southern and Northern elites
were able to accede to one another on significant issues just as long as
they each got what they wanted. For the South, the continuance of the slave
trade and the 3/5 clause which gave the South more representation in the
House of Representatives were the main issues. The North wanted a a more
powerful central government in order to regulate commerce - in Alexander
Hamilton's words, a federal government that had "energy." Marshall explained
that "the economic interests of the regions coalesced: New Englanders engaged
in the 'carrying trade' would profit from transporting slaves from Africa
as well as goods produced in America by slave labor. The perpetuation of
slavery ensured the primary source of wealth in the Southern states."
Soon
after the ratification of the Constitution, Congress dealt with a growing
problem Southern planters were facing- runaway slaves. Thus, in 1793 they
sought to strengthen the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution by passing
the Fugitive Slave Act, which now required the Federal government to assist
in returning runaway slaves. Clearly this fortified the South’s position
on the issue of slavery, but more importantly it signaled the federal government’s
willingness to intervene on behalf of the slaveholding South.
Thomas
Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana from the French in 1803 immediately doubled
the size of the country. However, with new territories opening up, a new
question arose: how to regulate slavery in these territories while they
await statehood? The only precedent in this matter was the Northwest Ordinance
of 1787, written by the old Congress under the Articles of Confederation,
which applied to the territory north of the Ohio River. One of the more
significant provisions of the Ordinance read: “There shall be neither slavery
nor involuntary servitude in the territory, otherwise than in the punishment
of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” In the wake
of the Louisiana Purchase, states were admitted both in the North and the
South. However, in 1820 Congress once again stepped in to try to fashion
a compromise between the proponents and opponents of slavery by forging
the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise set up a boundary line
to govern whether newly admitted states would enter as free or slave -
to the North of the line only free states were to be admitted, to the South
of the line only slave states were to be admitted. The Missouri Compromise
once again only deferred the problem of slavery for a few decades as an
imbalance in power between North and South became more evident.
The
issue of slavery in the territories became more pressing with the commencement
of the Mexican-American War in 1846. Immediately Pennsylvania Democratic
Congressmen David Wilmot introduced legislation (known as the Wilmot Proviso)
designed to ban slavery in any territories the war might produce. Southerners
feared passage of the Proviso would permanently tilt the balance of power
between slave and free states. When California applied for admission as
a free state in 1849, talk of secession first began to surface. In 1850,
Henry Clay introduced a complex Compromise to the situation which provided
for: admission of California as a free state; the organization of other
territories acquired in the War (New Mexico and Arizona) without reference
to slavery; the abolition of the slave trade (not slavery) in the District
of Columbia; and the toughening of the Fugitive Slave Laws.
Of
all the provisions of the Compromise of 1850, the last one mentioned proved
the most troublesome. The law created federal commissioners who had exclusive
right to decide fugitive cases. Yet, the federal commissioners had to accept
claims of slave holders from state courts in slave states as “unimpeachable
evidence.” Marshalls were then appointed to recover runaway slaves; yet,
these marshalls received twice as much money for returning fugitive slaves
than for finding on behalf of the black person. Further, fugitives could
not testify in their own cause. In many instances, blacks who had enjoyed
freedom in the North were dragged into slavery in the South for no justifiable
reason. The Compromise of 1850 thus placed the federal government squarely
on the side of the slave states in this rising conflict.
The
next important development over slavery came in 1854, when Stephen Douglas
drafted the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Act provided for the formation of
territorial governments in Kansas and Nebraska, stipulating that each could
decide the issue of slavery for themselves. This element of the argument
for “popular sovereignty” essentially repealed the line drawn by the Missouri
Compromise of 1820. Northern opposition intensified as the country headed
for a showdown on the issue of slavery. Three short years later, Roger
Taney delivered his decision in the Dred Scott case (1857), where
he argued that slaves were not citizens and therefore had no recourse in
the American judicial system. Taney further reasoned that the federal government
had no authority to regulate slavery in the territories, and he intimated
that states could not do away with slavery either, for doing so would violate
property rights of individuals. With the election of Abraham Lincoln in
the next Presidential election, the country was torn apart by the issue
of slavery when Southern states began to secede.
In
the wake of the Civil War, the federal government moved vigorously to defend
the rights of free blacks. The passage of the 13th
(1865), 14th
(1868), and 15th
(1870) Amendments(respectively)
banned slavery, gave blacks the rights of citizenship and equal protection
of the laws, and forbade the right to vote on the basis of race, color,
or previous condition of servitude. Yet, with the Presidential election
of 1876 and the Tilden-Hayes Compromise, Reconstruction came to a formal
end, thus bringing what Southerners termed “Redemption” and the dark period
in American history known as Jim Crow - legal segregation.
Southern
states immediately set out to deny blacks their Constitutional rights on
two fronts. On the one hand, they took away political rights such as voting
by initiating a series of restrictions on voting that made it impossible
for blacks to participate in the electoral process. Poll taxes were introduced,
designed to deny poor blacks (and poor whites to an extent) the franchise.
Grandfather clauses were put in place, which made it legal to vote only
if one’s grandfather could vote. Clearly few if any freed slaves fell into
this category. Literacy tests and later “understanding clauses” were instituted,
both of which challenged the educational level of blacks. All of these
restrictions chased blacks out of the electorate, such that by the end
of the nineteenth century only 1-2% of all blacks in the South could vote.
On
the other hand, Southern states took away the legal rights of blacks by
instituting Jim Crow laws - laws designed to separate the races in all
public spaces. Separate bathrooms, water fountains, cars on trains, accommodations
in restaurants, theaters, movie houses, and hotels - all were put in place
so that the two worlds of black and white in the South - once intertwined
so intimately under the “peculiar institution” of slavery - would forever
remain separate from one another.
The
Supreme Court verified the legality of segregation in the infamous Plessy
v. Ferguson case of 1896. The Court ruled that segregation on public
spaces such as trains was constitutional because “separate but equal” did
not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th
Amendment. The Court reasoned that political equality could be attained
through statutory law, but social equality or a “commingling of the races”
was something the law had no place in. In his lone dissent, Justice John
Marshall Harlan rebuked this argument, saying that “our Constitution is
color-blind.”
The
opening decades of the 20th
century saw repression in the South reach new heights. Lynchings increased
tremendously during this time, as the federal government was reluctant
to get involved on matters of civil rights. In the 1910s, blacks began
moving to Northern urban centers in considerable numbers, a “migration”
that lasted through the 1960s. Several factors facilitated the move: Southern
white supremacist repression, the mechanization of the Southern agricultural
economy that kicked blacks off the farms, and the brutal effects of the
Great Depression. As blacks streamed northward into cities such as Newark,
New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., they became
part of a burgeoning Democratic coalition that controlled these urban center.
However, they were faced with de facto segregation in housing and schooling.
In the 1930s and 1940s, white Democratic leaders were reluctant to fully
champion the cause for blacks, even though they had become a significant
electoral base in the North. Franklin Roosevelt refused to sign anti-lynching
legislation in this period. The reason was clear: the odd and unstable
New Deal coalition he constructed consisted of Southern whites who favored
segregation, Northern blacks who opposed it, and white ethnics (Southern
European Catholics and East European Jews) also residing in the North who
were not wholly sympathetic to the cause of blacks. As long as civil rights
stayed on the back burner, this coalition could hold. But only if civil
rights remained in the shadows.
Harry
Truman took the positive step of desegregating the military in 1947. Immediately
this sent shock waves through the white South, thus generating opposition
to Truman in the Presidential election of 1948 in the form of the Southern
Dixiecrats. Truman survived the election, but it signaled the beginning
of the end of the Democratic coalition, and end that would be finalized
in the mid to late 1960s.
Through
the 1950s, the federal government took strides for the cause of civil rights,
most notably in the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education
(1954)
which was argued by Thurgood Marshall and the Legal Defense Fund of the
NAACP. The Court, under the guidance of Chief Justice Earl Warren, overturned
the decision in Plessy by arguing that “separate but equal” has
no place in education. Separate schools are inherently unequal, the Court
reasoned. In a second companion case (Brown II), the Court ordered
schools to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” The decision in Brown
energized
African American communities all over the country. Yet, while the importance
of both Brown cases in particular, and the overall legal strategy
of civil rights leaders such as Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston in
general, cannot be overstated, it must also be pointed out that very little
happened in the cause of civil rights in their wake: the South dragged
its feet on desegregation, and other institutions of the federal government
moved slowly to end the abuses of white supremacy.
So
what happened to tip the scales for the cause of civil rights that reached
its culmination in the 1960s? One factor has to be singled out: the grass
roots involvement of blacks themselves and their willingness to endure
violence and even the threat of death for their cause. The Montgomery bus
boycotts in the 1950s gave initial fuel to the movement immediately after
Brown,
with the 26 year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. at its helm. Soon boycotts
turned to another successful tactic: sit-ins. On February 1, 1960, four
black men sat down at a whites only counter at Woolworth’s in Greensborough,
North Carolina and demanded to be served. They were denied. The next day,
30 blacks returned; they too were denied, ridiculed, and spat upon. The
third day, 50 blacks and 4 whites showed up at the same Woolworth’s. Thus
began another integral part of the effective strategy of the Civil Rights
movement.
By
the early 1960s, sit-ins, boycotts, and civil rights marches had made national
news. In the comfort of their homes, Americans watched with horror as peaceful
demonstrators all over the South were sprayed down with firehoses, attacked
with police dogs, beaten and dragged through the streets and arrested by
white police. The March on Washington in the summer of 1963 further brought
the problem of civil rights to most American households, as King gave his
most eloquent “I have a Dream” speech. It was clear that the federal government
could no longer drag its feet. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark
Civil Rights Act, and in 1965 he signed the Voting Rights Act. Both struck
final blows to the two-pronged attack by whites on blacks in the era of
Jim Crow - the former in abolishing legal segregation and discrimination,
the latter in abolishing political disenfranchisement.
In
the wake of these pieces of legislation, political equality was attained.
Yet, stubborn economic inequalities between white and black America persisted
and were so deep-rooted that black frustration soon reached new heights.
Between 1962 and 1968, 164 ghetto revolts occurred, including the famous
Watts outbreak in 1965. In this cauldron of discontent the black nationalist
movement was born, and its message of black power, racial separatism and
self-reliance came to rival the traditional Civil Rights movement’s message
of integration. In 1966, the Black Panther Party emerged to defend black
communities from racist violence. Black nationalist leaders such as Malcolm
X, Huey Newton, and Stokely Carmichael were of the mind that racism and
white supremacist thought were so ingrained that no laws could not overcome
them. The message of “nonviolent resistance” now had to compete with “by
any means necessary.” And the only solution was to separate and build wholly
black political and economic institutions.
By
the late 1960s, the images white Americans were receiving in their living
rooms changed dramatically: rather than seeing young black men in coat
and tie and black women in dresses hosed down and dragged through the streets
for no other reason than marching peacefully, they were now witnessing
black men and women donned in black leather jackets and black berets, standing
at attention in military formation. They witnessed black athletes at the
1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico win track events and stand on the victor’s
platform with a black-gloved fist raised high in the air- the Black Power
salute. Blacks everywhere found a new sense of pride and power in the simple
notion of “blackness,” in the belief that for the first time in American
history they had lifted the Veil. No longer were they viewed through someone
else’s eyes or culture; no longer were they “invisible,” in Ralph Ellison’s
words. Yet, at least in the mind of much of white America, the Civil Rights
movement of the 1950s and early 1960s had been replaced by nothing less
than an armed resistance. And the federal government, with J. Edgar Hoover
at the helm of the FBI, set out to destroy this new phase of the Civil
Rights movement.
Black
militancy gave whites the excuse to abandon the Civil Rights movement.
By the early to mid 1970s, with Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Medgar
Evers dead from gun shot wounds, with numerous members of the Black Panther
Party in jail or in hiding, with Southern whites fleeing the Democratic
party for the Republican party, and with whites all over the country fleeing
urban centers for the suburbs, the Civil Rights movement was but a mere
shell of itself. By 1980, the very conservative Ronald Reagan was elected
to the Presidency, and he followed through on his promise to cease the
enforcement of most affirmative action policies. Within two decades of
the heydey of the Civil Rights movement, the hope that two worlds may become
one, that black and white in America could live peaceably among one another,
was gone. As Andrew Hacker put it, America in the 1990s was still two nations,
black and white, separate, hostile, unequal.
Contemporary
American Society and the Ideal of “Colorblindness”
At
the close of the nineteenth century, Justice John Marshall Harlan issued
his famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. Harlan wrote that “There
is in this country no superior, dominant ruling class of citizens. There
is no caste here. Our Constitution is colorblind.” At the time, Harlan
was railing against the Court’s decision which authorized legal segregation
in the South. For most of the twentieth century, defenders of civil rights
for African Americans vigorously adopted Harlan’s ideal of “colorblindness”
in our Constitution. “Separate but equal” was an insidious thought to a
Thurgood Marshall or a Martin Luther King, Jr. They did everything they
could to see to it that blacks were not treated separately, that they were
treated just as anyone else under the privileges and immunities granted
in the Constitution. Hence, the ideal of “Colorblindness” was the underpinning
to the decision in the Brown case and to the goals of both the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These actions on
the part of the federal government guaranteed that our Constitution as
such knew no dominant class or caste system. They guaranteed, in other
words, an equality under the eyes of the law that had been denied to blacks
for over 175 years.
But
we are back to where we began these reflections on African Americans in
the American political system. We pointed out at the outset that equality
has several meanings, and for the past generation in American politics
the struggle for equality for African Americans has shifted to other fronts
which call into question the very ideal of a colorblind Constitution. It
is often said that to get past race in America one has to talk about race
in America. Similarly, we might ask whether in order to get to a colorblind
society we need to have a color-conscious Constitution. In other words,
in order to get to a point where race no longer matters in America, we
need to be aware of race until relative equality exists between white and
black in America.
Persistent
inequalities remain in various aspects of American economic and political
life. The federal government in the late 60s and early 70s took steps to
remedy these inequalities in the form of affirmative action policies in
employment and education. In the 80s and early 90s, the government took
steps in the way of racial gerrymandering in redistricting to boost minority
representation in Congress by directing states to draw what is called “majority-minority”
districts. In general, racial preferences were meant to remedy past discrimination.
The Supreme Court in the Warren Court era upheld most of these government
policies. Under the intellectual leadership of Justices Brennan and Marshall,
the Court reasoned that contemporary society demanded a color-conscious
reading of the Constitution. However, as the Court became more conservative,
a color-conscious reading of the Constitution became suspect, such that
by the late 1970s the Court ruled in Regents of California v. Bakke
(1978)
that quotas could not be used to achieve “diversity,” and that race could
only be one of many factors in admissions programs. Justice Rehnquist went
further and argued that he was not sure race could ever be used in admissions
practices. In their dissent, Justices Marshall, Brennan, White, and Blackmun
stated, “The position that our Constitution is color-blind has never been
adopted by this Court as the proper meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.”
Yet,
the ideal of colorblindness had become the guiding judicial philosophy
of the Court with regard to race in America. By the mid 1990s, the Court
declared in Adarand Constructors v. Pena (1995) that “strict scrutiny”
required a compelling state interest in racial classification and minority
set asides in government contracting work. In the same period, the Court
decided in two important cases (Shaw v. Reno and Miller v. Johnson)
that redistricting was unconstitutional when lines for Congressional districts
were drawn solely on the basis of race. In the wake of the 1990 census,
numerous majority-minority districts were created in accordance with the
1982 Amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Black representation in
Congress nearly doubled, such that in the 105th Congress there
were 39 African Americans serving in Congress (38 in the House, 1 in the
Senate). However, in Shaw, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote, “Racial
classifications with respect to voting carry particular dangers. Racial
gerrymandering, even for remedial purposes, may Balkanize us into competing
racial factions; it threatens to carry us further from the goal of a political
system in which race no longer matters - a goal that the 14th
and 15th Amendments embody, and to which the Nation continues
to aspire. It is for these reasons that race-based districting by our state
legislatures demands close judicial scrutiny.”
Justice
O’Connor touched upon an age-old idea in American politics: “the goal of
a political system in which race no longer matters.” Or in DuBois’ words,
a system where the problem of the color line is no longer a problem. At
the close of the twentieth century, it is safe to say that nearly every
American cherishes the thought of living in such as political system. Perhaps
the dawning of the twenty-first century should begin with this question:
how do we get there?
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