The Civil War - Now 100% Slavery-Free!

Let me start by saying that I wrote the last essay before I learned that the Republican Governor of Virginia had declared a "Confederate History Month" purged of any mention of slavery. I confess as well that as a history professor - you know, a PhD in history, lots of courses in history, lots of courses I've taught, yadda yadda - I always thought the the Civil War was really fought over the issue of slavery. So I thank the Honorable Governor for setting me straight on this.

But it got me to thinking. If I've so completely misunderstood the Civil War, then perhaps I've misunderstood lots of other things about Southern history too. And if its time to celebrate the Confederacy, then why not party over those other things as well. Why stop at Confederate History Month in Virginia?! Here are some ideas for other celebrations we should mark throughout the calendar:

Segregation Appreciation Days! - Let's take a week and turn back the clock, back past 1954 (Brown v. Board) all the way back to 1896 (Plessy v. Ferguson). For this week, let's bring back the rich traditions of segregation to the South. You know, like separate water fountains. Denny's Restaurants could refuse to serve black patrons and NOT have to worry about being sued. Because after all, segregation was really about "states' rights" - not about keeping negroes in their place.

Plantation Days! - Not too many people in the South actually own plantations any more, but we can update those good old days can't we? The plantations may be gone, but lots of white folks in the South have lawns right? And those lawns are often cared for by landscaping companies that employ Mexicans. So during Plantation Days, just don't pay them. Threaten to call the immigration authorities if they make a stink about it. They'll get back to mulching right quick I reckon. I'm thinking sometime in the spring when the magnolias are blooming for this.

Gov. Orval Faubus Week! - During the first week of the new school year let's honor the great states' rights champion, Arkansas' own Orval Faubus, by standing in the doorway of our local schools and refusing entrance to any non-white kids. Especially the Asians, who work harder than our kids and are getting better grades and going to better colleges. I hate that.

Secession Summertime! - All that talk by Gov. Rick Perry and others about seceding from the Union is just hot air. Southern states don't want to leave America - they can't afford it. Not with the balance of payments being what they are. Geez, if the South really did try to form its own country (again), its social statistics would resemble Nicaragua's, only without the charm and with much worse food. But during Secession Summertime all those Yankee tourists could be treated like foreign visitors, forced to show ID papers or passports, shaken down for cash at the border. That sort of thing. Who knows? maybe that would raise enough money to ease that balance of payments.

The Klan Kat Walk! - Let's face it: One of the reasons the Klan has dwindled of late is the fashion. Very few of us look all that good in nothing but white, the cuts on the robes and hoods aren't flattering and it's really tough to get the barbeque stains out. Why not put a little hipster edge into the ol' KKK by sponsoring some Klan fashion shows? See what creative variations on the old standard can be. Could be a way to promote young, up-and-coming designers, maybe raise a little money for the local John Birch Society. Just because you're going to a cross burning doesn't mean you have to look frumpy.

The Holiday Book Burning! - The Republican majority on the Texas State Board of Education pointed us in the right direction with their recent decision to re-write American history to make it more, well, Republican. So let's close out the year by having big book burnings around the South to celebrate the Christmas holiday. Preferably near one of those 10 commandments monuments. What a spectacular way to honor the baby Jesus, watching all those books about slavery, reconstruction, segregation and lynching go up in flames. Jesus doesn't want us to read those books, he wants us to handle snakes and watch preachers on the TV. Who doesn't love an old-fashioned book burning?

It's time to stop being ashamed of all that history. Embrace it, hold it, cherish it, and in so doing, make it up, ignore it and lie about it. After all, if the Confederacy had won the war, we'd all be a lot whiter, wouldn't we?

HEY, HEY, HO, HO: POLAR BEARS HAVE GOT TO GO!

Breaking news: the polar bear is the true agent of racial repression in America. I kid you not.

No this is not an Onion story--really. It's a wacky, tragic, and true tale of how a venerable civil rights organization became a corporate pawn. And how corporate lobbyists, overpaid and underworked, are creating a sham movement of the poor to support an agenda to roll back environmental regulation.

The players: Exxon, the Pacific Legal Foundation (a right-wing libertarian advocacy law firm), the dubious Alliance to Stop the War Against the Poor, the polar bear, and the Congress of Racial Equality and its chairman-for-life Roy Innis. Jill Tubman, herself the daughter of a CORE activist, untangles the bizarre story.

But first, a brief look back at CORE. Founded in 1942, CORE brought together an interracial group of activists, many of them interested in bringing Mahatma Gandhi's teachings to bear on the creation of a "beloved community" that transcended racial division. CORE activists built alliances with the labor movement, with left and religious groups, and with wartime pacifists. They formed experimental communities (sometimes called ashrams) where they lived together black and white, at a moment in history where crossing the color line was transgressive. They experimented with sit-ins to challenge restaurant segregation and sponsored a 1947 Journey of Reconciliation to break down segregated interstate transportation in the South. CORE activists bridged North and South, providing training for a new generation of activists who would shape the transformative wave of protest in the early 1960s. Most famous for its role in the 1961 Freedom Rides through the South (a reprise of the 1947 Journey, but on a much larger scale), CORE activists also led protests against housing segregation in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Cleveland, New York, and Los Angeles. In Philly, Newark, and Brooklyn, CORE spearheaded protests and civil disobedience at construction sites with all-white workforces. And by 1964, CORE chapters were leading the way in grassroots community organizing in poor communities over issues like tenants' rights, price-gouging inner city stores, and police brutality. CORE fell on hard times, however, and by 1966, it repudiated its longtime interracialism and embraced black power. Its membership plunged and its donations dried up. But some of its most creative activists, including founding member James Farmer, housing reformer Clarence Funnye (who tragically died in a plane crash in 1970), and antipoverty warrior George Wiley, left CORE but took the organization's mandate with them and pushed in new directions.

Roy Innis, who took the helm of CORE in 1968, followed a different path. A firebrand advocate of black power, he soon migrated to the political right. By 1972, Innis was a prominent supporter of Richard Nixon. He became a Reaganite. And he joined the board of the National Rifle Association and, in an appalling affront to its founding principles, branded CORE as a national "pro-firearms organization." Among CORE's more prominent allies is the Community Financial Services Association of America, the trade association of "payday lenders" (or as they call themselves the "payday advance industry"). In 2005, CORE honored life-long civil rights activist Karl Rove at its annual Martin Luther King, Jr. dinner. In Tubman's words, Innis now presides over "the decrepit, corrupt CORE."

What is Innis's new battle? It is against the listing of the polar bear as an endangered species. Protecting the endangered bear is, in Innis's words, an "attack on economic civil rights." If we save the polar bear, sites for oil drilling are limited, the oil supply shrinks, prices rise, and guess what, poor people are left paying more. Advocates of the protection of endangered species are "modern day Bull Connors and George Wallaces, who are standing in the door, trying to prevent poor Americans from achieving Martin Luther King’s dream of equal opportunity and true environmental justice." I can think of about 500 direct ways that poor black people are ripped off by profit-artists like those who bankroll CORE. And I can think of lots of ways that Exxon could show its concern for poor people. How about subsidies to inner city gas stations? Or better yet, grants for public transit systems that so many people of color rely upon, since they can't afford exorbitant insurance, expensive cars, and costly fuel.

The environmentalist movement has not always allied itself with African Americans and other minorities. But a robust environmental justice movement in recent years has gone a long way toward repairing that breach. The bottom line is that environmental devastation knows no color line. Climate change and reliance on fossil fuels have devastating long-term consequences for black and white, Latino and Asian, American and Bangladeshi alike. In fact it's poor people who suffer the brunt of manmade environmental disasters from floods to fires to chemical dumping. And really, what has Exxon done for poor people of color?

Thinking about the face off in Alaska between the polar bear and Roy Innis, one thing is for sure. I will never think about whiteness and privilege in the same way again. And more seriously, I shudder in horror in memory of the true heroes of CORE: James Farmer, James Peck, Gloria Brown, George Houser, Clarence Funnye, and on and on, whose extraordinary contribution to the black freedom struggle will continue to inspire, well after the tragedy and farce of the organization that calls itself CORE is long gone. They would be marching on Exxon and thinking locally and globally about the ways that racism, environmental degradation, and corporate greed are mutually reinforcing.

MCCAIN'S U-TURN ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

John McCain's "Straight Talk Express" has taken another sharp U-turn. I'm getting dizzy. This time, McCain has jettisoned the moderate Republican position on affirmative action in service of cheap political posturing. (Many genuinely moderate Republicans, among them the late President Gerald Ford, have supported affirmative action. And many of the military leaders whom McCain professes to revere, among them several former heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, filed an amicus brief defending race-sensitive college admissions when the issue came before the Supreme Court in 2003). But McCain is no moderate Republican.

Yesterday, McCain announced his support for Ward Connerly's ballot initiative in Arizona, one that, like his others, postures as a pro-civil rights bill but outlaws the use of racial preferences in college admissions, government contracting, and employment. Although he confessed that he had not read the initiative, he added: “But I've always opposed quotas.”

But back in 1998, McCain criticized anti-affirmative action efforts. In a speech to Latino business leaders he argued: “Rather than engage in divisive ballot initiatives, we must have a dialogue and cooperation and mutual efforts together to provide for every child in America to fulfill their expectations.”

Even more damningly, that year, McCain joined a small group of Senate Republicans who voted with the Democrats to defeat a measure that would have abolished minority set asides on highway construction contracts. McCain reminded his colleagues that he was (at least then) a member of the "Party of Lincoln" (his quote). That said, McCain's defense of affirmative action was not exactly principled. He hoped to preserve the GOP's image. McCain stated that:

Unfortunately, discussing the inherent contradictions and shortcomings of affirmative action programs, the danger exists that our aspirations and intentions will be misperceived, dividing our country and harming our party. We must not allow that to happen.

It should be added that the set-asides that McCain defended in 1998 (10 percent of federal highway contracts for minority or women-owned firms) was the closest thing to a quota system that existed in 1998. (Recall that quotas in university admissions went by the wayside after the 1978 Bakke decision).

But McCain's position on affirmative action is troubling for more than its hypocrisy. There is a problematic racial calculus at work. McCain is trying to shove Obama onto the third rail of racial politics with hopes that the Democratic candidate will get fried. Obama has made it clear that he supports affirmative action in principle, but also that it's not central to his agenda. More than that Obama has made gestures toward the appealing if impractical arguments for the creation of a system of class-based affirmative action. But McCain is hoping to send a signal to bitter whites that Obama is just another Al Sharpton.

Expect the McCain campaign to continue to look for subtle ways to remind white voters that Obama is a scary, "white-hating" guy. Keeping the politics of race front and center is the GOP's only hope (and perhaps a scanty one) for victory in November.

RACE AND THE REPUBLICANS: ROOT AND BRANCH

That the Republican Party's post-1964 resurgence owes a lot to civil rights politics goes without saying, despite considerable debate on how much of a role that economics, suburbanization, sexuality, gender, and religion played in the rise of the New Right. William Voegeli, a conservative political scientist at the Claremont Institute, has weighed in on these issues with an unusually reflective and thought-provoking article on race and conservatism. Voegeli grapples with the connections between states-rights rhetoric and anti-civil rights politics, with William F. Buckley's infamous contention that whites are an advanced race, and with the New Right's indifference to civil rights (at best) and vocal support for segregationism (at worst).

Voegeli, however, makes at least two erroneous arguments that undermine his article's larger political point. The first, and most important, is his assumption that civil rights legislation fundamentally expanded the power of the federal government in ways that vitiated what he believes are legitimate arguments for reserving most, if not all powers, to the states and localities. The civil rights movement, he contends, succeeded in "politicizing all the spaces in which Americans live their lives. The lesson that federal government intervention could extinguish the wickedness of segregation was learned too well, and reinforced the liberal conviction that government could—-and therefore must—-intervene to eradicate every social ill, no matter how large or amorphous, affecting minority groups." Voegeli is right that the coercive power of the federal government made possible many civil rights advances, most notably the advent of integrated public education in the South and the abolition of segregated public accommodations. But whole areas of everyday life remained largely unaffected by federal civil rights legislation: most notably housing. The tepid 1968 Fair Housing Act (also known as Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act) left the most distinctive and pernicious feature of segregation and a prime cause of racial inequality--residential segregation--mostly untouched. Although rates of black-white residential segregation fell in the 1990s, most of metropolitan America remains intensely balkanized by race, the result of ineffective civil rights laws. And even federal intervention to desegregate schools was terribly limited. Most school districts in the North and West remained separate and unequal, untouched by federal law. And contra Voegeli, busing (that controversial remedy) was mostly the result of state administrative action (mandates by state departments of education), not federal intervention. The story of the implementation of civil rights legislation is not one of uniform triumph: it is one of struggle between advocates of racial equality and ideological or procedural critics of civil rights enforcement, most of them Republican. Often the Republicans won all out; more often still, they weakened civil rights policies without destroying them entirely. That's why affirmative action is on the rocks nearly everywhere and why, since the 1980s, American public education has grown increasingly segregated by race.

Voegeli's arguments about affirmative action are also problematic. "Affirmative action," he argues, "has been the civil rights movement's political gift to the conservative movement. Conservatives have been delighted by the chance, finally, to present themselves as the ones articulating a principled egalitarian argument on behalf of innocent people whose prospects in life were diminished when they were judged according to the color of their skin rather than the content of their characters." This is simply bad history. It is true that civil rights activists, among them Martin Luther King, Jr., the Urban League's Whitney Young, and CORE's James Farmer all argued for some form of compensatory programs to undo hundreds of years of systematic racial segregation. But affirmative action as we know it was the creation of a Republican president, Richard M. Nixon. And despite the fact that Ronald Reagan unleashed and legitimated conservative anti-affirmative action rhetoric and appointed scores of judges who have slowly eviscerated civil rights laws, affirmative action remained administratively intact throughout his administration. Reagan could have--but did not--gut the executive branch agencies responsible for enforcing affirmative action. On the other hand, the courts whittled away at affirmative action, particularly in education and contract set-asides, gutting remedial arguments for affirmative action and leaving the program resting on the thin reed of the diversity rationale. In other words, affirmative action is far more powerful in its critics' imaginations than it is in practice.

In the end, Voegeli hopes to defend the Republican Party against the charge that "the essence of conservatism is and always has been Dixiecrat-ism." Or put differently, "everything that conservatism has accomplished and stood for since 1965—-Reagan, the tax revolt, law-and-order, deregulation, the fight against affirmative action, the critique of the welfare state...everything—-is the poisoned fruit of the poisoned tree." I think the metaphor of a hybrid tree, grafted onto racist roots is better. The importance--and in most cases centrality--of race to the rise of the New Right is undeniable. Reagan, after all launched his 1980 campaign in infamous Philadelphia, Mississippi, and played to his Dixiecrat constituents brilliantly. Nixonian and Reaganite law and order politics--nothing to be proud of, especially given the steady rise in crime between the 1960s and the 1990s--resulted in the expansion of a carceral state which disproportionately impacted African Americans but had little impact on crime rates. It is impossible to ignore the racial roots of the transformation of criminal justice in symbolic moments like the infamous Willie Horton ad in 1988. Even though only a tiny percentage of whites were ever victims of criminal acts by blacks, crime had (and still has) a black face. On the welfare state, right-wing criticism of Social Security and Aid to Dependent Children (later Aid to Families with Dependent Children) is as old as the New Deal itself. But the poison fruit of anti-welfarism ripened in the post-1960s period, when the mainstream media represented welfare as a black problem (on this point read Martin Gilens's superb and impeccable book, Why Americans Hate Welfare) and when candidates like Reagan stoked white resentment with his racist and entirely fictitious depiction of the "welfare queen." And just ask Charlie Black, who crafted Jesse Helms's infamous anti-affirmative action ad (and who is now flacking for John McCain) whether or not there was racial symbolism in the white hands crumbling up a job rejection letter and in the laden and inaccurate phrase "racial quotas." Rightist anti-tax politics also has a racial component (Thomas and Mary Edsall's sometimes problematic Chain Reaction and more recently Robert Self's important history of Oakland and the East Bay, made this clear nearly twenty years ago) and has its origins as I have noted before, in the rhetoric of slaveholders in the nineteenth century.

Race is not all: anti-statism, libertarianism, law-and-order politics, and anti-welfarism have long pedigrees in the United States. But they bore abundant fruit only when grafted onto the roots of racism.

To Voegeli's credit, he acknowledges the Republican Party's racist past--and the moral and political costs of the New Right's position on civil rights. That's a start. But there's good reason why the G.O.P. remains America's white party.