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Fully American

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In his inaugural address in 1909 William Howard Taft said:

The negroes are now Americans. Their ancestors came here years ago against their will, and this is their only country and their only flag. They have shown themselves anxious to live for it and to die for it. Encountering the race feeling against them, subjected at times to cruel injustice growing out of it, they may well have our profound sympathy and aid in the struggle they are making. We are charged with the sacred duty of making their path as smooth and easy as we can.

And it really is shocking to read that nowadays. That it had to be said not that long ago that Black Americans are fully American. On this side of integrating the military and other public organizations. On this side of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. On this side of electing a Black president, it’s a shock to read that it had to be said. Lord knows it never felt like we were where we needed to be, but at least we had progressed to the point where we could agree on the fundamental truth that Black Americans are Americans who deserve to be treated as such.

And yet, after the Trayvon Martin verdict and the Voting Rights Act decision, those words keep ringing in my ears. Because it feels like that’s a debate in America for the first time in a long time. Not just on the fringes. Not just with a wink or with dogwhistles, but it’s an underlying part of the debate.

Just engaging on those things feels like it’s having the debate on if Black people are fully American, and if their lives matter as much as any other American.

I can’t have the argument with people who assume that a Black boy isn’t American enough to walk around in a hoodie in the rain. That his life is worth less than the fear of a neighborhood watch volunteer that he might be a thief. I can’t have the argument with people that it’s OK to bring a gun and stalk him, to ultimately shoot him dead. I can’t have the argument that Trayvon Martin’s parents — brave as they were in public, remarkable as they were — should have to have that much grace just to get their son’s killer put on trial. The fact that they are in America ought to have been enough. Even taking the side of human decency on that feels like it puts some legitimacy on the other side.

And I can’t believe we have to argue that Black folks deserve the right to vote, that precious, American right. That they aren’t considered American enough to have to stand in line in many places as quickly as White people. That they should be considered American enough not to need ID’s that they disproportionately don’t have. That in places with a history of barring minorities from voting, that can’t prove they’ve stopped it, deserve extra scrutiny.

I don’t know where it goes from here. But it feels like for the first time in a long time, it’s going backwards.

Comments

  1. 1

    I think a lot of the stuff we hear today is the final hoarse gasping breaths of a decrepit old mentality that has outlived its time.

  2. 2

    NBC reports tonight that federal DEA agents raided several medical marijuana dispensaries in Washington State today.

  3. 3

    Whenever someone like Paula Deen or George “Macaca” Allen says something racist a common defense is that they harken back to an older age when open racism was the norm, they’re just a product of their times (like the fucking 1960’s?!).

    The Taft quote goes toward invalidating the whole notion that sometime “back then” nobody knew any better. From my personal standpoint, I was a kid in the deep South during the late 50’s and early 60’s and I knew racism was wrong. So did anybody who cared.

    The current Republican insanity has given all the closet racists permission to come out and say what they really think. In a way, it’s a good thing, cutting through the pretense that we live in a post-racial society.

  4. 4

    Good Post. It does feel like we are willing going backwards. As if a group of people willing turned their back on progress, as if being modern civilized person was just too hard, and they gave up.

  7. 7

    You forgot the most obvious parallel.

    When even the most accomplished African-American in the country has to deal with years of assertions – not just by a fringe few, but even from thousands of elected officials at every level up to and including Congress – that he’s not really American, then yes, I think the American-ness of “Negroes” is very much in doubt in a lot of people’s minds. If you can call them minds.

  8. 8

    As to George Zimmerman- a jury found him not guilty. Get over it. Just like the nation got over the OJ trial etc. I didn’t see blacks turned away en masse while whites were busy electing a black President. TWICE.

    White on black crime is barely 8 %. In Chicago (where Obama was a “community organizer”) black on black murders run to 90% of all murders up there. The race hustlers (Democrats all) need to come to grips with true problems in the black community, not just rant and rave for more donations.

    Detroit’s data shows that 47% of the remaining citizenry are functionally illiterate. Democrats had 50 years to correct that problem but did nothing.

    Not saying Republicans are blameless but let’s put the “conversation” about race on it’s proper footing. OK?

  9. 9

    @8 Anyone who can use the term “race hustlers (Democrats all)” is a conservative with an ideology to peddle.

    Democrats had 50 years to correct that problem but did nothing.
    Prove that allegation. Where are the facts of that assertion? Otherwise you are just lying to try to score political points.

    With just most minimal of searches, you could this:

    It took decades of decay to bring down the once-mighty industrial giant that put the world on wheels. The city grew to 1.8 million people in the 1950s, luring them with plentiful jobs that paid good wages to stamp out automobiles for sale across the globe. But like many American cities, Detroit’s fall began late that decade as developers starting building suburbs. Then came the 1967 riots that accelerated the number of white residents who moved to the cities north of Eight Mile Road, considered the region’s racial dividing line. At the same time, auto companies began opening plants in other cities, and the rise of autos imported from Japan started to cut the size of the U.S. auto industry. Detroit’s property values fell, tax revenue dropped, police couldn’t control a growing murder rate, and many middle-class blacks fled the city for safer suburbs with better schools. By 2009, the auto industry collapsed along with the economy as a whole, eventually pulling the city down with it. Government corruption under former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick only made things worse. In the 2000 census, Detroit’s population fell under 1 million in as the exodus continued. Today it’s barely above 700,000.
    http://www.cleveland.com/busin.....bankr.html

    But that explanation doesn’t fit the narrative you are trying to peddle.

    What in your opinion is the proper footing for the discussion on race? Enlighten us. This should amusing.

  10. 10

    To the Time for Fascists: Democrats were in power in Detroit consistently for about 50 years. Nobody saw this coming? Who moved in to the political vacuum after the riots? Which city government partnered with developers and embarked on glitzy, useless projects like the Ren. Center, Comerica Park, MGM Casino, ad nauseam? Typical Democrat mentality. Vast inner-city works that accomplish very little but which resulted in great profits for the development partner and the city was left holding the bag of “no improvement”. All of that contributed to the suburban exodus.

  11. 11

    @2 “I didn’t see blacks turned away en masse while whites were busy electing a black President.”

    Their determination to vote despite all the obstacles put in front of them doesn’t exonerate the scumbags who spared no effort or expense to keep them from voting. Who, by the way, are back at it again, this time with the Extreme Court’s blessing …

    http://www.tampabay.com/news/p.....da/2131208

    And, yes, some of us whites did help elect him — twice — because he was the better candidate both times.

  12. 12

    For your consideration, courtesy of Charles P. Pierce –
    THE NEVERENDING STORY

    You have to admire one thing about the movement conservatives — and the Republican party, which relies on them for its very heartbeat — and that’s that they don’t believe that any issue is ever settled as long as it seems to be settled in a fashion with which they disagree. If they don’t want to do so, they don’t even take yes for an answer. This is why anyone who counsels that we try to understand their point of view, or walk a mile in their shoes, or do anything except see them for the one-way, nihilistic vandals that they are, is off on a unicorn hunt from which they may never return. To borrow an early dictum from Senator John Blutarsky — nothing is over until they say it is.
    […]
    They do not want that right exercised and they will do anything they can to keep it from being exercised, and they absolutely…will…not…stop. Nothing is permanent, no victory ever final if they do not want it to be.

    emphasis added.
    Go read the whole thing to understand why we are going backwards.

  13. 13

    Comment on going backwards on settle debates:

    As a white male who has made out reasonably well with the leg up of privileges I did not earn and was born with (i.e. white skin and a penis), I think I need to address why the current regression in the area of civil rights for non-white, non-male, non-US born, etc… does not make me click my heels and lick my lips.

    I did not use the word “minority” because the minority population is white skinned penis possessors. And when we throw in “with a goodly amount of privilege obtained cash” it is a really small minority.

    What goes around comes around. And while I may shed this mortal coil before the shit hits the fan, my progeny won’t be so lucky.

    If Because this bullshit ain’t going to be stopped with reason there shall come a day of retribution. And white skinned penis possessors are going to feel it.

    Regardless of my good intentions and good deeds, the righteous majority is going to round up the historically aggressive unreasonable types of which profile I fit.
    Ask the family of Trayvon Martin about the cost of anger driven profiling.

  14. 14

    @8 Anyone who can use the term “race hustlers (Democrats all)” is a conservative with an ideology to peddle.

    Ummm no… in reality Booker T. Washington (A BLACK MAN) identified the Poverty Pimps Jackson and Sharpton all the way back in 1911…

    “There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

    Regarding your hijack of the paragraph… 1962 DUMMOCRAPTS took over Detroit. William Edwards Deming had his total quality theories rejected by American automobile companies and other businesses over the Taylor model. People bought quality. You make shit people flush shit. Plain and simple.

  15. 15

    Democrats had 50 years to correct that problem but did nothing.
    Prove that allegation. Where are the facts of that assertion?

    DUMMOCRAPTS took over Detroit in 1962. Been the head of that dying fish ever since. Need any more evidence?

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