Latest Coates's post about racism and democratic candidates. Worth reading with an open mind.

[Mass]

Before people start saying the GOP is worse, Coates knows the GOP is worse. This is the last of a series of blog posts he wrote about Democratic candidates and racism.

http:/http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/hillary-clinton-reconstruction/427095/

I have spent the past two years somewhat concerned about the effects of national amnesia, largely because I believe that a problem can not be effectively treated without being effectively diagnosed. I don’t know how you diagnose the problem of racism in America without understanding the actual history. In the Democratic Party, there is, on the one hand, a candidate who seems comfortable doling out the kind of myths that undergirded racist violence. And on the other is a candidate who seems uncomfortable asking whether the history of racist violence, in and of itself, is worthy of confrontation.

These are options for a party of amnesiacs, for people whose politics are premised on forgetting. This is not a brief for staying home, because such a thing doesn’t actually exist. In the American system of government, refusing to vote for the less-than-ideal is a vote for something much worse. Even when you don’t choose, you choose. But you can choose with your skepticism fully intact. You can choose in full awareness of the insufficiency of your options, without elevating those who would have us forget into prophets. You can choose and still push, demanding more. It really isn’t too much to say, if you’re going to govern a country, you should know its history.

[nashville_brook]

1. lede buried... this is about the Dunning School...

and HRC's unfortunate stumbling into it last night.

Hillary Clinton Goes Back to the Dunning School
How do you diagnose the problem of racism in America without understanding its actual history?

Last night Hillary Clinton was asked what president inspired her the most. She offered up Abraham Lincoln, gave a boilerplate reason why, and then said this:

You know, he was willing to reconcile and forgive. And I don't know what our country might have been like had he not been murdered, but I bet that it might have been a little less rancorous, a little more forgiving and tolerant, that might possibly have brought people back together more quickly.

But instead, you know, we had Reconstruction, we had the re-instigation of segregation and Jim Crow. We had people in the South feeling totally discouraged and defiant. So, I really do believe he could have very well put us on a different path.
Clinton, whether she knows it or not, is retelling a racist—though popular—version of American history which held sway in this country until relatively recently. Sometimes going under the handle of “The Dunning School,” and other times going under the “Lost Cause” label, the basic idea is that Reconstruction was a mistake brought about by vengeful Northern radicals. The result was a savage and corrupt government which in turn left former Confederates, as Clinton puts, it “discouraged and defiant.”


A sample of the genre is offered here by historian Ulrich Phillips:

Lincoln in his plan of reconstruction had shown unexpected magnanimity; the Republican party, discarding that obnoxious name, had officially styled itself merely Unionist; and the Northern Democrats, although outvoted, were still a friendly force to be reckoned upon … With Johnson then on Lincoln's path “back to normalcy”, Southern hearts were lightened only to sink again when radicals in Congress, calling themselves Republicans once more, overslaughed the Presidential programme and set events in train which seemed to make "the Africanization of the South" inescapable. To most of the whites, doubtless, the prospect showed no gleam of hope.

snip

Yet until relatively recently, this self-serving version of history was dominant. It is almost certainly the version fed to Hillary Clinton during her school years, and possibly even as a college student. Hillary Clinton is no longer a college student. And the fact that a presidential candidate would imply that Jim Crow and Reconstruction were equal, that the era of lynching and white supremacist violence would have been prevented had that same violence not killed Lincoln, and that the violence was simply the result of rancor, the absence of a forgiving spirit, and an understandably “discouraged” South is chilling.

[hfojvt]

5. that's interesting

But let's face it. "the version fed to Hillary Clinton during her school years".

Well, Hillary is older than I am. I must admit I cannot remember all that much about the history I was taught in my school years. My last course was US history in the 10th grade. That is, 37 years ago. I took an economic history in graduate school, which would also be a number of years ago - about 27 years.

Why exactly is that "chilling"? What is being read into the fact that Clinton might remember some of her high school history?

Geez, you miss one re-education camp and suddenly you are lost.

[JI7]

8. it's kind of like saying if Hitler just had kinder parents it would have prevented

The holocaust.

When the holocaust was not just one isolated thing. But there were centuries of antisemitism before that. Even before hitler jews were demonized .

[hfojvt]

13. that seems like accurate speculation

Sure Jews were demonized by some, but for the most part multiple millions of them were not systematically slaughtered for centuries.

But it is "chilling" to hold to such a belief? Because that means Coates won't get his reparations check?

[JI7]

15. so your standard is mass slaughter ? if it's not mass slaughter, well it's not so bad.

Coates isn't calling for reparations .

[hfojvt]

18. mass slaughter tends to be worse

than the mere statement "I hate Jews". Even a pogrom were 200 are killed and 5,000 are displaced is kinda not nearly as bad as the death of 4,000,000.

I suppose that does seem like a strange standard. What kind of a moron thinks that 4 million is greater than 200?

And since I did click on a few links (for once in my life) Yes, Coates does seem to be calling for reparations. Not explicitly in the OP's essay, but in other places http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/bernie-sanders-reparations/424602/

[JI7]

19. and those previous things had a lot to do with why mass slaughter happened .

[ladjf]

7. Republicans of the 1850's and early 1860's were well aware that

the issue of slavery was the "answer to their prayers" in their search for a dramatically dividing issue.

IMO, their strategy was deliberately designed to divide the Country , even if it meant war. They elected Lincoln, assuming that he would execute the order to free the slaves. The South would lose the War and the Republicans would become the dominant Party.
The South would be bankrupt and all but destroyed economically. The dominance lasted until the 1930's.

The strategy of suddenly, by proclamation, freeing the slaves with no compensation for the owners (who had legally purchased the slaves) guaranteed secession and war. It is likely that within 15 years, the slaves could have been freed, the owners getting at least some compensation for the investment, with no war, death or destruction. Unfortunately, the "Radicals" prevailed instead.

[JI7]

10. yeah the victims were the white slave owners.....

[ladjf]

11. Everyone in the South and most Northerners were victims. The only "winners"

were the Republicans.


The slave owners broke a moral law by purchasing slaves. But, there was no Federal law prohibiting slave trade. My point is that the slave owners were stripped of investments that had been legally acquired as though they had broken the law. I think they should have been given some compensation.

Geography controls most of human destiny. Had the geography and climate of the North Eastern states been favorable for large plantation style crops, Northerners would have been lapping up the profits of slave ownership unless somehow, North Eastern Americans were by and large more virtuous than people in the South. Human greed is everywhere. Southerners saw the opportunities for unscrupulous, big, short term profits just as the Wall Street Bankers are currently doing.

[JI7]

12. fuck that

[hfojvt]

16. geography controls most human destiny

yeah, sure that's pretty fatalistic.

As for North Eastern Americans, one fact is that even most southerners were not slave owners. Not everybody is ruled by their greed.

Compensation sure would have been cheaper than the war.

Slave owners were stripped of investments though because they were traitors fighting against their duly elected government (even though Lincoln was kept off the ballot in most southern states.)

[hfojvt]

14. I don't know where you are getting that nonsense

"The strategy of suddenly, by proclamation, freeing the slaves with no compensation for the owners (who had legally purchased the slaves) guaranteed secession and war."

That's a nice theory, if not for the fact that the Emancipation proclamation came during the war, and not before it.

[ladjf]

21. I didn't say that the Proclamation came before the war. I got my opinion from studying the sequence

of events leading up to the War, during the War and after.

[hfojvt]

22. seems to me that you did

"The strategy of suddenly, by proclamation, freeing the slaves with no compensation for the owners (who had legally purchased the slaves) guaranteed secession and war."

Because there was no proclamation before the war, so when was this strategy announced?

[ladjf]

23. I did a poor job of writing down what I had in mind.

The Republican Party was founded in 1854. The Republican Convention of 1860 nominated Lincoln. The Emancipation Proclamation was in 1863. That sequence was clear to me but I failed to clarify the time-line in my post.

When I first researched the Republican Party from their first years, I noted that their philosophy and methods strongly resemble the Republican Party of today. They were already up to their usual underhanded tactics.

As I studied the sequence of events from the time their party was founded up the point of the Emancipation Proclamation it appeared to me that the Republicans were more interested in seizing power than doing what was best for the American People. I felt that the Federal Government failed to address the slavery issue in a manner that would have freed the slaves, made them citizens without
stampeding the South into immediate submission, bankruptcy and deaths.

Perhaps there was no way to end slavery in the U.S. other than Civil War. In that case, the largest burden of guilt should fall onto the Federal Government for failing to prohibit slave trade in America long before 1863. Many of the founding fathers owed slaves.
At that time, it apparently was an acceptable practice. But by 1860, just 74 years after the Declaration of Independence, it had become an issue that had to be solved immediately no matter what the damage might be. Could there be other underlying realities that motivated the Northern politicians of the period? At the start of the War, the dollar value of cotton exports exceeded all other commodities combined.

But, when the South had to decide immediately to either acquiesce to the Fed's demands or go to war , they made the terrible and fateful mistake of choosing a war that there was no chance to win. From various accounts from that period, the South felt that they could win the war. As it turned out, it was and still is the worst calamity in American History.

If the current Republican Party is able to gain total control of the Government, the results would eventually eclipse the horror of the Civil War.

[JI7]

2. i hope this stays in GD

because the point he makes is not really about the election itself. Or even the candidates themselves as much as how these things are viewed in this country.

And how history is not being taught in an honest and truthful way when it comes to this issue.

[Mass]

3. This is why I posted that here and not in GDPnt

[hfojvt]

4. which is which?

Also, I am not sure what either of those mean.

What, after all, are the "myths that undergirded racist violence"?

I don't really know what he is talking about there. Nor do I know if I should even take instruction from him. He's a privileged fellow, and some of his statements seem less than honest.

Secondly, how does one "confront the history of racist violence"? Do we need a time machine for that?

As far as the last line. "It really isn’t too much to say, if you’re going to govern a country, you should know its history."

Well, we usually do NOT elect history professors to either Congress or the Presidency. Is Coates some kind of expert in history himself? Does he have a degree in it? How many books has he read about our history? Considering I have spent a few years on a historical research project and a good part of my life doing family history research, I think I probably know more about many aspects of history than Coates does. Yet he apparently is putting his humble self up there as a guy who "knows our history".

[JI7]

6. one example is stonewall jackson owning slaves

Which you didn't know even though you said he was one of your heroes.

[hfojvt]

17. an example of what?

And, of course, it depends on what the definition of "was" is.

History can be a funny thing. See, I was born in South Carolina. So as a child, for whatever reason, even though my dad was born in Wisconsin and my mom in New York, I saw myself as a Southerner dammit. So, as a child, I was reading books, in my northern town, about the Swamp Fox and Robert E. Lee, and yes, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Two of my great great grandfathers fought for the GAR. Brothers and nephews and sons of my ancestors died fighting for the GAR (some other distant cousins were fighting for the CSA too). But I was never told those things as a kid. I am not even sure if my parents knew those facts. I discovered them from my own family research.

So, here I am, descended from a guy who died in Andersonville, but I think that as a southerner, the rebels were "my side". The library in my town contained books about Lee and Jackson. Books that said a) they were decent people and b) they were great generals.

My name is Thomas. So Thomas Jackson joined Thomas Jefferson (who also owned slaves (there is a rumor anyway) and Thomas Edison and Thomas Paine who were childhood heroes.

But whatever, that will forever be seen as a stain on my soul, something like a bloody shirt for my confederacy of detractors to always remember and wave around since they were, doubtless, born perfect and all knowing.

[snooper2]

9. Did he say that with a Dos Equis in his hand?

[gollygee]

20. Interesting responses to this