Slavery and Trump: the poison lingers

We’re about to commemorate, because celebrate really isn’t the right word, the fourth centenary of the introduction of slavery on the North American continent, in 1619.

The first permanent European settlement in Virginia was established in 1608. So it took just eleven years before they were importing slaves from Africa. 

Anyone in Britain who feels any sense of superiority over their American cousins over this should think again. Those settlers in Virginia were decidedly and entirely British.

By a curious coincidence, as a Brit myself, I’m reminded of this dismal past regularly in my new home in the suburbs of the Spanish city of Valencia. Not far from where we live, in a wheat field, stand the ruins of a farm building. On the intact wall, an artist has painted a black man raising his fist as he looks at a field in which he has, no doubt, been working and will soon be working again.

Even today, even in Spain, still yearning to be free

It’s a curious sight not only because it reminds me of the Africans taken to America, but also because Africans come to Spain each year for the kind of work the man in the painting does. They’re paid, of course, and they go home afterwards, so they’re not slaves. But free? I’m not sure men driven by economic necessity so far from where they live can really be said to be free.

The institution of slavery marked American culture profoundly. If you believe that a group of people is so debased, so inferior that it is perfectly possible to buy and sell individuals from it, and you treat them as cattle for the best part of two and a half centuries, how long will it take you to understand that they are no different from you and certainly no less valuable?

There is something shocking in the fact that a movement has to be called ‘Black Lives Matter’, as though that were some kind of surprising new discovery. The United States was founded on the proposition that all men are created equal. How is it a shock to discover that it really applies to all women as much as all men, and all blacks as well as all whites?

However, it seems that this truth is still a shock. The L A Times recently reported that one in a thousand black men and boys can expect to die at the hands of police violence. That’s two and half times more than their white equivalents.

In passing, those figures are bad enough entirely independent of race. Something like three people are killed by police each day in the US. So far in 2019, two have been killed in the UK, 1 in 2018. US police kill as many people in a day as the UK police killed in each of the last two years.

But above all, it is the contrast between black and white deaths that is particularly striking. It underlines why a movement called ‘Black Lives Matter’ had to be set up. There is still an indifference to the value of black life permeating US society, and in particular its power structures such as the police. I’ve quoted these words before but they’re worth quoting again, since they reflect how that indifference came from the very top of US society. This is Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court in 1857, talking about slaves and their descendants, whether free or not, who, at the time of the Declaration of Independence:

…had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect…

Why is all this of any particular interest now? Well, it isn’t just because of the commemoration of the introduction of slavery. It’s also because, by an ironic coincidence, this is the week in which Donald Trump made his offer to buy Greenland from Denmark.

The Danes, sensible in their adoption of twenty-first century standards, and sensitive to the needs of the Greenlanders, dismissed this proposal as absurd. And Trump, far from admitting his error – and when will he ever? – responded by cancelling his planned visit to Denmark.

To him, what he was proposing was “essentially a large real estate deal”. That’s a far more telling statement than he and even most of his critics realised. Because he wanted to buy an entire country, including its 50,000 inhabitants. And that to him is just “real estate”.

Trump: buying and selling a nation and its people
is just a real estate deal

People who look or sound different from the ruling Anglos in the US just don’t matter to a certain section of those Anglos. They can be bought and sold like real estate, or indeed like cattle. They can no longer be enslaved as they once were, but it seems they’re still viewed as inferior can still be shot with casual frequency.

The poison that entered the US soul four centuries ago hasn’t yet been worked out of the system. It’s interesting that it still drives Trump’s attitudes. And isn’t it appropriate that this should be revealed in the week we commemorate its four hundredth anniversary?

Have a happy Independence Day. But maybe remember what it means too

Twelve score and three years ago, the fathers of our cousins across the Atlantic, brought forth on their continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Well, all men in the strictly limited sense of the word ‘man’. Women weren’t given the vote or anything radical like that. And even amongst men, it wasn’t really every man. The main author of the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was a slaveowner himself and able to live with the notion that anyone black amongst men created in supposed equality, could be held in slavery, his rights being pretty much equal to those of livestock.

Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the USA
who denied African-American any rights a white man was bound to respect

The fact that slavery existed at the same time as the founding fathers issued the Declaration of Independence, suggested to many that its lofty sentiments were only ever intended to apply to whites. This led, as I’ve pointed out before, to what today is a shocking claim at the conclusion of the Dred Scott case in 1857. Chief Justice of the United States, Roger Taney, declared in his judgement that from the earliest days of the nation, ‘negroes’ were seen as inferior and, indeed, “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

There have been many cases, for instance of police shootings of black men, which rather suggest that some still feel that African Americans have no rights a white man is bound to respect.

Nor were all white men precisely equal. Most of the states of the time applied fancy franchise rules, with the vote only available to those who held certain levels of wealth. There was a widespread feeling around the western world at the time that those without property had nothing to lose from political decisions, and might therefore act recklessly if they were given a say in them.

But none of that really matters. Or rather, it matters a great deal, but only to show the way humanity makes progress: through compromise, through half measures, through what may sometimes seem nothing less than hypocrisy. Despite all the contradictions and equivocations, the Constitution that was written based on Jefferson’s powerful words, has stood the test of time remarkably well, surviving a devastating civil war that led to the abolition of slavery; the often brutal measures to repress the women’s suffrage movement; and the authoritarian attempts to hijack the Constitution during the McCarthy era.

Senator Joseph McCarthy:
tried to distort the US Constitution into authoritarianism

Through its existence, it has been a beacon to millions around the world. When that Constitution was launched, ‘democracy’ was a derogatory term in Europe. It implied chaotic rule by the masses, by their nature incapable of rule and opening the door to anarchy. When Lincoln claimed, in the Gettysburg address, that the aim of his war was to ensure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”, he wasn’t exaggerating. Precious few parts of the Earth allowed the people much of a say in government; Lincoln’s efforts ensured that rather more of the US people had such a say; the enfranchisement of women half a century later extended that for the first time to a majority of the people. The other nations we now think of as democracies followed in the wake of the United States.

It is, therefore, hard to overstate the importance of the event the US celebrates on 4 July, not just for Americans but for the world. Certainly, it took a lot longer to come even close to recognising that all men, and women, should be seen as equal, and we’re still far from realising that equality in practice. But at least the aspiration has been there since 1776 and we’ve slowly moved towards it.

Sadly, the vision Jefferson and his contemporaries championed, flawed and contradictory as it may have been, but still profoundly invigorating and freeing in the long term, is now more under threat than ever. Donald Trump is once more trying to distort the Constitution in an authoritarian direction, as Senator McCarthy did in the fifties – but this time with the power of the White House behind him.

So perhaps today’s celebrations need to be a little muted. Among the festivities, Americans need to realise that a man elected under the provisions of the Constitution is undermining it. And, to adapt Lincoln’s words once more, they should highly resolve that those who preceded them shall not have struggled in vain, and continue the fight to ensure that a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all and not just some people have an equal right to freedom, can indeed endure.

Donald Trump:
trying McCarthy's trick again, but with the power of the White House

Ferguson: continuation not interruption

Hasn’t it been fascinating to follow the happenings from Ferguson? 

Ferguson. Curious spectacle

I particularly enjoyed the description of the events by Darren Wilson,the policeman who fired the shots that killed Mike Brown. 

He painted a picture of Brown that was nothing short of terrifying. This huge man had reached in through the window of the police car and rained blows upon Wilson. It must have been appalling. I suppose we should at least be grateful that the blows left so few marks on Wilson’s face; or perhaps he simply has a capacity to heal from his wounds that far outstrips any ordinary person’s.

It may be an effect of the internal glow Wilson derives from having such an easy conscience: he has, indeed, assured us that his conscience is completely clear.

Things got even worse after this first nightmarish incident. The colossus, Brown, came after Wilson, furious and petrifying in his power. Let’s not forget that Brown had massive physical strength, while Wilson had only a gun to defend himself. He fired on Brown several times, and must have hit him more than once, because, as he declared, he saw him “flinch” several times. Despite all that Brown kept coming on until finally Wilson had to finish him off with a bullet to the head.

It must have been terrible. For that poor Mr Wilson.

Wilson, cool and in control, fired twelve shots at Brown. Whereas Brown was really, really rude to him. And threatening. Why, he looked as though he might have been armed. Of course, Wilson actually was armed whereas Brown wasn’t, but hey, it might have been the other way round.

Gary Younge reported on all this for the Guardian. He quoted Barack Obama commenting on the Grand Jury’s decision not to indict Wilson, “we are a nation based on the rule of law so we need to accept that this was the special jury’s decision to make.” But Younge adds his own gloss:

The trouble is that the United States, for far longer than it has been a “nation of laws”, has been a nation of injustice. And in the absence of basic justice such laws can amount to little more than codified tyranny. When a white cop, Darren Wilson, shoots an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, dead and then is not indicted, the contradiction is glaring. For a world where it is not only legal for people to shoot you dead while you walk down the street, but where they can do so in the name of the law, is one in which some feel they have nothing to lose.

Gary Younge. Well worth reading in the Guardian

That struck a bell. It reminded me of something that I’d read before:

… the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.

It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken.

They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.

Who wrote these ringing words? Why, Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, speaking for the majority in its decision of what has come to be known as the Dred Scott case. Scott was a slave who claimed that having been taken from a slave state, Missouri, to a free state, Illinois, he was in effect a free man. The Court decided that as a “negro” he was not a citizen of the United States and had no right to sue in its courts.

Dred Scott. A slave from Missouri
And absolutely not a citizen, according to the Supreme Court

You’ll have guessed that this was not a recent case. In fact, Taney gave his judgement in 1857. It contributed to the outbreak of Civil War. It was partly in response to that judgement that the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments to the US Constitution were adopted, respectively abolishing slavery and establishing the civil rights for all US nationals, irrespective of their previous status of bondage.

What’s interesting is that the War and the Amendments clearly didn’t change that much. As Gary Younge points out, the Ferguson events are a continuation of an important trend in US history, not an interruption of it.

Roger Taney would have have been proud.

Slavery: seems the Blacks were just fine with it. Like victims of any abuse

A Polish émigré, Julian Niemcewicz, who visited George Washington in 1798, commented ‘Either from habit, or from natural humour disposed to gaiety, I have never seen the blacks sad.’ 

So that was OK, then. The slaves were happy. What was wrong with slavery?

Niemcewicz’s words are a striking example of the capacity we all share to convince ourselves of any belief we find convenient. At the time he expressed that view, the Northern US states were busily abolishing slavery, and yet the South would cling on to the ‘peculiar institution’ for nearly seven more decades, and only give it up after a crushing defeat in a bitter civil war.

Not many miles from Washington’s home lived another major figure of the early United States, Thomas Jefferson. He wrote those stirring words that inspired the revolutionary war: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ Yet he too was an owner of slaves, and even fathered several children on one of them, Sally Hemings.

In fact, those very words were used against African Americans by Chief Justice Roger Taney, when he wrote what must be one of the most shameful documents in US history, the final judgement of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case:

‘The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human family [...] But it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration [...] The unhappy black race were separated from the white by indelible marks, and laws long before established, and were never thought of or spoken of except as property, and when the claims of the owner or the profit of the trader were supposed to need protection.’

So a proclamation of the equality of all men was turned on its head, into an argument in favour of the inferiority of the ‘black race’ and a justification for its enslavement.

What makes this kind of self-delusion particularly extraordinary is that, not only was slavery repugnant, it was also known to be economically inefficient, even in Washington’s day, as Dr David Stuart, from his extended family, made clear: ‘[Slaves’] support costs a great deal; their work is worth little if they are not whipped; the [overseer] costs a great deal and steals into the bargain. We would all agree to free these people, but how to do it with such a great number?’

I say nothing for Taney, but Washington and Jefferson were outstanding men who understood the issues. Yet even they felt powerless to act. It’s that ‘how to do it’ in David Stuart’s words that is most striking: he knew what was right and he knew it was expedient but he saw no means to do it.

Curiously the same impotence to overcome entrenched wrong has marked many of the other great abuses in history, whether discrimination against religious minorities, the denial of rights to women, the use of child labour, the refusal of minimal protections to workers. They have been preserved either by a self-delusion worthy of a Taney, or by a failure to act by those who knew that change was needed. ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,’ wrote Edmund Burke. Slavery is a classic case of an evil that was not extirpated because good men did nothing (and a few bad ones did a great deal too much).

Edmund Burke: understood how evil could triumph

Once the abuse has been ended, a new consensus appears which finds it extraordinary that it had ever been tolerated. Slavery? Appalling. The wonder is that it lasted.

But when we look at the Washingtons and the Jeffersons and wonder how they could have lived with that abomination, we should pause a moment and ask ourselves a few questions too. Because right now, in our own advanced, democratic countries we’re tolerating abuses which may in turn come to be regarded as just as incomprehensible as slavery.

In Britain, thirty people a week are dying after having been deemed fit for work by an agency acting for government. This means that terribly ill individuals, often disabled, are being denied benefits, their suffering hugely increased as they go to their deaths. This is presented as tough but intelligent economics.

On both sides of the Atlantic, huge numbers of people are being denied access to healthcare either because it is being sacrificed to shareholder interest in the US, or subject to increasingly draconian restrictions in Europe. People are dying needlessly, and in greater pain, than they would if we were prepared to invest more in their care.

The kind of racist thinking that inflamed Roger Taney continues to poison the debate about immigration or about Islam, and the greatest ‘minority’ of all, women, are still far from attaining equality with men or the full protection of the law, as casual attitudes towards domestic violence or rape constantly attest.

We can look back on those grand old men of the eighteenth century and puzzle at their blindness and wilful self-delusion. If we don’t want future generations to look back at us with the same condescending contempt, we need to take a look at what we’re doing wrong in our time.

And fix it. Fast.

The event of 2012: Obama's re-election

Before wishing everyone much pleasure and success in 2013, and in the midst of all the retrospectives for the end of the current year, I want to concentrate on just one of its many events: the re-election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States.

Obama: his re-election the defining moment of 2012?

This was in a way more remarkable than his original victory in 2008. That was won in the shadow of the lamentable presidency of Dubya Bush, a front-runner in the race to be the worst in US history. Facing him was a ticket which included Sarah Palin as possibly the worst candidate for vice-President: Aaron Burr was even creepier, hard though that may be to believe, but was probably less intellectually challenged.

So the first Obama victory might have owed a little to chance. To be re-elected, though, was a confirmation that enough at least of the US electorate really meant it.

That’s a great outcome, and not just because Obama is one of the brightest US Presidents there have been – though certainly he benefits by comparison with his predecessor – and, if the Tea Party can be persuaded not to take the country over the Fiscal Cliff or some other precipice – he may yet achieve remarkable things. What’s even more fascinating is what it says about how far the US has come.

Back in July 1776, one of the outstanding figures in history, Thomas Jefferson, drafted the Declaration of Independence. The first couple of paragraphs are extraordinarily impressive – you’ll remember all that stuff about ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ – but then comes all the stuff people tend to ignore because it is, frankly, rather dull: a long list of all the grievances of the British colonies against the British King.

Thomas Jefferson: admirable, though not without faults...

For instance, ‘he has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures,’ we’re told, and I have to say that as a rallying cry to armed revolution, it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi, doesn’t it? These days we have a European parliament that travels, with all its papers, from Brussels to Strasbourg ten times a year and though that’s led to some pretty horrible consequences (e.g. UKIP) it still hasn't gone as far as a descent into bitter war.

Interestingly, not all the grievances originally intended for inclusion by Jefferson were adopted by his colleagues. In particular, they left out one that starts:

‘He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain.’

Great, isn’t it? Denouncing the slave trade as un-Christian. It’s like telling today’s Christian right to be nicer about the rights of, say, Moslems.

Now Jefferson of course never freed himself from slavery, even fathering several children on Sally Hemings, who as well as being his slave was even, by today’s standards, under age when he first began his long relationship with her. However, it is admirable that he at least rose far enough above the sentiments of his time to want to denounce the trade in slaves.

His colleagues would not go that far. Jefferson's denunciation was cut from the final draft of the declaration, and this was not without significant consequences.

In 1857, 81 years later, with the country Jefferson helped found slipping inexorably towards Civil War, a powerful push in that direction was provided by a majority decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case. In the judgement, Chief Justice Roger Taney pointed to the founding documents of the United States and in particular to the Declaration of Independence, declaring that they made it clear that blacks:

‘had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.’

Roger Taney: vilain of the piece. And doesn't he look it?

Hardly what Jefferson intended in his original draft, but what far less noble men among his successors made of the final version. Blacks had no rights in law; whites had no obligation to treat them with respect.

It took 155 years to achieve the re-election, and not merely the election, of a half-black President of the United States. But given Roger Taney’s words, the road travelled is still extraordinary, even in such a time.

Enough on its own to make 2012 a seriously important year.

And now, as promised, I wish you all every possible prosperity and joy in 2013. Wouldn’t it be good if it contained at least one event as outstanding as that one from 2012?