A more perfect union

We're not broken, we're just not finished

Yikes! It’s been a month and a half since I posted anything. I apologize. In my efforts to pull this country together and eliminate this divide before it eliminates us, I do mainly two things. Write and talk. I lead a workshop that I call ‘The Intersection of Race and Life in America’. I’ll go anywhere in the United States. They’re difficult workshops. Difficult conversations. Difficult to get right. Difficult to lead. Putting then together is difficult and crazy time consuming. In the last few weeks I’ve done three, with two more coming up in less than a month. So…there’s my excuse for not writing. But I need to be writing too. There’s some immensely important stuff going on.

The hopeful and uplifting poem, The Hill We Climb, written and recited by Amanda Gorman, the young poet who read her poem at the Biden Presidential Inauguration has been banned in at least one Florida school. That’s important. The offending sentence seems to have been, “Somehow, we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.” Amanda Gorman, the offending poet, is Black.

In 1787 Gouverneur Morris penned the preamble to the United States Constitution, calling forth “a more perfect union”, which sounds mighty close to, “a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished” raised no such fervor and to my knowledge neither the Constitution nor the Preamble have ever been banned from an American school. Gouverneur Morris, the non-offending founding father, is White. I should have been writing about the difference between “simply unfinished” and “a more perfect union”.

The Supreme court is likely about to overturn the right of schools to give extra points to students of color. That’s important. Never mind that Jennifer Gratz opened this can of worms in 1997 when she sued the University of MI because lower qualified Students of Color were admitted over her. She railed against the 20 points given to applicants of color on a 120 point scale. She was peeved that she, a White person who had always earned everything she’d achieved, like all White people seem to have, that 85 Students of Color with lower scores and grades then she were accepted. Never mind that Jennifer’s law suit ignored a lot.

Jennifer managed to ignore the 1,400 White students with lower scores and grades then she who were accepted. She managed to ignore the 6 points given if the student was from the all-white Upper Peninsula…the 10 points given if you went to a top – i.e. White - high school…the 8 points given if the student took Advance Placement classes, which are 3 times more available in schools serving White kids than in schools serving Black or Brown kids…and the 4 points awarded to legacy students…students like Brett Kavanaugh who claimed to have been admitted to Yale solely on the basis of his hard White work and certainly not on the extra points he earned by being a legacy student.

A 2007 study showed that for every SOC who was admitted who didn’t otherwise meet the requirements, two White students were admitted because of the parents’ connections or because their parent wrote a donation check. An argument against Affirmative Action is that it harms Students of Color because it lowers the standards. But in fact it is white people who benefit from the awarding of points thus lowering the standards.

Jennifer Gratz is white. So is Brett Kavanaugh.

But what exactly is Affirmative Action? I’d guess that the most common way it is thought of is as a legislative order giving institutional opportunities based solely on skin color. Surveys show that support for Affirmative Action has declined over the last few decades. A poll in 2016 found that 56% of White people believe that discrimination against White people was as big a problem as discrimination against Black people. 45% of Trump Republicans believe they face a lot of discrimination. Only half as many felt that Black or Brown people face a lot of discrimination.

After the Civil War Union General Sherman evidently believed in affirmative action and decreed that some freed enslaved people would receive 40 acres to farm and a mule to pull a plow to cultivate their land. And in fact, some 400,000 acres were given to these newly freed humans. It took about a year for this land to be re-confiscated and returned to the White previous owners.

Tobacco is a land and labor intensive crop and in the 1600’s the British Monarchy was finding it challenging to wring tobacco profits from their American colonies. So in 1613 the crown created the ‘Head Right’ system which gave fifty acres for every ‘head’ that traveled to VA to grow tobacco. Every White head.

In 1705, concerned that 29 years earlier during the Bacon Rebellion White and Black laborers had banned together in an uprising against the elite, VA enacted a statute that required masters to give indentured servants 50 acres of land, 30 schillings, 10 bushels of corn, and a musket. Unlike 40 acres and mule, this ordnance was never overturned. “Give ‘em something so they’ll leave us alone!” Indentured servants were White.

Also in 1705 the colony of VA, still concerned about the Bacon Rebellion, locked in a brutal system of white supremacy giving owners of enslaved people absolute rights of control and torture and making it illegal for Black people to be armed or employ White people. White people, feeling their superiority, no longer desired to band together with Black people against the White elite.

In 1785, intent on building a country of educated White land owners, the new country enacted The Land Ordinance Act whereby 640 acres of land was made available for $1.00 an acre ($31.12 in 2023 numbers) creating a nation of White land owners. In each township, one acre was set aside devoted to public education. White students only.

The 1862 Homesteading Act transferred fully 10% of the entire US land mass to private ownership. Open to any citizen of the United States. The catch? Black enslaved people wo had lived and slaved here for generations did not become citizens until the 14^th Amendment was enacted in 1868.

In 1935 President  Franklin Roosevelt, as a part of the vaunted New Deal, signed the Social Security act buying some measure of financial security for elderly Americans. Excluded from participation were those labors filled almost exclusively by Black Americans.

The Social Security Act simultaneously created Unemployment Insurance and simultaneously excluded those same labors as the Social Security Act did. So now White Americans, based solely on the color of their skin, were provided some measure of financial security during old age and unemployment.

In the 1940’s, post WWII, the federal government went about creating a middle class by making home ownership available. The Federal Housing Authority became the primary mortgage lender and insurer. Federal programs kept the average cost of new homes at about twice the price of the average American annual salary. There was a catch. Only White Americans had access to these programs. Not even Black combat veterans of ‘The Greatest Generation’  had access to these redlined programs.

Also post WWII, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, aka the GI Bill, was enacted. It made college affordable for vets. Except the only colleges available to Black Americans were Black colleges. So while White veterans were becoming lawyers, engineers, and accountants, Black vets were receiving industrial, agricultural, and vocational training. This was exacerbated by career counselors who steered servicemen towards careers that were in line with their military training. Most Black service men were dock workers, stewards, and cooks.

Anyway, enough of institutional opportunities based solely on skin color.  But as we await the decision by a court with three justices appointed by an openly racist president, as Randall Kennedy of the NY Times quipped, “It is worth recalling a sobering feature of the racial history of the United States: Every major step undertaken to advance Black Americans and to redress the consequences of racial subordination has been met with charges of “reverse discrimination” and unfair “preference.”

Tonight I really want to focus on some of the feedback that I’ve received from these workshops I’ve been involved in. The question always comes up, “What can I do to promote racial equality?” And in truth, I’ve always stumbled when I’ve tried to answer this question. I don’t have that blueprint. But here’s my frustration and answer.

In 1961 President John Kennedy challenged America to land a man on the moon. Eight years later we were there. Resolve and commitment. In 2002 in the face of a deadly pandemic America developed a vaccine in less than a year. That took resolve and commitment.

My grandparents moved around by foot, horseback, and horse drawn carriages. My parents traveled by car and jet. In two generations we’d gone from horse shoes to brake shoes and jet engines. We did that.

Yet, in four hundred and four years, we have not been able to solve America’s issue with race. I used to hear, “This takes time”, and decades later I hear, “This takes time.” Obviously. But 404 years? That’s just a country that isn’t really committed…that doesn’t really care…that benefits from the status quo. And my guess is that most folks who are asking that have done little or nothing.

So my answer is, stop doing nothing and do SOMETHING, and do it with commitment. In truth there has been nothing that America has not been able to accomplish when we’ve had the resolve.

Please go to the comment section and share your ideas. But please don’t say that we just need to love and respect each other. I hear that frequently. That’s a way of saying we really don’t need to do anything. We do need to do something. There’s no excuse for four hundred and four years.