I started my day like I usually do. Flat on my back reading multiple news sources from my phone. I was not expecting that one of the first things I would read was yet another piece on Nikki Haley’s denial that America is now or ever has been a racist country…pretty much stemming back to her confusion a few weeks ago about the root cause of The Civil War. So there went my perfectly planned day. Hike, then tie together the many subtle and not-so-subtle race things that have hit the news recently: The sad border crossing drownings, Elon Musk’s racist rants, the sad denial of free food for hungry American children, and of course, The Great Debate - is America racist?
But after reading the latest about Nikki, I realized that it’s time to just retire that question. Let it go. Spoiler alert: “Yes we were and still are”. Now then, will people line up to take DEI and Anti-racist training? Will it be a big wake up call for those Americans who hitherto before didn’t know? Probably not. Over half of White Americans believe that they are discriminated against by race, and over half of them believe they suffer more discrimination than actual minorities. I guess they’re just practicing for the day in 2050 or thereabouts when they actually become minorities. So no…no big rush to take anti-racism training.
All this certainly brings up why are Republican politicians from Ron DeSantis, the White governor from Florida - to Tim Scott, the Black U.S. senator from South Carolina - to Kamala Harris, the other national female, part Indian, national politician being asked this question? And why are they all dodging it?
Nikki Haley: “No, we’re not. We’re not a racist country. We’ve never been a racist country.” Her goal, she said, was to “lift up everybody, not go and divide people on race or gender or party or anything else.”
Ron DeSantis: “Well, the US is not a racist country,” DeSantis told a CNN town hall in New Hampshire. “And we’ve overcome things in our history. You know, I think the founding fathers – they established a set of principles that are universal. The principles of the Declaration of Independence, saying “all men are created equal” may not have been universally applied at the time. But I think they understood what they were doing. They understood that those principles would be the engine for progress for generations to come.”
Tim Scott in response to President Biden’s April, 2021 State of the Union address: “Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country” before launching into a laundry list of the many times that he has felt the sting of racial discrimination.
Kamala Harris responding to Tim Scott: "Well, first of all, no, I don't think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak the truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today.”
Blah blah blah…
More recently, in response to Nikki Haley, Harris has expanded on her views: On The View, Harris took issue with Haley for downplaying systemic racism in the United States, saying, "I think we all would agree that while it is part of our past and that we see vestiges of it today, we should also be committed collectively to not letting it define the future of our country. But we cannot get to a place of progress by denying the existence of racism."
"It is not in our best interest to evolve on the issue of race in America to suggest that the Civil War was prompted by anything other than slavery in America. It is not in the best interest of our progress as a nation to ban books and deny our children the ability to benefit from the knowledge of America's full history so that we can move toward progress. So, it's unfortunate that there are some who would deny fact or overlook it when, in fact, moving towards progress requires that we speak truth.”
And that’s it, in a nutshell. Moving toward progress requires that we speak truth. Simple. Doable. America does not need to be stuck in the past nor do we need to pretend that our brutal, White supremacist polices and actions never occurred.
Nikole Hannah-Jones suffered a lot of heat after authoring and publishing the controversial 1619 Project - a project that spoke the truth in the hope of moving towards a better America and a more perfect union. I admire her resolve and her struggle with patriotism as shown in her words: “I’ve never considered myself a particularly patriotic person. But what I’m arguing is that our founding ideals were great and powerful. Had we in fact built a country based on those founding ideals, then we would have the most amazing country the earth has ever seen.” I’m a somewhat (not highly) decorated combat Marine, followed by a career protecting Americas’ public lands. Yet, I have that same struggle with patriotism.
Would have. When I was in school, American history was taught as a series of triumphs that we have bragging rights to and that remain front and center over wrongs that were relegated to the distant, unimportant, unspeakable past. We portray that we are an honorable country always marching towards good. Slavery was evil, but the Civil War ended that evilness. Then there was segregation, but America-the-good gallantly addressed that with the Civil Rights movement - and with the help of White people ended segregation and everything that had been unfair and un-American. There was no atoning for the near elimination of Native Americans, yet it somehow didn’t invalidate our national narrative of perpetual greatness. Abroad, the U.S. had led the cause of freedom against fascism and communism. At home Japanese internment, McCarthyism, and Vietnam were mistakes but they didn’t erase the larger picture of our greatness. That’s a pretty optimistic narrative. And it’s false.
America could still get there, but we have to speak the truth. We need to stop this non-sensical stumbling around with ‘Gottcha’ questions and pretending that we’re perfect and have always been perfect. We have a long way to go to get to that more perfect union.
Yes, America was a country conceived and built with racism. Yes, we are still a country where based on skin color, we are not yet equal. And yes again, we can move beyond that. As we’ve proven again and again, America can do anything it sets it mind on. Right now all we’re doing is having a pissing contest that is not moving the needle on America’s Thing with Race. We can do better. It takes work, not rhetoric or dumb questions followed by stupid answers.
Tomorrow I’m going to get that hike in and I’ll be less frustrated. Maybe I won’t even read the news.
And this request: I hear a lot from people who month after month forward these posts to friends. Instead of constantly forwarding, please just ask them to subscribe. It’s easy and it’s free. There’s is even a button so you can easily subscribe for them. A little over two years ago. We started out with a couple of hundred subscribers. As I recall they were people who had donated and we put them on a list and started sending them these posts. We now have well over 4000 monthly readers. But to make a real dent in this intractable problem we feel like we need to have a million readers. Literally… one million. Please help us get there.