{"id":2215,"date":"2015-06-22T14:07:07","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T22:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2215"},"modified":"2015-06-22T14:07:07","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T22:07:07","slug":"old-times-there-are-not-forgotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2215","title":{"rendered":"Old times there are not forgotten"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some people in this life need an elephant to take a shit on their head before they will acknowledge the possibility the circus might be in town. So now Nikki Haley and Lindsey Graham and a bunch of other South Carolina Republicans, finding themselves backed into a corner by the Internet and the media and the blood of nine dead citizens, are saying the Confederate battle flag needs to come down from the South Carolina statehouse grounds. Yay and hooray.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: those battle flags went up across the South – and onto state flags that had not heretofore incorporated them – not in the aftermath of the War of the Rebellion, not in the heady days after the Redeemers brought an end to the Federal occupation, but in the 1950s as a deliberate response to the emerging civil rights movement. \u00a0It was \u201cForget, hell!\u201d writ large. \u00a0It was pledging the full faith and credit of Southern states to the cause of massive resistance to the notion that all men were created equal. \u00a0It had nothing to do with history, or heritage, or anything of the like; it was a deliberate gesture on behalf of white supremacy, and any argument to the contrary is facially invalid.<\/p>\n

Yes, symbols matter. But this isn\u2019t some kind of triumph. This isn\u2019t even a win<\/em>. This is table stakes, the barest small-blind ante necessary to participate in the 21st century. The idea that Nikki Haley deserves some kind of credit for \u201ccoming around\u201d less than a year after saying it wasn\u2019t important because she\u2019d been elected and she hadn\u2019t heard from any CEO about it is risible. \u00a0She\u2019s not doing it because it\u2019s the right thing to do, she\u2019s doing it because the whole world is finally watching. You get zero credit for decisions you made because CNN had your nuts in a professional threat sandwich.<\/p>\n

Start with this. Read it. The whole thing. Don\u2019t skip bits<\/a>. This might be the most important thing written about the topic of race in the United States in the last forty years.<\/p>\n

I know you didn\u2019t read it. \u00a0Go back. I\u2019m deadly serious about this.<\/p>\n

Okay. Now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here is the thing: this country has never<\/em> come to a reckoning with how we got to this point. We kind of sort of tried with the war, but there were slave states in the Union too, and their slaves were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation (slavery in places like Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri only came to an end with the Thirteenth Amendment at the end of 1865). And Reconstruction – spun by the Confederates into a horror of foreign occupation and oppression rather than any kind of effort to maybe do right by freed slaves – lasted maybe a decade, until it was possible to throw it over the side for the sake of political advantage (and the election of Rutherford Hayes as President). The Civil Rights movement lasted long enough to get a Voting Rights Act that has since been disemboweled, and efforts to extend its reach beyond the South, or Jim Crow, or the ballot box, went by the boards as soon as one party decided to take advantage of the backlash for political purposes. \u00a0We as a nation are overly fond of making a grand gesture and then forgetting about it as soon as we can get something by forgetting it.<\/p>\n

Reparations for black America aren\u2019t about cutting everyone a check. \u00a0You can\u2019t dump a sack of money in everyone\u2019s yard and call it square, because it\u2019s not just about poverty, it\u2019s not just about water fountains or bus seats. \u00a0Hell, the effort to try to get black elected officials got utilized to gerrymander white supremacy into Southern Congressional delegations for the last twenty years. Affirmative action – that much-derided phrase – isn\u2019t about diversity or a quota or ticking a box, it\u2019s about exactly what it means. Affirmative<\/em> action. Recognizing that people have been wronged and making a willful, deliberate, conscious effort to undo the effects of that wrong.<\/p>\n

It also means something else.<\/p>\n

It means not giving in to despair. \u00a0It means not deciding that the task is too enormous, too overwhelming, too difficult to explain. It means not choosing to punt because the last slaves died decades ago and nobody alive today ever owned one. \u00a0It means grappling with how to make our society and our country worthy of what we say about ourselves. \u00a0It means taking seriously things like \u201cjustice for all\u201d and \u201call men are created equal\u201d and \u201ca more perfect Union.”<\/p>\n

And for the first time in twenty years, it means struggling with whether that means not<\/em> throwing your hands in the air and running away and hoping that death and demographics will bend the curve for you without having to put your own shoulder to the wheel and do your part to atone for the shortcomings of your forebears. \u00a0It means turning that question in upon myself.<\/p>\n

It means I have to ask, in all seriousness and full well aware of what the answer may require, what am I<\/em> prepared to do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some people in this life need an elephant to take a shit on their head before they will acknowledge the possibility the circus might be in town. So now Nikki Haley and Lindsey Graham and a bunch of other South Carolina Republicans, finding themselves backed into a corner by the Internet and the media and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Old times there are not forgotten”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}