Professor Ricky Jones talks Tucker Carlson and race relations in the U.S.
Louisville Courier Journal
In 1979, the legendary writer James Baldwin began work on a manuscript examining his relationships with Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and
Martin Luther King Jr. He never finished it. In 2017, filmmaker Raoul
Peck used Baldwin’s words as the foundation for his riveting masterpiece
“I Am Not Your Negro.”
Peck’s
entire film is captivating, but one segment in particular ceaselessly
haunts me. The meditative voice of narrator Samuel L. Jackson
deliberately carries us through one of Baldwin’s most damning
reflections on a good percentage of white Americans, “I’m terrified at
the moral apathy – the death of the heart which is happening in my
country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they
really don’t think I’m human. I base this on their conduct, not on what
they say. And this means that they have become, in themselves, moral
monsters.”
As
he did throughout his life, Baldwin raises difficult but necessary
questions with which we must wrestle. Why are so many white Americans so
brutally mean and inhumane? Why do so many others feel comfortable
justifying or excusing it? Why do others still, who claim “not to think
that way,” find it acceptable to say little and do even less? Make no
mistake, there are certainly whites who stand in the tradition of
William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown and others. However, reasonable
people must admit they are the exceptions, not the rules.
To
be sure, no matter how sensibly and dispassionately one approaches the
subject, many whites immediately paint them as angry black people,
[reverse] racists, or maniacs. Despite that, while far too many cower
and equivocate, other brave Americans continue to raise the issue in the
public sphere. A small sample of important work over the last few years
includes Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The First White President” in the Atlantic,
Charles Blow’s “The Lowest White Man” in the New York Times, Rose Marie
Berger’s rumination “Why are white people so mean?” and Michael
Harriot’s recent sledgehammer piece, “White people are cowards” in The
Root.
All
of these writers along with stalwart academics like Duke University’s
William “Sandy” Darrity, Emory University’s Carol Anderson and others
contextualize the subject and push back against the emerging narrative
that white American mean-spiritedness appeared and apexed with the
ascension of Donald Trump.
That is a lie. The truth is none of this is new. Its genesis is
actually rooted in times long before America’s current anti-black and
brown immigrant president’s family immigrated to the country.
Voter
fraud is a canard. Voter suppression, however, is real and is not new.
It has been around since the limiting of the franchise to
property-holding white men at the beginning of the country’s political
story. Forcing the extension of it to others has always been a
struggle.
Traumatizing families and children of
color is not new. White Americans enslaved blacks, raped black women,
demonized black men, ripped black children from their parents, sold them
all when profitable, visited any number of other inexcusable atrocities
upon them ... and justified it all. Those who resisted were threatened,
punished or killed. Once slavery ended, whites continued to glorify
slavery and the Confederacy with flags, statues, monuments and political
candidates who reaffirmed all the nastiness and death. They still do.
The
Supreme Court’s support of such indecency is not new. Remember Dred
Scott and many other legal blows to decency and democracy.
That
only scratches the surface. Native American genocide, black codes,
grandfather clauses, poll taxes, intimidation, disproportionate
incarceration, convict leasing, Jim Crow, Japanese American internment,
police murder of black men, women and children often without
consequence. None of it is new. It is the continuation of a
long-standing pattern and, as Congresswoman Maxine Waters advised,
resistance needs to be fomented.
Medgar Evers was
slain in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, and Martin Luther King in 1968. James
Baldwin passed in 1987. None of them ever experienced Donald Trump, but
all witnessed omnipresent American white supremacy and meanness. Maybe
Baldwin was right when he said we are dealing with “moral monsters.” It
is hard to say at this point. If that is the case, we need to be clear
about it. Such an acknowledgment would lower the expectation that many
of our white brothers and sisters will be inclined to make decisions
based on human decency rather than economic and political calculations
or privilege maintenance. At least that honesty would eradicate the lies
and pretense.
If
America continues on this path (and there is no historical or
contemporary evidence that it will not), maybe Emma Lazarus’ words
famously associated with the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired,
your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” should be
replaced with a paraphrasing of Dante, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter
here ... unless ye be white.”
