White people don’t get it
Please note: this blog in no ways intends to minimize the atrocities the Jewish people have experienced for millennia. Jews were slaves long before Africans were brought to America and were tortured by numerous societies before Hitler. I based my comments on the fact that Hitler studied American slavery, Black Code and Jim Crow laws as a model for his horrific attempted annihilation of the Jews.
Another cold kept me uncomfortable and awake last night. My mind gets restless in these empty hours, and last night was no exception. I jumped into tracing the violence we are seeing today. It led me to the ultimate painful issue for Americans: Slavery.
Slavery in America has never been resolved.
I knew that. But I had not made the bigger connection. I myself have said over and over about ICE and Trump, “this is not the America I know and love.” But now I see clearly: it IS our country. We have been the world’s example for atrocities for years. In fact, our nation invented and perfected systemic horror against groups of people.
I, like many others, have tended to compare what’s happening with Trump today with Nazi Germany. Perhaps we have done so because it is one of the most horrendous genocide examples we’ve seen in our lifetime. But we need not look anywhere but our own country to see where today’s gruesome human rights violations come from.
Where do we think Hitler got his ideas? The Nazis studied American slavery, systemic enslavement, segregation and Jim Crow laws to craft their Nuremberg laws. When Germany looked to us, they saw a country that did the following: enslaved human beings, classified human beings as being less than human, defined a superior race, enacted systems to remove all rights from the “inferior” race, permitted cruelty and torture to manage the “inferior” race, threatened citizens who didn’t support such systems, maintained a system of terror to drive behavior, actively sought to identify and punish anyone who worked against such a system and took zero accountability for the cruelty enacted.
Yes, the Nazi’s got their ideas from us. Every black person in America has known this and has been sadly wondering when we supposedly progressive white people were going to get it. Well, I do now, and it is horrifying. America is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. We’ve gaslighted ourselves into thinking we— the “woke” white folk appalled by what’s happening in our country today— are the good guys. Breaking news: we’re one of the worst
Now before you write me off as a crazy bleeding-heart liberal, stop! Go on this journey with me.
Portuguese slave owners first brought African slaves to the colonies in 1619, long before the colonies’ independence from England and King George’s rule. Other enslaved Africans were already on North American land because they were brought by the Spanish, starting in 1525. Between the 1500s and mid-1800s, over 12 million enslaved Africans were brought to our shores. This is more than the 8.3 million people in New York City today, considered to be the most populous U.S. city.
These slaves transformed our burgeoning nation from a camp for religious fanatics to an economic powerhouse. Bought primarily by southerners in the transatlantic states, slaves became cheap agricultural labor, contributing the equivalent of $3 billion dollars in labor to produce tobacco, cotton, rice, sugar and indigo. Slaves also supported other industries in the north. Collectively, the output of slaves in the 16th and 17th centuries amounted to more than 60% of the the colonies’ wealth.
Realizing the value of slave labor, the southern states enacted laws to define slave ownership. The colonists’s decided that the legal status of a slave was inherited through the mother— If a mother was a slave, any children she bore would be slaves as well. Sound familiar? To maintain this automatically reproducing labor force, southerners also developed restrictive codes limiting education, forbidding reading and writing and restricting freedom of movement. Slaves also were held in deplorable conditions,
Slavery became America’s “peculiar institution,” enabling white Americans to establish and build wealth for centuries. Even before the colonies gained independence in the American Revolution, slaves had begun revolting.
Then the Civil War began, pitting the Union against the South. When slaves were emancipated in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, they were supposed to have absolute equality with white people, including personal and property rights. However, the Civil War did not end until 1865, leading to continuing slavery, particularly in the Deep South.
With the 13th Amendment, the relationship between slave owner and slave was supposed to have shifted. Slave owners became employers and slaves became employees with labor contracts and wages. Former slave owners never actually followed the requirements of the 13th Amendment, however. If they had, the 4 million enslaved Americans freed by the Union would have gained total equality with white people.
The Southern states may have lost the Civil War, but their commitment to slavery did not weaken. They enacted “Black Codes” that severely restricted the rights and movement of newly freed Black people. Under these codes, blacks were forced to sign extended labor contracts at minimum pay. If they refused to sign, they could be arrested, fined or forced into unpaid labor— what is unpaid labor if not slavery? This is not freedom, and surely not aligned with the requirements of the 13th Amendment.
In South Carolina, Blacks were prevented from having any other occupation than farmer. Other states required written evidence of labor contracts for at least a year. Without this document, Blacks were considered to be vagrants, which could lead to arrest and imprisonment. All of the Southern states restricted Blacks’ ability to own land, choose occupations, work for fair wages and enjoy the freedoms that white people were accustomed to. Even after the 14th and 15th Amendments were passed, guaranteeing equality and the right to be able to vote without interference, Black Codes prevented Black people from freedom. Essentially the south after the end of slavery created a system of laws and regulations to re-enslave Black people in America.
With each bit of progress Black people made, white people enacted laws to turn back the progress. After Black Codes, Jim Crow laws continued to marginalize Blacks, denying them the right to vote, get an education and other opportunities. Jim Crow laws, named after a Black minstrel character, guaranteed separation between Black people and white people. We’ve all heard about the separate entrances, separate bathrooms, separate transportation requirements and separate education the Jim Crow laws put in place.
These Black Codes and laws led to the mass incarceration of many Black men. Perceived infractions led to chain gangs, unpaid, forced labor and imprisonment. When whites complain about the numbers of imprisoned Blacks— which, ironically, is less than imprisoned whites— they forget that white people set up the rules leading to this imprisonment.
The reality is that the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments never became the truly enacted law of the land. In particular, the Southern states made sure that other systems were in place to prevent Black Americans from gaining the freedoms the Constitution had given them.
Even after lawmakers determined the Jim Crow laws unconstitutional, the systems, institutions and opportunities created by white people remained. This is how racism in America has become a system. White people have always controlled agriculture, industry and government. White people determined, wrote and enacted Federal, State and local laws. White people set voting districts, invented the prison system, determined neighborhood boundaries and school districts, and controlled all access to money and investment. These systems have not changed, for the most part, since white people established them.
The anti-discrimination laws and diversity, equity and inclusion programs have attempted to remedy the depth of systemic exclusion Blacks have experienced. But guess the primary color of the people who wrote these anti-discrimination laws and DEI policies? Do I have to spell it out? White people.
All of this has been done under the guise of “freedom.” But Black people in America have never been free of the white man’s and woman’s thumb. When the current administration determined that DEI has hurt white men, it hijacked the policies to help disenfranchised people. By claiming that white men are now the victims, the Administration can keep Black people out of the white-created systems, erecting a new invisible but clearly unscalable wall for Black people.
So how did Hitler get his ideas? He got them from us. Forced labor— this came right out of slavery and the Jim-Crow South. The Jewish Ghetto? This came from preventing Black citizens from living in and owning land or homes in white areas. Jewish lineage: slavery defined Black lineage too. Preventing intermarriage? Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. Slaves were not permitted to marry at all. Ripping apart families? Yep, white Southerners did this to Blacks too, preventing marriage and family gatherings (and then today we wonder why so many single Black moms exist). Every horrific law Hitler wrote has its counterpart in slavery, Black Codes and Jim Crow laws.
Even the atrocities of the concentration camps can be traced to American roots. White people enslaved Blacks, worked them to death, beat them and tortured them in innumerable ways until they died. The South may not have used ovens, but this is likely only because this technology was not available in the hundreds of years of slavery, and it was too obvious for the repressed and “secret” slavery that has continued since 1865.
Now, MAGAs want to declare the work of racial equity and equality complete, as if the goals were achieved. We have never implemented the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Whites, especially conservative white Nationalists, have tried to gaslight an entire nation.
Yes. Germany learned from the U.S. We built an entire country, with institutions, social systems, rules, laws and regulations around slavery. Most white folk didn’t change when slavery was made unconstitutional.
This is not woke-ness. This is the painful truth. White people need to put on their big girl panties and look at what this country has really done. Let me tell you— it’s awful and we should feel bad. Even if your ancestors, like mine, weren’t born here, you have benefited from the white hierarchy set up to privilege white people.
What we’re fighting today isn’t only to prevent another Hitler. We are fighting to prevent a return to slavery. We are fighting for really living the principles outlined in our constitution rather than pretending to. We are fighting for change so that another nation cannot use our example to build evil empires. We are fighting to show nations can learn the lessons of history. If we fail to understand the gravity of our current conflict and its real roots in the horrors of America and Americans, then we have never created a country on the ideals our forefathers gave us. We’ve lived a lie, and it’s about time we called ourselves on it.
I would love to hear from you, even if, especially if, you disagree. Perhaps we can bring back the American tradition of debate. Please like and share this blog with others. Subscribe to receive it by email and go directly to the Walk the Moon website (www.walk-the-moon.com) to peruse the full collection of articles and updates. You can email me from the Walk the Moon website as well.
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