(Vol. 1.5 - Special Coup Edition)
In 1876, the United States Supreme Court effectively ended the era of Reconstruction that followed on the heels of the Civil War, fully giving over power to what was, in essence, a reborn Confederacy. The South did indeed “rise again.” The result was Jim Crow, an era of racial apartheid that would see violence and terror turn back nearly all of hard-fought victories of activists, armies, and politicians, and that would serve as the model for Hitler’s Third Reich and South Africa’s Apartheid government.
The decision was United States vs. Cruikshank, a case stemming from the 1873 massacre of some 60-150 Black people who had been defending the legitimate election results in their Louisiana parish from an enraged white mob. The death knell of Reconstruction had already begun to sound when the highest court in the land struck its killing blow. White politicians had already begun scaling back support for the enforcement of civil rights laws in former Confederate states and cities, less interested in the rights and well-being of the people so recently freed from generations of subjugation and bondage than in speedy economic recovery for themselves and their allies.
In Cruikshank, the justices ruled that the “Bill of Rights did not apply to private actors or to state governments despite the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, which provided citizen rights and equal protection under the law for formerly enslaved people. The decision reversed criminal convictions for the civil rights violations committed in aid of anti-Reconstruction murders.” There would be no justice for those murdered by the mob, nor would there be meaningful enforcement of civil rights law in a South (or North) still filled with embittered, committed white supremacists.
With the help of the courts and Northern politicians who were themselves white supremacists (or at least happy to side with them for economic and political expediency), unreformed Confederates took back their state houses, sheriff’s departments, and just about all other places of power and influence in the American South. The bloodshed and trauma of the Jim Crow era gave way to the more subtle but insidious violence and oppression of the era of mass incarceration and continued inequality. Every time we’ve made progress on civil rights, the backlash has been swift and fierce. And largely free of consequence.
In short, our country has failed, to this day, to ever truly reckon with or repair the generational harms of our slavery-based foundation or the apartheid that followed. White reconciliation has always come before all meaningful attempts to heal those deep wounds. In fact, the knife has never been withdrawn, and the poison on its tip has been left to course through the bloodstream of our nation with only token efforts to stop it--or even acknowledge that it is there.
The sickness we’ve allowed to spread is absolutely the cause of the violent symptoms we see unfolding before us now: an attempted insurrection and coup at the U.S. Capitol, including people intent on kidnapping and possibly killing or harming duly elected representatives who dared to present even the faintest hope of addressing the harms of their white supremacist fantasies; a president who has trampled our nascent democracy, aided and abetted sedition and treason, and cheered on white supremacist support; legions of riled up (mostly) white folks drunk on racist conspiracy theories and illusions of victimhood; an entire justice system set up to enforce a racial caste system, whether tacitly or explicitly.
Simply put: Any calls to “move on” from this moment, to “heal” and “unify” without first removing the knife, treating the wound and the poison, and then bringing real accountability and demanding meaningful reparations from the knife-wielding perpetrator(s), are empty at best--dangerous at worst. Moving on, forgetting, failing to truly address or learn from what’s happened because it is uncomfortable or painful or because some of us secretly prefer the status quo--all of that is precisely how the South was able to rise again after Reconstruction*. It is why the sins of the Confederacy and the whole United States economic and social system that benefitted from the enslavement of generations of Black people still haunt us to this day..
As Isabella Wilkerson notes in her book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents: “Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now.”
Indeed. As the coming days no doubt unfold in a whirlwind of aftershocks, it is absolutely incumbent on us all to stay focused on the bigger picture. We must not forget what has happened, nor offer premature forgiveness. We must not allow our (understandable, human) desire for “normalcy” (and some damn rest!) override the need for justice and true healing. If we go on ignoring or sweeping under the rug such persistent and toxic ideology and behaviors, the terrors will only grow worse. Eventually, our whole body politic will go necrotic and die.
I refuse to sit back and let that happen. I refuse to let my elected officials let that happen.
Any foot dragging or dismissal of calls to remove Trump from office now would be the final proof that our laws and "norms" have no meaning for (white) people in positions of power. Failure to bring swift accountability now will damn us for years to come.
Failure to pursue aggressive and immediate accountability for Trump and all who aided/abetted the coup and the attempt to delegitimize and steal our elections, will drive a stake through the heart of our frankly still-nascent and incomplete democracy. Call it the End of Reconstruction, Part 2: Full Capitulation.
It doesn’t have to happen, though. Better and smarter people than me have long envisioned and demonstrated other ways of being, structures and ideas that can bring real, lasting, positive change to our rotting old home. Find them. Support them. Start local. Use whatever you have--your voice, your money, your sweat, your mind--to help rebuild. There are things, people, worth saving.
First we must cut out the rot and inoculate ourselves from the poison. We must acknowledge that yes, this racist violence is who we are and has been since the beginning. This is America. But not all of it. Not all it can or should ever be. What will we do, then, to make sure our better angels prevail? History is being made right now. Let’s write it--and right it--together.
In solidarity,
-Emily
* Recommended reading: “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” by David W. Blight