Examining the History of America’s Approach to Race and Diversity
By
Allan C. Brownfeld
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When Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, declared in January that, America “is not a racist country,” and has “never been a racist country,” she stirred much controversy.
Haley said that although she faced racism as a “brown girl that grew up in a small rural town in South Carolina,” she became “the first female minority governor in history, who became a U.N. Ambassador and who is now running for president. If that’s not the American dream, I don’t know what is.”
Ronald Reagan discussed the uniqueness of America: “Other nations may seek to compete with us, but in one critical area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws people from the whole world, no country on earth comes close…You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany, or Turkey, or Japan,but you cannot become a German or a Turk or Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”
We teach so little history in our schools that the history of slavery is largely unknown. It has existed almost universally through history among peoples of every level of material culture. It existed among nomadic pastoralists of Asia, hunting societies of North American Indians, and sea people such as the Norsemen. The legal codes of Sumer provide documentary evidence that slavery existed there as early as the 4th millennium B.C. The Sumerian symbol for slave in cuneiform writing suggests “foreign.”
At the time of Pericles, Athens had 43,000 citizens who alone were entitled to vote, 28,500 metics, or resident aliens, and 115,000 slaves. Race was not necessarily an element of slavery. The Romans enslaved other Caucasian people and some black Africans enslaved other black peoples. Racial differences became closely connected with slavery only when European colonial powers were expanding into world areas whose inhabitants were of a different stock from the dominating group.
Our Judeo-Christian tradition was also one which accepted the legitimacy of slavery. The Old Testament regulates the relationship between master and slave in great detail. In Leviticus, God instructs the Israelites of to enslave the heathen and their progeny forever. In the New Testament, St. Paul urges slaves to obey their masters with full hearts and without equivocation. “Slaves give entire obedience to your masters,” he wrote.
What is historically notable was that so many of the leading men in the American colonies in 1787 wanted to eliminate slavery andv pressed vigorously to do so. In his original draft of the Declaration of Independence, one of the principal charges made by Thomas Jefferson against King George 111 and his predecessors was that they would not allow the American colonies to outlaw the importation of slaves.
In his autobiography, Jefferson declared, “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.” In “Notes on the State of Virginia,” Jefferson wrote: “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of one of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it .”
While many criticize the Framers of the Constitution for not eliminating slavery at the very beginning, , it was their view that declaring the independence of the 13 colonies had to take precedence, and South Carolina and Georgia, would not agree if slavery were made illegal. Slavery, they declared, would be dealt with at a later time. And in a bitter civil war, it was and was finally eliminated.
One of the unprecedented breakthroughs which the framers included in the Constitution was separation of church and state, religious freedom for all and no religious test for public office or citizenship. Elsewhere in the Western world, Catholics were without equal rights in Protestant countries, Protestants did not have equal rights in Catholic countries, while Jews did not have equal rights in either.
Prof. Samuel Huntington points to the truly historic meaning of the Constitutional Convention and its product: “This is a new event in the history of mankind. Heretofore most governments have been formed by tyrants, and imposed on mankind by force. Never before did a people, in time of peace and tranquility, meet together by their representatives and, with calm, deliberation, frame for themselves a system of government.”
Yes, we have seen racism in our society since slavery came to an end. We have seen segregation and lynchings, the denial of the right to vote. I lived in the South during the years of segregation. I remember the “Whites only” signs and the inferior status of black citizens. But I also remember steady progress to bring all of this to an end. In bull sessions when I was in college and law school, if anyone suggested that we would live to see a black president, he would have been viewed as completely unrealistic, if not mad.
I was working in the U.S. Senate in the years shortly after civil rights legislation had recently been passed. Those were years when American politics worked. The Republican Party, which then proudly proclaimed itself the party of Lincoln,did not view Democrats as “enemies.” They worked closely together to advance civil rights. Only. a small group of Southern Democrats resisted. But change was achieved. And we lived to see a black president elected——twice. In the state of Virginia, we elected a black governor.
To look at the American society, made up of men and women of every race, ethnic background and religion and casually use the word”racist” to categorize this complex and ever changing society, is to misread reality almost completely. During the Reagan administration, I was a member of the transition team at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In the report I prepared, we called for an end to race-based affirmative action programs and called for a movement toward a genuinely color-blind society. This was the goal of the Rev. Martin Luther King, )r., who looked forward to the time when men and women would be judged on “the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”
The head of the Reagan administration transition team at the EEOC was my good friend and colleague, Jay Parker. Jay, who was black, liked to tell the story of Whoopi Goldberg, who was asked by a friend what her career plans were. Whoopi answered, “I want to be an actress.” The friend replied, “But, Whoopi, you’re black.” Whoopi’s response: “I won’t mention it.”
We may not yet have arrived at a genuinely color-blind society, but for those of us who remember the years of segregation, we have moved dramatically in that direction. To casually call America a “racist” society is to miss our real story almost entirely. This appears to have been what Nikki Haley had in mind.
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