THE PAST IS NOT DEAD

“THE PAST IS NOT DEAD”

            In his 1951 novel “Requiem for a Nun,” William Faulkner uses a couple of lines that have echoed through 20^th century literature and history:  “The past is not dead – it’s not even the past.”  I have thought of that quote many times in the last few weeks during the debates about taking down statues and memorials to the Confederacy, especially in the South.  I thought of it in the blog that I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the lynching in Duluth, Minnesota.

            I also remembered a column that I wrote for the Oakhurst Presbyterian Log in July, 2001, and I want to quote some of it here: “On February 17, 1866, General Robert E. Lee, - who had surrendered the Confederate forces some ten months earlier on April 9 - came to Washington, DC, to testify before the Congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction.   If we look back to the violence and re-establishment of slavery in the South after 1877, Lee’s testimony seems moderate, but he revealed the bottom line when he was asked his opinion of voting rights for African-American people.  The roots of the white supremacy that surged forth was seen in his testimony on that day: ”In a good many States in the south, and in a good many counties in Virginia, if the black people now were allowed to vote, it would, I think exclude proper representation;  that is, proper, intelligent people would not be elected; and rather than suffer that injury, they would not let them vote at all.”

            I wish that I could say that such sentiment had faded over these 151 years, but we see evidence all around us that white people are bound and determined to deny the vote to African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans and many others classified as POC (people of color).  Just as Lee stretched the reach of the truth in the name of “alternative facts” in his day, so the current white supremacists seek to deny voting rights on the fabricated danger of voter fraud.  

            I grew up in the segregated South, hearing that Reconstruction, which sought to protect voting rights of all American citizens, was a dismal failure because of the incompetence of African-Americans and the corruption of some white folks.  As I learned as a young adult, this interpretation was an alternative interpretation and was akin to the denial of climate change in the present day.  Reconstruction was one of the few times in American history when the nation sought to live up to its ideal of equality – voting rights were expanded, public schools for all were begun, debtors’ prisons were lessened.   The seeds of the false narrative, currently called “alternative facts,” can be seen here in Lee’s testimony before Congress in 1866. 

           

            In regard to the current debate over whether we should be removing monuments to the Confederacy, which was established to protect slavery and white supremacy, we should recall this history.  We should also recall that Germany does not allow public displays of Nazi symbols, which seems to us a violation of the First Amendment.  There is one huge difference between us and Germany, however.  They admit that the Holocaust happened, and that the German people were the principal cause of it.  Because of that admission and that awareness, they are cautious about allowing that deadly spirit to come back into the public square.

            In our country, though, we have never admitted how much slavery and the genocide of native Americans has caused economic benefits to flow to those classified as “white.”  Without such an admission, we have yet to recoil from the heritage of slavery and the taking of the land, as the Germans now recoil from Nazism.  I am not advocating that we eviscerate the First Amendment, but it would be a huge step to move toward a national admission that those of us on top benefitted immensely from stealing human labor and annihilating the peoples who lived here when the Europeans came.  Perhaps the best step towards that would be for us to contact our state and federal representatives to seek an amendment to the Constitution which declares that people of African descent are 100% human beings, rather than the 60% status that the Constitution currently gives them.  More on this next time.