The Arc of History

Hello!  At my daughter Susan’s suggestion, I’m starting a blog!  I’m not much of a techno-person, so bear with me while I learn it.  I will seek to use this forum on at least a weekly basis to share thoughts and open room for discussion on issues focusing on race, theology, the church, and justice.  I’ll be glad to hear from you on these musings and on any ideas that you have. 

             I’ll start with the obvious point of all of these:  the beginning of the disastrous Trump administration.  During this administration, I don’t know how far back we will go in the history of human rights, but we almost certainly will lose some ground, and perhaps a lot of ground.  Will we return to the 1950’s, with the deep struggle for human rights beginning to take hold, but still a deep struggle?  Will we go back to the 1910’s when Woodrow Wilson, the first Southerner to be president since the Civil War, re-segregated the federal government, and before women had the right to vote?  Will we go back to the 1890’s when a combination of legislation, violence, and Supreme Court decisions re-instituted “slavery by another name,” as Doug Blackmon put it so well in his book by the same name?  Will we go back to the 1870’s when white Southerners and allies elsewhere fought hard to strip black people of their rights, finally culminating in the “Mississippi Doctrine” of law and death?   I hope that we don’t go back further than that – if we do, Lord, help us all!

            Wherever we go, we should note that this is part of a long struggle in American history between the forces who designed the Constitution with slavery as a strong element of it, deeming those of African descent to be 60% human, in one stream, with the other stream driven by those inspired by the idea of equality, those women and poor people and people of color who heard that the idea of equality applied to them also.   We should also note that many of us have both forces in us as individuals and as institutions, much like Thomas Jefferson, who penned the famous line in the Declaration of Independence:  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all {people} are created equal.”  Jefferson was not quite sure that people of African descent were more than 60% human beings, and that is how he could emphasize equality while holding the 60% human beings as slaves.  And, of course, as the DNA tests have told us, he had several children with one of his 60% human being slaves, Sally Hemmings. 

            We find ourselves now swimming in those same waters, as the eddys and currents seek to take us one way or another, with the current arc of history bending not towards justice but rather injustice.  There is much work to do in the short term, but there is one long term idea that I’d like to float out there and get response to it. How about seeking a constitutional amendment to establish that people of African descent are full human beings, rather that the 60% currently enshrined in the document?  We could combine this with the idea what women are also full human beings, since the “men” in Jefferson’s famous phrase seems to have meant “males.”  We tried to do this with women 40 years ago with the Equal Rights Amendment but fell 3 states short.  I’ll have more on this discussion next time, but I’ll be glad to hear from folk on this idea and any others that you have! 

            This era looks to be full of chills and spills but very few thrills.  I’ll be glad to hear from folks on how you see this time in our history, and since it is Black History Month, soon I will suggest some witnesses from different eras who can give us some clues about actions and attitudes needed in our present time.  Let me hear your thoughts!