We should acknowledge our racist past

John M. Crisp, Tribune News Service

MAGA Republicans’ willingness to gum up the necessary functions of governance was on display last week in the House of Representatives.

The unruly Republican rump turned the House’s typically bipartisan defense spending bill into a close vote by attaching amendments that have nothing to do with defense and little to do with spending.

Instead they reflect the social policy preferences of many Republicans. For example, the House bill would limit diversity training and transgender care in the military.

The most dramatic measure forced into the bill is the elimination of time off and reimbursement for members of the armed forces who travel to another state for an abortion, a policy the Pentagon implemented after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.

This seems particularly unfair to service members. If you are among the more than 60 per cent of Americans who support a woman’s right to control her body and you happen to live in one of the half of American states that, post-Roe, have essentially banned abortion, you can — theoretically — move to a state more in line with your views.

The military, however, tells its soldiers, sailors and Marines where to live. The Pentagon’s effort to provide for female soldiers stationed in Texas the same rights as female soldiers stationed in New York is commendable. But Republicans are determined to deny those rights, even if it means defunding the military.

But the amendment that caught my eye was forced onto the defense spending bill by MAGA Republicans with the help of nine Democrats: Defense Department schools would be prohibited from teaching that the United States or its founding documents are racist.

The problem is that nearly all of the Founders were racists. And how could a founding document be more racist than our Constitution, which established in law the right to own enslaved Blacks and counted them at the rate of three-fifths of a white human being? So the Constitution is a racist document, or at least it was; it reflected the sensibilities of the age in which it was written. Nothing is gained by pretending otherwise.

But “racist” is a term so ugly that Tommy Tuberville, Republican senator from Alabama, recently declined to assign the epithet to white nationalists. Blowback forced a quick change of mind.

But the fact is, since our founding most Americans have probably been racists. My ancestors certainly were. One of them wrote to his father on March 4, 1861, urging support for secession and “for the maintenance of the institution of slavery” and arguing against “free N-word equality.” On March 7, 1860, he wrote his brother, reporting that he had been to a “Negro sale”: “I bought one little boy about 10 years old for $1151.00, about as good a bargain as was sold on that day.” Am I embarrassed by this blatant racism that resides in my family tree? Not in the least. My white supremacist ancestor is as remote from me as slaveholders such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In fact, if you’re an American, your ancestors were probably racists, too. In the 19th century few, north or south, were truly enlightened about race. What matters is what we think and do about race now.

Contrary to the MAGA amendment tacked onto the defense spending bill denying teachers in Defense Department schools the privilege of talking honestly about race, it would be healthier to acknowledge and accept our racist history. One of the great things about our country is that eventually we abolished slavery, even if it took us a while. England abolished slavery in 1834, and Mexico in 1829, and neither required a civil war.

Still, despite a century of Jim Crow, we have made significant, if fitful, progress on race. But despite a Black president and two Black Americans on the Supreme Court, it’s still clear that we have not reached racial perfection.

A more honest acknowledgment of our racial past would help us understand—and improve—our racial present. The Republican amendment on the defense spending bill has just the opposite effect.