Three months ago I felt a tugging on my heart to write “Racism won’t die in 2020”.
After thousands of reads and overwhelming response, I’m now writing a second follow up whose fundamental purpose is to simply prove that racism exists, and implore Americans to act accordingly.
My first follow up post in this informal series, “There’s No Debate: Good People Aren’t Good Enough”, touched on self-preservation vs. justice, and called those with privilege to be allies of the oppressed.
Now, a letter from the office of the POTUS has called for the purging of “any training on ‘critical race theory ‘ or ‘white privilege’” in Federal agencies.
This is the world we’re in.
This is the time we’re in.
This is a dangerous time and place to be in.
So now, I come back to you with receipts.
I’ll never forget one evening watching TV with my dad as a young child. I was too young to care what news program it was, but old enough to understand what was being said. A man, who looked like so many men I’d seen in own neighborhood, was a long-time (and that time current) KKK leader. He was being interviewed by a nationally run news program, for the entire world to hear and see. Without pause or fear of any sort of consequence or persecution, he said that he believed that Black people were an inferior race. That Black people were essentially a poison. He fundamentally believed the “one drop rule” was important, and that Black people were basically a scourge in America.
But for me as a young child, the thing I’ll never forget is what he said about me.
He said “Mixed race people are a mud race. They’re mud people.” He believed that the mixing of Blacks and Whites, especially through marriage and offspring, was an ultimate sin. He went on to say that we were even worse than just black people, because we were a waste of White blood, tarnished with Black blood, and no matter what - we were condemned to never be as good as a White person.
He said I was less than human.
He believed I was less than human.
He believed I was the representation of sin on Earth.
I grew up every day after that knowing that inevitably, he wasn’t the only person in America that believed that about me.
For the rest of my life, I’ve carried the burden of proving those people wrong…
…while also proving to myself that I don’t care.
🖤
Now, back to our current societal moment. I want to be clear from the jump that this is not a partisan issue.
This is about truth.
Racism exists.
Privilege exists.
And the reason that racism and privilege exist is because throughout history bad people, along with the complicit good, have protected it by making space space for it.
Racism is a most dangerous lie composed of a collection of lies.
Many have protected, are protecting, and will protect this lie - either intentionally or unintentionally via the denial of its existence or the advocacy of it being their truth.
So, about those receipts.
Many of us have anecdotal proof of racism, but given the weight if this moment - I feel compelled to provide fact-based “evidence for the court” that what I’m saying is undeniably true.
Undeniably.
Inconveniently.
True.
To do this, I’m providing actual “receipts of racism” in the form of quotes from our great nation’s leaders throughout our country’s history - from founding fathers until now. Quotes that either intentionally or unintentionally protected racism by spreading its lies, or simply making space for others to believe them.
🚨 consider this your “uncomfortability ahead” warning 🚨
Let’s start with good ole’ Thomas Jefferson, the man who penned this quote regarding the topic of the potential emancipation of slaves that I previously referenced in “There’s No Debate: Good People Aren’t Good Enough”.
“We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”
The same man also said this:
“Amalgamation with the other color, produces degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent." - Thomas Jefferson (Founding Father, 3rd President)
Wow.
When I first came to realize one of our nation’s founding fathers literally said this…
…it hit me.
For years, I’ve wondered and tried to understand how the man on TV that I saw as a child could think the way that he did. Could genuinely feel that way. Could truly hate me, and condemn me, without ever coming close to knowing me.
I honestly battle between feeling anger towards him, and sympathy for him. Going through life with that hatred, that falsehood… it’s saddening. Especially knowing more now about what could have allowed (made space for) someone who could arguably think reasonably and intelligently to live such a sad life of hate.
Thomas Jefferson made space for that.
"There is a physical difference between the White and Black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races of living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race." - Abraham Lincoln (16th President)
Sit with that.
Even a President who largely goes down in history for playing a role in the emancipation of slaves in this country wasn’t innocent in terms of the role he played in making space for racism. Whether you want to view this from the lens of self-preservation, white supremacy, or white privilege… you can’t read Lincoln’s words without deciding to acknowledge your own disappointment or your own denial.
"This government was not founded by Negroes nor for Negroes, but by White men for White men. The inequality of the White and Black races was stamped from the beginning." - Jefferson Davis (Senator, Mississippi)
No comment.
"It is vain to deny that [Black Americans] are an inferior race - very far inferior to the European variety. They have learned in slavery all that they know in civilization." - Andrew Johnson (17th President)
Not too surprising that the same man who overturned “40 Acres and a Mule” also perpetuated a lie that was masked as a more convenient truth for his base.
Rather than continue on with the then established inconvenient truth, that Black Americans were in fact not inferior, and allow the inconvenient and uncomfortable plan for equity and healing to take place in this country… he canceled it.
"A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high plane; the Negro, for instance, has been kept down as much by lack of intellectual development as by anything else." - Theodore Roosevelt (26th President)
Come on, Teddy.
"I know there are times when abortions are necessary - when you have a Black and a White [interracial pregnancy] or a rape." - Richard Nixon (37th President)
In case you missed this, folks… stance on abortion aside… let me clearly translate this.
I (the product of interracial pregnancy) was declared necessary to be aborted, within the walls of the oval office by President Nixon, alongside and equal to the product of a rape. The President clearly implied and made space for the belief that I am inherently less than human, inherently unwanted, inherently dirty… inherently… a mud person?
In an effort to remain as non-partisan as possible in this message of objective truth that I'm seeking to deliver, I'm not including any quotes more recent than this one.
They do exist, though.
They’re not hard to find.
And I encourage anyone seeking to understand, to simply look.
I also end with Nixon’s quote to illustrate a key point.
The lie of Thomas Jefferson found its way hundreds of years later to Nixon…
Hundreds of years later to the man I’ll never forget watching as a child on TV.
The lie of racism that Jefferson spoke still thrives today because it’s been protected for hundreds of years. And, sadly, our nation’s leaders are not immune to it, nor have they ever been.
Protected by advocators of it.
Protected by deniers of its existence.
Protected by those making space for it.
In closing, here's my challenge for each American in 2020 who won’t deny the existence of racism, and truly wants to be a champion for equality.
"Do your morals define your politics, or do your politics define your morals?"
All of the men I quoted here were elected. Without proactively electing officials that will be champions of truth, justice, unity and equality - we're just going to keep letting the lie that is racism fester throughout our leadership. Throughout America.
My plea to my fellow Americans is that from 2020 onward, let us let our votes and our voices reflect our morals and not our party lines.
Ask yourself this question:
Of the candidates who will be on the ballot in November, which of them do I believe 1) won’t perpetuate racist lies, 2) won’t deny the existence of racism, and 3) won’t make space for it to fester and thrive for hundreds of years to come?
Pay attention to what the candidates are saying and doing past, present, and future, including the current message coming from the White House, and you should at least be able to answer that question.
How you vote then, is yours to own.
I wrote “Racism won’t die in 2020”, because I knew the odds were stacked against each of us hoping and dreaming for something to be different now, after the murder of George Floyd, than has been for hundreds of years. Against all of the odds, all craziness that is this year, let 2020 be a cornerstone moment for our country. Let’s have the heart of who we are as people and a nation, united, stand over self-preservation and party feuds.
Let our morals define our politics.
Let our votes reflect our hearts.
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