[Cross-posted from ProgressiveHistorians.]
The past isn't dead. It isn't even past.
-- William Faulkner
What struck me most clearly about David Blight's magnificent new book A Slave No More, which I recently reviewed, was just how close to us the nefarious effects of slavery remain. John Washington and Wallace Turnage, the two former slaves whose escape narratives Blight published in his book, passed down their manuscripts to their children and grandchildren, whose own same-generation heirs in turn passed them on to Blight. The scholar was, in essence, receiving the manuscripts from people whose parents and grandparents were enslaved, right here in our own country. To bring the events of America's sordid past even closer to home, consider the case of the last two Civil War widows, who died less than five years ago. If you think about that, it means that there were women alive in our own time who were married to men who fought over the question of slavery. (And if you're one of those folks who thinks the Civil War wasn't really about slavery, read Blight's book -- he disproves that notion with aplomb.)
I know I shouldn't be surprised by all this, but I am. We learn about the Civil War in history classes as if it's something in our distant past, as remote as the Black Death or Caesar's conquest of Gaul. It's very jarring to realize that most of us probably know people who knew people who were enslaved, or at the very least who knew people who were. And for some inequalities, the "distant past" is even less distant than for slavery. Though I have not discussed it with her, my ninety-four-year-old great-aunt likely remembers a time when women could not vote in this country. Her mother certainly did.
So it shouldn't surprise us that American racial and gender attitudes are far from the egalitarian ideal so many think they are. It takes far more than a century and a half for people to get used to treating as people those whom their ancestors viewed as property. It takes far more than a century for people to recognize as equals those whom their ancestors viewed as unworthy to choose their own leadership.
Of the two men whose stories are retold by Blight, Turnage's case is particularly poignant. As a teenager, he survived five harrowing escape attempts and intervening beatings that left him in one case unable to stand for days. Yet once he finally escaped and was resettled in Washington, Turnage's life was spent in a daily struggle for survival. A few photos taken of him in the 1880's, showing a dashing man in a fine suit, were the closest he ever came to middle-class respectability. Despite his obvious courage and ability, Turnage's skin color was enough to ensure his perpetual relegation to the workhouse. The memory of slavery was still too near.
As it was for Turnage, so it is, though in differing degree, for today's victims of inequality. For BrownFemiPower, who's assailed with specious historical arguments about black slaveowners in the antebellum South (note to BfP's commenter: read David Blight's book!). For Shanikka, who must refute a white blogger who assured her dad that Barack Obama wasn't one of "those" blacks because he had "advanced degrees." For my co-blogger, Elle, who has to deal with ignorant white people who make racist comments about her appearance and academic qualifications. They are fighting the same fight Turnage fought, only now their battles are against a hidden and far more insidious form of racism: the Racism Nobody Thinks Is There.
Some of my readers may argue that these "insights" aren't really new, and they're not. But it's only recently that I've begun to see these things. I was that guy who thought he was a progressive but was ambivalent about affirmative action, who once infamously argued as a freshman in college that modern-day feminists were "hammering on a nail that's already been driven all the way in." Only now do I recognize how offensive that comment was, and sadly, it took a white guy to show me -- historian Thomas Sugrue, whose book The Origins of the Urban Crisis shocked me to my core when I read it this past November. Suddenly I couldn't close my eyes to racism any more, somehow -- and I also couldn't deny that if we're going to fix anything in this country, traditional "liberals" don't go nearly far enough. I'm still trying to pick up the pieces of my ideology after reading that book, but I do know that I'll never look at inequality in America in quite the same way again.
I remarked the other day that I wish we lived in a society where men and women were born equal, instead of one in which we have to achieve equality. I know very well that we don't live in such a world; the very fundaments of how I understand myself affirm that it is the case. As an example, when I first read Hugo Schwyzer's comment that "the opposite of rape is not consent; the opposite of rape is enthusiasm," I experienced a series of emotions in succession. First, I was stunned because the idea of obligatory mutual enthusiasm seemed so true and so obvious; and second, I was shamed because I had never even considered the notion before Schwyzer said it. And then, long afterwards, I experienced a third emotion: anger, rage that such terrain should even be contested. What woman would dare to suggest that it was all right if a man merely refrained from saying no but failed to express any enthusiasm? Yet here we are, having to learn that the same standard applies to men that applies to women, that we are not some superclass that has the right to do whatever we want to women so long as they don't object. Similarly, just this evening I was reading these excellent black women writers and caught myself thinking, what would it take for these women to break into the big time of blogging? I was immediately angry with myself and with society at the same time. Why should black women have to "break into" anything? Why shouldn't they be welcomed into the big time of blogging, and everywhere else? Why should I even think these thoughts? Are these the fruits of a society in which equality persists? Are these the marks of a people who are born equal to one another?
We are most certainly born more equal than John Washington and Wallace Turnage were, because they were slaves and we are free. Turnage wrote of his successful escape across Mobile Bay to Union lines, "I Now dreaded the gun, and handcuffs and pistols no more. Nor the blewing [sic] of horns and the running of hounds; nor the threats of death from the rebel's authority. I could now speak my opinion to men of all grades and colors, and no one to question my right to speak." His words show us that the freedom that was won in 1865 was true and real. But just because we are more equal does not mean we are equal enough. Every one of us bears the curse an unequal society gifts to us: we look at others through inborn lenses tinted with prejudice, our minds poisoned from birth with the unspoken dictum that those upon whom we look are somehow lesser than we are. The more I realize how far we are from the kind of mutual respect that goes with true equality of difference, the more discouraged I become.
This may not seem like a very "historical" post, but I think these issues are all about history. Our history has bequeathed to us a legacy of inequality, and it is our job to combat it as best we can. There are no slaves in America any more, yet each of us remains a slave to prejudice and inequality. Every moment we choose to change the subject, to refrain from challenging our inborn prejudices, is a moment in which neither we nor anyone else is truly free. We must pledge zero tolerance for inequality in all contexts. But first, we must realize that inequality remains, not obvious but no less real for its hiddenness. A critical part of that process is, I think, to realize that our own hidden inequality is only a scant few generations removed from the overt inequality of slavery and gendered voting rights. For racism, sexism, and other inequalities in our society, the past, as Faulkner wrote, isn't really even past.