Salt Lake City News

April 4, 2021 | [OPINION] Civil Divide and Systemic Racism in the US Has Been Present for 160 Years

The January 6 riots in Washington DC are less about former President Donald Trump and more about the civil divide and systemic racism present in the United States (US).

In order to completely understand the January 6 riots, one needs to understand how the Civil War still influences US history, 160 years later.

One of the causes of the Civil War was State's Rights versus those of the Federal Government.

The US Government was once dominated by the northern States, who would just vote what they wanted in Congress.

While the southern States were sparsely populated, each had the same representation in the Senate but were outnumbered in the House.

The north had a tendency to use the south - with the wealth of its agriculture, trade with the Caribbean and southern continents - as a piggy bank for financing northern infrastructure.

The south was ignominiously defeated by the Union, which proceeded to dismember the complete culture and society of the southern States.

Furthermore, northerners were contemptuous of southerners after the war, treating them as non-citizens through the reconstruction period.

Another aspect of the south to consider: severe poverty.

Freed slaves were only part of the poverty in the south.

Most whites were not slave owners.

They worked in small family units on their own lands, just getting by producing things that the plantations didn't make.

When the plantations were disrupted, the poor whites got poorer, until they were more impoverished than the slaves.

Yet still the northerners treated them with contempt.

This stagnant economy defined the south for nearly 100 years from the end of the war.

The veterans of the war - most of whom had lost everything - created the mythos of the southern man who could be defeated, but would never lose his pride and his smoldering hatred for northerners.

Because of these factors, southerners grouped together to preserve their dignity and pride, and worked on restoring much of what they'd lost.

The depression hit them hard but the World Wars gave them a chance to shine with their pride driving them to be great soldiers.

The only problem was when they returned from the war they were still impoverished and still had nowhere to go.

Education wasn't available to most southerners because the school structures were never developed the way it was elsewhere.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, the grandchildren of the Confederate soldiers began to become more and more resentful of the blacks and northerners.

Blacks were getting preferential treatment for jobs and education.

There was also the false perception of civic preference.

Resentment and resistance began to grow and people recalled the pride of their grandparents about the Confederacy.

The symbols of the Confederacy intimidated northerners and blacks, and strengthened the resolve of southerners.

By the 2000s, Confederate symbolism permeated the poorest, least educated of whites everywhere in America.

From shrimpers off the Gulf Coast, truckers in the Midwest, farmers in Plains, Union workers in the Rust Belt: these people became increasingly alienated from the more prosperous Americans working in cities at white collar office jobs.

By 2008, a vast number of poor whites had lost nearly everything: homes, jobs, family, dignity.

President Obama stabilized the economy, but more Americans - white Americans - fell into poverty.

By 2016, impoverished whites could only see Mexicans and blacks succeeding - at taking their jobs.

It wasn't Mexicans or blacks - or even Chinese: automation was replacing humans working at what were quickly transitioning to robot jobs.

Poor white Americans began to return to admiring Confederate values, laying blame for their plight on the brown races.

Some view Trump as somewhat a martyr for Confederate values.

Trump was not a martyr, rather someone who simply brought the Confederate mindset out in the open.

Ever since the 1960s, openly expressing sympathy with the southern values has been strongly rejected and punished.

But it has never stopped those values from being deeply tied into white society.

Generations past were taught that blacks were "dirty, smelly, thieving devils who couldn't be trusted with anything". And more terrible things.

Society reinforced these lies - perhaps unintentionally - and those whites that never knew any blacks knew no better and believed the lies.

Some schools never had any black students.

Some districts would cut deals with a similar size all black district, even 400km away, and merged into one district.

The rich whites subsidized them until they were 'separate but equal' facilities.

That eliminated having to transport students back and forth each day to meet Federal requirements for integration.

Federal integration statutes were eventually revisited and all the 'separate but equal' rubbish was thrown out.

However, it was a lengthy process over several decades of legal proceedings.

There is an unspoken assumption that 'everyone knew' what was happening - that racial discrimination was still prevalent on the unseen society of poor whites.

Alas: Federal and State statutes that made discrimination illegal were easily bypassed with technicalities and whites still taught "racism" and "segregation" ideology at home.

Whether Trump is racist is a debate worth having, but effectively all he had to do was acknowledge publicly that racism was alive and well, and that he was going to do something about it.

Racism is somewhat comparable to religion, you can't do anything about it.

This isn't any form of academically accepted orthodoxy of racism in America.

Unless you grew up surrounded by racism and pride in the Confederacy, it's not something northerners would see.

Even blacks didn't recognize the emotional undercurrent until the George Floyd protests and the racists coming out in daylight.

The movement to remove Confederate symbology throughout America may be one answer to this deep mindset.

If we remove the symbols, the memories may fade.

However, there is validity in the argument that history should not be cancelled and denied.

Instead, we learn from the past mistakes evident in our history.

Immigration problems extend back over 100 years, when America actively brought Europeans in as 'cheap labor'.

At the time, the US did have a labor shortage, so immigration was a solution.

Even then, many people objected to the "disease-riddled, thieving, rapists and murderers" from Ireland and Italy, leading to riots in big immigrant cities and draconian laws that effectively made immigrants slaves, and removed any rights they had.

During the early part of the twentieth century the Chinese in California were legally discriminated against and banned from property and citizenship.

Japanese were also banned and really didn't get full rights until the Immigration Act in 1965.

That paved the way for political refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s, which in turn opened up the refugees from South America, Africa and the Middle-East.

The problem with border crowding doesn't occur from Americans doing things wrong.

It's because America has been - and remains - the beacon of hope for refugees for hundreds of years.

Nothing has really changed since the 1920s, when ethnic war broke out on Eastern Europe.

Two world conflicts, communist conquest and religious genocide created the surge of refugees, which is ongoing.

Of the current border crisis, it's simply too many refugees at one time.

There are a lot of children because US laws have always provided opportunity for 'lost children' with family in America and be granted entry.

This has been the case since World War I.

Covid quarantine, blocking legitimate immigration for four years, more serious poverty, deadly drug traffic and despair, has pushed a tidal wave of refugees to the border.

As current sitting President, the current immigration crisis is President Joe Biden's problem.

But it is not his doing.

US Press Office - Salt Lake City News

Written by The Editorial Board.