“…Three Fifths of All Other Persons…”
When we were kids, my mom’s older brother taught us to play Monopoly. The game was simple enough to get, even for the youngest of his seven nieces and nephews, all of us strung together by 11 years. At four and five, my little brother and I were the babies. We would choose our game pieces—I recall being partial to the shoe—then toss the dice to see whose high roll would knight one of us ‘first.’ Those games lasted for-eeeever. For the first few revolutions, every dollar we got was predicated on the precious passage around GO and the luck of the board (beauty pageant wins, bank errors, landing on Free Parking…). Our family’s protracted Monopoly experience was due to Unc’s insistence that we start off with no money. (I am not sure how it never occurred to any of us to actually read Parker Brothers’ official instructional insert.) It would not be for another decade or two before I learned that every Monopoly player—according to the rules—was entitled to something like $1500 to start.
Being Black in this country is incredibly similar to how my family experienced the game of Monopoly: you start off with nothing and hope for the best. Except unlike our version, all the other players in the same game of real life start off with something. Our peers inherit real assets, agency, status, useful experience and de minimis emotional scarring and trauma from crimes against humanity, along with pecuniary indebtedness suffered during preceding generations, all in a manner impossible for Black people in this country (maybe even on the planet) to replicate. While everyone else starts off with a surplus passed down from a previous generation, or at the very least, some positive momentum, Black people start off with a massive deficit and already are moving backward.
From the time the White Lion washed up on the shores of the colony of Virginia in the summer of 1619, this nation’s inaugural Black community, sourced from the west coast of Africa, emerged from the ship’s hold at or below servants’ class. They were not in possession of their own selves, therefore were ill-equipped to advocate for their rights or best interests. As African servants continued to be woven into the fabric of Colonial life throughout the 17th & 18th centuries, a clear pattern emerged wherein Black bodies were systematically treated differently—worse than—white, indentured or otherwise. White refugees and thrill-seekers alike came to the New World clutching firmly to their personal possessions, private dreams and racist notions of larceny and covetousness, evidenced initially by all the conflict with the Native Americans whose lands European emigres felt not simply desirous of, but morally compelled to appropriate—by any means necessary. Other examples of racism began to spring up throughout the Colonies. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was established in 1630 and enacted lifetime slavery for Blacks within 11 years of contact by 1641. The colony of Connecticut was founded in 1636 and inside of 15 years established its own laws instituting slavery in perpetuity for Africans by 1651[1]. Even if the first few Black arrivals were impressed into service in a fashion based on the template already established by white indentured servitude, it did not take long for the Black body to be shoved to the very bottom of the social order of things. This aspect of the Colonial social hierarchy, strategically and deliberately maintained by just about each and every white individual citizen, would remain virtually unfazed over the next 400 years. It would appear that there is something shut up in the bones of white people that compels them to subjugate those more pigmented than they are for their own material and psychological advantage.
With respect to the issue of American slavery, in 1845 Sen. James Henry Hammond of South Carolina asked openly: “Were ever any people, civilized or savage, persuaded by argument, human or divine, to surrender voluntarily two thousand million dollars [or property]?” By 1860, just 15 years later, that value jumped by more than 50% to $3 thousand million. Black slaves in 1860 were collectively valued at more than $3,000,000,000 in 1860 USD terms. This sum was larger than the entire nation’s investment in railroads, manufacturing and banks at that time. (Sutton, Robert; Latschar, John; and Beard, Rick. Slavery in the United States: A Brief Narrative History. Eastern National[2]: 2013, p. 43.) All three billion of those dollars were held by non-Black bodies. For Black people in America to be made whole for just the 1860-assessed blood-sweat-tear equity infusion they invested into this country, strictly by virtue of personal labors and conscripted self-sacrifice, requires a $6,000,000,000 swing in 1860 terms: the $3,000,000,000 valuation was a debt to Black people unjustly imposed (-$3,000,000,000) requiring $3,000,000,000 to get to $0 (breakeven) + another $3,000,000,000 to match the same value assessed back in 1860— this time in Black hands—totaling $6,000,000,000.
Though the $3,000,000,000 150-year-old market valuation of enslaved Black bodies did not enrich Black people, the value did not dissipate or vanish. That capital never made its way into Black hands because it was already tied up so tightly in white ones. These white hands—in the north and the south, indeed, all throughout the country—drafted, then voted into law, as well as inscribed in the hearts and minds of the entire American public via propaganda, de jure and de facto regulation, all manner of legally and socially sanctioned barriers and impediments to Black citizenship and participation, including (though certainly not limited to) making it virtually impossible for Black people to protect their own persons or property. When a handful of Black people got together in 1966 in Oakland, CA to noodle over this dilemma—a dilemma not created by Blacks but which had plagued Blacks in this country for almost 350 years by this point—they fashioned themselves the Black Panthers and were promptly branded a terrorist organization by the United States government. After being terrorized and human rights’ violated by local law enforcement all across the country, and simultaneously subterfuged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Black Panthers formally dissolved ten years later in 1976.
It is said that vampires cannot see their own reflections. The thought came to mind as I contemplated why it was that white America has never been able to confront and account for in real time the inexorable, life-taking tax it imposes on Black and Brown people in order to maintain the quality and comfort of life it has come to expect—a quality and comfort only available because of this heavy burden placed on those Colored others, and as well, a quality and comfort strategically and deliberately denied those Colored others. While I am by no means an expert on Transylvanian mythology, it does occur to me that if a member of the undead must exist among mortals, perhaps mingle with them from time to time, but then also has to feed on them—literally by feeding on them—it might be difficult to face oneself in the mirror. If vampires could suck the life-force out of people to maintain their own survival, but leave the victims and their communities to deal with the consequences of their feeding frenzies because they don’t ever have to worry about facing themselves in the mirror (answering for their sins), that would actually be quite the convenience for the vampire. We rely upon our reflections for the utility of being able to see ourselves; an opportunity to see what others might see when they look upon us. Our reflections are a tool which help us to see ourselves the way others might. But if they do not exist, it seems fairly simple not only to fabricate how one wishes to be seen by others, but as well, dismiss any feedback or evidence that refutes the image of oneself the individuals with no reflection have constructed for themselves; ironically, these fictitious images would be reinforced by the very absence of an actual reflection. Beings unable to see their own reflection can imagine righteousness, greatness, virtue for themselves. They can also continue to do things (or have things done) which are neither righteous nor great nor virtuous with no consequences.
The race crisis in America continues to exist precisely because the cohort responsible for creating the problem/currently benefiting from the problem a) continues to fail to take responsibility for the problem’s existence, b) tries to make the victim the author of the problem, and/or c) refuses to acknowledge that the problem exists in the first place. For every second of the four plus centuries that European fortune-hunters aka immigrants have occupied the New World, they have believed that whenever they do whatever they do to Peoples of Color, their actions are just and right and proper…simply because they choose to believe that…and of course there is some economic, social and/or political advantage to be gained for their doing so. They do not appear capable of entertaining any counter arguments or scrutiny—certainly none from their victims (they’ve already pre-criminalized them, marking them for future feedings). They rely on their own recognizance to calibrate their consciences, at their convenience. Theirs is an insatiable bloodlust to be advantaged economically, politically, socially, and perhaps even psychologically at any cost and in a manner completely devoid of self-reflection. Cells inside of a body which consistently and constantly put their own regeneration ahead of all others at the expense of those others are said to be malignant, sometimes metastatic, always lethal.
Unc sent me this screenshot about race from social media, soliciting my thoughts.
Another subject on which I am far from expert is the American Ku Klux Klan (call it a general disinterest in abominations and monstrosities). But I felt it my writerly duty to at least get some basic information about America’s largest and oldest terrorist organization. I wanted to delve more deeply into this organization’s longevity, specifically the persistence of KKK activity in this country; the one for which this country has borne no sanctions harboring over the last 150+ years (juxtaposed with the fate of the previously referenced Black Panthers who only existed for 10 years). For this I turned to Martin Gitlin’s The Ku Klux Klan: A Guide to an American Subculture[3]. This work—intended for schoolchildren as per its Series Forward describing it as a volume meant to share basic information about various American subcultures (beatniks, hippies, flappers, etc.)—leaves much to be desired in many ways, though most notably for failing to elucidate expressly the USD cost of Klan activity to Black people in America which has yet to be accurately quantified or redressed. However, the author does outline basic KKK facts upon which I will rely for the purpose of this post. The organization was formed on Christmas Eve in 1865 in Pulaski, TN as an all-white male secret society/gentlemen’s club of sorts by a handful of former Confederate officers. Eventually mysterious, concealing garb and the desire to perform hijinks after dark in the local town work their way into the picture. The Klan’s story begins as a “boys will be boys” tale with idle and perhaps disgruntled members engaging in what was thought to be innocuous and therefore totally forgivable mischief. But in the context of the post-Civil War American South already reeling from fury, utter destabilization, and a refusal to accept wrong for previous sins against Black people, and inflamed with an unyielding belief in white supremacy, the Klan grew into a powerful, coordinated, national network of political activism and unbridled violence and terror against any perceived enemy, expecting fully to be able to act out its vengeance with impunity and no fear of reprisal.
Let’s pause for a moment: ‘any perceived enemy’ was always Black people; could sometimes be Jews, Catholics and immigrants; and occasionally was even ‘regular’ white people of whose lifestyles the Klan did not approve (Gitlin 2009, 26). But what strikes me most about Klan activity in the land specifically requesting those “tired,...poor,...huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (presumably promising protection since law and order 'reign supreme'), is that all of the aforementioned categories of persons liable to be victimized by the KKK—itself a civilian organization—should have been able to rely on local, state, or if need be federal law enforcement to protect their persons and private property as citizens inside this country. This was almost never the case when the criminals were Klan: for much of its 150+ year history it became painfully obvious that the KKK wasn’t so much above the law as a part of it. Gitlin’s primer reiterates what most Americans already know: the myriad horrific crimes committed by the Klan against innocent civilians were regularly and repeatedly acquitted by all-white juries, or never indicted at all. One Mr. Edward Aaron, an African-American handyman in Alabama, was abducted by a band of Klansmen who castrated him with razor blades, then poured kerosene and turpentine on his wounds. The crime: a band of white psychopaths attacked an innocent, defenseless man...(maybe trying to keep America great?). The provocation: Mr. Aaron was Black.
Birmingham, Alabama’s Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor conspired with fellow Klan members, gifting them fifteen minutes “to beat [Civil Rights’ Activists], bomb them, burn them, shoot them, do anything…wanted…with absolutely no intervention whatsoever by the police.” (Gitlin 2009, 28). Again, we all know about the heinous crimes the Ku Klux Klan committed against Black people and those conscientious others willing to stand alongside Blacks and help them fight for human rights. These crimes were mostly committed with impunity. Nobel Laureate Rev. Dr. King (himself murdered by a white supremacist) wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail that the Freedom Riders who were assaulted and terrorized by Klansmen and their local fellow white citizens were specially trained in non-violence tactics, to ensure that they would not retaliate when rabid, trashy, bitched-made crackers savagely attacked them, knowing full well they wouldn’t get hit back (King 1963, 67)[4]. Klansmembers were not sophisticated Jedis too savvy for government officials to apprehend. They were just white, and already a part of the legal and social framework (simply by virtue of something as basic as their whiteness), acting as the State, carrying out what they felt would be in the State’s best interest.
Somehow America seems to miss this point: the Ku Klux Klan acted always, not as a separate, fringe group—or counterculture group, as Mr. Gitlin might claim—but as an appendage of the hegemony at large—a proculture group—part of the State, which is precisely how and why members of the organization were granted immunity or leniency for the most brutal of crimes. While the white American public at-large may have been scandalized by some the Klan’s more horrific acts of terror, no part of any legislative body ever required mandatory minimum sentencing for any of their offenses, no three-strike rules were imposed and certainly no assets were seized from members who might have acquired them by engaging in any number of criminal acts committed against Black and Brown people. In fact, early in the last century, after a particularly prolific crime spree, national press outlets reasonably outraged, harshly censured the Klan. In 1921 the New York World demanded and got its wish for a federal investigation of the KKK. Then-Imperial Wizard William Joseph Simmons appeared before the United States’ House of Representatives and blatantly denied all allegations of violence, attributing the crimes to imposters (the World exposé recounted 152 Klan crimes, the most violent: four murders, forty-one floggings and forty-seven tar-and-featherings). Simmons further claimed that his was not a racist organization for "he had frolicked with [B]lack children in his youth"…!?!?!% He went on to describe his organization as both “benevolent and fraternal,” pointing out that the Klan’s decision to exclude Blacks, Catholics and Jews was no more controversial than many other private clubs’ decision to do the same (likely many Congressman might have been members of such “benevolent and fraternal” clubs as the Klan). Drawing an honest and legitimate connection between Klan orthodoxy and the belief system of many in America exonerated Simmons; Klan membership across the country mushroomed (Gitlin 2009, 15).
The machinations of the KKK laid the groundwork for how white society maintained the benefits of slavery post its abolishment: under cover of night, and cover of robe—black or white—the dirtiest of work could be coordinated, then executed, and the social apparatus Would. Provide. More. Cover. After all, what was the Klan doing if not the bidding of American society—again architected deliberately—by maintaining the social order that the institution of slavery had so completely established with respect to Black people and their agency, mobility, asset-acquisition, and asset-retention in this country? That bands of white people All. Across. America. (not just in the American South…) acted in concert to terrorize, plunder, maim, and murder with impunity primarily Blacks, but as well members of any subculture deemed personae non gratae, is proof of this country’s complicity in KKK and terrorist activity. White person as upright, hardworking neighbor. White person as concerned citizen/collaborator/terrorist. White person as lawman. White person as juror. White person as jurist. White person as student. White person as wife. And this mechanization is nowhere near over. Black people today continue to be executed summarily by police officers and even private citizens, whose actions are affirmed by juries and internal affairs as right and proper, as a manifestation of the People's interest in and duty to establish and maintain order. This long legacy of maintaining order by controlling Black people’s bodies is at the heart of the racial apartheid that has always existed in the U.S., whether perpetrated by slave trader, slave owner, overseer, pattyroller, Klansmen, officer of the law or otherwise private U.S. citizen (calling the police to report a Black graduate student for sleeping in a dormitory common area where the somnolent student resided).
Whenever the subject of race emerges in conversation, far too frequently there is a focus on what Black people could be doing to improve the situation, as though we are the authors of the problem of race in the first place. Black people are presumed to possess an agency this hegemony propagates and simultaneously, systematically denies. Meanwhile, whites invoke a helplessness and powerlessness amid all of the damage and destruction they deliberately and methodically unleash on Black and Brown people all across this country or know has been done by others like them. In Hillbilly Elegy J.D. Vance paints himself a victim of circumstance amid his chaotic Appalachian upbringing. In South and West Joan Didion’s ruminations though at times piquant and poignant, seem wholly oblivious to the privilege of access just to be able to traverse the American South so freely in service to her journalistic pursuits. Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail reminds us of the Black version of Ms. Didion’s travels, “…when [Black people] take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of [their] automobile because no motel will accept [them] (King 1963, 69).” Dr. Arlie Russell Hochschild begins to acknowledge that her whiteness functions in her seamless access to and inclusion within the southern Louisianan cultural milieu, permitting her to research and write Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, an effort I believe would have been completely impossible had she been Black. (That rendition would have probably looked more like John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me, from almost 60 years ago.)
White people don’t NOT have power, as their narratives about themselves like to suggest. They voted in our 45th president. They are the sons and daughters of liberty who have deliberately, judiciously, and meticulously blocked freedom and prosperity for Colored and marginalized others, making America reeeaaaaallll "GREEEAAAATTT!" (Said in my best Tony the Tiger voice.) Theirs is a malicious unwillingness to reckon with all the wrongs they know they have committed, or wrongs which they know have been committed on their behalf—being as they are the "Posterity" to whom "the Blessings of Liberty" were secured, as per the Preamble of the United States Constitution. They then continue to facilitate and maintain those wrongs
a) pretending like they never happened;
b) acknowledging they did happen, but claim them to have been redressed;
c) acknowledging that they happened, were not redressed, but were not done by them personally so they have no responsibility and are therefore being ATTACKED unfairly, even though they benefit for the fact that those wrongs were committed simply by virtue of not being of the same race as those against whom the wrongs were committed/continue to be committed; or
d) being confused about whether or not they did happen but redouble their efforts to be 'good people' by maintaining the status quo, since they have mouths to feed and/or other responsibilities
for their own sense of comfort and control at the expense of helpless Black and Brown others; the helpless others who are always the victims of their feeding frenzies.
When they look at the mirror, white people don't seem to see our blood dripping from their mouths and fingertips. When they look at the mirror, I wonder if they ever see anything.
This post is dedicated to my Uncle G, who taught me how to play many games in life. He helped me to question rules if I could prove that they were set up against me, so others might be able to win unfairly off of my effort. Because of him I know, if I have to play a game, it had better be possible for me to win it. HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNC!!!!! THANK YOU FOR BEING THE GRAVITY TETHERING ME TO THIS EARTH SO THAT I MAY STILL FLOAT TO THE BEYOND TO SEE THE POSSIBILITY FOR ALL OF US IN WHAT NONE OF US CAN SEE TODAY:-*!!!
[1] Don Jordan and Mike Walsh, White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America. (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 175.
[2] Eastern National is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit cooperating association, supporting the interpretive, educational, and scientific programs and services of the National Park Service (http://easternnational.org/about-us/)
[3] Martin Gitlin. The Ku Klux Klan: A Guide to an American Subculture. (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2009)
[4] Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait, (New York: New American Library, a division of Penguin Group, 1963)