In Search of Our Better Angels

By Hank Silverberg

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”-- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural address, March 4, 1861 

(President Lincoln)

I thought of Mr. Lincoln’s words a lot this past week. In part, it was because of a great book I am reading: In Search of America, by Jon Meacham. It looks at U.S. history not just through great battles or great men, but through the trials and errors which have swung our politics forward, backward and then forward again. He points out very distinctively that the division our country faces today is a continued struggle we have had since Europeans first stepped foot on the western hemisphere in 1492.

Our founding fathers, people like Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln were flawed men. They had great ideas that moved human kind ahead of its barbaric history, and yet still denied the liberty they promoted to millions of people who did not share their racial features or their religion. 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

 But the words Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 were really a promise rather than reality-- a promise that has yet to be completely fulfilled.

History is crowded with sad examples of the broken pledge:

The slaughter of Native Americans that began the day Columbus set foot on Hispaniola, that continued after the creation of the United States,through Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears (1831-1840)  and the 7th Calvary’s slaughter at Wounded Knee in 1890. They were events that stained Jefferson’s words forever.

Abigail Adams, writing to her husband John during the debate over the Declaration of Independence in 1776 told him “Don’t forget the ladies,” but the white men meeting in Philadelphia did forget them and women did not get the right to vote until 1920.

African Americans designated as only three-fifths of a person in the U.S. Constitution, were denied legal equality until the 14th Amendment in 1868 made them citizens. That came after a war that had killed 600,000 Americans. Even into the 20th Century, what Martin Luther King called a “promissory 

note” in 1963, was still not cashed and remains unpaid to this day. 

In the 20th Century, we also went to war in Europe to stop the murderous “master race” of Nazis, while at the same time our moral high ground was marred by the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans simply because of their race. Our eventual victory, hailed as liberty for the world, was also severely tarnished by the repressive boot of the Jim Crow South that continued into the 1970’s until it faded to a light shade that is often hard to spot today.

(1926 Jim Crow sign)

I thought about all this as I watched my state’s political leadership stumble and disintegrate over echoes from that past. It comes with great irony in a year when Virginia will commemorate a horrible moment in our history, the 400th anniversary of the importation of the first black slave at Jamestown in 1619.  

It’s clear that two decades into the 21st Century, Virginia has yet to come to grips with its imperfect, immoral past.  

 (You can find a good time line of the week’s political chaos in Virginia here)

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/us/politics/virginia-scandal.html

With that in mind, here are the questions Virginians and others across the country have been asking this week:

How in the 1980’s, after the Civil Rights marches and the “massive resistance” movement of the 60’s, could at the time young men like Ralph Northam, Mark Herring and Tommy Norment not know that blackface was a symbol of hate and repression? Northam is now Governor, Herring is now Attorney General, and Norment is now Senate Majority Leader.

Governor Northam, a Democrat, has told The Washington Post he will stay in office and explore the issue of “white privilege” while pushing an agenda of racial reconciliation. Will that be enough to erase a 35-year-old sin and satisfy the scores of Democrats who have called for his resignation?


https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/va-gov-ralph-northam-says-he-wants-to-focus-rest-of-his-term-on-racial-equity/2019/02/09/2a739b20-2c76-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2475a88bc1e8

 

  Senator Norment, a Republican, who was under fire after racist pictures were found in a yearbook he edited while a student at VMI that included students in blackface, is now facing more accusations from students in classes he now teaches at the College of William and Mary. They say he is insensitive to racial issues in his assignments and lectures. He’s avoided public comment.  

(A Confederate flag towers over I-95
on private property near Fredericksburg, VA) 

https://thinkprogress.org/former-students-say-virginia-senate-majority-leader-taught-racially-insensitive-college-course-b82fabf8a683/

And then, there is this:

After the revelations of the #metoo movement and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, how bizarre is it that the Virginia’s Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax, elected just last year, and a descendant of a slave, faces 15-year-old accusations of sexual assault now, right when his political future seemed on the upswing?  

   So, while all these questions are being asked, a poll conducted of Virginia voters at the end of the week, by the well respected Shar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, found the state’s voters split, with 47% saying Northam should step down, and 47% saying he should stay. Black voters seemed more inclined to accept the Governor’s explanation with only 37% favoring his resignation.

  On the allegations against Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax, 65% of those polled said they didn't know enough about the allegations to form an opinion even after a second woman came forward to accuse him of sexual assault.    

_________________________________________________________________

    Full Poll results are here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2019/02/09/National-Politics/Polling/release_543.xml?tid=a_inl_manual

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Racial and social justice still elude us in many ways at the end of the second decade of the 21st Century. If you ask a person of color, they will give you recent examples of injustice or prejudice, many of them from personal experience.  As I have written in this blog before, 75 years after Hitler murdered millions of people, including 6 million Jews, Anti-Semitism is on the rise again. And as I have written here before, the current hostility toward immigrants, as it has been repeatedly used in this country's past, is based mainly on fear of something different rather than any real threat to our way of life.     

 We are far from the ideal of people being judged by the content of their character as Dr. King dreamed, but things have changed for the better in the last 50 years. Change, especially when dealing with the human heart and mind, moves slowly. We should not let our frustration over the slow pace of progress take our minds away from the ultimate goal. 

Virginia’s political turmoil may just be a blip on the historic radar screen for some future historian. But it’s clear evidence that Americans have yet to find those “better angels” that Lincoln alluded to. The ideals of our founding fathers are still a long way from being a reality.  

           (Your comments and suggestions are welcome)

(Copies of my book "The Campaign" are available on Amazon.com, BN.com, hanksilverbergbooks.com or at a reduced price from me at hanksilverberg@gmail.com. Ask for details)