Historical Guilt

What could induce enough guilt in numerous enough Americans to lead to an acceptance of the belief of racism without racists? I have in mind here, specifically, white Americans. For this relative outsider (again, I am an immigrant), the answer is obvious: white America has never really digested, assimilated the true story of the two and half centuries of unrelenting atrocities that was slavery. (Many conservatives demonstrate daily on talk radio that they have not.)

Evidence in support lies in areas where interest should exist but does not. So, for example, outside of professional historians’ circles, there is no discussion of the interesting fact that most black Americans are considerably lighter skinned than the African populations whence they originate. There is no discussion either of the related fact that the freeing of slaves on the owner’s death was so common in the antebellum South that several southern states made laws seeking to restrict and contain the practice as a public danger. One major reason that manumission was common was that it was how white owners could protect their slave children from beyond the grave. Stop and ask yourself what simple behavior might explain both facts. (Incidentally, some fiction readings have led me to believe that there exists some consciousness of the same facts in small southern towns. There, white people kind of know who are their distant black cousins.) I am referring to a long history of rape, of course. (I assume that property cannot give sexual consent.) Many white Americans know of slavery without really knowing much about it. I only spent one year in an American high school, long ago, but I remember that the one American history class I took had little to say about slavery. It was like painted over.

American public opinion of the left has largely adopted the systemic racism narrative since about the nineteen-seventies. It has been taught in nearly all universities since that time. Much progress in racial integration has also meant that many more whites now than then actually know some African Americans personally. This may prevent them from treating blacks in general with the indifference reserved for abstractions. Be it as it may this adoption of the systemic racism idea by whites on the current left is surprising because the adopters mostly vote Democrat and, historically, the Democratic Party is the party of both slavery and legal segregation. (Even more surprising, of course is the fact that African Americans themselves overwhelmingly vote for the same party with a charged racial past.)

Finally, and subjectively, the word “systemic” has a nice ring to it. It sounds sort of technical, or even scientific. Its very use is vaguely status-enhancing (I suspect some liberals are proud that they don’t confuse it with the more common, low-brow “systematic” but, that’s just me.) In the end, the word is intended to convey the abstract concept that racist actions take place even if no one is explicitly acting racist. That’s a valuable idea politically because it spares those who use it the exacting burden of demonstrating the existence of a guilty party and also the burden of convicting him or it.

[Editor’s note: you can find Part 2 here, or read the whole thing here.]