AMERICAN SLAVERY, AN UNTREATED CANCER

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
One of my heroes. Born a slave in Maryland, Douglass escaped slavery
and was a major force for abolition. He eventually
became a U.S. Ambassador. He changed his world for the greater good.

 

No intelligent and sane American in 2021 would deny the poisonous evil of American slavery. Slavery, never a moral or ethical practice, ended formally as a legal practice n what is now the United States with passage of Amendment 13 to the U.S. Constitution in 1865. Millions had died or been mutilated in the bloody Civil War preceding the Constitutional end of American slavery. Descendants of slaves continued to die unjustly thereafter. 

By far, most of those who died in The American Civil War, which effectively ended the condoned enslavement of predominantly African-Americans, were free White men and women. Some of their ancestors has been enslaved in colonial America under English debtor law. Others came later to the U.S. to avoid persecution in their countries of origin. The end of slavery did not come about by race war. 

Reconstruction, a federal post-Civil-War program to rehabilitate the devastated states of the Confederacy, was no cure for the cancer of slavery. It was corrupted by exploiters from northern states, known as carpetbaggers. Minor federal consideration was given to the approximately 3 million displaced slaves in the Confederate states after 1865. Emancipation, which was simply an overdue acknowledgment of their natural humanity, meant little to those who were left illiterate and destitute.

The cancer of slavery has remained rooted in the deep tissues of American society. And it has metastasized for 156 years after slavery itself was made illegal.  Yes, this is obviously still a problem. 

Some observers of Black Lives Matter (BLM) in today's headlines might associate that movement with a therapy for the cancer of slavery. Closer scrutiny of BLM will quickly dispel any notions that it is a remedy or aims to promote healing of any kind. BLM is a movement of contention and revenge aimed at what it perceives as a hostile White capitalist culture on all levels. It is a movement forged in 19th century European class resentment and anarcho-revolutionary politics, as articulated by Karl Marx and others.

No. The cancer of slavery is not simply an ideological thing. The cancer of slavery is organic. It thrives on generational poverty, poor public education and poisonous media portrayals of Black identity. It thrives on single motherhood, welfare dependency and the devaluation of studious Black men and women by their own urban culture. It metastasizes when Black subculture is exploited in media by equating it predominantly with poverty, drug abuse, crime and violence. 

The cancer of slavery is so deeply embedded in the tissues of America that violent revolution will not cut it out without also potentially killing its host. If the host, the whole American culture itself, is destroyed, what will take its place? I assure you, anarcho-revolutionaries have a really bad record of trying to solve that problem when they have succeed in violently taking over. Seattle's CHAZ, or CHOP, in 2020 is a recent example. The French Reign of Terror is another great example. America's anarchic Wild West was rife with genocide and mass murder. 

I am a simple White American of working-class immigrant background. However, I know some things about people, groups and organic disease. I know that cancer can be treated organically by depriving its cellular growth of the things upon which it thrives. I know that a metastasizing cancer is lethal due to its spread to vital organs. Ignoring it is fatal. I also know that human group processes are rooted in individual organic processes. A group is likely to ultimately achieve healthy process when all its individuals achieve a certain standard of healthy process.  

Identity politics are not therapeutic in this regard, especially the politics of a Black identity that is portrayed in exploitative American media. Exploiting the deaths of felons with racialized victimization narratives is a transparent manipulation of media to reinforce a dysfunctional ideology. Those portrayals shine more light on the disease in Black American life than on its existing health. BLM has made this worse by associating itself with Antifa's rioting, looting and arson. BLM has declared itself for lawlessness while demanding justice. How can any true justice be delivered by lawless anarchy? 

I suggest reconstruction in the sense of rebuilding our whole society by truly addressing the chronic disease of slavery is needed. I agree with some more rational Left-leaning thinkers that constructive proactive compensation for slavery is overdue. I do not think doling out low unearned incomes to uneducated Black adolescent mothers is constructive economic compensation. Over half a century of that approach has proven it marginally effective. Nor do I believe that sending out large cash payments to people ill-equipped to invest those payments in a healthy future is the answer. 

The therapy for the cancer of slavery is not obsessing on teaching past social injustices in substandard public schools. The therapy is not demeaning or ignoring Western Civilization or factual World History in those schools either. The therapy is not undermining the value of multiple-income households for raising children, whether they be founded on heterosexual marriage or not. The therapy for the cancer of slavery is not simply violently erasing the painful reminders of it in public places. 

Slavery lasted as long as it did in America due to greed for money.  As much as I might agree on many levels that money is the root of all evil (poisonous), I believe any therapy for the cancer of slavery in functional capitalist world entails finances. The first stage of treating the cancer of slavery is drastically reducing generational poverty. The root of that poverty lies in the public education systems wherever generational poverty is concentrated. 

Poorly staffed and underfunded public schools spread the cancer of slavery. In recent days, we are learning of the corruption of teachers' unions in large public education districts. The incomes for teaching in public schools are too low. More importantly, we have known for some time that public education teachers have been deprived of the legal and political backup to enforce basic safety standards and student etiquette standards in public schools. Their current cries of vulnerability in a time of pandemic can be seen as symptom of their general feeling of being unsafe in their jobs. Understandable.

Any racialization of public and private education should be eliminated through federal and private regulation. While courses in Black History are important if taught as factual history, for example, the politicization of education of any kind turns it into propaganda or indoctrination. Racializing the teaching of historical facts by Whites, Blacks, Asians, or Indigenous People simply undermines the path to social healing and cohesion. We understand that now. The color of a teacher should not change the teaching of any subject, based in high educational standards, factual research and documentation.  

African-American children, descendants of slaves, should be given automatic federal scholarship to any school, including private schools for which they competitively qualify, from primary school through university. And the parents of qualifying students should be given an automatic annual federal subsidy to support an education-positive home environment. African-American children, descendants of slaves, who perform to a defined standard in public schools academically and behaviorally should be rewarded in a similar way. Their families should be given a larger subsidy for their efforts as an incentive for those families to stress the importance of education at home and in their communities. 

In addition, I suggest a one-time federal compensation payment in the form of an educational trust should be granted to any child born between established dates, regardless of academic ability, with a proven genetic history of slavery in the U.S.A. between 1776 and 1865. DNA confirmation could be arranged as part of applying. That money should be available to that child for any form of education, including travel abroad, during their lifetime. That trust money should, like a savings bond, earn appropriate interest, but should be for the exclusive educational use by the designated recipient, once they graduate high school. 

Today's information technology could be used to find additional taxable funds to pay for these programs. Large financial holdings in the U.S.A. which can be associated historically in any way with slavery should be taxed by the federal government to build a government trust for these compensation funds. And, those with billions of dollars who loudly advocate social equity as well as social justice would be expected to voluntarily put their money to the cause to set an example. 

Building a larger middle class that includes people who are actual descendants of slaves in America can only make our nation stronger. Violently demanding social equity, based solely on skin color (BLM), while using slavery as generalized rationalization is exploitative racialism. There are many people of various colors in America whose roots are not associated with American slavery in any way. They should not be branded racists. Their struggles in life should not be demeaned. Racializing all American culture and American history is simply metastasizing the cancer of slavery. It is not a way to heal it.