The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
There are periods in human history when nothing much seems to happen. I have always perceived medieval history in that guise. The earliest American history of our European origins was not very engrossing either, because the Europeans who initially came to these shores were not too much to become engrossed about. In addition, they were unrelenting religious bigots.
Since the beginning of 2020, the USA has become a veritable boiling pot of history. The COVID-19 virus has turned our nation and the world upside down. The death of George Floyd and the recent deaths of other Black people at the hands of the police also seem to have begun a transformation of the US almost overnight from something it was into something it is yet to become, although at this point we know not what.
History has always had a bumpy evolution. We might suppose that once events are far enough behind us they officially become history. They do, but the interpretation of what they mean can change quickly and dramatically. Thus history is not rigid. Rather it is fluid. It ebbs and flows, depending on the changing outlooks of all those who are doing the historical interpretation.
Some cultural patterns last for decades or centuries, and other change in just a few months or years. For instance, it is becoming increasingly clear that the coronavirus is permanently going to change life dramatically, although as of now we cannot predict with any certainty what those changes will be. Without question, the year 2020 will be an important one for many years to come. To suggest just three out of many possible hypothetical examples, elementary, secondary, and higher education may never again function as before. College and professional sports may never be the same again. The perm,anent office for millions of people may no longer be an “office,” but a room in their homes.
The focus of this essay shall be on the historical shift which is daily taking place on the streets and in the parks of cities all across the USA. This nation has a long history of Black slaves being mistreated prior to the Civil War, and other Black citizens receiving grossly unfair treatment after the Civil War. Reconstruction was supposed to pave the way for Blacks and whites to live together in peace and harmony forever after. Its well-intended precepts turned into a colossal failure.
Once Reconstruction was defeated by conservative and racist politicians regaining political control of the former Confederate states, the treatment of Blacks assumed new and even more vicious patterns. Lynchings became endemic. Former slaves became tenant farmers who were the equivalent of slaves to the land owners. Segregation became the official law of the land in many Southern states as well as in some Northern states.
However, it is only in the past few years, and particularly since the murder of George Floyd on a street in Minneapolis, that there has been a widespread coalescing of rage against the inequities and injustices that Blacks have experienced from the white population since the birth of our nation.
One index of the transformation we are witnessing is the virtually universal and brand-new capitalization of the word “Black” in just the past couple of months. However, virtually all writers still write the word “white” in lower-case.
Why the sudden linguistic change? This is a remarkable illustration of the fluidity of history. Prior to May of 2020, almost all printed news sources always spelled “black” in the lower-case when referring to people of African ancestry.
How Blacks referred to themselves and how whites referred to Blacks has undergone many changes through the centuries, and especially since the Civil War. The “n-word” was widely used by many whites, but it has been considered totally unacceptable for the past seventy-five years. Cultured white Southerners sometimes spoke of “nigras” or “colored people.” The latter expression was widely used among Blacks themselves for generations, and was enshrined in the title of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP is one of the oldest and most influential of civil-rights organizations. Now it tends to use the initials rather than the entire title, but that may be for the sake of brevity more than because of a hesitancy over the usage of the dated “colored people” description.
In the 1960s the term Afro-American became popular among many Blacks and some whites. Later that morphed into “African-American.” Eventually many blacks called themselves simply “blacks,” as did many whites. And then, beginning with the frequent mass demonstrations that quickly emerged after the death of George Floyd, “Blacks” became the instantaneous proper designation for Americans of African descent.
The fluidity of history may also be seen in the nomenclature regarding people of Latin American origin. Years ago they were either Hispanics or hispanics. Therefore all people south of the USA border were called Latinos.
Then that word was eventually dropped because the largest Latin American country, Brazil, is Latino but not Hispanic. Only within the last year has that word merged into “Latinx.” Latinos is a masculine word, but presumably Latinx is an asexual word which describes all the people of all the Latin American nations in one word that includes everyone. My assumption is that Latinx is an affirmation of feminist sentiments.
The point of all these alterations of ethnic descriptors is that through the passage of time, different people perceive the same entities through different historical lenses. They feel a need to change the way “others” are properly described. It is hard to teach old dogs new tricks, but all of us hominid canines need to use new words to express heightened sensitivity to “others.” By such courtesies is progress made in human relations. In the process, “history” is also changed.
Since the subsequent killings of other Blacks by other policemen after the Floyd death, and reflecting on earlier deaths of scores of Black men and women under similar circumstances, it appears as though millions of white Americans have suddenly awakened to the reality that Black Americans in general have always been treated unfairly by white Americans in general from the way whites treat one another. In other words, white racism has made it far more difficult for Blacks to achieve the American Dream.
Many letters to the editors of various newspapers and magazines are being written about this abrupt societal and linguistic change. It is my guess that “Black” is here to stay, as is “white” (lower case), at least for the present. If that is so, we who are white will continually be reminded of how we treated Blacks in the past, just by the capitalization of one short word. Lexicographically, that is a great leap forward. Whites need to understand that --- altering the main line from the movie Network --- Blacks are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore. Because of a number of instances of police brutality in past weeks and years, the way whites perceive Blacks and the way Blacks perceive whites may never be the same again.
Why is this happening? It is because it has become apparent that thousands of Blacks are less well care for as victims of COVID 19 and because hundreds of demonstrations all across America involving millions of Black and white citizens are changing how many people conceptualize racial injustice and inequity. History is fluid, and we are living through a time of rapid fluidity. As many pundits have suggested, we may finally have passed “the tipping point.”
Another example of the fluidity of history occurred when a sizeable majority of Americans who strongly opposed same-sex marriage came to accept it over a remarkably short period of time. That abrupt transformation took only a few years. It is perhaps the most amazingly fast major social upheaval in American history. Could a similar major restructuring be happening in racial attitudes? We can sincerely hope so.
Or consider Christopher Columbus. The Vikings were the first Europeans to discover the western hemisphere, but they only visited; they didn’t come to stay. The Spanish, and then the Portuguese, French, and British, settled in the Americas. Columbus even managed to have a national holiday named after him. But besides discovering the New World, he and his sailors also brought European diseases to the natives living here, and with over-the-top zeal they thrust their religion upon them as well. Thus someone who was in relatively good stead for five centuries began to fall out of favor around the time of the five-hundredth anniversary of the Columbian voyage.
The American poet James Russell Lowell wrote, “New occasions teach new duties/ Time makes ancient good uncouth.” Because of the truth encapsulated in those poetic lines, statues of Confederate war heroes have suddenly become odious, and many have already been either pulled down by demonstrators or removed by orders from local or state officials. Via the fluidity of history, the Lost Cause may at last be in the process of being obliterated as something positive from the collective memory of most Americans.
A man reckoned by many to be the greatest of American presidents underwent huge changes in his attitudes toward Black slaves as well as free Blacks during his tragically shortened presidency. In 1861 Abraham Lincoln seriously concluded that sending all Blacks to Africa might be the best solution to the inherent white-American racism he perceived in his fellow countrymen. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves in the Confederate states (but not the border states) to be immediately free. By the time of his assassination, he may not yet have advanced into seeing Blacks to be the social equals of whites, but in the absence of convincing proof otherwise, I choose to believe he arrive at that realization. Lincoln was certainly not flawless, but he also had a magnanimity of spirit which has been too rare in anyone elected to the most difficult and taxing office in America.
There are not as many demonstrations in mid-July of 2020 as there were in mid-June, but they are continuing. What do the demonstrations demonstrate? Rage. Remorse. Sorrow. Shame. Old wounds. New insights. Empathy. Sympathy. Ignited convictions, renewed hopes, reinvigorated optimism.
America as a whole has never openly admitted the inherent inequities of race from the earliest days of settlement on American shores by non-Americans. We started out with glaring injustices woven into the national fabric. As often as we addressed those issues, we never sufficiently resolved them. In the providence of God, a pandemic, coupled with a few outrageous incidents of unrestrained police violence, may be leading us to take great strides toward the redress of ancient grievances.
A new understanding of history is being written by these events. If this transformation succeeds, the United States of America will move much closer to the ideals set out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is better late than never to become the people we have always claimed we are. - July 12, 2020
John Miller is Pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC. More of his writings may be viewed at www.chapelwithoutwalls.org.