In the New York Times this week, the linguist John McWhorter takes on the recent outcry over the new account of slavery in Florida schools.  He notes that the idea that slaves benefitted from learning skills like blacksmithing inaccurately implies a kind of good side to slavery and is clumsy and ahistorical. But the full record of slavery in the new curriculum is robust and truthful.  It was written by William Allen who is, like McWhorter, a Black and an accomplished academic.

McWhorter goes on to mention that the history of American slavery has improved a great deal recently with Gone with the Wind yielding ground to Amistad, Roots, and a new and vast literature on slavery.

Even when I went to school in Florida in the 50s and 60s, we were taught about the horrors of slavery.  But missing was the awful history of the half a century following the Civil War.  We learned nothing about Reconstruction and the massive rewriting and white washing of the role of the South.  We never heard about the Klan and Night Riders or the removal of voting rights and the imposition of the Black Codes and the laws of segregation.  Robert E. Lee was transformed into a hero and we never heard about Black heroes.

One hero that was forgotten by the romanticization of the South was Robert Smalls. A slave who learned the skills of the sea was well known from 1861 and into the early 20^th century.  Smalls was one of the most accomplished and remarkable men of the period and a true American hero.  His incredible life story would make an exciting movie that would demonstrate all the ills of the contemporary white washing of the history of racism and the crazy but prevalent idea that white people are an aggrieved race victimized by liberals. 

Growing up as a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls must have known that he had been fathered by his owner or one of the sons of the master.  Somewhat favored among the slaves, he was taught the skills of seamanship and became a proficient and respected naval worker, even learning to pilot ships.  With white officers in charge, Smalls steered the armed vessel, the Planter, around the area of Charleston Harbor transporting weaponry for the Confederate navy.  And one night his chance came to use his talents to win freedom. While the officers partied on shore, Smalls sailed in the night to the locations of his family and the enslaved families of his crewmembers.  Surprised and scared, the wives and children boarded the Planter and hid quietly hid themselves.  Smalls steered the vessel in the dark of night past Confederate garrisons. He gave the correct signals for safe passage and flying the Confederate flag.  He approached the Union naval blockade in the dim light of early dawn.  Smalls’ wife had brought a sheet, and this was raised as a flag of surrender while the banner of the rebellion was brought down.  The Union naval forces boarded the ship and took it capture and it became an effective fighting ship for the Federal forces.

Smalls became a hero in the North and was reviled and hunted in the South.  The Union navy made him a civilian captain and pilot of several vessels including the Planter and he led ships along Southern ports and islands doing logistics and intelligence work. He even advised Army generals in their strategy against the South.  He used his status as a folk hero to encourage President Lincoln to allow other former slaves to win their freedom by enlisting in the armed forces.  Lincoln eventually did this and over 200,000 Black soldiers fought for the North forming a large percentage of the Federal troops.   

Shortly after the war, Smalls was piloting the Planter again and was taking two generals and other officers around the area of South Carolina where he had escaped on that ship five years before.  A disgruntled former Confederate captain McNulty of another ship attempted to use his vessel to run Smalls’ ship against the rocky shore.  Instead, the skillful Smalls turned the Planter directly at the aggressor to ram the ship.  Its captain seized his rifle and aimed it at Smalls.  Smalls stood boldly against him, pointing his own weapon at McNulty telling him to aim well because Smalls would never miss.  The Union officers quickly armed themselves and took control of the attack.

The story of the life of Robert Smalls after the war demonstrates how the country abandoned the hard-won freedoms of the former slaves.  The President Johnson began to pardon the treasonous rebel leaders and the South passed the Black Codes and used various means to return the former slaves to a subservient status.  Black voters were intimidated, and some elected former slaves were removed from office by violence, fear, and even murder.  Smalls himself was ejected from a segregated train. Smalls served in the South Carolina legislature and later was elected to five terms as U.S. congressman.  White schemers filed false bribery charges against Representative Smalls, and he was at first convicted by a local trial court.  When the conviction was about to be overturned by a higher court, the South Carolina governor pardoned Smalls in order to deny him vindication.

Nonetheless, Smalls lost the next election and he retired to local politics even helping stop a riotous white mob.  He used prize money for his wartime exploits and his very successful business ventures to purchase his old home in Beaufort.  It was the home of his former master.  In a poignant act of forgiveness and kindness, he allowed the widow of his old master to stay in the home where he had served her long before as a slave.

The southern states continued falsifying the story of slavery and removing the rights of Black citizens by fear, Jim Crow laws, segregation and lynching.  They erected monuments and parks dedicated to the Confederate generals and Klan leaders and whitewashed the history of slavery and the Civil War.  Traitors became heroes and the hero Smalls was forgotten. 

I certainly never heard of the remarkable life of Robert Smalls during my schooldays during segregation days in Florida.  I don’t imagine that Florida school children will ever hear Smalls’ inspiring story.

There was an ancient tradition in Europe of using Jewish businessmen as money lenders and then finding a way to avoid paying the loan.  The Jews of medieval Britain provided a convenient lending bank but were heavily taxed. The taxation became so onerous that the money lenders could no longer stay in business. There being no more money available to borrow from the Jews, so in 1290 King Edward expelled all Jews from the British island.  They would not return until 1656 when Oliver Cromwell saw the benefit of readmitting Jewish people with money to lend. 

Shakespeare knew of this old European scam when he created Shylock who lends a bundle but loses the repayment, all his property, and his daughter.  But obviously the Bard could never have met a Jew as there were not any around.

The Brits have changed their attitude about people of non-Christian religions.  There of course was a Jewish Prime Minister, Disraeli, and the current PM, Rishi Sunak, is a Hindu.  Sunak will read a passage from the New Testament at the coronation ceremonies for King Charles. No doubt he will use the King James version.

The coronation ceremonies will also include representatives from all major religions, Hindu, Moslem, Sikh, Buddhist and others.  The Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, will represent the Jewish community.  A problem with this part of the ceremony is that it takes place on Shabbat which begins Friday at sundown and does not end until Saturday evening and the ceremony will still be in session.  An observant Jew should not drive a car on Shabbat.  So at the personal invitation of King Charles, Rabbi Mirvis will spend the night at the King’s home, Clarence House, a short walk from Westminster Abbey.

Adriel and Mike O’ were good friends in secondary school. Mike had a famous father, a lawyer and respected prosecutor. Mike’s older brother was a lawyer as well, and he served a tour in Vietnam as a military lawyer during America’s awful invasion of that nation that yearned for its independence. After leaving the military, Mike told me his brother gave a series of lectures on some of the abuses of the U.S. forces such as the Mai Lai massacre. Apparently some of the way that soldiers were able to kill villagers and even children was what he called “the Gook factor.” Dehumanization. Soldiers did not talk about villagers or children, but “gooks,” a derisive epithet that included the claim that the Vietnamese, the gooks, did not value life, or at least not in the way the white invading forces did.

This type of dehumanization was explored in a fascinating on-line course I took on Coursera, “The Paradoxes of War” taught by Miguel Centeno at Princeton. Military training always involves a process to overcome the very human reluctance to kill others, even in battle. One of the ways to train soldiers to kill, is to try to make sure that they see their enemy as an enemy only, not full human. And societies always honor their own soldiers not only as heroes, but importantly, as a kind of paragon, a life to emulate. That is, the fallen soldier is an example of true humanity who had to kill those who are somehow less than us. So we can count on young people to be prepared to do this all over again when they are called to action against an enemy who is not quite like us.

Recently, I listened to a podcast on the subject of dehumanization. Brene Brown (“Unlocking Us” podcast 13Jan2021) explored dehumanization as “the most significant drive of insurrection”. I rather think that it is one of many drivers of the January 6th attack on the capital. Brown gave the example of the Nazi propaganda calling Jews vermin and an enemy within and so forth. However, the dehumanization of European Jews goes back hundreds of years, even to the writing of the gospels which purposely depicted the Jews as Christ-killers.

There were multiple causes for the Nazi takeover of Germany, and specifically several causes of the insurrection, the Beer-Hall Putsch. When I saw the news videos of the white nationalists chanting “Jews shall not replace us!” I heard the echoes of Jew-baiting and blood libels over years of hatred of Jews including the Cossacks and the pogroms that drove my ancestors from Lithuania and Russia. These American anti-Semites and the other racists and insurrectionists are reacting to an enormous social unrest that is leaving the non-college whites with fear and resentment of minority gains. I suspect that the American style of pogroms, the riotous destruction of black villages and ghettos, arose when black citizens arose to prosperity and some power, replacing white privileged status. The non-college whites and other Trumpians very well see that the U.S. is becoming more diverse and whites will be a minority soon and are already outnumbered in California, Arizona and other states. Black and other nonwhite Americans are gaining power and prestige. White culture is breaking down into value loss, lack of social capital, job loss, and social disintegration, a process documented by Charles Murray in Losing Ground and other sociologists. Jews the usual target for frustration and resentment for social status decline, but in America, blacks, immigrants and other minorities are targets for revenge.

Fear and loss are the breeding grounds of conspiracy theories and bizarre cults. A recent NYT commentary by Thomas B. Edsall (3Feb2021) discussed the motivation of the recent insurrection and the social forces motivating any type of conspiracy believers. Edsall referenced a message from a scholar Karen M. Douglas who wrote that “people are attracted to conspiracy theories when important psychological needs are not being met.” She identified three such needs: “the need for knowledge and certainty”; the “existential need” to “to feel safe and secure” when “powerless and scared”; and, among those high in narcissism, the “need to feel unique compared to others.” The motto of the Trumpian hordes was Make America Great Again, a call to return to a time when the white privilege of the male working class was the very core of U.S. domestic political power. The rise of less privileged, brown and black peoples to wealth and power, symbolized by the presidency of Barack Obama, placed an enormous number of people in a lesser state where loss, powerlessness, and fear comes to dominate their thinking.

Led by President Trump over years of race baiting and fear-mongering the awful mob attacked the Capital. Trump had come to political power by dehumanizing the first black President, Barack Obama, in his racist birther slanders. But he was only capitalizing on the rage of white racists who saw Obama as the ultimate symbol of white race replacement. In the end, I have faith, or maybe just hope, that the violent, resentful, and racist hordes will lose as a diverse nation comes to value its inevitable diversity and reclaim its values.

Following the violent Trump inspired assault on Congress, David Brooks’ column in the New York Times (7 January 2021) asks the reader to look to history to be reminded of the dark forces in America. Yet he thinks that this is a turning point in history, a reversal of the trend toward white supremacy and know-nothingness. Well, I doubt it.

After the horrors of the civil war and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the vile President Andrew Johnson began to turn back the clock and revive the racist policies of the South. Johnson defied the will of Congress, yet Congress failed to remove him from office. Despite the efforts of Ulysses Grant to insure the civil and human rights of the newly freed slaves, the South succeeded in its intent to “rise again” or in contemporary terms, to “make America great again.” The result was segregation and the nearly complete disenfranchisement of the African-Americans. Black elected officials were driven from office and sometimes murdered.

One hundred years later, the Voting Rights Act restored the political powers of Blacks. After the election of Barack Obama, a wealthy publicity seeker realized he could awaken the racists and know-nothings with the insane birther movement. Even though the birther claim was so obviously false, many, in fact millions bought into it. And riding on this racist renewal, Donald Trump rode into the White House. When the election of 2020 again showed the power of the Black voter, the dark forces were enraged. Inflection point? No, the newly found good sense of the politicians who jumped aboard the Trump train does not demonstrate a return to an fair and tolerant nation. The attack by Trump supporters only showed that we can repel the dark forces, but they will remain in the shadows.

Who knew? This is from Aeon (https://aeon.co/essays/when-philosopher-met-king-on-platos-italian-voyages Accessed 25Dec2020):

“Plato’s first visit to Sicily ended in dark irony: Dionysius I sold the philosopher into slavery. He figured that if Plato’s belief were true, then his enslavement would be a matter of indifference since, in the words of the Greek biographer Plutarch, ‘he would, of course, take no harm of it, being the same just man as before; he would enjoy that happiness, though he lost his liberty.’

Fortunately, Plato was soon ransomed by friends.”

Of course, Plato was no friend of democracy, believing that democracies eventually lead to the rise of tyrannical leader. The authors of this piece, Nick Romeo and Ian Tewksbury, comment on Plato’s political philosophy in a democracy. If we apply friendship and education to bring people together will can all be philosopher-kings, ruling together.

Timely.

So here we are in the midst of a mass delusion on the part of literally millions of people who believe that Donald Trump won the presidential election of 2020. No need to go into how crazy that is. Journalists and opinion leaders are livid about the craven politicians who openly support this lie and the other republicans whose silence we all hear.

But for Adriel, it is not the usual scalawag politicians who are used to subjecting us to hypocrisy and prevarication. It’s the believers, those so willing to believe what they know is false. And so many!

Yet when I meet those deluded folks, they seem so normal, perfectly okay and often are kind and concerned neighbors. Long ago I read an article, I think in the Atlantic, by a reporter who had conducted a series of interviews with people who had been abducted by space aliens. The visitors from the cosmic realm had swooped down in flying saucers adorned with Christmas lights flashing away. The earthlings were teleport-ed up, examined and interrogated and placed back gently in their homes. That’s not the crazy part. The astounding part was these people were perfectly normal. In other ways, I mean. They lived in regular neighborhood homes or apartments. They had families, including real homo sapien parents. They held jobs, watched television, read books. (Well, maybe not read books.) They were the “just folks” you might meet in the grocery store or you might sit next to their desk at work. They were normal. The reporter had some information on their psychological make up, and they were as normal as anyone you might meet.

I think they were crazy. On the other hand. Almost everyone I meet believes that Jesus raised people from the dead, could cure leprosy without the benefit of antibiotics, and raised himself from the grave. Or they believe that G-d has a special agreement with them on account of being Jewish and they are entitled to part ownership of ha-aretz and maybe all of Palestine. Or maybe they are a hafiz and can recite, with ardent belief, the entire Koran from memory. At St. Ann elementary school, we little believers were required to memorize, recite, and pledge belief in the words of the Nicene Creed, a list of required Catholic dogma, fully vetted by the Doctors of the Church in 325 of the Common Era. All of us believe in something that is clearly at odds with what we can easily see is reality. And we appear normal. Personally, I believe sincerely that I will win the lottery, maybe not the big one, but millions surely. And I appear normal, to some at least.