The Third Reconstruction

As a student of history I am often inclined to place current events in the context of it.  Of late I have been watching, reading and listening to the debate over the U.S. National Anthem, the Flag; the song and symbol of supposed American patriotism being used as a medium by ex San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick and other NFL athletes/sports-figures to draw attention to racial inequality and police brutality.  The devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and comparison of responses to each one of these storms.  The aftermath of Charlottesville – the protests and counter-protests that led to the death of Heather Heyer.  A POTUS that cannot seem to drop his habit of bloviating on Twitter, oftentimes employing galling language that further divides the American populace, frequently along racial fault lines that generate seismic debate.

I can’t help but sometimes think how unusual are the times we are in.  How not only do we have a supposed leader of the free world that does not behave “presidential”, but long time relationships such as your friendship with former classmates being severely damaged or destroyed over Social Media.  But as a pupil of American History I am reminded that these times are not unusual (the mediums in which we exchange ideas are) – they are in fact part of a recurring theme.

From my perspective we are in the midst of what I like to describe the “Third Reconstruction”.  A phrase the Rev. William Barber has coined.  I’d like to acknowledge Rev. Barber and others as I’m not the first to come up with this theory.  On this particular blog entry I will attempt to interpret my understanding in chronological fashion in context and support of my declaration/argument.  But don’t take my recollection of history as complete fact; please read the works of authors like the late Howard Zinn who wrote “A People’s History of the United States“.

Part of the problem that I’ve observed on social media platforms like Facebook is those platforms allow people to post varying degrees of opinions, re-postings and sometimes fake information.  As humans we are inclined to seek those opinions or “facts” that reinforce our pre-conceived notions or perceptions of the world we live in.  Yes, social media has been revolutionary in allowing us to exchange ideas without having to access traditional means of broadcast, but it is a medium to which there are no guard rails on the proverbial road to “truth”.  You can create your own bubble, befriend those that share the views contained inside your bubble, and decide to block any dissenting opinion – or in many cases FACT that may inflate and ultimately burst that bubble.

Since 1619 Jamestown, the blood that flows through the body of the American Experiment is race.  Which feeds every institutional organ of our society.  In an attempt to quell labor uprisings like the Polish craftsmen in 1619 Jamestown, Virginia, colonial leaders like John Smith needed to create division amongst the European indentured servants and newly arrived African labor.  They knew if labor from Europe found solidarity with Africans, their dominion would be unsustainable (Virginia is known as the “Old Dominion”).  The same way that I believe members of the 1/10th of 1% leverage it now to distract us from increasing economic inequality to further their capitalistic dominion of our lives.  Thus the creation of slavery by inventing the social construct of race.  There is only one race – the human race, we differ only by the amount of skin pigmentation and physical features based on adaptation to our ancestral lands.

The first Reconstruction began after the Civil War, when freed slaves needed an environment to transition from being property to owning property, becoming educated and contributing members of society – through the establishment of voting rights and being elected to state and local positions; amid the ruins of the antebellum South.  With every Reconstruction there has been an equal and opposite backlash by institutional White Supremacy which was born out of Jamestown.  The Presidential Elections of 1876 ended in a stalemate (sound familiar – remember Florida in 2000) that was only resolved by the Hayes Compromise – where Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for being sworn in as the 19th President of the United States, agreed to remove Federal troops that had occupied the South since the end of the Civil War.  Once the protection of the Federal Government was removed, former slaves experienced the terrorism and brutality of white backlash; this was the environment that saw the rise of white paramilitary groups like the KKK.  The South was now in the grips of Jim Crow… which would last until the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The second Reconstruction is the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.  Beginning with Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, African-Americans along with other racial minorities sought equal protection under the law and to have their constitutional rights upheld as United States citizens.  This was the answer to the brutal regime of Jim Crow throughout the American South as well as institutionalized racism in northern urban centers that many blacks over the course of a century had migrated to for jobs and educational opportunities.

1968 to me was the commencement of the second backlash… the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy along with the election of Richard Nixon – his campaign with adviser Lee Atwater having authored the Southern Strategy – leveraging white resentment against the Civil Rights movement for electoral victory.  The strategy was to bring into the fold of the new Republican Party former segregationists and Dixiecrats who felt stranded by the Democratic Party after President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 act.  I would argue that Nixon never completed his representation of the backlash – Watergate submarine(d) his presidency, but after the brief presidencies of Ford and the Democrat Jimmy Carter, Reagan oversaw the reboot of Backlash #2.  This backlash gave birth to modern conservatism – which took the racial subtleties authored by Lee Atwater in the original Southern Strategy and implemented them into public policy such as tax cuts, the shaming of minorities on public assistance such as welfare and supply side economics.  It also incorporated White evangelicals as a solid voting block, particularly around the issue of abortion – a backlash against Roe v. Wade in 1973.  The period of modern conservatism – where supposed “establishment Republicans” controlled the GOP, concluded with the election of Barack Obama.  The third backlash (addressed in subsequent paragraphs) was fertilized through the Tea Party of 2010 and “birtherism” – of which our current president “trumpeted” – pun intended.

The irony to me was Dr. King in 68′ was not only condemnation of the Vietnam War, he was beginning to address the social-economic divide – Labor vs. Capital.  He was brining forth the argument that poor and middle class whites should have economic solidarity with blacks – referring to the original 1619 Jamestown meme.  Dr. King was gunned down in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4 1968 – he was there to address the sanitation workers strike.

The election of Donald J. Trump to the Oval Office (by some would argue the antiquated Electoral College) marks the third and possibly final backlash to the Third Reconstruction represented by eight years of the Obama Presidency.  Not to rehash recent history, many of us acknowledge Trump began his presidential campaign by attacking racial and religious minorities, i.e. Hispanics from Mexico and Muslims.  In fact, his campaign and many of his administrative policies since his inauguration have revolved around race.  Starting with executive orders around the Muslim ban, radically changing immigration policies and the attempt at every turn to eradicate the vestiges of the Obama legacy (failed attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare serve as Exhibit A) – the first African American president is the core of his administration.  The appointment of alt-right (read neo-Nazis) members to his cabinet, figures like the recently departed Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and Steven Miller all serve to bring into focus the resistance to the demographical shifts that will render the United States as a majority-minority country in just 20 years.  Already states such as California have caucasian populations under 50%.

I would argue the issue that binds his base and the base of the post-modern GOP is race and demographic anxiety.  To draw attention away from the trajectory of an ultimately failed presidency – Trump consistently goes back to ringing the bell of race, usually via Twitter, or speeches given to generally all white audiences like the most recent one in Alabama referring to African American NFL players kneeling before the Flag and Anthem as SOBs (code for n*gg*r).  This latest episode to distract from escalating tensions with North Korea, a GOP Congress that hasn’t passed any significant legislation over the last nine months, or the weak response to dire conditions in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

I challenge my readers regardless of viewpoint or agreement/disagreement with my post to consider the origin of race in America – the social construct of the 1619 Jamestown project, to find commonality with others of a different hue, accent or upbringing as yourself.  This period calls for all of us to step out of our bubbles, help each other above and beyond the dereliction of leadership from the White House down to our town, city councils and school boards and have constructive dialogue outside of Twitter and Facebook.  To debate and disagree but to be civil in exercising our First Amendment rights is American, is patriotic.  Not the tangential furor over songs and symbols.  If we are to survive the Third Reconstruction…