On Diversity (Part 3)
When Migration and Immigration Become One and the Same.
In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy vs Ferguson in favor of the practice of segregation in many southern States. The sudden liberation of America’s slave population, brought about by Lincoln’s War of Consolidation, had resulted in much social upheaval in the States belonging to the now defeated, former Confederation. Fearful that some of the liberated slaves would retaliate against their former masters and unwilling to merge the culture of the their former slaves with their own, many southern, “white” Americans preferred to keep their distance from their now “black” brethren. Not only was the merging of “master” and “slave” culture on an equal footing an enormous task, but it was aggravated by the imposition of the Northern carpetbaggers who took advantage of the vastly weakened South for political and economic gain. Over time a “solution” was found that became known as racial segregation. Depending on where one lived southern American society was divided in two. Those who exhibited the racial features of a former West African were held at arms length from those who did not, and successful “black” communities began to form. After all, many of the former slave owners were themselves “black” and did not share the slave culture that so many “white” Americans had no desire to accept as their own.
When World War I was imposed on us by Woodrow Wilson, our 28th president, and his British and American banking cronies, the racial barrier that had grown up under the South’s policy of segregation was weakened somewhat. The military has a culture of its own and American “blacks” and “whites” were both compelled to conform to the same cultural discipline. In addition, a large part of the American work force was sent overseas and the demand for workers in the North exceeded supply. Southern “blacks” began moving North. As a result, Americans living in the northern States were compelled to reap the social ramifications of the war that they had waged against the formerly seceded States a half-century prior. They were now confronted with the same slave culture with which their “white” brethren had been confronted during the era of Reconstruction (1865-1877).
Between 1915 and 1930 an estimated 1.5 million “black” Americans had migrated to the northern States. They tended to settle in the large industrialized cities where they were most likely to find employment. The cultural shock for both “black” Americans and their “white” urban counterparts, who vastly outnumbered the former, was no less traumatic than that experienced when Eastern and Southern Europeans arrived in large numbers during the latter part of the 19th century.
Alas, the rooster sent South by the North between 1861 and 1877 was coming home to rest, and many in the North — certainly not all — resisted the assimilation of their newly arrived “black” neighbors. Cultural assimilation takes time, and it was especially difficult for the former slaves and their descendants, because the culture that they brought with them was readily associated with their racial features. This made it difficult for those who desired and were able to assimilate to separate themselves from those who found it more difficult. This was clearly unfair, and racial discrimination and racial bigotry became an important issue for many “Whites” who had never been directly exposed to slavery or the culture that it produced.
In the South the two races were kept separate by the introduction of Jim Crow laws. In the North other ways had to be found for those who resented the “West African” presence and their culture of slavery. Yes, the institution of plantation slavery in America had come to an end with the ratification of the 13th Amendment, but the culture of enslavement was still alive and “well” among our “black” brethren.
Between 1940 and 1970 another 4.5 million “black” Americans migrated northward and brought with them even more of their slave culture. The assimilation process would not be easy for many, if at all. Let’s break!
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was the son of a French noble and magistrate. His father grew up during the French Revolution and was 21 years of age during the La règne de terreur (Reign of Terror). De Tocqueville’s grandfather, also a French noble, was imprisoned by the iron hand of Robespierre and nearly lost his life, but for the execution of his famed jailor. Whereupon his grandfather was released. Alexis spent much of his youth in La Manche, a Norman province in the north of France. In 1805 the Spanish and French were defeated by the British in the Battle of Trafalgar, and Napoléon was victorious over the Third Coalition in the Battle of Austerlitz. Alexis was nine years old when Napoléon was forced to abdicate his throne and exiled to Elba — an island in the Mediterranean Sea off the northern coast of Italy — in 1814.
In 1831, in the aftermath of the July Revolution, Alexis was commissioned, in part, by the French government to study the American penal system. He and a fellow French magistrate arrived in New York City in May of the same year. After nine months of extensive travel the two voyagers returned to France in February of the following year. Enthusiastic about the American implementation of republican government, Alexis published the first volume of his two volume analysis of what he discovered. He entitled it De la démocratie en Amérique (Democracy in America). His emphasis on the democratic aspect of our republic was not accidental. Alexis was a Christian who was opposed to slavery, as were many Americans at the time. He dedicated a portion of his analysis to the issue. He wrote,
“Le préjugé de race me paraît plus fort dans les États qui ont aboli l’esclavage que dans ceux où l’esclavage existe encore, et nulle part il ne se montre aussi intolérant que dans les États où la servitude a toujours été inconnue.”
My Translation: It appears to me that racial prejudice is more pronounced in the States that abolished slavery than in those in which slavery still exists. And, nowhere is racial prejudice more pronounced than in those States in which it never existed.
Understand clearly what is being said. The slave owners liked having slaves, but only in so far as they were kept in place. Alternatively, many Americans disliked slavery and wanted to be rid of the West African presence altogether. The country of Liberia, founded in 1822, along the west coast of the African continent — promoted at one point by Lincoln, himself — was eventually realized, but not nearly to the extent that many non-slave owners and former slave owners had hoped. There were simply too many former slaves.
One can well imagine that the attitudes expressed by De Tocqueville in 1835 changed somewhat with Lincoln’s War of Consolidation, for one had to justify to the next-generation of Americans that the war was about something more than a political power grab by Lincoln and his band of radical Republicans. Indeed, by 1864 Lincoln had trashed the US Constitution several times over in his effort to defeat the “rebels”. Lincoln never recognized the Southern Confederacy as an American state in its own right, and well over 600,000 Americans on both sides of the war lost their lives as the result of his intransigence. Although he won the Electoral College in his bid for re-election in 1864, he won by a margin of only ten points. Forty-five percent of all Americans in the North who voted in 1864 voted against Lincoln for a variety of reason including what they feared most at the war’s end — massive numbers of liberated slaves in search of America.
A full half-century had past before Americans living in the North would be confronted with their former concern — the massive migration northward of freed slaves and their descendants. They cursed the day that slavery had been brought to North America.
Many, both “white” and “black” Americans overcame the cultural calamity, most did not. Although America was a land of immigrants, these “immigrants” to the North were former slaves. Their assimilation into “white” culture would be resisted and therefore slow. One World War, played out in two parts, would do a great deal to bring “white” and “black” Americans together, but it was not enough. After all, in the trenches there was the common enemy, and among the ranks there was military discipline. One learned to get along in order to survive.
It had been easy for the North to point the finger at the South before the migration; now the North was pointing its finger at each other. It was difficult for everyone. So, many “white” Americans abandoned their previous dwelling and fled to the suburbs. Not everyone could afford the move, however, and it played poorly for those who remained. More than ever, badly needed tax dollars to address the racial and cultural disparity were suddenly gone. The large influx of “black” Americans from the South meant lower wages as the labor force became bloated. This resulted in less ability to pay the higher rent of those who had abandoned their dwelling when they moved to the suburbs. Keep in mind that market demand is not just about want; it is also about the ability to pay. Without these higher rent payments landlords found it difficult to meet their margins, and like city government the quality of housing and life for everyone diminished. Dysfunctional apartment units went unattended, municipal services were cut back. As property taxes are often what funds education, school buildings were not properly maintained, and the most qualified teachers naturally went where the money was.
The “black” Americans who had come to the North in search of economic opportunity suddenly found themselves in an even worse plight than before. It is one thing to be poor in the country-side; it is quite another to be poor in a city. By the early 60s the racial hypocrisy of the “white” North and West had become more intolerable than the much clearer separation of races in the South, and our “black” brethren revolted. Their anger was justified, but their expression of it was destructive. What happened during the “Summer of Love” in 2020 was very similar to what happened in the early 60s. The riots were suppressed, but the solution to the problem was both temporary and ignoble. Rather than tax-breaks, investment opportunity, and formal education and job training to assist in the problem of assimilation, our federal government under the Democrat leadership of Lyndon Bains Johnson, our nation’s 36th President, began a war in Southeast Asia and a program of entitlements in the United States that we could not afford, and that led to our exit from the Bretton Woods agreement and wanton money printing under the Republican leadership of Richard Milhous Nixon. These policy measures worsened the matter for everyone — measures from which we have yet to recover, as America’s plight grows ever worse.
It is difficult to believe that our entry into the Vietnam War was not in part motivated by the racial tension of the early 60s. By 1969 the US Government introduced a military draft in the form of a lottery. Those among us who were born between the years 1944 and 1950 were selected at random in several drawings, and the “winners” were sent into battle. Surely our nation’s leadership must have been thinking,
“Better that our young men destroy the property of Southeast Asia than that of struggling entrepreneurs in the ghettos of the newly formed inner cities! Better that they bleed in the defense of voluntary free markets in a far away place than engage in civil strife at home. Create a lottery that effects everyone and send our nation’s young men between the ages of 19 and 25 overseas to die in the paddy fields of Vietnam!”
What better way to divert our national focus away from our racial division at home than to “save democracy” overseas?
Johnson’s Great Society, although received with great fanfare on the Left as the second coming of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s failed New Deal in which he robbed an entire generation of their gold, gave them paper in return, and set the stage for Nixon’s exit from the Bretton Woods Treaty in 1971, had a very similar effect. It reinforced, on the one hand, the racial hypocrisy of Lincoln’s War of Consolidation, and on the other hand, the illusion created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt that government could better guide the domestic economy than those who labored in it. Rather, than prosecuting the bank theft that has been with us since our founding; Johnson robbed the American worker and gave to the poor both “white” and “black”. He created a false Robin Hood that has since grown increasingly obese in the name of racial equity.
If this were not bad enough, in 1965 the Immigration and Nationality Act was signed into law to “brown up” our nation’s racial mix, and Latin Americans began flooding northward supported by the Catholic Church. Mind you these were not political or religious refugees coming to America in search of freedom; these were economic refugees (opportunists) from Mexico who believed that they had a natural claim to the North American continent.
Our nation was founded in the Protestant tradition of 17th century England and the United Dutch Provinces, and our national leadership was sold us out in favor of the Latin traditions of the Catholic Church.
Rather than a biracial nation with a Protestant tradition that badly needed to assimilate our “black” brethren, we would be overrun by a massive inflow of Catholic hispanics whose perspective on government was centralized control. The reaction of our “black” brethren was to be expected and well-deserved — the culture of slavery inherited by the descendants of our nation’s former slaves would be celebrated as “Black” culture. Rather than assimilation there would be voluntary separation, and a new industry was born.
In Liberty,
Roddy A. Stegemann, First Hill, Seattle, Washington 98104
Author of Mount Cambitas - The Story of Real Money