‘There is a Party slogan dealing with the control of the past,’ he said. ‘Repeat it, if you please.’
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” repeated Winston obediently.
“We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?’
1984, George Orwell
Americans, by and large, know squat about our history, which I think, in part, is why so many of them are so easily led in the direction of violence and tyranny. What they believe is largely what mass media, particularly movies and television, has fed them. Growing up in the 50s and 60s, for example, my generation was told America was steel-eyed white men with guns on their hips and chips on their shoulders. America was God-fearin’ white people who worked hard, saluted the flag, went to war when they were told to go. White Americans were exceptional; they a right and a duty to take what they wanted.
The definition of “American” was always kept narrow; the underpinning was always “white;” and the purpose was division and control.
How we are taught history plays a large role in how we identify ourselves and our relationship to others. Those beliefs form much of the basis for our actions, including and in particular about how we choose our officials. The linguist and philosopher George Lakoff observed, “People do not necessarily vote in their self-interest. They vote their identity. They vote their values. They vote for who they identify with.”
If you’re a politician, you want to define “values” on your terms. For years, Republicans claimed to be the party of “family values,” an empty but powerful phrase that conjured up impressions of stability, security, restraint (other than in the area of consumption), and, yes, whiteness. By extension, broken homes, irresponsibility, poverty, and crime were attached to Blacks. Their lot was the result of their nature, and they alone had to pull themselves out of the mire.
Political messaging and the scripting of American history were of a piece, and, in both cases, Pure Truth was often beside the point. In the case of the contributions and accomplishments of Black Americans – not to mention the oppression inflicted upon them, and, indeed, their very humanity – it was kept firmly hidden.
Nearly 60 years ago this month, two American men of letters, James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, joined two undergraduates at Cambridge University to debate “The American Dream is at the Expense of the American Negro.”
Buckley was only eight years removed from publishing an ugly editorial in his magazine, The National Review, entitled “Why the South Must Prevail,” in which he argued that whites were more “advanced” and therefore entitled to govern.
“The central question that emerges,” he wrote in that editorial, “ . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically. The sobering answer is Yes . . . .” (italics his)
By some accounts, Buckley was evolving on the subject, but that did not stop him from embracing the emerging Republican strategy of race-baiting to appeal to white working-class voters during his run for mayor of New York later that year.
Baldwin had built a career describing the Black experience and working to shake America free of its racist traditions, trying to do what he could to, as he put it in his famous 1962 letter to his nephew, “ . . . make America become what it must become.”
The debate took place as the Republican Party was beginning to ramp up racism as a political strategy. It was held less than a month before the Selma-to-Montgomery March. The Voting Rights Act, which Buckley opposed, was signed the following August.
A news report said more than 700 people packed the Cambridge Union Society chamber, and another 500 crowded into the bar, library, and other rooms to follow the event on closed-circuit television.
During the debate, Baldwin made a particular point about history, how it was taught, and how it shaped one’s identity:
“When I was brought up, I was taught in American history books that Africa had no history, and then neither had I. I was a savage about whom the least said the better, who had been saved by Europe and brought to America. Of course, I believed it. I didn’t have much choice . . . . You belonged where white people put you.”
Baldwin spoke as America was making slow, unsteady, long-overdue progress in bringing the rights and protections of citizenship to all its people. The backlash was ferocious, sometimes violent. Richard Nixon ran on an appeal to racism. Ronald Reagan gave his first campaign speech in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three Civil Rights workers had been savagely murdered only 16 years before, and he declared his support for “states’ rights,” music to racist ears. George Bush the Elder trotted out Willie Horton. The Younger was more subtle, aiming at voter suppression to disrupt minority turnout. We all know what the most recent Republican president did.
A couple of years ago, America starting hearing about “Critical Race Theory,” a niche idea discussed in academia that the Right latched onto, re-packaged, and turned into the “perfect villain” for culture wars. They campaigned on it, whipping up racist feelings and re-casting them as emblems of their determination to protect white schoolchildren. State legislatures passed laws against it being taught in public schools, even though it never had been. The current governor of Virginia was elected on a platform that featured condemning CRT as a major plank. The current governor of Florida has taken this to extremes not seen since the reign of Joe McCarthy, aiming primarily at that state’s educational system, banning books, taking over schools and universities, and attacking teachers to force them to, shall we say, “teach white.” From there, he has gone after gay people with similar cruelty and abandon, and other lawmakers eagerly and energetically have followed suit.
A complacent media has helped clear the path for this effort, insisting on “objectivity” by refusing to acknowledge the clear intent of the latest round of race-driven politics. For example, The New York Times, a paper that once distinguished itself with its coverage of the Civil Rights movement and even won a landmark Supreme Court case based on that coverage, recently ran, within the space of 10 days, what amounted to a puff piece on the aforesaid Florida governor and then a fawning commentary on same, in part because it is clear to all he is organizing to run for president in 2024.
I would like to think we will beat back this assault. I wish I could say I am certain of the outcome.
By the way, the Cambridge students voted Baldwin the winner that night. I cannot say I am sure what the verdict would be in an American university today.
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Scaypgrayce 