Denialism is an American tradition
America’s original sin cannot be waved way or wished away. But if there is one way in which the country is as exceptional as it believes, it is in its ability to avoid dealing with harsh realities. The Silents seemed particularly good at this, but they perhaps learned it from their parents and their parents’ parents.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy devoted decades and dollars, along with erecting Confederate monuments, to rewriting the history of the Civil War so Southerners might avoid confronting their treason and defeat in defense of slavery. So was born the myth of The Lost Cause. Even now, the history of Donald J. Trump’s 2020 election loss and the violent insurrection he inspired is being Lost Caused by his seditious supporters. Election denialism grows out of that long tradtion and generational reflex.
Theodore R. Johnson considers our aversion to confronting the legacy of race in this country and why he writes frequently about it nonetheless. It represents unrepaired cracks in our nation’s foundation (Washington Post):
If you want to know the ways in which our practice of democracy or republicanism falls short of our professed ideals, pay attention to race. Look to the struggles that racial and ethnic minorities have faced when attempting to exercise the right to vote or have their policy concerns prioritized. If you want to identify flaws in our economy, note all the instances where Black and Latino folks, in particular, are left behind — employment, wages, housing, wealth and credit. If you want to see the flaws in policies concerning immigration, national security, the legal system, health care, poverty and the social safety net, pay attention to the disparities experienced by those outside the racial majority.
I write about race because I care about America. That sentiment might come as a shock to some. It is rare today to hear someone who talks forthrightly about the ills of structural racism lead with a declaration of patriotism or pride in the nation’s progress. But this is squarely within the tradition of Black America, from historic stalwarts Ida B. Wells and Langston Hughes to modern-day activists such as the Rev. William J. Barber II and Colin Kaepernick.
Race isn’t the problem with the American experiment so much as it is the best indicator of the experiment’s structural problems. Consider slavery: It’s not the nation’s original sin because a significant number of White Americans enslaved Black people; it looms so large for America because the nation was supposedly founded on the idea of human equality yet allowed this grossest of inequalities to persist and expand.
Those ideals still mean something. They still inspire two and a half centuries after the Declaration. It is why we get up each morning and write in this space, why we pore over the news and support campaigns and issues bearing on personal freedoms and equality, why we point out the glaring failure of the American Dream that has clearly left Gen Z and much of the middle class behind.
Why can’t we have the nice things that other wealthy nations have few problems providing them for their populations? It’s not just the greed and the power-hungriness of America’s richest. It’s race. But that’s impolite to mention.
The nation’s trouble is not that it has a racist bone that simply needs removing but that it is disturbingly slow to recognize that racism is the sharp pain that helps us locate the fractures. I write about race because finding the fractures in our society and our democracy is a necessary step toward healing and strengthening, not destroying, the whole of the nation.
Race is that locked door of the mind behind which our macho, therapy-averse culture refuses to look. Until it does, the pathologies will pass from generation to generation as in dysfunctional families.
“Shame is a toxic emotion, and it often causes people to direct hostility outward rather than inward,” Peter Wehner wrote last week.
We have yet to break the chain.