RACISTS

NOTES OF CONCERN…

   Jack Blair

                            RACISTS?

We are pretty proud of George Washington, and we honor him.

We are very proud of Thomas Jefferson and celebrate him as wordsmith of our most import national documents.

And history tells us James Madison joins with the founding fathers as deserving of our respect.

James Monroe, too, joins this list of honored presidents.

And who could forget Andrew Jackson? The first “people’s president.” The hero of New Orleans.

James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor, perhaps lesser known but honored and respected throughout history.

I am going to arbitrarily stop listing famous, honorable, and admired previous presidents.

George Washington found 18 slaves at Mount Vernon when he moved in. When he married, he gained 200 more. By 1786 he owned 216 slaves.

Was he a racist? Do we find him less honorable? Does that big monument to him that reaches to the stars need to come down because it offends?

Thomas Jefferson’s wife brought 100 slaves to their marriage. And he purchased many more during his lifetime, becoming at one point the largest slaveholder in Virginia. 

Shall we demolish the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC? That beautiful round domed granite building that everyone goes to visit.

James Madison owned slaves all of his life. Even when he sold his farms, he did not free or sell his slaves.

James Monroe owned 30-40  slaves. A small player compared to those presidents who came before.

President Andrew Jackson bought his first slave in 1788. By 1794 he had at least 16 slaves. He did not free his slaves in his will. Remember, he was the “peoples’ president.”

Zachary Taylor owned 100 slaves. He never sold or freed any of them. *

(all this information comes from research and publications of Rob Lopresti.)

Twelve of our presidents owned slaves, and eight of them owned slaves while serving as President of the United States.

I wanted to share this information, not to in any way degrade the individual men or their service to the nation, but to demonstrate that different norms, mores, and traditions have existed throughout our history. I do so also because I am not only not a racist personally but have spent many years of my adulthood supporting causes designed to provide opportunity and advancement to blacks in our country and in South Africa.

As time moved on and people became more enlightened or simply found the needs of farming and manufacturing, the inventions that helped with daily tasks  enabled them to think differently about the issue of owning slaves.

I see the current brouhaha over whether the Confederate Battle Flag was used to declare a racist South or whether it was a symbol to mothers and fathers of fallen children who fought for a way of life that existed then. Time brings all things into perspective through humanities way of “moving on” and trying each day to make life better.

There has been a great deal of silliness around this issue recently, calls for not only the removal of the Confederate Battle flag from where it flies but also calls to do away with the United States Flag because of failures over history in our country over many issues. 

Recently someone wanted to cut out reruns of the TV show The Dukes of Hazard because the car in the show was painted with a Confederate Flag. Really?

So should we burn all copies of Gone with the Wind and any other movie that in any way glorifies the history of that time? Should we go to Washington and demolish every monument to a president who owned slaves?  

While we are at it, should we protest outside the homes of people who love that Confederate Battle  flag for all the right reasons? If we did that, would we be much different than the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses on lawns of people who disagree?

We live in a time when most of us believe every human being is created equal. There is a minority who disagree but, thankfully, they are a minority.

On occasion, I think the majority really are not in charge of how we live and operate our country. The majority is pushed around on all sorts of issues.

Any student of history will accept that people have held wrong ideas and done wrong things throughout time. But history moves on. People change. Wrongs are righted. We learn and we discover. We should be hopeful.

But over time America occasionally operates like the old television Gong Show, and I get a little less optimistic. At the moment, we are in the midst of one of those times.