We should recognize, rather than deny, our racist past

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The will of the Republicans of MAGA to erase the necessary functions of governance was manifested last week in the House of Representatives.

The unruly Republican rump turned the Houses typically bipartisan defense spending bill into a close vote by adding amendments that have nothing to do with defense and little to do with spending.

Instead, they reflect the social policy preferences of many Republicans. For example, the House bill would limit diversity training and transgender care in the military.

The most dramatic measure imposed in the bill is the elimination of leave and reimbursement for members of the armed forces who travel to another state for an abortion, a policy implemented by the Pentagon after the cancellation by the Roe Supreme Court v. Wade last year.

This seems particularly unfair to the military. If you’re one of the more than 60% of Americans who support a woman’s right to control her body, and you live in one of the half of US states that after Roe essentially banned abortion, you theoretically you can move on to a statement more in line with your views.

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The army, however, tells its soldiers, sailors and marines where to live. The Pentagon’s effort to grant female soldiers stationed in Texas the same rights as female soldiers stationed in New York is commendable. But Republicans are determined to deny those rights, even if it means withdrawing funding from the military.

But the amendment that caught my eye was forced into the defense spending bill by MAGA Republicans with the help of nine Democrats: Department of Defense schools would be prohibited from teaching that the United States United or its founding documents are racist.

The problem is that almost all of the founders were racist. And how could a founding document be more racist than our Constitution, which established in law the right to possess enslaved blacks and counted them at three-fifths of a white human being?

The Constitution is therefore a racist document, or at least it was; it reflected the sensibilities of the time in which it was written. Nothing is gained by pretending otherwise.

But racist is such an ugly term that Tommy Tuberville, a Republican senator from Alabama, recently refused to attribute the epithet to white nationalists. Blowback forced a quick change of heart.

But the fact is that since our founding, most Americans have probably been racist. My ancestors certainly were. One of them wrote to his father on March 4, 1861, urging support for secession and the maintenance of the institution of slavery and arguing against the free equality of the N-words. On March 7, 1860, he wrote to his brother, reporting that he had been at a negro sale: I bought a little boy about ten years old for $1,151.00, a bargain about as good as that sold that day.

Am I bothered by this blatant racism that resides in my family tree? Not the least. My white supremacist ancestor is as distant from me as slave owners like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In fact, if you’re American, your ancestors were probably racist too. In the 19th century, few, north or south, were truly enlightened about race. What matters is what we think and do about the breed now.

Unlike the MAGA Amendment added to the Defense Spending Bill that denies teachers in Department of Defense schools the privilege of speaking honestly about race, it would be healthier to acknowledge and embrace our racist history. One of the great things about our country is that we finally abolished slavery, even though it took us a long time. England abolished slavery in 1834 and Mexico in 1829, and neither required a civil war.

Yet despite a century of Jim Crow, we have made significant, if uneven, progress on race. But despite a black president and two black Americans currently on the Supreme Court, it’s still clear that we haven’t reached racial perfection.

A more honest acknowledgment of our racial past would help us understand and improve our racial present. The Republican Amendment on the Defense Spending Bill has the exact opposite effect.

John M. Crisp, columnist for Tribune News Service, lives in Georgetown. He can be reached at [email protected].

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