The Meaning of Whiteness: Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin and What Racism Does to Whites

The current discourse in this country around issues of race and discrimination can often feel like many steps backwards from any “progress” we’ve made. However, the nature of this discussion, often hateful and cruel, actually has a silver lining. First, it puts the myth of the U. S. as a “post-racial” society behind us. Second it has opened an honest, serious, and much needed dialogue about the place we all hold in this society and not only what it means to be black in America, but also what it means to be white.

For us teachers this means it must also come into our classrooms. We need to be ever more conscious of tackling the “hard history” of what race has meant to the history of our nation and how in turn that still resonates with our culture. A sometimes difficult concept for white students is to try to understand exactly what it means to be white.

When we teach the nature of slavery, or Jim Crow, or segregation, we rightly focus on how these forms of institutional racism have impacted black Americans. But another important factor to consider is how these things, instituted to preserve white supremacy, impact the people who perpetuate them, and what that does to the relationship between blacks and whites in this country and their ability to move beyond racial stereotypes and biases.

A resource for addressing the impact of slavery on white Americans is the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. In his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he gives considerable attention to how the institution of slavery impacted the mentality of white slaveholders, perpetuated the institution itself, and marked the relationship between blacks and whites throughout southern society. In one section Douglass relates the story of the wife of one of his slaveholders Mistress Hugh. When Douglass came into this household as a boy, she had no experience with slavery. Because of that, she began to care for Douglass and even to teach him to read. As she quickly learned from her husband, a more experienced slave owner, to treat a slave as a human being is to make him “unmanageable” as a slave. The cruel and violent nature of the institution required “irresponsible power” on the part of the owner; which meant slave owners were never held accountable for the violence or cruelty they perpetuated on their slaves. To treat them as human, would essentially ruin them as slaves. So under slavery’s power, Mistress Hugh, once pious and kind, became violent in her oppression toward Douglass. “Slavery,” he noted, “proved as injurious to her as it did to me.”

James Baldwin clearly spelled out the meaning of whiteness in his work during the Civil Rights era. In his seminal The Price of the Ticket (1985) and especially his essay “On Being ‘White,’” Baldwin argues that, in fact, white is not a race. When the Irish, Italians, Norwegians, or any other European group came to America, they were not considered “white.” In fact, they faced their own array of discrimination and oppression from WASP Americans. However, many in these groups made the “moral choice” to become white. To become white, one must buy into the American system of racism and white supremacy. As they “opted into” whiteness, it meant seeing another “race,” African Americans or Native Americans, as inferior, as well as to willingly participate in institutionalized racism, which includes denying the brutal, genocidal, and racist history of the country. How did they do this? “By deciding they were white. By opting for safety instead of life. By persuading themselves that a Black child’s life meant nothing compared with a white child’s life. By abandoning their children to the things white men could buy. By informing their children that Black women, Black men and Black children had no human integrity that those who call themselves white were bound to respect. An in this debasement and definition of Black people, they debased and defamed themselves.” Once a group’s own identity is based off the demise of another, the moral choice becomes “moral erosion,” and “they cannot allow themselves to be tormented by the suspicion that all men are brothers.” As with Douglass, Baldwin clearly shows that by dehumanizing others, one ultimately dehumanizes himself.

Fortunately, the discussion of whiteness continues in the publication of great recent works by scholars Michelle Alexander, Michael Eric Dyson, Jennifer Eberhardt, and Ibram X. Kendi, among others, has helped push whiteness front-and-center again in our national discourse. As a white man, I cannot truly understand the impact of racism in this country simply by studying what that oppression has done to African Americans. I must also try to comprehend what it has meant in the hearts and minds of whites and in myself.

The U. S. has already declared war on Iran's people

The foreign policy of the Trump administration has made the world much less safe. One area headed for disaster is the Middle East. In his attempt to be the anti-Obama president, Trump has violated the Iran nuclear deal, a hallmark Obama policy, and has increased tensions in the country and the region. The Trump strategy is simple: violate the nuclear agreement, raise sanctions to further cripple the Iran economy, thus creating a desperate situation in Iran that will "justify" American military intervention. The U. S. House of Representatives has recently passed a bill to check Trump's military aggression in Iran, but in many ways, with the increasing of sanctions, which Trump often boasts about, the administration has already declared war on the Iranian people.

In essence, economic sanctions are designed to pressure nations with short-term economic penalties in an attempt to halt aggression or behavior deemed harmful among the community of nations. Ideally, sanctions are used to "convince" governments to behave. However, the U. S. use of sanctions in recent decades have furthered political chaos and have greatly harmed the populations in these countries via economic desperation and insecurity. Consequently, sanctions tend to make bad political situations worse and cause humanitarian crises among a nation's populous.

This result was evident in Iraq leading up to the second Gulf War in 2003. During the 1990s, after the first U. S. invasion, economic sanctions were used to "pressure" the Saddam Hussein regime to comply with U. S. wishes. Instead, the most potent effects of the sanctions were felt not by the regime, but by the Iraqi people. Sanctions disrupted the entire economy, greatly decreasing available sources of income for the Iraqi populace. More importantly the strangulation of the economy had a wider-ranging impact on public services that directly impacted civilians most, including health care, water treatment facilities and electrical grid capacity. Without these services, life expectancy declined in Iraq, and infant mortality and poverty increased dramatically. The Geneva Convention, in its 1977 Protocol, prohibits "economic sieges" against a nation's population as a means of warfare, which is exactly what these sanctions did. (see Global Policy Forum report)

The situation in Iran is becoming increasingly alarming for its people. These sanctions are designed in particular to target the Iranian people, and overwhelming impact is felt by the poor, sick and elderly. This economic warfare is also designed to stifle any economic growth, which impacts young professionals with joblessness and underemployment. This is a population who often tends to be more liberal and open to the West than its government; a population Americans should increasingly be opening up to, instead of alienating.

Any warfare that purposely targets civilians is a violation of basic international law, and is exactly what U. S. policy is currently doing.

The Attempt to Democratize War

Teaching is often a subversive act. A question I sometimes pose to students, knowing most will be flummoxed (though the sharp ones sometimes get it), is "When was the last time we declared war?" The answer, of course, is 1941, World War II. You could ask this question a different way: "How many wars have we had since World War II?" The answer: zero. (Technically.) Of course, all students know the U. S. seems to be fighting somewhere in the world all the time. So where's the disconnect?

The authors of the Constitution gave the powers to declare war to the Congress (Art. 1, Sec. 8, Clause 11). The reasoning was simple: though the president is the "commander in chief," basically in charge of the military, including during the time of war, the body of government closest to the people (i.e., democracy) had the awesome responsibility to take the country into a war. This has happened only five times in our history. However, we've had dozens of military engagements, both before but especially after, WW II that never went through the Constitutional process; this includes the two longest wars in our history going on currently in Afghanistan and Iraq. For many reasons, none of which are very convincing, the U. S. Congress has surrendered its duty to declare war. (War Without War Powers) From the Korean War, to Vietnam, to both Iraq invasions, Congress has handed over to the president, despite the horrible mistakes made along the way, the power to start and conduct with little oversight the country's major military engagements.

As the Trump administration is warming up for another possible war in the Middle East with Iran, many in Congress are trying to reel in those unconstitutional presidential powers. There are currently bipartisan efforts to prevent President Trump from going to war with Iran without a formal congressional declaration. These are commendable and good for the country and for the Constitution. But it brings to mind other efforts to make the declaration of war more susceptible to American democracy.

The most ambitious effort to democratize the declaration of war was the Ludlow Amendment, introduced to Congress several times between 1935 and 1939 by Rep. Louis Ludlow (D-IN). This bold bill would change the Constitution to essentially give citizens a check on the war declaring powers Congress. In the case that the Congress declared war, the amendment would require, except in the case of the country being directly attacked first, that there be a national referendum - a vote - to approve or not the declaration. In short, a declaration of war would require the approval of the American people.

Though this might seem cumbersome and even unrealistic, especially considering the U. S. post-WW II military ventures, the Ludlow Amendment had considerable public support in the 1930s.  The First World War caused a great deal of disillusionment in the U. S., just as in Europe, and ushered in a period of isolationism, at least among the American public. In the 1920s and 30s congressional hearings were heard on the causes of WW I, and "neutrality" laws were passed to prevent the country from getting into another disastrous European conflict.  Though the official policy of the U. S. government was never isolationist, the feelings among the American people were strong to avoid the situations that brought us into the Great War. Ludlow was also motivated by the growing tensions between the U. S. and the growing empire of Japan, and the fear that our business and policy leaders would do what they had to, including going to war, to protect U. S. economic interests in Asia.

It would be interesting to take a poll today among Americans, after so many years of U. S. warmongering, where the people might stand on a "Ludlow Amendment." I'm confident it would be a number that would make both the President and Congress uncomfortable.