I can’t speak for all of us, but as for myself while I love TKAM, I still get a lot of “Great White Hope” vibes from it, no matter its intention. I know a lot of older African Americans who just think Finch had a conscience, and shouldn’t be lauded for doing, you know… the right thing.
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Thanks, and yes, along the same lines, I know a lot of white people who are really, really ready to pat Atticus on the back, when I think what they’re really doing is patting themselves on the back, all while getting their hearts warmed too. And also while doing nothing more of substance to try to go out and make life better for actual black people. It seems like a circle of narcissism.
It reminds me of a debate I had with an old professor of mine, he really tweaked out when I mentioned that no one on my side of the fence was apeshit about Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation.
It was like “Sure, maybe he was against the idea of humans as chattel”, but I’m going to guess that a lot of it had to do with “I have a country to run, and the entire southeastern half of it just left”. And only the minorities in the class legitimately felt that way.
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Considering the time and place of the story and the writer herself, however, I would argue it’s a morality model for other southern whites to realize the level of decency they could themselves attain with very little effort.
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At the time, Frederick Douglass was very positive about it, as were other community leaders, etc. What were the arguments against, made by you and the members of your class who shared your viewpoint?
Yeah, I read Frederick Douglass’ quote that went on like "…Everybody is liberated. The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated… "
A lot of us were like it’s easy to say that during the time period, but Lincoln wasn’t an abolitionist, he thought shipping the majority of the freedmen to Liberia was a great option, he didn’t believe blacks NEEDED the same base political and social rights and white Americans, and again… half of the freaking country just put on it’s collective Daisy Dukes and left.
And since they left, we have to remember the EP was a military policy, and it was deliberate and gradual, and left a ton of border states with a “?” as to their status. It was only effective in states that were technically no longer part of these United States. There was still boatload of slaves kind of just wading about thanks to an document with a ton of loopholes.
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I would argue that it was harder, not easier, to see the value of the EP at the time. The entire country - minus a few progressives - believed slavery was laid down as law in the Bible. For a white president born in Kentucky and raised barely over the border into southern Indiana to make the claims made in the EP was nothing short of blasphemy in the 1860s. More to the point, it was pivotal for political reasons: it was the necessary slap across the face to force the white southern “gentlemen” to put up or shut up.
We look back on it now with jaded eyes, but at the time it was risky, ate up a lot of political capital, and gave favor to a group of people who had no clout, no money, and as you said weren’t really being championed with full heart by Lincoln. It was a compromise, but so far ahead of what had come before that it’s naive to think of it now as “not good enough”.
There are many groups in this country waiting for their turn at basic civil liberties, and what we can witness in contemporary time is that there is something incredibly strengthening and ennobling in having your personal identity made a protected legal reality.
The perfect is the enemy of the good. We still have a lot of work to do, but the EP was not an easy cornerstone to lay at the time, and that should be respected. Just the fact that human and civil rights aren’t yet equally protected across the board shows how difficult the work is. How much can we demand of one political document?
In a way, it’s like I’m arguing we should consider the glass as half full. Not that I’m usually a Pollyanna when it comes to politics.
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Sorry, but your comment is basically more whitewash. Sure, Lincoln and somme other goodhearted white people took risks, but you’re overemphasizing white historical “actors,” as it were, all over again. Let’s not forget, for example, the slaves and their efforts to get free:
[S]lavery collapsed under the pressure of federal arms and the slaves’ determination to place their own liberty on the wartime agenda… . . slaves accomplished their own liberation and shaped the destiny of a nation . . .
Emphasizing the agency of slaves and former slaves does not simply alter the cast of characters in the drama of emancipation, displacing old villains and enthroning new heroes. Abraham Lincoln and the Radical Republicans do not play less significant parts once slaves gain an active role in their own liberation, but they do play different ones.
Source:
In both TKAM and even careful (white) accounts of Lincoln (like, say, Spielberg’s movie Lincoln), and in so many well-meaning white accounts of historical racism, noble white people get pretty much all the credit, mostly for doing what they should have done anyway, and the big shadows they cast end up obscuring for readers or viewers the real lives, and the real emancipatory efforts, of real black people.
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It’s not an either/or situation. Of course people fight for their own rights instead of just waiting for the powers-that-be to get around to it, but that’s not enough without guns or government helping to turn the tide.
Did someone here say it is enough?
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