No to states’ rights. Yes to a Third Reconstruction.

by | Mar 26, 2019 | Politics | 1 comment

“All we ask is to be left alone.” -Jefferson Davis

This arch traitor and leading contender for Worst American Who Ever Lived, knew what his kind needed to maintain their unjust ideal. To leave the South alone meant, simply, to deprive Southern black Americans of their nation’s promise. Davis’s rallying cry has echoed awfully through the centuries, with tragic results for millions of Southerners. It is time for progressives to reject the South’s age-old demand for states’ rights and stand up for a third, decisive time, for progress in this region.

The original states’ rights, the right to slavery, was the signal injustice in our, rending African-American communities in ways that reverberate to this day. The American Revolution did achieve important progress in this area–for the first time making slavery intolerable to some Americans. But those Americans were sadly in the minority. For the most part, Northerners not only tolerated but profited from the US’ number one source of international export. It took a war and 600,000 deaths to cleanse this system in fire.

Some white Southerners did learn their lesson. Derided as “Scalawags,” they embraced federal power as a means of uplifting their black neighbors. I write under my full name and middle initial to honor a North Carolinian who expressed the Scalawag mindset well: “I plead for the protection of the lives of all the citizens of the United States of every hue and color, no matter where they may shift their residences.” The Scalawags, however, were quickly marginalized, and the states’ rights mindset enjoyed a restoration. Southern leaders like Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina hid behind the cloak of federalism to keep African-Americans near bondage. In fact, Thurmond actually called his segregationist faction the States Rights Democrats.

Segregation fell, and the South took an incomplete stride toward justice. In spite of multiple instances of discredit, conservative Southern leaders held to the States’ Rights mindset. To this day, the South’s ruling class uses whatever discretion it is given by the federal government to subjugate and exploit the people trapped under its authority. Shelby County v. Holder, Medicaid expansion, and welfare reform all testify to Southern conservatives’ undying devotion to perverting federalism. I fear that Sen. Kamala Harris’ teacher-pay plan will meet with the same result, with Southern leaders rejecting aid while their Northern counterparts welcome it.

This history is tragic, but in the first two cases, there were efforts to heal the South. The first was explicitly called Reconstruction, and it accomplished real gains for African-Americans and many lower-class whites, who had themselves been disadvantaged by the vicious antebellum system. Scholars and activists such as the Rev. William Barber now conceptualize the mid-20th century civil-rights revolution as a Second Reconstruction of Southern social structure. For all our continued struggles with race and hierarchy, the Second Reconstruction moved us forward.

Connecting past to present, Rev. Barber coined the idea of a Third Reconstruction. In this dark time for our nation and region, we need to realize Barber’s goal. The South remains cursed by poor education, high violence, high rates of obesity and HIV, and the least secure voting rights in the country. But the South, for all its manifold shortcomings, nevertheless gave the nation Martin Luther King, the novels of Faulkner, jazz, bluegrass, and some of the most distinctive food and beauty in America. It would be immoral to give up on this region. We need a partnership between the federal government and a multiracial movement of Southerners to bring the promise of American life back to this most complicated region. This dream is only attainable, however, if we ditch States’ Rights, and deprive reactionary forces of their oldest and most pernicious weapon.

1 Comment

  1. Linda Clark

    What an extraordinary post. I agree with and appreciate your publishing your analysis. Thank you for this enlightenment.

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