In America’s first 100 years, political life was strange. Slavery was the ultimate wedge issue. It united the South. Although Southern politicians may have diverged from each other on any number of issues, they circled the wagons when it came to slavery.
They were in a constant war with black equality.
Think about what war does to political life. Think of the national mood after 9/11. When people feel there is a threat to their "way of life", other aspects of political life become more flexible. We may have a little disagreement about taxes, but those people are attacking our way of life!
This war-like footing in relation to slavery was a political strangeness. This political strangeness persisted until the Civil War. After the Civil War, of course… it became even more important.
Prior to the Civil War, the subjugation of blacks was explicit federal government policy. It did not require nuance or obfuscation. After the Civil War, black oppression required even more cross-party collaboration, especially in the South. The Southern Republican party and the Southern Democratic party could differ on many things--but they had to work together to keep blacks from gaining power, or for that matter, basic human rights. Compromise with the other political party was not the worst-case scenario. Black equality was the worst-case scenario.
Slavery for the first 100 years, and the balancing act of Jim Crow politics for the next 100 years, made mainstream politics moderate in an unnatural way. If you doubt it, look at the course of history after the Civil Rights movement.
After the Civil Rights movement ended Jim Crow, there was no longer an existential issue binding together members of opposing political parties in the South. From that point on, the two major parties in America drifted further and further apart.
The end of Jim Crow destabilized the political balance in America. The two political parties became less willing to compromise.
How have political parties reacted to this destabilization?
That’s next week's topic.
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<Notes>
***This is the third of six weekly posts as we approach the 2020 election.
***Slavery and Jim Crow were really evil and they caused immeasurable suffering. A reader could think that I'm somehow implying those things were good, because they made American politics artificially more moderate. I don't think slavery or Jim Crow were "good" in any way, for any reason. But they did influence how political parties interacted, especially in the South.
Recommended book: Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson [In the above passage, I discuss that members of opposing political parties cooperated to subjugate blacks. Wilkerson compares this cooperation with the caste system of India and argues that America has both a race problem and a caste problem.]
Recommended book: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein
Article: Alabama: All Are Not Created Equal
http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/06/alabama_all_are_not_created_eq.html
Video: Let's Talk About Race in America...
https://www.holypost.com/post/let-s-talk-about-race-in-america
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