Skip to main content

American political life was never normal. Here's why.

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.

<end>


<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


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Real Estate in America

We sold our house this summer and bought a new home. The experience has led me to reflect on homes and home-buying in America. As in any industry, there are good and bad incentives at work in real estate. A home seller would like to get the highest price for their house and sell it in a reasonable period of time. The industry operates on a commission system so that the agent seeks to sell the house at a higher price. This incentive works, but only to a point. Consider the impact of $5000 on the seller vs. the agent. Six percent of $5000 is $300. After the realty company and purchasing agent take their cut, the agent isn't left with much. A $5000 difference in the price of the house means little to the agent, but a lot to the home owner. Does an agent become successful by getting the highest price or by turning over lots of houses? The answer is obvious. An agent's ideal world is not one where people get exactly the right price for their homes, it is a world where everyone is wi...

The 2020 Vote: Bending toward justice

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.  --  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. My hero, Dr. King, was wrong about justice. I love Dr. King. His writings and speeches are collected in a book called “A Testament of Hope”. That book was a revelation for me. Dr. King had a moral clarity that is rare in this world. Many of his observations were accurate, wise, and timeless. But the ‘arc of the moral universe’ statement is misleading. We are promised no such experience in this world. In Dr. King’s time, the quote may have been both accurate and wise. King saw the expanding reach of national newspapers and television networks. When the nation, through that new media, was exposed to the reality and brutality of overt Southern racism--then the nation, which believed it shared a common and decent morality, imposed that morality on the South. While Dr. King’s understanding may have been both accurate and wise, it was not timeless. This is where my moral hero comes u...

Federal incompetence is an equilibrium strategy

I’ve heard a number of commentators--right, left, and center--characterize Trump as the pivotal problem with Republican leadership. But why was Trump overwhelming to the Republican party? Why was he gradually embraced by nearly all Republican leadership? And would the Republican party be much different today without him? Each party is made up of different interest groups. Two large factions of the Republican Party are fiscal conservatives and the Christian Right. The fiscal conservatives are dominated by Free Market Fundamentalists. Anti-tax pledges and opposition to virtually any government regulations are Free Market Fundamentalist positions, and those positions are prominent in the current Republican party. The Christian Right wants white Christian conservative values to dominate American culture. They once did dominate American culture, and they want to turn back the clock. These two influential factions of the Republican party do not make natural teammates. Free Market Fundamental...