Racism, rebranded

Racism is a complicated dimension of most societies. For the U.S. it is part of our DNA. Slavery based on race is directly or indirectly ingrained in our founding documents and economic development.

My initial activism was with the civil rights movement. Like hundreds of other northern white students who volunteered in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, I knew that in addition to voter registration and freedom schools our presence was a deliberate, and for three of us deadly, provocation.  

Defenders of segregation and vote denial would hesitate to do to us what they had been inflicting on local African Americans who dared to challenge them—or at least it would be more widely recognized.

The problem was not only the repression of fundamental rights and the prevailing apartheid system in the former Confederate states, but the accommodation to it for practical political reasons by the rest of the country.

Contemporary dimensions of racism are less overt but still problematic. The recent 6-3 vote by the Supreme Court to gut the voting rights act was a denial of history. It may have been motivated only by political partisanship to enable gerrymandering in favor of Republicans. But the consequence is likely to be the loss of at least half the seats held in southern states by African Americans. Racial intent or coincidence?

The rewriting of history in national park exhibits and purging of high-ranking African American military and government leaders suggests a wider reemergence of racist perspectives.

In Riverhead, justifications for no public consideration of the OLA legislation to protect us from ICE may just be adherence to national Republican talking points. However, the impact is overwhelmingly on a specific ethnic/racial population. That Council Member Merrifield can insist mass deportation is not discrimination suggests total blindness to the intentions of the president and Stephen Miller to overcome the displacement of white people in the national population. 

Inability to deal objectively and professionally with the divisive role of Ms. Merrifield with the Anti-Bias Task Force adds to suspicion that the treatment of Mark McLaughlin has a racial dimension. His independent behavior and opinions may simply have displeased Republican elected officials. Yet their multiple efforts to punish him contrast with their previous elevation of his position with the task force and as director of the office of Assembly Member Jodi Giglio. 

Was criticism of his objection to President Trump’s reposting of the Obamas’ online depiction as apes based on suspicion of political disloyalty or on his sounding the alarm about acceptance of racist tropes?

The election of an African American President did not mean the end of racism, but may have triggered its resurgence. It has been rebranded nationally and locally in a last desperate effort to return to an unhappy past. 

An encouraging sign of contrary sentiment in Riverhead is that all six performances at the Suffolk Theater of “To Kill a Mockingbird” were sell outs or nearly so. This treasured account of resistance to racism in the rural South during the Depression is on the library and class room purge list in some parts of our country.