What do we mean when we use the word "racism"?

Yesterday I posted a piece briefly contrasting the ways in which American white supremacist rule has worked to suppress Black people, Natives, and Mexican Americans. I wrote it for this space over two years ago, but never shared it because I found it awkward and I thought I could return to it later. This last week or so, though, I have been working on a blog post with similar themes. Being 12 single-spaced pages in - and nowhere near finished - I decided I needed to back off again. But I didn't want to leave the subject. I think it's just too important. So I just posted that old commentary and started again from the beginning.

When Representative John Lewis (D. GA) died eleven days ago of pancreatic cancer the flood of tributes to his life included the real and the fake. I was most appalled by a tweet from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY). Nobody has done more to stymie the agenda John Lewis pursued in life than Mitch McConnell. Lewis spoke strongly, marched, sat-in, and endured savage beatings for racial integration, for justice, and for equality. But the single moment of his life that is most remembered was Sunday, March 7, 1965. On that day Lewis led 500-600 marchers from Selma headed to the state capital in Montgomery to demand that African American people be allowed to register and vote in Alabama. As soon as they crossed the Alabama River at the Edmund Pettus bridge, they were attacked by Alabama State Police and mounted Dallas County possemen, who set about beating the marchers with batons, bats, and knotted ropes. Lewis himself, Amelia Boynton, and 15 others were beaten nearly to death.

Those beatings were seen on national television in an era before routine satellite links. It took hours to fly the films to New York, but when they were put on the air, they interrupted ABS's broadcast of "Judgement at Nuremberg," a film about the trials of Germans who claimed they were "just following orders." The racist stormtroopers in the movie seemed a close parallel to the Alabama troopers and sheriff's posse in the breaking news. So were the "good Germans" and the Americans who had quietly watched the violence against African Americans as if it had nothing to do with them. The following days brought hundreds more people from around the country to join the projected follow-up march. My rabbi was one. My Uncle Martin, an Episcopal priest, was another. On March 15, President Lyndon Johnson gave a televised address in which he called for a Voting Rights Act. Johnson's great talent was pressuring lawmakers and he pushed that transformational bill through Congress.

That was fifty-five years ago. In 2013, the US Supreme Court gutted that Voting Rights Act (Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529) on the grounds that it was based on forty-year old information and therefore obsolete. It's absolute necessity was demonstrated immediately when states that had been under its coverage moved to restrict Black voting with new registration requirements, closed polling and registration sites, and redistricting within a day of the Court's decision. All that would be required to overcome the Court's objection would be a new law, based on current information. But Congressional Republicans have refused even to consider it. The bulwark of that opposition has been Senator Mitch McConnell.

And that is why McConnell's statement really set me off. How dare he honor Congressman Lewis when he has stonewalled any effort to renew what is probably the signature accomplishment of Lewis's long life? Reading it, I noticed this: He remembers Lewis as a leader in the lunch-counter sit-ins. He remembers Lewis as one of the 13 original Freedom Riders, savagely beaten for integrating insterstate buses. He remembers Lewis as one of the Big Six, addressing the historic March on Washington in 1963. How, then, does he fail to remember Bloody Sunday? How, then, does he fail to remember Lewis being beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge? How, then, does he fail to remember the historic passage of the 1965 Voting Rights... Oh! Lauding Lewis for his role in getting a piece of legislation whose revival McConnell has been blocking for the last seven years is probably a bridge too far even for the massively hypocritical and mealy-mouthed Mitch McConnell.

I posted a quick observation on Facebook, noting what McConnell remembered about Lewis and

what he did not, and I asked, "Why do you suppose that is?" I really thought the connection with the Voting Rights Act was obvious. I really didn't think I had to say that this was about disfranchising Black people, stealing their political power, safeguarding white supremacy in federal and state governments. But the answer I got was "racism." 

Racism means a lot of things. It is especially puzzling here because McConnell actually chose to celebrate Lewis for his opposition to segregation. But there's more.

McConnell, like Lewis, was born and grew up in Alabama. I did not know that a young Mitch McConnell attended the 1963 March on Washington. I did not know that Mitch McConnell was an undergraduate activist for integration at the University of Louisville. And I do not know what the philosophical meaning of McConnell's current intransigence is. He was the surprise confirmation vote for Loretta Lynch as Barack Obama's Attorney General, so maybe he really thinks he believes in racial equality. Or maybe he thinks he believes in it, but can't really accept it, so he resists political power for African Americans. Or maybe, he has simply devolved into the sum of his ambitions and machinations. Maybe this man has no principles at all anymore, no moral center. Maybe the beginning and end of his public life is the pursuit of power for himself and his political party.

I don't know the answer to that question. I do know that I have much more to say about reducing opposition to the Voting Rights Act to the chameleon word "racism." I will follow this up with another post, probably tomorrow.