Mixed Race Studies

Parallels to country’s racist past haunt age of Obama

Cable News Network
In America: You define America. What defines you?
2012-11-01

John Blake, CNN

This is the second in an occasional series on issues of race, identity and politics ahead of Election Day, including a look at the optics of politics, a white Southern Democrat fighting for survival and a civil rights icon registering voters.

(CNN) – A tall, caramel-complexioned man marched across the steps of the U.S. Capitol to be sworn into office as a jubilant crowd watched history being made.
 
The man was an African-American of mixed-race heritage, an eloquent speaker whose election was hailed as a reminder of how far America had come.
 
But the man who placed his hand on the Bible that winter day in Washington wasn’t Barack Obama. He was Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate.
 
His election and that of many other African-Americans to public office triggered a white backlash that helped destroy Reconstruction, America’s first attempt to build an interracial democracy in the wake of the Civil War.
 
To some historians, Revels’ story offers sobering lessons for our time: that this year’s presidential election is about the past as well as the future. These historians say Obama isn’t a post-racial president but a “post-Reconstructionist” leader. They say his presidency has sparked a white backlash with parallels to a brutal period in U.S. history that began with dramatic racial progress.
 
Some of the biggest controversies of the 2012 contest could have been ripped from the headlines of that late 19th-century era, they say: Debates erupt over voting rights restrictions and racial preferences, a new federal health care act divides the country, an economic crisis sparks a small government movement. And then there’s a vocal minority accusing a national black political leader of not being a “legitimate” U.S. citizen.
 
All were major issues during Reconstruction, an attempt to bring the former Confederate states back into the national fold and create a new era of racial justice. And many of the same forces that destroyed Reconstruction may be converging again, some scholars and historians say…

…Obamacare, 19th century style
 
Beyond Revels, there are other parallels between today and the post-Reconstruction era, according to some historians.
 
The most commonly cited link revolves around the debate over voter ID laws. Since Obama’s election, 34 states have considered adopting legislation requiring photo ID for voters, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Seven have passed such laws, which typically require voters to present a government-issued photo ID at the polls.
 
During the post-Reconstruction era, many white Southerners viewed the onset of black voting power in apocalyptic terms. They created a thicket of voting barriers – “poll taxes,” “literacy tests” and “understanding clauses” – to prevent blacks from voting, said Dray.
 
“The idea was to invalidate the black vote without directly challenging the 15th Amendment,” Dray said….

Many contemporary voter ID laws are following the same script, he said.
 
“It just goes on and on. They’ve never completely gone away. And now they’re back with a vengeance.”
 
Some opponents of the voter ID laws note that these measures disproportionately affect the elderly and the poor, regardless of race.
 
Supporters of voter ID laws say they’re not about race at all, but about common sense and preventing voter fraud.
 
“That is not a racial issue and it certainly isn’t a hardship issue,” said Deneen Borelli, author of “Blacklash,” which argues Obama is turning America into a welfare nation.
 
“When you try to purchase over-the-counter medication or buy liquor or travel, you present photo ID. This is a basic part of everyday transactions.”
 
Historians say there are other ways the post-Reconstruction script is being dusted off and that some of them appear to have nothing to do with race on the surface.
 
Consider the debate over “Obamacare,” the nation’s new health care law. The controversy would be familiar to many 19th-century Americans, said Jim Downs, author of “Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction.”
 
The notion that the federal government should help those who cannot help themselves wasn’t widely accepted before the Civil War. There were a few charities and municipal hospitals that took care of the sick, but most institutions ignored ordinary people who needed health care, said Downs, a Connecticut College history professor who studies the history of race and medicine in 19th-century America.
 
Reconstruction changed that. Post-Civil War America was marked by epidemics: yellow fever, smallpox and typhus. Freed slaves, who were often malnourished and had few clothes and little shelter, died by the “tens of thousands,” he said.
 
The federal government responded by creating the nation’s first-ever national health care system, directed at newly freed slaves. It was called the Medical Division of the Freedmen’s Bureau. The division built 40 hospitals and hired hundreds of doctors to treat more than a million former slaves from 1865 until it was shut down in 1870 after losing congressional funding, Downs said.
 
“It absolutely radicalized health care,” he said. “You can’t argue that government intervention in health is something new or a recent innovation. It originated in the mid-19th century in response to the suffering of freed slaves.”
 
Critics at the time said the new health care system was too radical. They said it would make blacks too reliant on government. The system was expanded to include other vulnerable Americans, such as the elderly, children and the disabled. Yet some still saw it as a black handout, Downs said.
 
“The whole notion of the modern day “welfare queen” can be traced to the post-Civil War period when people became very suspicious of the federal government providing relief to ex-slaves,” Downs said. “They feared this would create a dependent class of people.”…

Read the entire article here.