VOLUME 6, ISSUE ONE: SUMMER/FALL 2024 CCSU AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM
From the Desk of the Editor
Dear Readers,
The delayed posting of this issue occurs during a historic week in American politics and the African American sojourn in these United States of America. After nearly two years of a presidential campaign of historic milestones such as the candidacy of the first woman of African descent, Kamala Harris’ run for the presidency, the defeat of her campaign by an historically small margin, and the re-election of Donald J. Trump, I am writing to you on the eve of his second inauguration. The campaign of 2024 was historic in so many ways, beyond what can be covered in this brief missive, but one that is sure to determine many of the topics covered in forthcoming issues of the journal.
The two contributions included in this issue were prescient and predictive of the issues and themes abounding throughout the 2023-2024 presidential campaign. Reminding the readers of the historic continuity of struggle and resistance in the African American experience, the first selection is the text of a lecture delivered by Dr. Felton O. Best on the Amistad rebellion and historic trial of the Mende people led by Cinque in New Haven, Connecticut. The trial was the first of its kind in which captured Africans won their freedom through the legal process. The exoneration of the Mende people was also historic because it lent legitimacy to the violent resistance of the enslaved and the use of violence to secure freedom. Dr. Best’s article, "The Existential Significance of the Amistad Rebellion: Enslaved Africans Throughout the Diaspora and their Pursuit of Liberty from Bondage to Freedom," details legacy of White mythology about the passivity and docility of African descendant people that made them particularly conditioned to subjugation and enslavement. This same psychological mythology continues today as it pertains to the stereotyping of African Americans that narrow expectations of their competency and abilities to achieve excellence in nearly every aspect of American social, economic, and political life.
Contrasted with the legacy of rebellion and violence in the African American quest for freedom and independence is the long struggle for inclusion, equity and equality in American life, especially American political life. During all presidential elections, emphasis is placed upon the role, efficacy, and importance of the African American vote. Dr. Bilal Sekou’s article, “The Power of the Black Vote: The Key to Building an Inclusive Democracy,” reminds us of the importance of the African American vote in the 2024 election cycle and the continued importance for full inclusion not only in terms of policy objectives but in the fundamental preservation of American democracy and democratic institutions. He also reminds the reader that the building of a multiracial democracy is an ongoing and paramount challenge, especially during the 2024 election cycle.
As we look towards the second Trump presidency and the looming attempts to realize the policy objectives in the Project 2025, it is hoped that readers will be informed and reminded of the historical continuity of themes in the historical legacy of the African American experience from slavery to the present. The continuity and change across eras are instructive and analytical guideposts.
Walton Brown-Foster, PhD
January 19, 2025
"The Existential Significance of the Amistad Rebellion: Enslaved Africans Throughout the Diaspora and their Pursuit of Liberty from Bondage to Freedom"
Felton O. Best, PhD
Scholars have hotly debated the causations of slave rebellions throughout the Diaspora. Such scholars include, but are not retained to, Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, Eugene D. Genovese, "Rebelliousness and Docility in the Negro Salve: A Critique of the Elkin's Thesis", Kenneth M. Stampp's, "Rebels and Sambas: The Search for the Negro's Personality in Slavery", Seymour La Gross and Eileen Bender's, "History Politics and Literature: The Myth of Nat Turner," Donald Hickey's "America's Response to the Slave Revolts in Haiti, 1791-1806," John Blassingame's, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, C.L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L' Ouverture and the San Domingo Rebellion, Merton Dillion's, Slavery
Attacked: Southern Slaves and their Allies, and Winthrop Jordan's White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 as well as others.
All of these scholarly works have significant insights into the Amistad case of enslaved Africans in rebellion and their allies. Regarding the historiography of enslaved African resistance, including but not limited to, the Amistad Rebellion multiple scholars had concluded that the cognitive docility of Africans prevented their ability of having a positive existential perception of the self, in terms retaliating against the peculiar institution and other forms of brutality. This article argues that enslaved Africans were successful in enduring the hardships of slavery through the concept of "mask wearing" articulated by the noted 19th century African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar in his poem, "We Wear the Mask."
The concept of "mask wearing" allowed Africans to portray themselves loyal to their slave masters, while simultaneously endeavoring to plot to escapes. Such strategies of "mask wearing" included faking pregnancies, breaking tools, poisoning slave master's food, chopping down agricultural plants like tobacco and cotton plants, as well as faking their true personality types. This deliberate existential mask wearing concept shows the intelligence,
rather than the docility of the slave, while simultaneously endeavoring to destroy the institution of slavery, and planning their escape from slavery to freedom through any means necessary. This concept of enslaved African mask wearing explains the freedom concept of the Amistad Rebellion.
Regarding the Amistad case, on July 1, 1839, fifty-three Africans were kidnapped into slavery in Sierra Leone and incarcerated into the Havana slave market. Such enslaved Africans revolted against their oppressors known as "the Amistad". As a result of this uprising, such Africans, killed the captain as well as additional crew members.
The initial arrival of the Africans in Connecticut resulted in their incarceration and the simultaneous charge of murder. However, given the reality that the slave trade was abolished in 1808, the institution of slavery as well continued to both, exist and thrive, in the Southern region of the United States. As it relates to the Amistad case, it arrived in the nation's federal courts, and simultaneously gained the interest and the attention of the nation's population. Even though the murder charges were dropped, these African captives, as a result of various claims of property rights, remained in the custody of Connecticut's legal forces. Despite the issuance of an "ordinance of extradition" by President Martin Van Buren based upon Spain's desire, the New Haven federal court refused to return these African captives to Cuba. This action was based upon their argument that "no one owned the Africans because they had been illegally enslaved and transported to the New World." (Reidker, M ) As a result of the aforementioned, Van Buren's appealed this decision, thus meaning that it would, in January of 1841, appear before the United States Supreme Court.
In response to Van Buren's action, the abolitionists solicited former United States President, John Quincy Adams. Adams, who was a noted liberal ordained clergyman, was regarded by the abolitionists as an ally who was politically committed to the liberation of enslaved Africans. The Amistad Rebellion was not a new nor unusual movement of Black resistance to slavery, or for that matter any type of oppression. In fact, by 1829 David Walker's appeal emphasized that enslaved Africans had to "free themselves," including but not limited to, taking up arms in such an endeavor of resisting the oppression.
During the peculiar institution Walker had talked about Toussaint L'Ouverture's Haitian Revolution as an example of African's self-directed rebellion to the attempts of Black marginalization and domination. In addition, enslaved Africans in Sierre Leone, during the Zawo War embarked upon a prolonged revolt against Spanish and African slave traders. Likewise in Brazil, other revolts emerged against the abolitionists campaign for Black freedom.
The Amistad Rebellion is just one example among many in which enslaved Africans embarked upon self-liberation through various acts of mask wearing. African enslavement in North America was dangerous to enslavers. Such enslavers endeavored to convince their human bondage that it was better to endure the humiliating aspects of slavery than to betray their masters. Despite their best efforts of psychological brainwashing of Africans, that their masters were benevolent paternalistic parents, such Africans rebelled, revolted, and resisted in various ways much to the surprise and perceived betrayal of their enslavers.
Numerous primary sources actually document the African concept of "mask wearing" where such slaves were perceived to be duped into believing that their masters have their best interests at heart. Such primary sources include narratives of enslaved Africans, slave masters’ diaries, antebellum travel accounts, statutory records, newspapers, storytelling journals, published sermons, as well as published autobiographies from slaves such as Frederick Douglass's My Bondage My Freedom, Harriet Jacob's, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, William L. Andrew's, Six Women's Slave Narratives, and Booker T. Washington's perceived accommodationist work Up from Slavery.
Although many Eurocentric scholars have endeavored to marginalize the idea of
enslaved African's intelligence and ability in "Wearing the Mask" primary source records as well as additional historiographical literature on the topic reveals the intelligence rather than the impaired mental conditioning of Africans. In fact, Ulrich Bonnel Phillips historical work has defined him as the "father of Eurocentric Antebellum enslaved African historiography. Phillips both denies, condemns, and refutes travelers accounts recording documenting the intelligence of slaves as well as ex slaves narratives. Phillips writes:
"Ex-slaves narratives... were issued with so much abolitionist editing that as a class their authenticity is doubtful............... Traveler's accounts....... Are the jotting of strangers likely to be Most impressed by the unfamiliar, and unable to distinguish What was common in the regime from what was familiar in Some special case." (p. 219)
Additional Eurocentric thinkers also joined the Phillips bandwagon regarding the perception of African docility and questioning their ability to organize, plan, and act in their own best self-interest of rebellion. On this point Randall Miller states that,
"One must use caution in dealing with the narrative of Enslaved Africans because they are most often the product of rebels and resisters.... Because they constitute a sample of a limited number of slaves population." (p. 138) .
Despite the efforts of the Phillips/ Elkins thesis the reality is that African captives like those in the Amistad story, are more reliable in documenting this lived experience of African Rebellion than Eurocentric scholars who endeavored to make such testimonies existentially invisible.
In reality, the autobiographical accounts of African captives throughout the Diaspora's resistance to slavery are not only valid, they are simultaneously wellgrounded and logical events regarding African's concepts of mask wearing. In fact, if African accounts of "duping the master" was biased and invalid, the slave master's preoccupation with the idea of Black docility, loyalty, and love for the master without retaliation, is both willful and sinful flawed philosophical thought. The slave master's preoccupation with the idea of Black docility, and loyalty and love for the master with
retaliation - is both willful and sinful philosophical thought and flawed history.
In addition to the African Amistad Rebellion notable additional enslaved African revolts occurred within America. Such events included the Stono Rebellion of 1739 in South Carolina, the Gabriel Prosser {1776-1880) plot in Richmond Virginia, the Denmark Vessey {1767-1882) conspiracy in Charleston South Carolina, and the Nat Turner rebellion in 1831. All of these events occurred as the result of the continuation of slavery within America regarding persons of African ancestry. These rebellions in addition to other lesser known ones were perceived to be the only direct evidence of slave resistance. Although these large scale rebellions are crucial and critical moments in African Diasporic History, the published slave narratives serves as evidence which reveals that such enslaved Africans existentially defined themselves as cognitively empowered active resistors of all forms of human oppression both covertly and overtly. Enslaved Africans from continental Africa to their transplanted homes in various parts of the United States, and elsewhere, developed coping strategies that resisted their philosophical, psychological, and physical deterioration which allowed them to maintain a positive image of the self.
John Blassingame, the former professor of history at Yale University wrote the stunning scholarly book entitled The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South where he reveals several covert and overt forms of resistance to slavery. Blassingame developed the names of "Jack," "Nat," and "Samba" as three types of slave personalities that lived on the plantation. What is most amazing is he argues that enslaves Africans could engage at will within any of these personalities. Blassingame writes:
"By engaging in religious activities the slave could, for a while, shift his mind from his hopeless immediate condition, to a bright
future awaiting him." (1979, p.7)
However, Paul Laurence Dunbar, had discovered this concept of "mask wearing" for enslaved Africans much earlier in the 19th century, which is documented in my biographical book on Dunbar entitled, Crossing the Color Line: A Biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872-1906. (Best, Felton 1993) Dunbar managed, I argued, to "document how people of African descent have historically learned to embark upon "existential philosophical and mutigenerational strategies of mask wearing to conceal their true identities as an endeavor to cross the color line and resist oppression in order to not be regarded in a category of otherness through his poem We Wear the Mask."
We wear the mask that grins and lies
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes This dept we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile And mouth with myriad subtleties,
Why should the world be other-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise, We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile, But let the world dream otherwise, while We wear the Mask!
As it relates to mask wearing as a form of resistance during slavery clarification is needed. Wearing the mask is a deliberate strategy of pretending to be happy while simultaneously planning for escape or attack. Notice the first stanza of Dunbar's
poem. He indicates that, "We wear the mask that grins and lies." The major objective here is Dunbar's depiction of both enslaved and or otherwise oppressed people of African descent concealing or masking their feeling in an endeavor to prevent multiple forms of retaliation.
Scholars George Frederickson and Christopher Lash give clarification to this form of resistance from enslaved Africans their descendants. They write:
The issues involved in the study of "resistance" to slavery are badly in need of clarification. The problem is one would suppose, not weather the plantation slave was happy with his lot but weather he actively resisted it. But even this initial clarification does not come easily. Too many writers have assumed that the problem of resistance consists mainly of deciding whether the slaves were docile or discontented and weather their masters were cruel or kind. In this respect and in others, as Stanley Elkins noted several years ago, the discussion of slavery has locked itself into an old debate as it relates to the contented slave.... Slave resistance weather bold and persistent or mild and sporadic created for all slaveholders a serious problem of discipline!
{Frederickson and Lash, 316)
Frederickson and Lash had to come to the logical conclusion that the issue of the docile slave was invalid. The question would become one of the enslaved action of embarking upon any form of resistance. The historiographical literature on enslaved African rebellion. Lash had to come to terms with the reality that the argument that the slave had no concept of the idea of freedom is hard to believe. {Frederickson and Lash. 315).
It is absolutely clear that enslaved Africans rebelled against the institution of slavery. In fact, the evidence it is overwhelming! Some to the most convincing evident as relates to both overt and violent resistance to the actual and attempts of enslavement is the Nat Turner rebellion which is very synonymous with the Amistad story. One of the things that needs to be emphasized is that he was nicknamed as "Old Prophet Nat." In this context, he was a slave preacher. His role as a theist was not predominated in the
idea of the Christian biblical text that "slaves should obey your masters "however in his scriptural belief in "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent takes it by force!" (Douglass, 89).
Nat Turner, as well as the black victims in the Amistad case, saw it as both essential and theologically just to rebel against the perceived sin of Africanized incarceration. Turner led a band of sixty slaves in the bloody massacre in Southampton Virginia that included both men, women, and children. (Aptheker, p.49) The aforementioned Stono Rebellion occurred September 9, 1739 in South Carolina. In was the largest African rebellion that existed in the Americas with the end result being that there was a loss of twenty-five colonists and about thirty Africans retaliators.
(Aptheker, p. 123)
The slave revolt in Haiti from 1796-1806 proved to be another strong manifestation of Black resiliency. During the 1790's the slave revolt proved to be both strong and frequent. The nations of the European powers had slave colonies in the Caribbean. Simultaneously the United States had an abundant population of enslaved Africans as well. In this context, it was in the interest of both the European powers and the powerful in the United States to prevent slave revolts from spreading to other regions of the world. Despite the interest of both powers to suppress slave revolts, this shared interest was circumvented by the desire of each power to dominate economic trade produced from the commodities of enslaved African labor. Likewise, the reality was that slavery became a sectional issue in the United States between the Northern antislavery abolitionist advocates, and the Southern proslavery endeavor of repealing the antislavery efforts of the Federalists. (Aptheker p. 143)
The reign of Saint-Dominque was a French colony which existed in the western
portion of the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola, which is the region of the modern day Haiti-as we know it today form 1659-1804. In this context, before their independence was gained in 1804 Haiti was actually a French colony of SaintDominique . This region under French rule, grew to become the wealthiest colony and maybe the richest in the world. (Hickey, p. 212)
Toussaint Louverture, and individual of African descent would eventually become the leader of the Haitian Revolution. The French colony of St. Dominique had a prevailing history of unruliness largely because of Black discontent. By 1791, during the French
Revolution unseen authority was dwindling in the mother country and its Black colony. Enslaved Africans rose in protest and revolted with the result leading to the killing of masters and the simultaneous the burning of plantations. In this context, a tremendous strong, and resilient Black leader by the name of "Boukman" assumed leadership and embarked upon voodoo which he perceived would "raise up Blacks to assume power over white oppressors." (Hickey p. 223) "Boukman" as he was called, eventually perished after spreading his revolutionary ideas, but was succeeded by additional inspiring future Black leaders. Like many Black leaders during the era of global antiblack racism, Toussaint Louverture, as Paul Laurence Dunbar would say, had learned to "wear the mask." Although multiple white slave masters were killed, Toussaint-a gifted ex slave that had had learned to "wear the mask" by being recognized as one who, "provided for the safety of his master's family before joining the revolt in 1791" -
organized Africans into a resilient strong militia, thus demonstrating an "intuitive grasp of both the science of war and the art of diplomacy. (Davis, p.213)
In conclusion, "Dunbarian mask wearing" as the noted poet Paul Laurence Dunbar had revealed in many of his short stories, was a political strategy of concealment used by enslaved Africans throughout the Diaspora, as well as the captives in the Amistad Rebellion. These resilient Black sailors did not reveal to their enslavers their skills of sailing, revolting, and their superiority of cognitive discernment, nor their ‘ psychomotor preponderation’ skills during warfare on land or at sea. The concept of "mask wearing" is also a conscientious science of existential self-defined existence documented in two of my publications which I encourage all scholars to read to embark upon greater analysis of the Amistad Rebellion as an existential act of rebellion and the philosophical concept of "wearing the mask." My earlier publications which provide an analysis of Paul Laurence Dunbar's resistance literature are entitled Crossing the Color Line: A Biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar: 1872-1906 ( Kendall Hunt, 1996), and an article published in the Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 17, pp. 54-65, entitled "Paul Laurence Dunbar's Protest Literature: The Years." (Best, Felton 0.).
Dr. Felton 0. Best is (CSU} Professor of Philosophy, African-American, African, & Religious Studies Director of African-American Studies, Coordinator of Religious Studies, Editorial Board: 1619 Journal of African-American Studies Protestant Campus Minister Central Connecticut State University New Britain, Connecticut.
Bibliography
Aptheker, Herbert American Negro Slave Revolts, Oxford University Press, 1989 Andrews, William C. Six Women's Slave Diaries, Penguin Books, 1990 Best, Felton 0. Crossing the Color Line: A Biography of Poul Lourence Dunbar, 1872-1906
Kendall Hunt: 1996
Best, Felton 0. "Paul Laurence Dunbar's Protest Literature: The Final Years" Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 17 pp. 54-63, July 2013,
Blassingame, John, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South: Oxford University Press, 1979
Dillon, Merton Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and their Allies, 1619 - 1865 Louisiana State University Press, 1996
Douglass, Frederick My Bondage, My Freedom Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1865
Elkins Stanley M. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, University of Chicago Press, 1959
Finkleman, Ed.. "Rebellions, Resistance, and Runaways in the South, Articles on American Slavery Vol. 13, p. 189 Garland Publishing, 1989
Gates, Henry Louis Six Women's Stove Narratives, Oxford University Press, 1988
Genovese, Eugene D. "Rebelliousness and Docility in the Negro Slave: A Critique of the Elkin's Thesis" The Mind of the Master Class and Faith in the Southern Slaveholder's View" Cambridge University Press, 2012
Hickey, Donald. "America's Response to the Slave Revolts in Haiti, 1796 -1806' in Finneman's, Ed. Articles on American Slavery, Vol. 13 Rebellions, Resistance, and Runaways Within the South, Garland Publishing, 1989
Jacobs, Harriet Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, 1813 - 1897: Written by herself, Edited L. Marie Child, London Hodson and Son.
James. CLR The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Rebellion: Vintage Books, 1989
Jones, Howard Mutiny On the Amistad: The Saga of A Slave Revolt and Its Impact on American Abolition Law and Diplomacy: Oxford University Press, 1987
Jordon, Winthrop White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550 - 1812: University of North Carolina Press, 1968
Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery: An Autobiography The Floating Press, 2009
The Power of the Black Vote: The Key to Building an Inclusive Democracy (Lecture for the African American Studies Program, Carter G. Woodson Lecture Series, Central Connecticut State University, March 30, 2023)
Bilal Sekou
Introduction
Let me begin my lecture first by expressing my deepest gratitude to both Dr. Felton Best and Dr. Walton Brown-Foster for the invitation to speak this afternoon as part of the African American Studies Program, Carter G. Woodson Lecture Series. I am deeply honored to be here today.
Building an inclusive, multiracial democracy, is the paramount challenge we face today in America. That will mean elevating and centering the voices of those who policymakers tend to overlook or ignore, protecting the voting rights of those Americans who have been historically marginalized and excluded, resisting a growing white backlash to economic and political progress by people of color, and the passage of public policies that prioritize and build the power of those who the political system has either never worked for or is currently not working for
None of this will be easy!
Building an inclusive, multiracial democracy, one not even envisioned by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, will be tough. Today, we face a triple threat to recreating American democracy: first, a direct and comprehensive assault on voting rights; second, persistent and growing wealth and income inequality, and; third, a growing White backlash against racial progress. I want to share some of my thoughts about these threats and what we can do about them.
Threats to Democracy
The Right to Vote
On June 4, 1965, President, Lyndon B. Johnson gave the commencement address at the Howard University graduation in which he said:
“This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.
Johnson’s speech came several months after one of the most seminal moments in the Black freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. On March 7, 1965, peaceful participants in a Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights were brutally attacked by Alabama state troopers with nightsticks, tear gas and whips after they refused to turn back (McClain & Tauber, 2019).
In his speech, Johnson reiterated his call for the passage of comprehensive voting rights legislation by the Congress. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to overcome the legal barriers in place at the state and local level that blocked access to the franchise for Black people that had been guaranteed by the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in the history of the country (McClain & Tauber, 2019; Shaw et al., 2019)
The 15th Amendment, ratified shortly after the Civil War in 1870, prevented states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of servitude.”
Nonetheless, over the next several decades, a coordinated and comprehensive attack on the voting rights of Black people ensued, particularly in the South (Shaw et al., 2019).
Between 1890 and 1901, often called the “era of disenfranchisement,” all eleven of the states that had seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America adopted new state constitutions and passed laws that either prevented or manipulated Blacks out of their voting rights. Laws were passed to strip Blacks of their ability to vote: including the all-white primary, poll taxes, single-month registration, reading and interpretation tests, and disqualifications for “crimes of moral turpitude.” If these measures failed, economic reprisals, violence, intimidation and even murder was used (May 2013; Anderson, 2018).
Nearly a century later, following the passage of the Voting Rights Act, a number of states adopted new laws making it easier to register and to vote by a number of legal reforms – from adopting early voting and same day voter registration to easing residency requirements and making it easier for voters to obtain an absentee ballot. The adoption of the VRA, along with intense and sustained enforcement by the federal government, opened the door for millions of Black people to register to vote for the first time ever (McClain & Tauber, 2019; Shaw et al., 2019).
The right to vote is the most basic and fundamental right citizens have in a democratic society. And yet, this right is constantly under attack. The current fights over voting rights are occurring in Congress and state legislatures all across the country.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, over the past 20 years, the attacks have grown in intensity. Across the country, a number of states – mostly Republican controlled states – have erected barriers to voting. Just this year alone, lawmakers in 32 states pre-filed or introduced more than 150 bills designed to make it harder to vote. They include measures such as imposing strict voter ID laws, shortening hours to vote, erecting barriers to registration, requiring proof of citizenship, and purging voter rolls (Waldman et al., 2023).
The current attacks first intensified following the 2008 presidential election, when the nation elected its first Black President. After that historic election, voting rights came once again under serious attack, with about half the states enacting some form of legislation that would make it more difficult for Blacks and other people of color to vote (Berman, 2016; Waldman, 2017).
In a 5-4 decision in 2013, Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court’s conservative majority ruled that the criteria for
added federal monitoring of registration procedures and voting practices under Section 4 of the Act were outdated because they had been developed in the 1960s and 1970s. States with a welldocumented history of making it difficult or even impossible for most Blacks exercise the franchise that had been subject to preclearance requirements from either the Justice Department or federal court before changing their laws under Section 5, were now free to change their election laws under the theory put forth by the Chief Justice, John Roberts, that there was little evidence of continuing racial discrimination in these states. The two sections were designed to work together; without Section 4, Section 5 is difficult to implement (Shaw et al., 2019).
It is important to point out that only one of the two major political parties seem to be determined to suppress the voting rights of Black and brown people. States controlled by Republican lawmakers have enacted most of the laws requiring photo identification or proof of citizenship to vote, restricting the voting rights of persons convicted of a felony, placing more stringent rules on voter registration drives, shortening the number of days to vote early, eliminating same-day voter registration, and purging voter rolls (Waldman et al., 2023).
The lawmakers who introduce these measures say that their aim is to prevent voter fraud.
But the truth is, the efforts to require, for example, voters to present a photo ID to cast their ballot or to present a birth certificate as proof of citizenship, is nothing but a modern-day poll tax, which places a disproportionate and unacceptable burden on young, poor, and nonwhite citizens, who are less likely to have a driver's license or other official government documents and will need to purchase them.
Bills designed to end Election Day and same-day voter registration, reduce, or eliminate the period for early voting, or limit the opportunity to cast an absentee ballot, are designed to reduce turnout, hamper voter registration drives, and other registration opportunities.
Simply put, these are just modern-day attempts to legislate voter suppression.
Growing Wealth and Income Inequality
Without a doubt, the renewal of American democracy is threatened by the ongoing attacks on voting rights But there is another threat, the growing concentration of wealth and income in the hands of a few, more so than in any other industrial democracy
Inequality has widened not just between the poor and the rest of the country, but also between privileged professionals, managers, and business owners on the one hand, and the white-collar and blue-collar workers who make up a majority of the nation’s workforce on the other hand (“American Democracy in an Age,” 2004; Piketty and Goldhammer, 2015).
The richest one percent has pulled away from everyone and has been doing so for decades (Piketty and Goldhammer, 2015; Dorling, 2019) And many Black (and Latinx) families have found themselves falling even further behind than their White counterparts (Simkins, 2022)
The Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy formed by the American Political Science Association framed the threat this way:
“Our country’s ideals of equal citizenship and responsive government may be under growing threat in an era of persistent and rising inequalities. Disparities of income, wealth, and access to opportunity are growing more sharply in the United States than in many other nations, and gaps between races and ethnic groups persist (“American Democracy in an Age,” 2004: p. 651)”
In the report, they raised three overlapping areas of concern: citizen participation, government responsiveness, and patterns of public policymaking and their consequences.
Equal political voice, representation, and government responsive to the needs and interests of its citizens are widely cherished American political ideals. And though America has never fully lived up to these expectations throughout much of its history for all Americans,
growing wealth and income inequality is putting these ideals further and further out of reach for most Americans (“American Democracy in an Age,” 2004; Gilens, 2014).
At the heart of this problem is that not all Americans have the ear of their elected representatives. Those that are affluent are more engaged in the political system and are better organized to press their demands on elected and appointed officials (Gilens, 2014) It should come as no surprise that the most advantaged are more likely to vote, work for a political campaign, make a campaign contribution, contact their elected official, engage in informal community activities, hold membership on boards and commissions, and affiliate with a political group (“American Democracy in an Age,” 2004).
Politicians and our nation’s governing institutions are much more likely to be responsive to the needs and interests of those who are privileged and active. As the authors of the APSA Task Force report aptly put it:
“Citizens with lower or moderate incomes speak with a whisper that is lost on the ears of inattentive government officials, while the advantaged roar with a clarity and consistency that policy makers readily hear and routinely follow (Ibid, p. 651).”
There are a number of reasons for growing inequality in America, including deindustrialization, technological changes, and market forces driving globalization, the financialization of the U.S. economy, and ecological degradation Progressive tax policies, regulations of industry and the financial sector, and robust social safety net programs could mitigate some of the more harmful effects of global capitalism, disruptions caused by technological change, and growing income and wealth inequality (“American Democracy in an Age,” 2004; Lindsey & Teles, 2019). However, these are not government priorities.
Policies either pursued – or not pursued – by the U.S. government partially explain why economic disparities have grown so much larger here than in other advanced industrialized
countries. Many government policies are skewed toward the interest and needs of the affluent, multi-national corporations, and the financial sector because they exercise disproportionate amounts of power in the U.S. political system (Gilens, 2014; Lindsey & Teles 2019).
Black and brown people exercise the least amount of power!
The White Backlash
For Blacks and other people of color, the opportunity to influence public policy in America has always been limited by racism. Changing this dynamic has always been difficult, especially if most Whites cannot conceive of a future where eliminating systemic racism leads to mutual benefit for everyone or if they perceive the advancement of people of color will lead to White disadvantage that threatens their place in the social hierarchy
The problem of racism helped make the election of Donald J. Trump possible and keeps him hanging around with a real chance of being reelected in 2024 Racism makes it difficult for Blacks and other people of color to exercise the kind of proportionate forms of political power in American society that would allow them to pursue their interests and pressure government to address their unmet needs.
Realizing this goal of a more responsive and inclusive democracy will not be easy. The political climate is changing for the worse, in a direction that may create even fewer opportunities for Blacks and other people of color to influence the making of public policies. The political climate is now being shaped by a growing White backlash in response to the changing demographics that helped Obama become the nation’s first Black president.
This is not the first time there has been a white backlash. The first one occurred after the end of Reconstruction (Anderson, 2018).
The origin of the current White backlash can be traced back to the resistance by segregationists to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the landmark case, Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansa. According to Sociologist Matthew Hughey (2014), backlashes are “crucial mechanisms in the reproduction of racial inequality.” (p.71) And he writes, “The white backlash and its variations have been sewn together by the narrative that non-white success is purposefully engineered at the expense of white sacrifice.” (ibid)
The current phase of the White backlash is a reaction to changing demographics and a perceived loss of social status relative to Black and brown people in particular. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that by the year 2044, that although there will be no clear racial or ethnic majority, people of color will make up a majority of the nation’s population. The increase in people of color is being driven primarily by the growth of the Latino and Asian American populations. According to population projections, Whites will be in the minority for the first time in the nation’s history (Colby & Ortman, 2015).
The “demography is destiny” thesis is being used to predict the future doom of the Republican Party. But there is the real possibility that growing awareness of the demographic changes may lead many Whites already experiencing racial anxiety to feel more sympathy for other Whites and develop negative attitudes and emotions toward nonwhites.
A number of empirical investigations show that demographic trends are increasing the saliency of whiteness and negative attitudes and emotions toward Black and brown people. Whites who feel threatened by the possibility of being a racial minority – perhaps out of fear that their group will experiences an illegitimate loss of social status – feel more animus toward people of color and feel more sympathy for other Whites (Craig and Richeson, 2014a; Craig & Richeson, 2014b).
Projected demographic trends coupled with growing racial anxiety may also lead many Whites to increase their support for conservative policies – reinvigorating the Republican Party. Many Whites are accustomed to privilege and power. To the extent that they feel threatened (materially and symbolically) by diversity and fear that democracy may be giving people of color access to political power and equal protection under the law at their expense, they may abandon their commitment to democratic practices and democratic governance (Miller and Davis, 2018).
In general, there is growing evidence that many Americans, but especially White Americans, are rejecting democratic practices and democratic governance. Opinion poll data show a public deeply distrustful of the federal government and American institutions. The belief that the government works for the benefit of all Americans is quite low. The belief that government officials waste taxpayer money, that government officials are corrupt, or that the people don’t have a say in what the government does is high (Theiss-Morse & Wagner, 2023)
Power and Policing
Racial inequality is the unequal distribution of resources, power, and economic opportunity across race in a society. Racial disparities are pervasive in America, everywhere from wealth, education, and employment, to housing, health, and rates of incarceration.
An example of how the unequal distribution of power in the arena of politics prevents any real policy change is the problem of policing. Tension between Black and brown communities and the police is nothing new. Even after thousands of demonstrations and the promise of police reform following the murder of George Floyd, little has changed in policing (Lopez, 2020).
Keep in mind that the origin of policing is rooted in white supremacy. Policing has its roots in slave patrols. The earliest slave patrol was formed in South Carolina at the beginning of the 1700s. By end of that century, every state that permitted slavery had created a slave patrol (Hadden, 2003).
As early as the colonial era, in southern slave-holding states, groups of whites were empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce chattel slavery. They had the power to capture and return to their owners enslaved people who had escaped, to crush slave rebellions, and to punish enslaved people who resisted or were accused of resisting plantation rules. Members of slave patrols could force their way into the homes of anyone – regardless of their race or ethnicity – if they were suspected of aiding anyone who had liberated themself from their bondage (Hadden, 2003)
Modern policing, with centralized police departments, took shape in the early part of the 19th century, appearing first in Boston and spreading soon to other big cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. The first police forces were white and male. Their key historical role was not to control crime, but to regulate class conflict (Harring, 2017). They were tasked with preserving the access of elites to basic resources, protecting private property, and controlling the labor force that was needed to provide the surplus the nation’s wealthy and wellto-do live on (Williams & Ritchie, 2015)
However, in the case of Black people, the police have always been a violent and coercive arm of the State charged with the responsibility of social control, not with the responsibility of serving and protecting. When Blacks settled in Northern cities, they met intense resistance, as whites increasingly worried about Blacks moving into their neighborhoods and white laborers worried about competition from Black workers for their jobs. The police transformed into a
“white wall” of defense, a coercive instrument of the government, intent on enforcing the color line and maintaining white supremacy in urban communities (Correia & Wall, 2022).
The role of the police has not change much since the seminal achievements of the civil rights movement, even as many of America's once thriving urban centers fell into decay after decades of white flight to the suburbs (fueled in part by what was viewed by many whites as an invasion into their neighborhoods by Black people), and the erosion of the nation’s industrial base followed by neoliberal policy-making during the 1970s and 1980s (Hinton, 2022; Vitale, 2021).
No amount of training in the proper use of lethal force or racial and ethnic sensitivity exercises will easily fix this problem When it comes to the communities of color, the police are, first and foremost, agents of social control (Vitale, 2021; Purnell, 2022)) In other words, the police do what they do because that is what policing was designed do.
Little has been done to fix the problem of policing because the reality is that the people simply may lack the power to effectively bring about change (Purnell, 2022).
Conclusion
If we are ever going to be able to build an inclusive and multiracial democracy then each of these threats must be faced At a minimum, two things must happen. First, the right to vote must be vigorously protected President Johnson was correct: “This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies.” Our democracy is strongest when we all have a say in decisions affecting our lives and our communities.
Second, there must be broad efforts to expand opportunity and assure security to most Americans. To restore faith in governing institutions, the people must force their elected leaders
to shift toward public policies that address the needs and interests of ordinary Americans – from escaping poverty to securing jobs, education, health care, and housing. This pivot in priorities must also include stronger regulation of corporations and the financial sector and reversing the decline of unions which in the past fostered citizen involvement
This will not be easy. Indeed, the weight of the challenges I am laying out may seem overwhelming. Building an inclusive, multiracial democracy may seem like a dream.
But remember the 20th century begun under state-imposed segregation; public lynchings; most of the nonwhite world, including Africa, Asia, and parts of the Caribbean colonized; a majority of Blacks, Asian Americans, Latinx, women, and Indigenous people denied the right to vote; few labor unions; no health, safety, or environmental laws and; Kings and Fascists, Communists and Capitalists, plunging the world into war in order to carve it up. We do not have to accept things as they currently are. The world can be changed.
Let me conclude by talking about a hero of mine named Fannie Low Hamer. As we all know, Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the 20th century’s most ardent, strident, and dedicated champions of human freedom. She worked and marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., fought to integrate the Democratic Party, and was one of the first Black delegates to a presidential convention (Lee, 2000)
Born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi, she was the granddaughter of a former slaved and the youngest of 20 children. In 1962, at the age of 45, Fannie Lou Hamer decided that she had enough of sharecropping and wanted to register to vote. The first time she tried to register, she failed Mississippi’s notorious literacy test – she could not answer an obscure question about the Mississippi’s state constitution. Years later, she jokingly remarked: "I never knew that Mississippi had a constitution."
On her second try, she failed the test again, but told the county clerk, "You'll see me every 30 days till I pass." Fannie Lou Hamer succeeded in registering to vote on her third try. Fannie Lou Hamer understood that freedom is not given. Fannie Lou Hamer understood that freedom must be fought for. There is enough talent in this room to continue her fight and win our freedom. Let’s go to work and fix our democracy
Dr. Bilal Dabir Sekou is Associate Professor, Political Science Department of Social Science Hillyer College, University of Hartford.
Works Cited
American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality. 2004. Perspectives on Politics, 2(4), 651–666. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3688533
Anderson, Carol. 2018. One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Berman, Ari. 2016. Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. New York, NY: Picador.
Colby, Sandra. L., & Jennifer M. Ortman. 2015. Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014 to 2060. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p251143.pdf.
Correia, David, and Tyler Wall. 2022. Police: A Field Guide. London: Verso.
Craig, Maureen A., & Jennifer A. Richeson. 2014a. “More Diverse Yet Less Tolerant? How the Increasingly Diverse Racial Landscape Affects White Americans’ Racial Attitudes.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40(6): 750–61.
Craig, Maureen A., & Jennifer A. Richeson. 2014b. “On the Precipice of a "Majority-minority" America: Perceived Status Threat from the Racial Demographic Shift Affects White Americans' Political Ideology.” Psychological Science 25(6): 1189-1197.
Dorling, Daniel. 2019. Inequality and the 1%. London: Verso.
Gilens, Martin. 2014. Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hadden, Sally E. 2003. Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Harring, Sidney L. 2017. Policing a Class Society: The Experience of American Cities, 18651915. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Hinton, Elizabeth Kai. 2022. America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion since the 1960s. New York, NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Hughey, Matthew. 2014. “Guest Editorial: White backlash in the ‘post-racial’ United States. Ethnic and Racial Studies 37(5): 721-730.
Lee, Chana Kai. 2000. For Freedoms Sake - the Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Lindsey, Brink, and Steven Michael Teles. 2019. The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow down Growth, and Increase Inequality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Lopez, German. 2020. “How to Reform American Police, According to Experts.” Vox https://www.vox.com/2020/6/1/21277013/police-reform-policies-systemic-racismgeorge-floyd (April 30, 2023).
May, Gary. 2013. Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy. New York, NY: Basic Books.
“President Lyndon B. Johnson Commencement Address at Howard University.” 1965. C-Span. https://www.c-span.org/video/?326895-1%2Fhoward-university-commencement-address (April 30, 2023).
Shaw, Todd, Louis Desipio, Dianne Pinderhughes, and Toni-Michelle C. Travis. 2019. Uneven Roads: An Introduction to U.S. Racial and Ethnic Politics. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press.
Simkins, Chris. 2022. “Report: Black Americans Face Growing Racial Inequalities.” VOA. https://www.voanews.com/a/report-black-americans-face-growing-racialinequalities/6528972.html (April 30, 2023).
Theiss-Morse, Elizabeth, and Michael W. Wagner. 2023. Political Behavior of the American Electorate (15th edition), Washington D.C.: CQ Press.
Miller, Steven S, & Nicholas T. Davis. 2018. “White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy (Working Paper).” Retrieved from http://svmiller.com/research/white-outgroup-intolerance-democratic-support/.
Piketty, Thomas, and Arthur Goldhammer. 2015. The Economics of Inequality. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Purnell, Derecka. 2022. Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom. Westminster, MD: Astra Publishing House.
Vitale, Alex S. 2021. The End of Policing. New York, New York: Verso.
Waldman, Michael. 2017. The Fight to Vote. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Waldman, Michael, Patrick Berry, Robyn Sanders, and Sara Loving. 2023. “Voting Laws Roundup: February 2023.” Brennan Center for Justice.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-february-2023 (April 30, 2023).
Williams, Kristian, and Andrea J. Ritchie. 2015. Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America. Oakland, CA: AK Press.