COMPASSIONATE OPPRESSION. Keywords: Entitlements, The War Against Poverty, segregation, Civil Rights, skin color classifications, ethnicity, racism, Justice John M. Harlan, The Great Dissent, Democrat Plantation.

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COMPASSIONATE OPPRESSION

A meditation on governing with skin color by Xuan Quen Santos

No other issue seems to be separating Americans into opposing forces for self-destruction as the classification of people by the color of their skin. I, as do many others, see it as part of a larger political scheme with a deliberate plan. Some features of who each person is can’t be changed, such as skin color. What can be done about it? The answer is quite simple. Stop lying. It is so obvious, but we have become blinded. What is your skin color?

Segregation by law was racism

In the prejudiced eyes and politically tainted language of the past, diversity in skin color was limited to basic colors in the English colonies: White for Europeans, later called Caucasians; black for the African slaves and freedmen, and brown or red for the native Indians or the Spanish speaking natives and mixed-bloods. This was a very evident imposed cultural barrier between “us” and the “others”. It supported other acts of legislation that reinforced the lines of separation; for example, laws against miscegenation that prohibited inter-marriage, or the legal marriage between slaves, or the use of first names only and attaching the surname of the owner. These were all designed to erase a big part of their identity by breaking familial and cultural ties and impeding new ones forming. The classification was later the mechanism to apply legal segregation. Dark color people became tagged like cattle, with one color, one tag. Chattel slavery in law originated in the ancient laws of cattle. The designation of “colored” was introduced to include in the newer laws many other ethnicities, basically meaning non-white.

Colored substituted Negro as a more "inclusive"

It is also true that most Europeans had lightly pigmented skin of all shades, from seemingly very light to not so light. It made no difference as to how they treated different groups. Their animosities kept them separated as evidenced by European history. Major events are always marked with violent wars between one group against another. We are witnessing the latest one now as Ukrainians battle the Russians. White people have never been one group. Asserting it is clearly a racist remark created only to reinforce the scheme of two opposing forces.

In the Southwest Hispanics were segregated in fact

It is a similar situation with the color of the skin of slaves brought from Africa. Their skin color ranges from light to darker, but the diversity of African people is the greatest in the world. More than two thousand languages separate them, although there seems to be six major language groups. Even today, most people are multilingual as about 100 languages operate as “lingua franca” allowing intergroup communications and trading. On top of that, the European colonial languages are also widely spoken. Tribal considerations would reflect even greater diversity.

In all that diversity there is also one thing that is true.  There is not a single black person in Africa just as there is not a single white person in Europe. There is no such thing as white color skin, or black, or red, or brown, or yellow.

The use of simple black-white color references was a tool for classification by the oppressive legal system of the times, whether Muslim, Portuguese, English, Dutch, French, Belgian or Spanish. Initially, it was not really part of the culture of the people of African origin, but it was imposed on them.

Women should know better, even the radical “birthing people” who appear in the news stirring the mobs during riots are familiar with makeup brands. Light skin people buy Guerlain, Maybelline, Lancôme and hundreds of others. Darker skin color people buy Iman, Black Opal and Cover Girl Queen (Latifah), and an endless list. Famous Asian brands are Etude House, Sisheido and Hera. More are coming into the market from India and South Korea.

What is your skin color?

        By trying to cover the whole spectrum of possibilities of human skin color, the cosmetics companies have discovered there is substantial overlap, something everybody knew but has not sunken in. Skin color is not a good identifier of race or ethnicity. The matter is becoming increasingly moot as people cross the barriers of race, skin color or ethnicity to form new families. And even if it were, why continue using it?

            The truth is: all the makeup manufacturers are trying to expand to the full spectrum of skin color in the United States of America. This market is the most diverse in the world and the color designations for skin by the specialists have identified more than sixty colors of human skin they can reproduce in the laboratories. Not even one is called “white” or “black”. 

What color is your skin? It does not really matter, but out of curiosity, go to the makeup counter and find out.  You may be surprised that many of them have poetic names, evocative of mystery and beauty, of nature at its best, they are reflections of the human spirit. None sounds like an insult. 

Lee surrenders to Grant, the end of the Civil War

            In 1865, slavery and the citizenship of Americans of African descent were formally resolved in the states who had not done so before. Vermont had abolished slavery in 1777. Fifteen years after the Constitution was ratified, eight of the thirteen signatory states had followed suit and five of them gave freed slaves the right to vote. Abolition did not begin at the end of the Civil War, not with the approval of the Civil Rights Act. The Federal Constitution should have become “color blind” once the issue was resolved with the ratification of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. It did not happen.

The political maneuvering of the southern democrats in the Senate and in the Supreme Court managed to continue its legacy through what is known as “segregation” (Separate but equal). It even became legalized in 1896, after the famous case of “Plessy v Ferguson”. Segregation policies required the continued classification of “colored” or “negroes” in order to keep them apart. The equal did not happen. 

The U. S. Supreme Court responsible for segregation policies

 Again, the color of skin was mandated by oppressive legislation, even after Americans of African descent had recovered their personal freedoms, had quickly begun to build their families and communities, mostly from scratch in the agricultural areas, and had begun to participate successfully in politics. Most of the progress in the south was rolled back by segregation. This immoral situation continued until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for which President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat from Texas gets credit without deserving it. He immediately created the antidote. 

The reforms had been promoted by Republicans since the Civil War, but had been stalled during Johnson's period by Dixiecrats for two years. At the last minute, they were even "filibustered” by the infamous KKK Democrat Senator Robert C. Byrd, the mentor of President Joe Biden. To maintain the system of “separate but equal”, it had been necessary for the southern states to maintain the system of “color” classification. This situation should have ended upon approval of the Civil Rights Act, but it did not. 

XIX Century political cartoon of "political negotiating"

President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his Great Society plan during his State of the Union address in 1964. Perfectly coordinated with what he called “the total loss of white votes of the south for at least two generations”. He outlined a series of domestic programs that he promised would eliminate poverty and inequality in the United States. By the end of his term, Congress had implemented 226 of his 252 legislative requests. The “War Against Poverty” was the new clever way by which the “Democrat Plantation” of state dependency was created. Segregation took on a fancy costume. By legislating a multitude of entitlement programs, it forced the classification of “protected categories of people” where color was only recently substituted by race and later ethnicity. Gradually, other “colors” were added, and race and ethnicity now appears on many more government forms than before. Instead of being eliminated, the classification of people of color expanded and multiplied in disguise.

The legislative oppression continued disguised under the veil of compassionate politics. “Compassionate” Conservatives share the blame. It is the perfect disguise for the system of spoliation -legal plunder- but it has the cost of creating division and animosity between groups of people. It prevents harmony from ever completely developing among diverse people. From ancient racism, it now fits the Marxist mold of oppressed vs. oppressors.

But worse. The Democrat Plantation has destroyed the very foundation of independent and dignified community life in the traditional neighborhoods occupied by “colored” people. It has corrupted their moral standing and sucked their energy away. Many of today’s church activists, whose parents and grandparents were the church leaders at the very front of the Civil Rights Movement, are now agents of the new masters of the plantation. Many churches have lost their independence and integrity by being the instruments of the distribution of what has been taken from some to give to their parishioners. The list of “benefits” is long, but the food distribution lines, and the other lines, always end up with the local black politicians in front of the cameras, regardless of their church affiliation. Their permanence in office depends on keeping the plantation operating. The lines are also formed during election days. The churches harvest the votes and help to keep the new segregation working.

As long as the classification of people by the color of their skin or other race or ethnic classifications continues to be legislated, it will continue to be used to maintain division. Someone once raised the red flag and said: “The Constitution is color blind”. Nobody listened. 

It may be time to make it a reality. 

Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan, the Great Dissenter

The 1896 U. S. Supreme Court case of “Plessy v. Ferguson” has been recognized as one of its darkest moments. The Court dominated by southern democrats approved the principle of separate but equal that legalized color segregation in the southern states. The one courageous dissenter against the decision was Kentuckian, Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan (1833-1911), a former slave owner himself. There is a secret to his dissent and defense of the Constitution.               

The decision of the Court was in reference to the constitutionality of a Louisiana law that allowed the railroads using inter-state lines to segregate people by the color of their skin and creating separate seating sections. These are the key words of Harlan’s dissent: 

"In the eyes of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here”…“Our constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.”…  “The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds." 

Harlan also warned that the decision would poison relations between the races and destroy the possibilities of harmony. 

"What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments, which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation." 

His opinion has been labeled “The Great Dissent”. It proved prophetic but it also opened the way for the Civil Rights movement. After writing other dissents that defended the rights of black citizens as Plessy did, he was attacked by many politicians and editors. Many black personalities expressed appreciation and offered encouragement, including the most visible black leader of the day, Frederick Douglass, with whom Harlan maintained warm relations for more than two decades. 

In 1908, the Court upheld Kentucky's infamous Day Law, which banned integrated education in private schools. The law was aimed at Berea College, which had been integrated since its opening in 1866. In that dissent, Harlan asked: 

"Have we become so inoculated with prejudice of race that an American Government, professedly based on the principles of freedom, and charged with the protection of all citizens alike, can make distinctions between such citizens in the matter of their voluntary meeting for innocent purposes simply because of their respective races?" 

                Many have speculated about Harlan’s change of heart. In his early days as a lawyer and politician, he had defended the “odious institution”. His father was a prominent politician in Kentucky who owned slaves for his household. Then, most of the slave states seceded and the Civil War ensued. Kentucky was one of a few states that remained loyal to the union. After the war, slavery in the law became a thing of the past. The old parties that had supported it disappeared, but in the south, it just changed name. Harlan became a Republican and an ardent defender of the efforts being made to eradicate the legacy of slavery.  There was a reason, a personal reason.  The power of the rules of family, an ancient Law, trumps any legislation of man. The Harlan family secret prevailed. What was the secret. 

Justice Harlan had a slave half-brother named Robert, who was treated discreetly as a member of the family. Their father had tried, unsuccessfully, to send Robert to school along with his other children. He ended up going to a private school for mixed-bloods. Robert lived most of his adult life in Ohio and did very well, but in the early 1860's with help from the family, he moved to England, to escape the increasing racial tension before the war broke. He returned after the war to recover what he could from the economic catastrophe that followed. Justice Harlan was very much aware of the obstacles racism had created for his brother and for the family to do right. Those family situations were never discussed in public back then, but we can do it now. 

The terrorism that the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups inflicted upon blacks and abolitionists in Kentucky immediately following the war also pushed Harlan toward the Republicans. Harlan became a good friend of the U. S. Attorney for Kentucky Benjamin Bristow, who prosecuted the white terrorists of the KKK for their campaign of terror by arson, beatings, and murders. Bristow was one of the Republican radicals and a mentor to Harlan. 

A HARLAN CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT 

The time has come to give real meaning to Justice Harlan’s statement about how it is that the Constitution is color blind.  It should take the form of an addition to the Bill of Rights by inserting a new item to the First Amendment. It should read as the other parts do. A clear prohibition to the Federal government to legislate about collecting information about the citizen’s race, color, origin, or ethnicity, and using those categories to create differences under the law.