Intro
America’s foundational principal, the one stated in the Declaration of Independence reads, “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This is not law, but it is the foundational principle for the “Bill of Rights” and every amendment thereafter. It is why America is celebrated. It is why America is the destination for all those looking for a better life, to have access to the “American Dream”. Of the fifty-six Continental Congress delegates that signed the Constitution, however, twenty-five owned slaves. The institution of slavery proved to be a complicated issue for the Founding Fathers to navigate. It was already sewn into the fabric of the nation, and though the morality of owning slaves was rarely questioned, the contradiction was undeniable. How can a nation that is built on the foundation of freedom and human rights be a slave-holding nation? The mostly enslaved Africans were 21% of the approximately 2.1 million inhabitants. How are they reconciled against the self-evident truth and the certain unalienable rights spoken of in the Declaration? This contradiction ate at the conscious of the aspiring nation. Our history lessons widely ignore the elephant in the room where the founding fathers crafted America’s game plan. Thomas Jefferson, in an early version of the Declaration, drafted a 168-word passage that condemned slavery. The removal of this passage was mostly fueled by political and economic expediencies of the leaders in the room. Their constituents were primarily slave owners. This removal created a legacy of oppression and exclusion for people of African descent that resulted in centuries of struggle for basic human and civil rights. The contradiction still haunts America. It has been 247 years since the signing of the declaration, and American society still twists itself into knots trying to rationalize and justify the treatment of its African American citizens juxtaposed against its foundational principles. How has America handled the contradiction and the tension caused by it? Very poorly. We would rather endure the headache than deal with the cause.
Cognitive Dissonance
I recently read a book called, “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)” by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. It is a book centered around the concept of cognitive dissonance. It starts with a quote from George Orwell that states, “we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.” He goes on to say, “Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it, is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.” The problem is that now, what should be solid realities are brought into question. The conflict that these contradictions cause all lead to the tension that we feel in our society today. This tension has a name. It is called cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. People tend to seek consistency in their attitudes and perceptions, so this conflict causes unpleasant feelings of unease or discomfort. Let us examine some examples.
- You are overweight and want to be healthy, but you do not exercise regularly or eat a nutritious diet. You say you cannot lose weight because you have hormone problems. You feel guilty as a result, causing tension.
- You know that smoking is harmful to your health, but you do it anyway. You say that if you quit you will gain weight. You know better, causing tension.
- You would like to build up your savings but tend to spend extra cash as soon as you get it. You tell yourself that you work hard and deserve nice things, you regret this decision later, such as when facing an unexpected expense that you do not have the money to cover, causing tension.
- You have a long to-do list but spend the day watching your favorite shows instead. You tell yourself that you deserve to relax. Eventually, you must account for this procrastination, causing tension.
America’s Conflicts
The Constitution vs. Slavery
During the time of the signing of the Declaration, slavery had been part of the Colonies’ existence for about 150 years, and it was integral to their society. Many of the colonists who sought freedom from British tyranny, themselves bought and sold human beings. By underpinning America’s young economy with the brutal institution of chattel slavery, they deprived roughly one-fifth of the population of their own “inalienable” right to liberty. The 13 colonies were deeply divided on the issue of slavery. Both the South and the North had financial stakes in the institution. Southern plantations, a key engine of the colonial economy, needed free labor to produce tobacco, cotton and other cash crops for export back to Europe. Northern shipping merchants, who also played a role in the economy, remained dependent on the triangle trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas that included the traffic of enslaved Africans.
Justification is a large part of cognitive dissonance. What was the justification for the blatant denial of the Africans human rights? Our founding fathers were in a quandary. How do they justify owning slaves in a land where the foundational principles are based on God, freedom and inalienable rights? Morally, they knew slavery was wrong and morality was an important thing then, at least in name. “In God we trust” was printed on the currency. How would they justify this conflict? They told the public that African people were no more than beast of burdens. No more human than the cattle they used to plow their fields. They fortified this narrative by quoting scripture from the Bible, interpreting that God declared for African people to be servants. They used supposedly scientific studies in reputable journals to state as fact that Africans had smaller brains, an unstable temperament, and a lazy disposition. They chose to believe this even though they had evidence otherwise. There were free Africans, like Anthony Johnson, who owned land and ran their own farms and were contributing members of society, but they wanted to believe the narrative. They needed to believe it. They depended so heavily on the free labor from the Africans for just about every aspect of their lives. The Africans cooked, cleaned their houses, cared for their children, worked their fields and warmed their beds. They did not just want slavery, they convinced themselves that they needed slavery. These justifications allowed the public to ease their dissonance, to feel ok about enslaving a group of people, human beings. Here is the interesting thing about justifications. If you practice them long enough you begin to believe them. That belief allowed for almost a hundred years of slavery after the Declaration.
The Civil War Amendments vs. Jim Crow
The Civil War ended in 1865 and the institution of slavery was legally abolished, but the contradictions continued. The civil war produced three constitutional amendments. The 13th amendment abolished slavery. The 14th amendment gave citizenship to all people born in the U.S. The 15th amendment gave African Americans the right to vote. This began the Reconstruction period. The Union soldiers remained stationed in the southern states to oversee, as four million new African American citizens were integrated into the United States. Because of the military oversite, these new citizens thrived from 1865 to 1877. They fully participated into American citizenship; owning land, creating communities, creating businesses, and participating in the democratic process by voting and holding office. Unfortunately, one fateful event called the “great compromise” ended reconstruction. The 1876 election was mired in corruption and the republican and democratic parties cut a backroom deal. The republicans removed the Union troops from the south in exchange for the presidency. The result was devastating. Add, that in 1896 the supreme court ruled in favor of the “separate but equal”, Plessy vs Ferguson supreme court case, and the nation was catapulted into the “Jim Crow” era, systematically stripping away the newly acquired civil rights gained by the new African American citizens. Jim Crow caused another sixty-nine years of oppression and, in my opinion, just as devasting to the Black community as slavery.
No Commitment
How was Jim Crow possible? America had just gone through the bloodiest war in its history. The Civil War resulted in 618,222 Americans dead, with 360,222 Union deaths and 258,000 Confederate deaths. The most deaths in any war that America had ever participated in. With the brutality of the war, it could be easily mistaken that the northern abolitionist movement was fully committed to the cause of freeing the enslaved. That was not the case. The federal government did not have full support of the people. For example, in 1863, in New York City, draft riots erupted because a portion of the community did not want to fight in the civil war. They had no desire to put their lives on the line for the freedom of the enslaved. These working-class, primarily Irish Americans, resented the Africans. They felt the free Africans in New York City were taking their jobs and earning higher wages than them. The draft riots started as a protest and as emotions elevated, turned into a full-scale riot, and continued for four days, during which more than 100 of the city’s Black residents were killed. Even President Lincoln was not totally committed to treating the new African Americans equally. The central cause of the war was the abolishment of slavery but citizenship for the African people was not his prevailing goal. He did not believe that the two races could successfully integrate. He felt that unleashing four million Black people into White American society—North or South—was a political nonstarter. As he planned for their freedom, he struggled with what to do with the newly freed Africans. He needed a plan, and he tested a potential one. On the night of December 31, 1862, a day before he issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln signed a contract with Bernard Kock, an entrepreneur and Florida cotton planter. They agreed to use federal funds to relocate 5,000 formerly enslaved people from the United States to Île à Vache (“Cow Island”), a small, 20-square-mile island off the southwestern coast of Haiti. (2) The plan was poorly executed, however. They did not allot enough resources for the African Americans and most of them perished. The plan was a failure. The commitment was also lacking at the state level. Though the northern states were the home of the abolitionists, emancipation is where the commitment ended. The northern states abolished slavery long before the Civil War, starting in 1777 in Vermont, and continued in succession through Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New York, Ohio, and finally New Jersey in 1804. However, as quickly as they abolished slavery, they instituted “Jim Crow” like laws in their states which stripped the newly emancipated African Americans of their rights as citizens, denying voting and in some cases property rights. Though the Union fought for the emancipation of the enslaved, there was never a solid plan to support them as citizens. It is not difficult to understand how, even after the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments legally granted the African Americans citizenship, Jim Crow was allowed to violate their civil rights. There was no full commitment to the African American’s integration into society, thus, America’s conflict continued.
Civil Rights Amendments vs. Mass Incarceration
During the 70-plus years of Jim Crow, African Americans endured civil restrictions, lynchings, and massacres. Induced by massive resistance to desegregation and the murder of Medgar Evers, it was not until 1963 that President John Kennedy asked Congress for a comprehensive civil rights bill. After Kennedy’s assassination in November, President Lyndon Johnson, urged by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., pressed hard, to secure the bill’s passage. In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352, the Civil Rights Act. The “Civil Rights Act of 1964” states that it prohibits discrimination “on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin”. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination based on sex, as well as race, in hiring, promoting, and firing. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools. As during the reconstruction period, African Americans took advantage of their new-found liberties. In the 1970’s over 700,000 African American students were enrolled into colleges and universities declaring majors such as communications, teaching, business administration, and medical related jobs. The total number of Black students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities increased from 282,000 in 1966 to 1,062,000 in 1976. In 1977 there were 58,515 thousand African Americans to graduate with a Bachelors’ degree and 1,273 African Americans to graduate with a Doctorate degree. in 1960, 11 percent of black workers were in professional and technical and craft worker positions; by 1980, their proportion had almost doubled to 21 percent. When African Americans are given access, we excel.
White Backlash
When African Americans began to gain ground after the civil rights movement of the sixties, the 1970s was highlighted by President Nixon’s “war on drugs” campaign. In a 1994 interview, John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s domestic policy advisor revealed that the “War on Drugs” had begun as a racially motivated crusade to criminalize Blacks and the anti-war left. He stated, “We knew we could not make it illegal to be either against the war, or Blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing them both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night in the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
For decades, overtly racist lynchings were the primary weapons in the subjugation of Black people. Then mass incarceration and the passing of several congressional bills, made it much easier. Most notably:
- the “1984 Comprehensive Crime Control and Safe Streets Act” eliminated parole in the federal system.
- The “1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act” established mandatory minimum sentencing schemes, including the infamous 100-to-1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine sentences. These laws flooded the federal prison system with primarily Black people convicted of low-level and nonviolent drug offenses.
- The granddaddy of them all, “the Violent Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1994”, featured:
- the largest expansion of the federal death penalty in modern times,
- the gutting of habeas corpus,
- the evisceration of the exclusionary rule which disqualified evidence gained from an unreasonable search or seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment,
- the trying of 13-year-olds as adults,
- 100,000 new police officers on the streets, which led to an explosion in racial profiling.
- the elimination of Pell educational grants for prisoners,
- the implementation of the federal three strikes law,
- monetary incentives to states to enact “truth-in-sentencing” laws, which subsidized an astronomical rise in prison construction across the country and lengthened the amount of time to be served. (3)
As a result, the prison population grew from 346,015 in 1960 to 2,307,504 in 2008. During that period Black men and women were imprisoned at higher rates compared to all other racial groups, with the highest rate being Black men aged 25 to 39. America found a new justification for its dissonance. Black people, primarily Black men, are dangerous, and they are criminals. This may have been the most damaging justification of them all and still haunts us presently.
Why the Conflicts?
America has never been comfortable with African Americans being free. Throughout American history, each period of the emancipation of African Americans, is followed by a period of denying their newly attained rights. We earn it, then America takes it. African Americans often ask, “why do they hate us”? It is self-destructive to the greater good of the country, but I think to better understand this dynamic we must continue to examine our history. America’s social infrastructure is built on classes determined by socio-economic status. When the Europeans migrated to America, they left a class structure that was fixed, with the nobility, the clergy, and the commoners each occupying a distinct place in society. Many of the colonists that left Europe were on the lower end of the European class structure. They left Europe not to escape the class system but to escape their place in it. The American founding fathers were determined to create a different model.
Americas system, was to be built on “the dream,” the idea that everyone had the opportunity for upward mobility. Even the European Indentured servants, though they were in the lower class, after seven years had the opportunity for upward mobility. It was a great plan. Immigrants still migrate here for the American dream. The problem though, is that when the founding fathers architected this plan, they only had the Europeans in mind, but the Europeans were not alone. There were the indigenous people, already here and proving to be resistant. Add the importation of the African enslaved to the mix and a complex system of racial hierarchy was created, with Europeans at the top, and the indentured servants, natives, and the African enslaved at the bottom. The socio-economic class system was easy. It was determined by how much wealth you had; but the racial class system was messy, there were policies that maintained it, but there were no rules, only how people felt. Sentiments changed all the time and policy changed according to those sentiments.
In the beginning, the three entities of the lower class were mostly treated the same. However, it was the 1676 Bacon rebellion where Nathaniel Bacon, a European indentured servant organized the indentured servants, native Americans, and African enslaved to stage an unsuccessful revolt in the Virginia colony. It was then that it was decided to divide these three entities to better control them. The Africans were chosen to become the lowest of the lower class. It was the natural choice. They were the more skilled laborers having come from an agricultural society in Africa. Also, compared to the indigenous people, they had a higher tolerance to the European diseases. Lastly, it would be harder for them to escape and blend in. To solidify this, policies were put in place to control and contain them. For example, in 1680 Virginia enacted a law that forbid all black persons from carrying arms and required them to carry certificates when leaving the slaveowner’s plantation. In 1682, A new slave code in Virginia prohibited weapons for slaves, required passes beyond the limits of the plantation and forbid self-defense by any Black person against any European American. In 1682, New York enacted its first slave codes. They restricted the freedom of movement and their ability to trade for profit, of all enslaved people in the colony. These are just a few of the many examples. More importantly, to solidify the infrastructure, the white lower class were conditioned to hate the Africans. They were programmed to believe that if the Africans were ever absolutely free, they would take their place in society, their jobs, and their women. The “replacement” ideology was born and fostered, and it never died. Why do they hate us so much? For one thing, centuries of being told that they should, but it is also hate driven by fear. Fear of retribution for the centuries of abuse and oppression, and most of all, fear of losing a powerful currency that they had grown accustomed to having in America, whiteness. They were programed, and the root of this program was the notion, “I may be poor but at least I’m white and better than them.” No matter how poor they were, this was a constant.
Why the conflict? Throughout American history, whenever sentiment changed enough to affect policy and the African Americans were unshackled, the Africans excelled. This success inevitably would lead to a sentiment to take away these gains. This is called the “White backlash.” The racial class is structured much like the old European “feudal” structure, rigid, where each segment stayed in their place. A surf or servant in the European lower class could never dream of being a noble. This is how America have always viewed African Americans. We are supposed to stay in our place. Yes, things have changed. African Americans have sat in the highest positions of the nation, but sentiment is a fickle thing. African American success have historically driven White American sentiment. African Americans have gained ground and are achieving in every aspect of American Life. Some saw the achievement of Senator Barack Obama’s ascent to the Presidency of the United States as an indicator that we had finally turned the corner on this racial problem and even some African Americans were ready to declare that we were in a post-racial period. What it really did was sound an alarm to those that still believed in the racial hierarchy, that were silent for a while because they believed they were alone in their sentiment. The 2016 Donald Trump candidacy was a revelation. It revealed that there still is a strong sentiment for the old days, when White American men enjoyed preference. It seems to be a strong sentiment and sentiment drives policy. The changes to voting, housing, and affirmative action policies over the past few years attests to that and the recent attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs; and hiring and recruiting practices in universities and corporations, are strong indications that we are in the mist of another white backlash.
Conclusion
Dissonance explains how some people’s psyche will not allow them to change their opinion no matter how illogical theirs seems and how informed yours is. They hold on to their beliefs no matter what the information presents. White America criminalized Black America, pointing to misleading statistics and somehow illogically associated crime to black skin instead of the more logical explanation of poverty. They pointed to the poor condition of the Black family as being the result of an irresponsible attitude of Black men and a promiscuous nature of Black women and ignored the centuries of devastation that slavery and Jim Crow had on the black family, the decades of incarceration of the black male because of the so-called war on crime, and the economic destabilization of the Black family due to, among other things, the lack of basic resources in black neighborhoods.
The psychological effects of these justifications on American society have been devastating for both Whites and Blacks. It created attitudes and stereotypes that have persisted for centuries. It created a caste system based on color that is used to justify exploitation, oppression and to maintain dominance over others. It fostered a sense of entitlement and superiority in the White population that manifests itself in so many ways, both subconsciously and consciously. And finally, the Black population is continually fighting the self-hate, low esteem, doubt, and sometimes outright self-loathing caused by centuries of oppression and propaganda. It has caused this current split that exists in society. It is how one side can think so differently than the other. How the two sides cannot come together no matter the facts.
Just as dissonance causes a person to make excuses to justify smoking when intellectually they know it is killing them…or causes a person to make excuses so that they can continue to eat food that causes obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and a host of other ailments…or causes people to justify spending money that they do not have, putting them in debt and jeopardizing any semblance of financial health, is how dissonance has caused America to justify its history of oppression against its African American citizens. It creates an environment where it is difficult for the Average African American to attain the basic resources like jobs, education, housing, and health care, making it difficult despite the evidence that whenever Black people have been allowed access, America has benefited immeasurably. I can tick off a list of endless contributions that Black Americans have given despite the roadblocks, imagine what the contributions would be if society would just get out of the way. Just stop hating as the young people would say.
It takes effort for people to work for the greater good. People are naturally wired to go for what they want, for that thing that makes them feel good now. The founding fathers were white men. They wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights for white men. For centuries they enjoyed all the benefits that living in this country as the focal point provided. As the smoker, glutton, and over-spender lies to themself to justify continuing in their self-indulgence, the White men of America has told themself that they deserve all the advantages that living in America has afforded them. They say, “look at what we have done.” They look at how this young nation has accomplished so much, and they falsely attribute it all to their efforts. But just as a person who wants to get healthy both physically and financially, who wants to stop the tension headaches and deal with the problem, we must look in the mirror and stop the excuses, and the justifications. America needs to take a long look in the mirror, stop the denials and embrace its history. It needs to recognize the harm that it has done to itself and understand the only way to get healthy is to fully embrace its foundational principles not just for one group but its entire population. Then and only then can we reach our greatness.
2 https://www.history.com/news/abraham-lincoln-black-resettlement-haiti
Edward Odom
