With Inauguration Day and MLK Day coinciding this year, it is worth reflecting on what this means, how far we have come as a nation, and how far we have yet to go. In the circles I frequent, there is little to be optimistic about. After decades of struggle towards racial equality and the real progress that has been achieved, it might seem that a plurality of the electorate has agreed, for a variety of reasons, to give a second chance to a convicted felon who has been rated the worst president in American history. It is worth noting, however, that the nation has experienced worse setbacks before. Whole communities, organizations, and individuals kept up the fight despite the frustrations and threats. They prevailed, and we will, too.
In the Smithsonian American Art Museum, there is a Winslow Homer painting titled “A Visit from the Old Mistress.” Painted in 1876, it depicts a Southern matron visiting her former slaves in their home. It is an awkward scene. The black women look her directly in the eye instead of averting their eyes downward. One of them even remains seated while her former mistress is standing. These freedwomen are no longer bound by Antebellum social protocol. More importantly, a freedwoman in the center of the painting is holding a toddler who was born free and who would never know bondage. The scene captures the essence of Reconstruction and a changing nation, with freedmen and former masters testing their new roles in the post-war South.
At the time, the United States had been on the verge of becoming a biracial democracy. Organizations like the Freedmen’s Bureau gave former slaves the opportunity to become educated and self-sufficient. The freedmen took their new status seriously, and other groups of newly enfranchised voters, namely impoverished whites and Northern migrants, had finally disrupted hidebound Southern society. By 1877, however, Reconstruction withered and died through a combination of federal government scandals, revanchist Southern state governments, the Long Depression of 1873, and political expediency. The final withdrawal of federal troops ushered in waves of bloodthirsty white Redeemers and a flurry of state laws that locked in white Democratic rule in the South for nearly the next century. That cruel regime was ensured by underhanded tactics such as white primaries and literacy tests and was enforced with a crooked legal system, extrajudicial violence, and outright terrorism. For the most part, the United States Supreme Court condoned these moves as state matters and further decided that civil rights ordinances were unconstitutional. The Old Mistress had not gone quietly, and her malevolence still cast a shadow over the South.
Early last year – January 6, to be precise – my wife and I were at an excellent Cajun restaurant in Saint Augustine. It was a pretty little spot, with a diverse crowd enjoying the mild January weather, the holiday lights remaining from Christmas, and that singular blend of history and contemporary that makes Saint Augustine so charming. As we waited for our table, the evening was disrupted by an angry rabble that stopped by the entrance. The buffoons were kitted out in surplus camouflage and “tough guy” tees and brandished a tawdry mix of flags, including the Confederate flag (because, of course, they did). They shrieked that “patriots” were languishing in prison for storming the Capitol, that Joe Biden was a pedophile, and that he would be coming for us next. I would hope that somebody would arrest me if I ever engaged in a violent insurrection. The goons soon moved on, dragging along their unfortunate spouses and pulling a little wagon laden with their even more unfortunate offspring. At that moment, the darker side of me reckoned that perhaps northern Florida needed another round as part of Military District 3.
It would be imprudent to dismiss that night’s unpleasantness as an isolated incident. For generations after the Civil War, much of the white Southern identity revolved around grievance. They were not just bitter about losing the war but also resentful towards Reconstruction, desegregation, and other advances they felt were imposed on them by Northern carpetbaggers, treacherous scalawags, and liberal agitators who simply did not understand the proper order of things in the South. Much later, as the Republican party utilized the Southern Strategy to gain and solidify its hold south of the Mason-Dixon Line, embittered white Southerners and disaffected whites in general gradually displaced the more moderate Rockefeller Republicans and Reagan Republicans. In the present day, the genuinely sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan in American conservatism has been replaced with a festering sense of grievance and a foreboding premonition that white security and dominance will be torn asunder.
The Old Mistress has been resurrected, and she seeks vengeance not just in the South but in dilapidated Rust Belt towns and even well-to-do gated subdivisions nationwide. This new Redemption, just like its 1877 predecessor, has harnessed that same resentment for malign purposes but has the potential to cause even greater damage because it has become a nationwide movement. Dismissing MAGA true believers as a pill-popping underclass in flyover country ignores the fact that anxious whites of all classes were in the insurrectionist mob. Living in Houston, I have seen plenty of “Let’s Go Brandon” bumper stickers on gleaming lifted pickups in front of newly constructed McMansions. The MAGA coalition has also expanded beyond angry, white, working-class men and has incorporated more billionaires seeking to safeguard their wealth along with voters of many backgrounds who, like working-class and middle-class voters in many other democracies, have lost patience with the global cost of living crisis.
In 2016, the United States was on the cusp of a truly multiracial, multireligious, multicultural democracy. The backlash against that development resulted in a tide of right-wing populism and resentment. Red state legislatures, dominated by lawmakers who represented increasingly noncompetitive, white, and rural districts, systematically attempted to make voting more difficult for predominately liberal constituencies such as city-dwellers, college students, and black voters. The Roberts Court, for the most part, pretended that white Southern racism no longer existed and that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was largely superfluous. The court also relied on erroneous history to justify granting nigh unfettered and unquestioned access to guns so those same twitchy whites could arm themselves to the teeth against imagined monsters.
Adherents to this ugly populist movement often see themselves as the wholesome bedrock of America and take it personally when they feel outsiders are criticizing their way of life and the truculent – even criminal – strongmen they vote into office. They gravitate towards swaggering bullies who promise retribution against coastal elites who might be looking down on them. More disturbingly, these characters bristle whenever the January 6 insurrection is labeled as such and many have even taken to celebrating it because they are uncomfortable condemning people who share the same fears of cultural and demographic displacement.
For the most part, conservative lawmakers prevaricate and equivocate because they either do not wish to be primaried out, or they fear the genuine threat of violent reprisal from their own voters. The promises to pardon so many insurrectionists is chilling because the utter lack of remorse most have shown thus far suggests they will only become worse. If they were more honest, they would exchange their red hats for brown shirts. Conservative lawmakers dare not criticize them and instead conjure more invisible threats to their primary base. For such a conspiratorial-minded group, those threats can take the form of black mermaids in a film intended for seven-year-old girls, Taylor Swift encouraging her young fans to vote, and basic history lessons on slavery and the Jim Crow South. We were also treated to scenes of weirdos throwing tantrums over Barbie two summers ago. Nothing displays emotional stability with more clarity than a grown man burning children’s dolls.
This subset of the population that is now ascending back to power insists on displaying Confederate symbols as an upraised middle finger against social progress while forbidding educators from teaching the history of those symbols, rails against career bureaucrats while rallying around unqualified lackeys, and preaches fidelity to the Constitution while openly admiring autocratic leaders from Franco to Orban. I have personally witnessed the barely suppressed fury of Christian nationalist speakers who, amid the usual screeds against educators and mainstream media, insist that Christians must oversee American society and that vaguely defined elites are out to get them. Some of those speakers then suckered hundreds of attendees into signing up for stock trading and real estate seminars. The notion of enforcing tradition, fundamentalist Christianity, martial values, and unapologetic patriotism onto the unwilling majority is so appealing to these would-be Redeemers, even if that enforcement is carried out by goon squads.
Ian Abbey, Ph.D.
This is a disheartening situation, but it will pass so long as our institutions hold and so long as we continue to look out for each other. Prairie View is one such institution, and we shall do our part by cultivating critical thinking skills among our student body and community. Do not give up on yourselves, and do not give up on each other. Don’t mourn, organize.
Dr. Ian Abbey is an assistant professor of history in the Division of Social Work, Behavioral and Political Sciences at Prairie View A&M University.
Academic course instruction is not affected by the passage of SB 17. The law specifically states that its limitations may not be construed to apply scholarly research or a creative work by an institution of higher education’s students, faculty, or other research personnel or the dissemination of that research or work. This page reference is to the specific research interest of a professor, Dr. Ian Abbey.