That ended 70 years ago when white leaders decided it was wrong. So what's the point?
19
The South has made the bed for an authoritarian minority federal government. What we see is a Southern Red State legal coup, favored by the electoral system and suppression. It gives the con-federalist South a majority in the Senate, a close tie in the House and an advantage in presidential elections.
70
Michael Bloomberg is a more likely and potentially efficient authoritarian.
21
The power structures in both the Republican Party and Democratic Party are no different. Both have used race as a means to create divisiveness in America. The Democrats just happen to be better at hiding their desire to control minorities.
16
Elected officials at the lowest levels of government no longer care to know the law, rules or ethics of management and instead will do whatever they believe enhances their political power. They assume, rightly in most cases, that the lower castes of society lack the economic resources to fight back. When someone has the audacity to ask them to follow the law, these trumpian thugs lie and malign. This is the new normal.
19
There are two solutions to the stench of corruption in our political structures- A. get out the vote in convincing (i.e.- MASSIVE numbers), B. huge public demonstrations in state capitals and Washington, D.C. The next scenario is a possible transfer of executive authority to the military. I don't know if there are voices within the Pentagon proposing that they resist any more directives from a senile (as well as mean-spirited) Commander. But they need to be as outspoken as the federal prosecutors and judges in the DOJ. That is, if they still salute the flag every day...
17
The insidious part of Jim Crow, was that by using racial hatred of black (and brown) people, the monied interests *also* kept poor white people down and in line, while promising them they might rise, but effectively insuring *no one ever would.*
This is *exactly* what is happening *now.* It's the exact same playbook.
82
By hobbling the likeliest Democratic (rather than the candidate selected by the pure & woke algorithm) challenger to Trump, you have helped ensure the failure of the attempt to unseat him.
Better the making of an equal-opportunity tyrant than the empowering of a flawed brand-persona who might actually do us some good, right?
Better the demonstrable, racist, despot that we know than a possibly/kinda, situational racist who actually tries, nonetheless, to ensure that democracy survives, and that modern life (as distinct from past injustices) continues to improve, incrementally for most people?
9
Trump gets his "how to" input from Putin , who has 20 years of practice.
16
We absolutely could return to these times under an authoritarian and racist president. Why is it that so many people in this country love Trump? He certainly doesn't know how to govern or lead people, and his intelligence is minimal at best. His real estate "empire" was always a big money loser and his "university" was a scam. Could it be his discriminatory statements and actions, mostly directed at immigrants and people of color?
53
The totalitarian regimes of Europe in the last century were very much "racist" in motivation and outcome. And in this respect, the Nazis were even more extreme than the plantation slave-owners or the architects of Jim Crow segregation or the creators of South African apartheid. White against black or brown racism is just one of the racial and ethnic "isms" that are an important part of autocratic regimes everywhere.
13
Speaking of learning from the experiences of other countries: It's worth remembering that the Nazi Party in the 1930s were particularly interested in and inspired by Jim Crow.
https://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-jim-crow
36
In other words, if you mess up democracy, it might take a while
for you to restore it! On the other hand did you really have a democratic situation in the deep south after the Civil War? I don't think so.
3
Excellent analysis but you are missing a modern day example of Jim Crow: the corrupt state of Maryland. Its disregard for the plight of Baltimore City's citizens is as immoral as any historic examples of Jim Crow.
8
What about leftist authoritarianism in which people's earnings and savings are forcibly taken from them by law to float and subsidize the unproductives? How could that happen? The lazy, less productive, or merely avaricious think they see a good thing and vote to oppress (fleece) their hard-working neighbors. A new kind of Jim Crow?
12
I think that poor white children were encouraged by their families and neighbors to do better for themselves whereas blacks were encouraged to feel sorry for themselves with this article continuing that trend.
20
Of course, Jim Crow was the big daddy of facist America but hardly the only one. Much is made of the 1950s red scare, but less is known about the way more intense one after the World War I armistice. Mobs killed people, public schools and universities were “cleansed” of teachers who even questioned the panic over Bolshevikism, and people kept their heads down and mouths shut. Of course, this also got tied up with immigration and a big target were Eastern Europeans. At one point there was a big roundup where thousands were deported with no due process and little public outcry. During this period, black Americans had to shoulder a new burden as racists made the case that they couldn’t be trusted as loyal Americans. An important thing to keep in mind is that the country pretty much stood by and let all this happen. As it did in the early 40s with mass internment of Japanese Americans. I would argue that facism, while not a default setting in this country, is always an available option.
23
Today the vast majority of Blacks vote Democrat. We're already returning to Jim Crow with gerrymandering and blatant voter suppression in states controlled by Republican legislatures.
19
Important and historically grounded, and amazing to me that more and more Americans don't know their own history. But have you broken this news to people like Joy Reid, who insist "black women need a reason to vote for someone"?
5
If Mr. Crow comes back with his full panoply of social control and at the national level, you won't be able to get breathing room by taking the train to Chicago or Detroit. Canada, maybe. Mexico, maybe.
3
Your country is in our prayers.
5
It's impossible to overemphasize the forbidding reality of Jim Crow for Black Americans in the American South. The state prison systems became a form of peonage where wealthy white plantation owners and timber companies could purchase the labor of Black convicts from state governments, whose legislatures had passed laws facilitating the imprisonment of indigent Blacks. A simple act like registering to vote could lead to the loss of a job, threats of violence,or a bank refusing to renew or grant a needed loan to a black farmer. Southern plantation owners often cheated Black sharecroppers in order to keep them in perpetual debt. During the great flood of 1927 the state of Mississippi forced thousands of Blacks at gunpoint to remain in the state to repair and maintain the levees. Local law enforcement was often complicit in lynchings and the terrorism of the KKK . Joseph Conrad got it right in " Heart of Darkness " The horror...the horror.
22
What large country didn't devolve to minority rule of the privileged and the rich, over hundreds of years?
Africa has many, many examples of that happening, as does Europe and I maintain that we in America are just following the old Roman road of falling to the whims of the the really stupid rich as they manipulate the system to stay in power.
I so wish Lincoln has simply shrugged when the slaver South had demanded to leave the Union, and told them not to let the Constitution hit them on the rump on the way out.
Hugh
12
Mr. Bouiie haas built an impressive straw man but note the date on the photo accompanying this article: 1943.
11
Jamelle Bouie pens a comprehensively compelling and convincingly erudite Opinion addressing the era of Jim Crow and the long term impact of both de jure and de facto racialization in America. Expressly drawing constructive parallels contrasting Jim Crow America, post-Reconstruction, with the rise of Republican Tea Party domination in the era of the Obama presidency, Bouie accurately characterizes the underlying socio-economic-political environment susceptible for advancing perfidious racial demagoguery and vicious anti immigrant xenophobia. And America is readily reminded of the vestiges of Jim Crow as played on the multi dimensional international stage as graphically illustrated by Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy. The indigenous populations of those nations experienced acute economic devastation, societal displacement, and encroaching immigrant influence, all of which posed an immediate anathema and imminent threat to established, recognized societal norms. Intensely engendering religious persecution and fomenting racial internecine followed. America remained in muted silence. A single party, playing the politics of racial exclusion and religious condemnation, controlled the government top to bottom. The ensuing Second World War ended those autocratic regimes but did not extinguish the sentiment of those who maintained such views. The Republican Party and the Vietnam War draft dodger have taken a page from Jim Crow to remake America. We cannot permit it. Race matters.
11
unfortunately the North has its own history and presence of anti-Black racism and discrimination.
5
When Trump first descended on the escalator in Trump Tower with Melania by his side — after months of false birth narratives about Obama — and with demonizing comments about Mexicans, I thought immediately of growing up in Alabama and Atlanta in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The ‘n’ word was common used by Southern politicians, local and state. For a decade or more I had already realized that I grew up in a police state, especially for African Americans.
For those who need their eyes opened to this reality, nationwide, read (google) “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Naheishi Coates.
God have mercy.
13
Great article.
8
Very well reasoned and written Mr. Bouie. I, regrettably, am less optimistic. The current administration and its Republican accomplices are establishing a new Jim Crow right now. Think concentration camps on our boarders and vote suppression throughout the red states. To me, the right wing militias and neo-Nazi groups are being given a very unsubtle go ahead by Trump. These groups are nothing less than the modern reincarnation of the red shirts and the KKK. We are in for a very rough ride if these criminals are reelected. Thanks for you astute observations on our not so glorious history.
16
Trump and Jim Crow? That's where we're heading? Really? Good grief...get a grip, people.
19
Jim Crow aka separate and unequal living while black African in America is the least of America's color aka race evil inhumane callous cruel cynical historical hypocrisy.
With 5% of humans America has 25% of Earth's prisoners.
And while only 13% of Americans are black African American like Ben Carson, Will Hurd, Tim Scott and Clarence Thomas about 40% of the prisoners are black. Because black folks are persecuted for acting like white people do in every phase of civil secular life without any criminal justice consequences..
Prison is the carefully carved black African American colored exception to the 13th Amendments abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude.
On the eve of the Civil War the 4 million enslaved black Africans in a nation of 30 million were worth more than all of the other capital assets in America combined. Except for the land.
There are roughly the same number of black African Americans under control of the criminal justice system from arrest through jail/prison, trial, conviction, sentencing and parole. With a criminal record robbing black ex- convicts of the right to vote, work and receive any government educational health, housing or other benefits. They are thus consistently enduringly and persistently separate and unequal which was and is the essence of Jim Crow.
See '13th' Ava DuVernay
11
1) in any one party state, the forms of representative government remain but are in fact stage scenes, a pretense. Hitler and Stalin were nominally sharing power with elected representatives, but the reality was that decisions were made outside and then enacted by compliant “legislators”.
2) political violence is this country has not been the military attacking the people but citizens attacking key political opponents. Terrorism by paramilitary. That’s what the Klan was and that was only the more organized form. Right wing groups are already arming and openly declaring their intentions while government looks the other way.
9
A good history lesson.
Trump is basically a rabble rousing bigot riding on a wave of fear re anybody who is not middle class white or who disagrees with him.
Be careful not to play the race card. Trump is an equal opportunity bigot who picks on blacks, jews, immigrants, hispanics, women and anybody else that speaks against him.
Unite those people. You will find even a majority of middle class non hispanic whites are not racists.
9
The Jim Crowe attitudes are not yet dead in the Deep South. I’ve had calls reminding me my vote counts, and to remember to vote for the “white candidate for mayor” in a racially divided city. I always invited the black clergy to speak at the Lent preaching services, since it was the one time a year everyone would sit together without fussing. I guess you figured out by now I voted for the black candidate, since I object to being told what to do by racist Jim Crowe types.
5
Headline: "...Where Might Trumpism Take Us? For analogies that show us where the nation might be headed, look close to home...."
Some of my biggest concerns regarding where Trump MIGHT take us if the 2020 presidential election doesn't go his / Putin's way include, but AREN'T limited to...
1.) Thermonuclear War (aka: a fast mass extinction event)
1.a) Another 20-25 year hunt for imaginary N.-W.M.D.'s...
2.) Carbon_Pollution (aka: a somewhat, slower mass extinction event).
3.) 'Capt. Tripps' (An intermediately, quick mass extinction event...).
Note: 'Capt. Tripps' is the nickname of a FICTIONAL 'C-9-like' disease, from, (Steven King's), novel "The Stand". It is NOT a real threat; It is a fictional plot device which resembles what the 1918 Spanish Flue would've looked, like, had that disease been a weaponized, ('B.-W.M.D.'), disease, instead of a cyclical sub-variant-flu...
1
And are we concerned at all with the self-imposed segregation among the identity warriors of the left?
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/13/u-of-virginia-responds-after-video-shows-black-wom/
12
Still are authoritarians. A settler mentality of take what’s yours and make it mine cause....I’m a superior being justified by my superior god. Maybe at one time the US could have been a democracy but not now. The US is a kleptocracy of greed.
Slavery of one sort or another is in your dna.
5
No one should forget how powerful home-grown Nazis and fascist sympathizers were in 1930s America nor that Trump (deliberately?) has called for "America First", Charles Lindberg's name for his explicitly Nazi party of the early 1940s. American states were quick to adopt miscegenation laws (congressional support going back to 1864) and later were enthusiastic eugenists and enforced sterilization of "lower races", "imbeciles" and "degenerates", closely aligning themselves with the awful practices of Hitler's Germany. Those abuses didn't end until the 1970s, and then only reluctantly. Racism, fascism, right wing populism, violence against minorities and various deep-rooted prejudices are baked into America and her politics, as are organized attacks on the poor, the marginalized, and those espousing leftist ideas, with governments deploying the state machinery of police and military agains citizens. America is a very poor example of a functioning democracy and an especially poor one regarding human rights and the rule of law. This is not new and goes right back to the exclusion of women, black people and the poor from human and civil rights at the foundation of the republic and the genocide of indigenous people shortly thereafter. Jim Crow is but one of many examples.
14
Had Lincoln and Grant held Davis and Lee accountable for their treason and hanged them after the Civil War the U.S. might not be in such a spot. They did after all mount a war against their Nation and they lost. They deserved to be treated as losers, not as co-equals or errant children but as the defeated enemy.
Had the south been allowed to to break away then they would have soon become a banana republic.
Instead the south has cause the entire Nation to become a banana republic.
Those who support the so called president seem to think that he is causing liberals to go crazy and bringing the hurt to coastal areas where the jobs and wealth are.
He is not hurting the coastal and liberal elites, or causing us conniptions, he is hurting those who support him.
That should be the primary point of this election.
13
And those African Kings and tribal leaders who sold blacks into slavery should have to pay reparations.
10
Where are we going? Boxcars and chambers.
4
Where? Down a rathole.
6
I would like to draw everyone's attention to Sinclair Lewis's novel It Can't Happen Here which came out in 1936 and detailed the takeover of an authoritarian government in America during the dark days of the depression. The remarkable similarities of Lewis's book to the current actions of the Trump administration are really prophetic. Read it; it gives one to think.
18
Jim Crow was regional and hidden from, or overlooked by, the rest of the country. Trump and the GOP is a national phenomenon with international consequences. I am not sure whether they can be considered to have similar origins, but the current situation could have a broader impact.
2
Reconstruction continues to reveal so much about our shared and fractured American psyche. I applaud Mr. Bouie for continuing to share historical insights from the most pivotal periods in American history. One to this very day continue to be misunderstood and ignored.
Reconstruction as mainstream history states failed. As you peel the onion what is revealed is the inherent struggle,since our country's inception, of state rights versus the Federal government.
We all know that struggle is just as active now as back in the 1890's and when so many proselytize the virtues of the US Constitution, and mind you these are not always the folks in power but the electorate, many of these very same people will do everything in their power to usurp it.
There is no greater example than what Mr. Bouie has illustrated for all of us.
Accepting our American history for what it is and was is the only way forward to form a more perfect Union.
13
This is a great column.
I was born in DC, to Virginian parents, in 1946. I remember Jim Crow. I have often described it to others as authoritarian, a remark which has caused puzzled reactions. But Bouie has it spot on.
The photograph, with the pointer to the Colored Waiting Room, brought back sharply the recall of an experience walking through the Colored Waiting Room at Union Station, in Washington, D.C., in the early 50s.
I am white. The experience of a white child growing up under Jim Crow was, for me, constantly disorienting. The irrationality and pervasive menace were exactly what I would expect from the most repressive authoritarian political regimes today.
30
The civil war has never ended and we periodically fight battles to relitigate the opposed ideas of that war. The sixties were that same war coming back to the streets with the first TV generation. The rules are now being put in place for the third major battle of the civil war. One can say that the Union won the first two battles and the south has finally learned that their only hope is to conqueror the country from the inside. McConnell has been fighting for the Confederacy all of his life and he knows how important the Republican conquest of the Senate and the state houses has been. He does not intend to lose that power. As a country at civil war we are an ideal target for foreign powers who want to sow discord and promote their own policies through helping one side. We see that the traitor Trump has become an agent of Russia and he is accepting their help to rig the coming presidential election. As we become a one party state it is inevitable that the voiceless people in America will resort to violence as they always have to exert an influence that is no longer available at the ballot box. The future war will resemble the first civil war more than the sixties because it will again be a revolution of states against the central government. And in todays globally connected world everyone will attempt to get a piece of us while the getting is good. Interesting times are coming.
18
Very thorough yet where is the same amount of verbiage and outrage to literally charge your audience to vote blue no matter who? Sure, there is much historic and academic bias to be written about but the Trump tsunami will devastate this unless the people most likely to be swept away by bias are not mobilized to vote blue. It was a no brainer for all of us to vote Obama and it is a no brainer this time to vote blue. I implore you to direct your frustration and proactive efforts to get your audience to be responsible voters and spend less time on interesting history or at least loudly make the necessary connection between that history and the urgency to vote blue.
7
This New Year's I was on a cruise and we went to Cartagena, Columbia. We went on a tour of the city which included a trip to a museum about the Inquisition. The guide told us a new curator had removed most of the torture devices from most exhibitions because they would be upsetting. He commented that it wrong to sanitize our history because it might be offensive. He is right.
We must not forget the dark lessons of our past whether it be Jim Crow or the Trail of Tears, Joe McCarthy blacklisting fellow Americans for their right to hold a freely held opinion or the destruction of our system of checks and balances by a corrupted Republican Congress. The clear knowledge that we have had other periods of dark time right here in the United States of America is important to being a society of educated thinkers; a vibrant electorate. We can be very arrogant in this country. America First, America great again, America the best is not the truth. Such arrogance is not an appealing trait. We are just another country plodding along trying our best to maintain a level of Democracy and freedom. We do many things well but we are not perfect. And that is a lesson that we all must learn.
20
"...an entire region of the country was once governed by an actual authoritarian regime."
In the slave holding south, there could be no free press.
There could be no or very little free thought, particularly if those thoughts happened to touch on anything having to do with slavery or the long aftermath of oppression.
There could be no true democracy.
This regime very much hit poorer white people and it continues to do so to this day. When there is a group of overlords who control the land and access to the economy, who can progress? Bear this in mind, too, many of the repressive laws that were passed are still on the books today across the south. (This is not to say that the rest of the country was not guilty of slavery, too. New York state conditionally freed slaves in 1817, seven years after Russia abolished slavery.)
The whole point of the Jim Crow south was to hold people down, first blacks but including poor whites or anyone who stepped out of line. Police departments knew what their jobs were: to represent the ruling class and hit hard against any "stopping out of line" by anyone else.
The legacy of repression is very much alive. "The past is not dead, it is not even past." Without this tortured condition of voters, the US would be a moderate liberal nation with a willingness to try new ideas rather than to stop them cold.
18
@Doug Terry
You make some excellent points. I have always thought that part of the extreme resentment many whites felt towards African Americans was due to the fact that slavery had wiped out chances for poorer whites to find gainful employment--who needs to pay workers when you have slaves?
Of course this was not the fault of the poor slaves, but you know human nature...
4
Unfortunately a huge portion of the country would fully embrace authoritarianism in a heartbeat if it meant continuation of a booming economy and stock market. When you point out the fact that they are trading off any principals they might have once had for a juiced economy and that their will be a day of reckoning when the debt will have to be serviced or taxes will go up again to pay for the tax cut giveaways, and the usual response is that things are going great for me and my retirement account has never grown so much. To summarize, they place their short term economic interest over all else, even over the welfare of their own children.
22
Totally fascinating. Convincing, too, especially here in Wisconsin.
6
Where? To exactly where the founders were most opposed - authoritarian rule influenced greatly by foreign powers.
6
Excellent, thought provoking piece.
The fact that the south was allowed to operate in such flagrant, extravagant contempt of the rule of law for so many years was indeed outrageous and made it essentially a "quasi" authoritarian, breakaway republic in many ways.
Even the appellation of "Jim Crow" tends to minimize if not completely mask the horrific nature of the whole despicable undertaking.
We let them get away with murder, literally, for over a hundred years.
14
You can dwell on the past and wrap yourself in victimhood, or you can look to the future and policies that benefit everyone. I found this article way more illuminating about what minorities want from either party going forward:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/us/politics/nevada-south-carolina-2020.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
3
@M: the past informs and forms the present. It’s not dwelling, it’s enlightening. If you don’t understand history, then you will not escape the past.
11
@M
The author’s point was that Trump’s GOP could “impose” segregation based authoritarianism on America once again. Not whether minorities are wallowing in “victimhood”.
By the way, if the overwhelming MAJORITY of white people were enslaved and segregated in all aspects of life through the mid 20th Century, I am can guarantee their average standard of living and quality of life would be decidedly less than it is today.
8
Why hedge on whether Jim Crow could ever return? It’s been 10 years since Michelle Alexander first argued the new Jim Crow is already here. And as she recently wrote in these pages, since then “everything and nothing has changed.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/opinion/sunday/michelle-alexander-new-jim-crow.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
163
I have no doubt that if Donald Trump were empowered to do so, he would reverse Brown v Board of Education, the Civil RIghts Act, Affirmative Action, and any other game changing legislation that attempted to level the playing field for people of color. It is inconceivable that any person of color would vote for Trump in the upcoming election. When he implored them in 2016 with his "What have you got to lose" what they have to lose should be perfectly clear after his proclamation that "there are many fine people on both sides" at Charlottesville, and his attempts to freeze immigration on people of color.
18
Very enlightening article. I particularly found interesting the section of how " The Southern Democratic Party didn't just control all offices ...."It was gatekeeper to all political participation"....'What is the state? asked one prominent lawyer during Louisiana's 1898 Jim Crow constitutional convention"...... "It is the Democratic Party......and party disloyalty with state is treason.". That describes the Republican red states to a tee as well as the Trump administration. In the mid to late 1960s Lynden Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act. and in doing so stated that the Democratic Party had lost the Southern vote. All the Southern Jim Crow democrats switched to the Republican party in revolt. Since then they have hidden behind the party of Abraham Lincoln but they are nothing more than the same Jim Crowers with a different party name. Now they are the Trumpist Party. Any one disloyal to Trump will face punishment. All is lock/goose step, marching forward to Trumpian authoritarianism. Nov. 3, 2020. VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO. That will be the only way to save our democracy and our Constitutional governing by law not by Trumpian fiat.
15
Racial segregation wasn't only in the old south. Take a look at this map of locations in the Green Book, a guide for African American road travelers from about 1930-1960--the whole country was participating in Jim Crow to some extent: https://historypin.org/en/greenbook
16
Wow! Incredible history lesson!
2
I have said for some time that MAGA means make the US the way it was before LBJ. You describe Jim Crow perfectly but you do not write one word about the person who did more than any other to stop Jim Crow. This failure will not help bring people over to your educated and rational view, which totally ignores the huge influence that LBJ'S civil rights act, voting rights act, fair housing act, Medicare, Medicaid, Headstart and Foodstamps had on ending Jim Crow.
10
Trumpism is the end, not the beginning of this slide. For decades we let our rights fall away. War on terror. Patriot Act. TSA profiling. NSA domestic spying. More war authorizations. More emergency powers. Supporting the Israeli occupation, genocide, and apartheid. Trump is just so disgusting that everyone can now see the mess that we made of our country.
7
Blacks in the South had a base of support in the North and Federal government that made change possible...although still very difficult of course.
What happens when bigots and authoritarians control all branches of government? How is change possible then?
6
I always learn from Mr. Bouie's columns and put his ideas to work in my classroom when I teach the history of the civil rights movement (which sadly many of my students know nothing about given that they are products of Georgia's education system).
That said, it is all too late. Trump will be re-elected - in a landslide if Sanders is the nominee, and then all hell will break loose. The "United" States is doomed. Instead of obsessing about November, we should be thinking about what comes next, specifically, how to divide up the country. RIP United States and welcome to the world new nations of Cascadia, New England, the new CSA, etc.
7
@Lucien
You are on point. The differences between conservative and liberal states are greater than that between different countries.
With the imbalance in the electoral college and the hyper partisanship of Republicans, the dissolution of the USA is more likely with each day.
5
There’s not going to be any breakup of the country, so let’s stop indulging in a fantasy. We’re all in this together. We either emerge as a stronger democracy, or we suffer the same loss of liberty.
We tried a breakup 150 years ago, and everyone knows how that turned out.
3
Jim Crow laws were enacted after the Reconstruction era and were mainly confined to the Southern states. The bigotry and authoritarianism of Trump and the Republicans exist on a national level, and more than comparisons with US presidents like John Adams or Wilson, analogies with European nations, past and present are still quite pertinent..
"a one-party state and ensure cheap labor, low taxes, white supremacy and a starkly unequal distribution of wealth."
Sounds like Wednesday for the modern GOP.
6
Excellent article. Mr Bouie never disappoints. One of the best opinion writers in the industry.
5
I would expect Jim Crow2 to be somewhat less blatant than its namesake, with racism clothed by classism. As in apartheid South Africa, a few people of color would be declared honorary white. Here it would be done on the basis of wealth and celebrity; there the status was granted to foreign visitors.
Jim Crow2 could be worse than its predecessor. Given our pervasive segregation and lack of social mobility, such a society could make it even harder for people of color to attain economic success than the old system did. The thriving African-American business districts might be suppressed. At the same time it might be less offensive cosmetically to others.
Do not think that it could not happen here. To some extent it already has.
6
Trumps favorite Movie is “Gone With The Wind “. That’s not a Dog Whistle, that’s a tornado siren.
Seriously.
16
@Phyliss Dalmatian
I wish all those who are outraged would look up the author of GWTW. Margaret Mitchell, anonymously , provided for many scholarships for black men, in an era when it was very rare. How’s that for racism?
3
I found it incredibly disturbing Trump would claim Parasite should not win the Academy Award. That should tell everyone where he is heading and should chill you to the bones. When Trump declares martial law and unleashes the right wing militia attack dogs I am sure he will also be backed by the full faith of Putin, Kim, and right wing Europeans. My fear is this is a world wide coupe for strong g men. It's the world rise of the far right.
5
Trump appointing loyalists to highest positions of government is tantamount to Putin putting spies there to collect all our military, intelligence, and technological secrets. Putin’s revenge against America is coming to fruition. Trump is probably selling pardons to the highest bidder, based on “recommendations” from his band of crooks.
5
He is selling pardons. The family of one of the beneficiaries donated tens of millions to Trump’s super PAC. Then Trump issued the pardon.
6
....and under the Democrats we can look forward to a third world existence that features hours waiting in Soviet style ten mile long lines for bread (and everything else including health care).
3
I share your cynicism, but I am here to tell you, we're not going back. I'm willing to give my life for it, like 600,000 did during the American Civil War. Are you?
6
Excellent article, as ever, Jamelle, and thank you for this good research and timely reminder of what the GOP and Trump are up to. The parallels are amazing, and most instructive to the lesson that white and black and all minority people need to get it all together to protect our constitution, as well as each other, through the rule of law and legal assembly. Blessings!
6
"I’m not saying a new Jim Crow is on the near horizon..."
I would. While we haven't yet seen the violent suppression of opposition voices, do you really not see how close we are to it? As I read about the political conditions of the Jim Crow South, I saw great similarity to what we have today. No, we're not there...yet, but we are rapidly heading there. What if Trump loses? Can you not imagine him refusing to step aside? With the help of the traitorous Republicans he has become fully convinced that he is above the law and accountable to no one, and therefore, if he declares the election invalid, that is his right. Who will stop him? How will they stop him?
The U.S. has never been so divided since the Civil War, and that erupted because of that irreconcilable difference. Sadly, I see no off ramp to another bloodletting before we can agree to come together, if we can indeed at all.
2
This is a fascinating piece and I learned quite a lot. The thesis is clearly well-founded: we already have a template for how an American authoritarian government could form and what it would look like. So I am hesitant to offer a counter-point, especially one that may come across as flippant. But this passage, "... there’s no reason to think it won’t look like something we’ve already built, versus something we’ve imported..." is salient. We no longer build things in America, we import them. Next time you walk through a parking lot just count the cars. Bernie Sanders is famous for his, "Every other civilized nation on Earth!!!" lead in to whatever idea he is peddling (free college, free healthcare, free whatever) . And he does so to the roar of his followers.
This might seem vaporous, but I think that if we devolve to authoritarianism, it just might be of the imported variety.
2
As usual, Mr Bouie, excellent insight and forthright, unflinching, to-the-point analysis. But I actually think that in these times there is always a danger of a new Jim Crow materializing, because there are people whose lifetime desires and ambitions are to make that happen. Only constant vigilance and a willingness to refight civil rights struggles will keep the worst at bay: full Jim Crow "authoritarian government with a democratic facade".
5
Trump is not an ideologue but an instinctive authoritarian who’s constructing one-man rule using methods pulled from the Jim Crow era. Then, Southern Democratic Senators, Governors, and local governments, backed by businessmen and landowners and supported by the Supreme Court and federal government, established racial dictatorships through disenfranchisement and violence. The Civil Rights Movement forced the Southern white aristocracy to switch to the Republican Party and quasi-legal tactics to hold power. The national and state Republican Party is running voter suppression campaigns in swing states Wisconsin, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and others, financed by Charles Koch, supported by Roberts Supreme Court decisions. They are running a billion-dollar online disinformation and voter discouragement campaign. White nationalists are preparing to fight for Trump this election, up to and including the use of violence. While Stacy Abrams and the NAACP are fighting for voter rights in the courts, the Democratic leadership’s response has been inadequate. Many Americans believe it can’t happen here, America’s exceptionalist freedom and democracy is inviolate. We’re getting a small taste of the fear poor, black farmers and laborers experienced in the Deep South during Jim Crow, and it’s time to move past impeachment and fight back.
12
I've never considered that the Jim Crow south was authoritarian, but the author makes a convincing case that it was. However, using a picture of segregationist 'colored' signs to suggest that Trumpism will take us down that old path is quite a bit of hyperbole. However, I don't think wherever we do land will be a nice place. Let's hope that Trump loses.
2
@SHAWN Davis
The signs may have disappeared, but the attitudes haven't, unfortunately.
8
“No blacks, no Jews, no dogs allowed.”
Miami park sign during the 1940s.
20
No Irish or Negros need apply. On want ads in the 1940s.
11
Thanks for reminding those who go, ‘wow, I did not know that’ about the most basic historical facts of our country that other ethnicities also suffered from discrimination and fear. Not physical slavery, but many Irish and Italian families, and others I am sure also were heavily discriminated against. And, surprise, it’s not just the US. The U.K. is finally admitting to exactly how widespread their support for slavery was, and let’s not forget how prevalent it also was among some Native American tribes and, oh yes, in Africa. And virtually every culture to some degree since recorded history. Frankly, I am much more interested in solutions.
2
I wholeheartedly disagree with the term authoritarianism when applied to the Jim Crow South. That type of state-sponsored terrorism must be labeled for what is was. We have been giving a pass to those states for blatant terrorism against African-Americans far too long and must finally acknowledge what it truly was.
277
Another cause of Jim Crowe was poverty among southern white rural folks hit hardest by Reconstruction, the northern press beat them up. Preventing another mistake like that might be to tell stories about nice white southern poor people, kindhearted families who feel beat up. Trump has pretended to be their only hope. We might benefit by having a Doug Jones as our =vice president, a nice person from that region.
In the time of Jim Crow it was the Southern Democrats that used violence and voter exclusion to eliminate democracy. Today the Republicans are using much of the same playbook for the same reason. History will paint them with the same brush.
2
Given the announcement that this administration is actively looking for disloyal folks, it sounds more like Trump is trying to channel Joseph McCarthy. With Barr in the mix it is impossible to avoid the suspicions.
2
It seems likely that any society hell-bent on keeping its abuses secret will devolve into a anti-democratic and anti-scientific exercise in hoarding wealth and power for a favored few. That favored few is likely to mostly consist of yesterday's favored few paired with some of today's most criminal and most eagerly complicit.
Just a thought from the state that elected Jim Jordan...
4
Having grown up in the Deep South in the 50’s and 60’s, this thoughtful column struck a painfully familiar nerve. Given its dubious history as the Sponsor of Jim Crow, segregation, lynching, and other horrors, why doesn’t the now reformed Democratic Party change its name to to separate itself from its shameful history? That party cut the deal in the 1876 election that virtually reenslaved the black people.
I wince every time I hear the Speaker, a leader of the Democratic Party, declare that Trump’s aquittal means little but the fact that he was initially accused is damning. This “get a rope” response to an aquittal unpopular with prominent Democrats is a chilling reminder of the response to the Leo Frank sentence which was also unpopular with Democrats at the time.
As we justifiably take down offensive memorials, and re-name offensively named streets, we should respectfully ask the Democratic Party to change its shamefully offensive name. Progressive, American, or Reform would be innocuous suggestions. This would inure to the benefit of the current party.
No self respecting minority voter should be saddled with the label Proud Democrat, regardless of the Party’s recent success in changing its previously despicable positions.
5
Certainly we can expect that elections will be held and there will still be courts and news sources. But in the authoritarian state elections are not fair, the courts are not independent, and the government is some manner controls most of the press. According to Trump things need to radically change because the Democrats are committing fraud in elections, there are Obama and Bush judges on the courts, and the press published fake news. That is the view from the right wing alternative reality universe which can be viewed daily on Fox News. Without an agreed on reality democracy cannot survive and Trump and authoritarians win. That is the mess we are in now and it isn't clear out to deal with this conundrum.
2
The real question of this article is where do we go from here? Are our institutions strong enough to not just weather Trumpism but to genuinely build a society that is both open and just? I have my doubts.
But history is not over. Outside events or overreaching by Republicans could produce a backlash that erodes their current grip on power. It can happen.
But why wait? Democrats and independents have in their power the ability to change this narrative through the power of the ballot and as early as this fall. The key is that people of more progressive ideals have to show up, register and vote. It is the ultimate key to reversing this backward slide into authoritarianism.
Thanks. Authoritarianism is always lying in wait for moments when fear is on the rise. Beware of leaders who try to stoke fear: "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
5
Outstanding piece. Very thoughtful and thought provoking. Thank you.
4
This precise idea occurred to me the other day reading the umpteenth article on authoritarianism and its rise here. While many are shocked at the level of comfort (displayed as disbelief) by many with what is going on, it made me realize it is comfortable to so many because we have been here before, albeit not uniformly. My father grew up in the Jim Crow South and this is what he described when he chose to leave. This is the "again" piece of MAGA.
6
A little disagreement, the Great Depression, certainly didn't reorder society to the benefit of the poor and / or the blacks.
The Great Recessions tend to reorder society to the benefit of the rich, which is what commenced at the end of the George W. Bush administration. Even while recovering from the Great Recession the rich found it convenient to get themselves a tax cut (Trump Kushner Tax cut) which adversely affects the middle class on down.
This is a great opinion piece. I'm a believer that every American should have to study Black History in America. A required course in high school and college. I would urge any one who has not listened to MLK: Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence on YouTube to do so.
Of course, for many Americans, having to confront racism in society, makes them even more belligerent. Take a look at Germany. Unable to come to grips with the horror of the holocaust a minority of citizens have become even more belligerent.
4
Thanks so much for this great, informative article.
Excellent piece. I would only add one item: The police. Studies have shown great efforts by white supremacists to infiltrate law enforcement agencies. To the extent that they succeed, they convert those portions of law enforcement into new little Jim Crow enclaves through racially disparate enforcement of laws.
https://theintercept.com/2018/11/05/new-york-times-police-white-supremacy/
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@N Yorker
The coming war will start all over the country, not just in the south, and the police will be the first troops to respond to the opposition militias. The Confederacy wants as many of their people in Americas police forces as possible so that when that day comes they will stand with a Republican one party state and oppress the people. It won't work in the long run but it will work at first. In the long run it will be war.
20
@N Yorker
Amen. And these stories are just now starting to see the light of day in some parts of the country. Check out this story from beautiful Portland, Oregon:
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/02/west-linn-to-pay-600000-to-settle-wrongful-arrest-racial-discrimination-suit-stemming-from-former-chiefs-favor-for-a-friend.html
And the above breaking story has just led to this story about the former West Linn, OR police chief and city officials who did nothing:
https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/452800-369266-west-linn-police-investigators-terry-timeus-report-went-unread
12
I think Mr Bouie makes a very solid point here. Indeed, we must look at our own history more impartially in order to understand the workings of authoritarian forms of government on our own soil. However, we also need to look outward at the various contemporary authoritarian governments and popular support for "strong leaders" abroad. The social forces today -- the ones that foster the rise of authoritarian governments -- exist in response to different social factors: e.g., globalization and migration pressures. Such pressures impact the US as well. Perhaps it is the combined scrutiny of past and present, internal and external authoritarian tendencies/regimes that will yield the most lucid insights?
1
I think Mr Bouie makes a very solid point here. Indeed, we must look at our own history more impartially in order to understand the workings of authoritarian forms of government on our own soil. However, we also need to look outward at the various contemporary authoritarian governments and popular support for "strong leaders" abroad. The social forces today -- the ones that foster the rise of authoritarian governments -- exist in response to different social factors: e.g., globalization and migration pressures. Such pressures impact the US as well. Perhaps it is the combined scrutiny of past and present, internal and external authoritarian tendencies/regimes that will yield the most lucid insights?
I thank the writer for this column. I now have a better understanding of the appeal of our autocrat to god fearing, family values, red blooded, traditional Southern Republicans.
1
Excellent and insightful column. Thanks for continuing to shine the light on our darkest corners.
6
The European viewpoint has gradually shifted my opinion of the United States. It is a country with deep strands of racism that has never had to face it past nor undergo any kind of « truth and reconciliation » between white and blacks.
The United States has passed laws pushing European countries to return property stolen by the nazis to descendants of persecuted Jewish people. Art, paintings, houses.
It never thought about returning property to its own black victims, and amend for its own pogroms against black Americans.
Kudos to Jamelle for such excellent op-ed. I don’t agree with everything but he challenges to question our own conception of American history.
11
Excellent piece; thank you Mr. Bouie. I've been wondering if the reason we find ourselves at this crossroads of our constitutionally-defined democratic priniciples is precisely because more black and brown Americans now exercise their franchise and expect to participate in our democracy equally, and more young Americans of all colors and backgrounds are growing up with the expectation that America is actually a diverse, pluralistic, equal society. I wonder if America is closer to living up to its intended potential now than ever before in our nation's history? I believe this possibility scares the you-know-what out of traditionally-privileged groups, who contemplate this potential of a truly equal American future, and see the loss of their privilege while growing power is held in the hands of previously disenfranchised groups whom the privileged elites have been raised, educated and trained to disregard and disempower. Scary, eh?
We must speak the truth of our nation's founding purpose with stronger voices than ever, and continue working to empower every American in our democracy. The Emperor Has No Clothes, and we must speak this truth loudly and clearly. Looking to our nation's past as Mr. Bouie outlines will help us understand the specific ways in which American constitutional values have never truly been implemented for all Americans. This understanding gives us a roadmap to implement those cherished American democratic values for real, for everyone.
5
The majority of young people in college today couldn’t begin to speak to Jim Crow
or it’s evil consequences in the Democratic South. Some might assume he’s a young rapper.
If there is a party attempting an authoritarian coup, trying to prevent the popular nomination of one of its own presidential candidates or attempting to go around the 12th amendment in a most underhanded manner, if there is an elite class in this country convinced of its own singular legitimacy and elitism, it is the Democratic Party of 2020. The irony is that after watching recent debates, the American people should begin to realize that Democracy is alive and well.
5
Whoever is the Democratic nominee must give more chips in the game of governing the nation to Blacks, Latino's and other minorities.
That means using the convention in Milwaukee to not only anoint a champion but also to launch a moral crusade that focuses on what Americans have to lose if Trump is returned to office for another four years.
Nobody has more at stake than Blacks, Latino's and other minorities. So, to fully enlist their vote, that means inviting Stacy Abrams or Corey Booker to serve as VP, Kamala Harris as AG, Susan Rice as Secretary of State, Julian Castro at Homeland Security, and Andrew Yang as Secretary of Commerce.
Announced at the convention, these cabinet appointments will disperse around the nation as campaigners to reignite the coalition that elected Obama twice.
If we can win this mother of all elections, Jim Crow will recede in the rear view mirror, not to be forgotten because it should never be forgotten, but to become a cautionary tale like the Trump presidency.
And
2
The treatment of dissenting whites was incredibly brutal, including lynchings. In authoritarian regimes like the Jim Crow south, it's not just enough to be part of the "In" group, you must also ideologically conform, or else.
White supremacists are not just looking for white power, but also state control over religious belief, gender roles, sexuality, sexual orientation, dress, music, entertainment and every other imaginable aspect of personality and behavior.
So to any middle class white person who is tempted to vote for Trump to keep their taxes low in the fall. Remember that your privileges and freedom will also suffer.
548
How I wish that Lincoln would not have been so magnanimous in April of 1865. He had just won reelection and the Radical Republicans, led by Thaddeus Stevens, were ascendant.
Imagine if Lincoln had signed the Wade-Davis Bill, which meant that Southern States would not be readmitted to the Union unless a majority of their citizens could swear that they had not supported the Confederacy. Imagine if General Sherman had not been prevented from breaking up the plantations and giving each Freedman forty acres and an Army mule.
True, these harsh terms would have meant Lee wouldn't have surrendered, but so what? The extra time in the field would have allowed Sheridan and Grant to smash the Army of Northern Virginia to bits and then turn their combined Army loose in the Carolinas.
But most importantly, an extra year of Civil War would have allowed Sherman to head inland again from Savannah. Sherman knew what total war was, and would have cut a sixty mile wide swath through southern Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, burning every plantation in his path.
4
Excellent piece, one I am afraid that may fall on deaf ears. The irony of the Jim Crow south (and the modern Trump led GOP) is that the people that most supported GOP were in many ways as harmed as blacks were, yet they believed they were maintaining 'their place'. Take a look at the South during the Jim Crow era, and what do you see? A society controlled by a political elite (much like it was in the Antebellum South, the planter oligarchy), and a society where workers had no labor rights, where education was overwhelmingly good for the elites, while poor for everyone else, a place where workers lived with polluted water and downwind from the factories in factory housing, while the elite lived upwind in mansions. Yet the elites convinced the hoi polloi that their lot lay with them, that the blacks were their enemy and if they didn't keep blacks separate, everything they had would be lost (begs the question, what did they have to lose?). And yes, as with today, by segregating blacks and denying them rights, along with demonizing blacks to the white citizenry, they kept people from organizing and demanding a real democracy. It doesn't take a genius to see this, the fact that labor organizing and the start of the revitalization of the South happened in the civil rights era is no coincidence, labor rights and civil rights were closely tied together. Sadly, we are reverting, in that once again the white working class has bought into the notion that 'they' must be kept in check.
11
Many thanks to Mr Bouie for an excellent summary of Prof Mickey's book and research. The authoritarian model certainly fits and the implications for our country are certainly plausible.
While I agree with Mr Bouie's observation that many of the preconditions for an authoritarian regime to reappear, I challenge his assertion that "the potent influence of a reactionary business elite" is playing a role in our current crisis of a lawless president and a complicit political party undermining the rule of law in our country.
There is zero evidence of this. His assertions undermines and weakens the excellent points of both his opinion and the Mr Mickey's findings.
Making such an assertion may comport well with some of the socialist claptrap coming from the further left in this country, but it is at odds with reality.
The business elite of this country is primarily centered in corporate America and comparable corporate entities headquartered abroad with major operations in our country. They, like the US military, are probably the most inclusive organizations outside of civilian government wherein minorities have achieved levels of both management and leadership responsibility and accountability.
Are there dysfunctional individuals in corporate America and in privately held corporations who are autocratically inclined and possibly some who are racist and misogynistic? Absolutely.
But that by no means condemns a class of people because of their occupation.
2
Many of the corporate, uber wealthy elite, here and abroad are left leaning liberals
and socialists.
5
Jamelle-
Thank you for making me remember history I learned as an undergraduate in the late '70s. Unfortunately, most Americans have absolutely no knowledge of the events you outline. They
do not, as I did not before college, that there was a chance for poor whites and poor blacks to make common cause in the late 1800s.
What happened to end it is a precursor to today's conservative tactics. Tactics as old as politics itself. Divide and conquer.
7
Well done, very much needed piece. One of your best.
7
This is excellent analysis.
5
After taking enough philosophy classes, I am not a fan of endless discussions of what a word really means. A better way suggested by philosophers of language is to see how a word is used in society. Isn't that the way dictionary authors gather the information in their books?
The American government was called a democracy when women were not allowed to vote, and now, although felons are prevented from voting, as well as children, it's still called "democracy."
Jamelle Bouie presents plenty of historical evidence to show that Jim Crow is authoritarian. That's not mutually exclusive from democracy.
Consider Bloomberg's non-consensual racist frisking policy, an authoritarian violation of blacks and browns, perpetrated by democracy, and yet it denies full restitution to his victims.
Why fight an endless meaning-change war over a word? Bouie could more easily call the government he favors "Bouieism," then define it precisely to fit his theory.
If others find his concept useful, they will use it, then it becomes a common word in society.
2
Outstanding article and solid analysis.
Authoritarianism is not always creeping - sometimes it marches in, starts smacking people around, and declares it's the law, like a bully. Pushing back decisively and without quarter - as with a bully - is the one way to prevent such forced takeovers.
This is why I think the Bundys deserves significantly harsher treatment in NV and OR. They engaged in exactly the sort of bullying behavior mentioned above.....and we as a nation allowed them to get away with it.
12
Age 80; one-dropper.
I had the full Jim Crow experience.
When I could do it, I left the south for good.
I generally don't even visit.
There are lots of places eager to get my tourist dollars
that didn't mistreat me as a child and young adult.
27
Yes. In fact, had the end of slavery and the beginning of Jim Crow been handled by simply stating that "all humans, regardless of race or sex, are Persons" we'd have done better than the multiple amendments that tried to add rights when the rights have always existed if you just accept that blacks and women are people.
14
Mr. Bouie cites several books about Jim Crow in the South, but what about scholarship on Jim Crow in the North?
I just googled "books on Jim Crow in the North" an got several hits, led by "The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North," edited by Brian Purnell, Jeanne Theoharis, and Komozi Wooward. The central theme in this collection of essays is that "Liberalism, rather than lighting the way to vanquish the darkness of the Jim Crow North gave racism new and complex places to hide."
Seems to me, Jim Crow left just as authoritarian a stamp upon the North as the South. In conclusion, the book "ultimately dispels the myth that the South was the birthplace of American racism, and presents a compelling argument that American racism actually originated in the North."
This book, rather than C.V. Woodward's "Mind of the South," might have bolsters Bouie's contention that Trumpism is leading to a new Jim Crow, after all Trump and his father would not rent to African-Americans, demonstrating that racism and discrimination was as bad in NYC as in any major Southern metropolis.
Although I am a major supporter of President Trump, I will agree that racism is in his DNA, which I would tolerate any day of the week over Hillary Rodham Clinton's enabling and protection of her philandering husband. Thank you.
6
@Southern Boy, you're right that Jim Crow laws developed first in the North and then moved South. Still, among many other differences between the regions, here's one major one: people who weren't white had a massively easier time voting outside the South and, since voting is the key element of democracy, that means the North was much more of a democratic region than the South. And those black voters outside the South were, by the 1940s, very important in putting pressure on the national Democratic Party to give up the party's more than century-long role as guarantor of southern white supremacy.
Not sure I can get my Texan head around why you think racism + philandering is preferable to protection of a philandering husband, but, the USA is still, for the moment, a democracy (unlike the CSA!), so you do you.
@Southern Boy The Clinton transgressions involved a few. Trump involves millions at the expense of millions!
2
@Southern Boy
If you tolerate the racism "in his DNA" then makes you a racist because you are complicit.
That is exactly the way that racism propagates itself from generation to generation.
None of us are born racist. We learn that it exists, then we either choose to tolerate it or not.
I choose not to.
1
Excellent piece. A point to add: during the long centuries when slavery was legal in the south (and in the north till slavery was gradually ended) the black laws or codes ( both terms were used at the time, they were not invented in the Jim Crow era) were equally authoritarian and equally protected by one party rule in those states. Democratic debate was slowly squelched through many forms of intimidation of white men voters who might dissent. Fear was wielded as a racialized weapon. The white south knew how to do all this long before the 1890s. All of which is to say, the United States has a history of racially selective authoritarianism that stretches all the way back to the colonial period.
323
@Louise Knight
Slavery existed in both regions of the country but it was not nearly as widespread in the north -- where between 1774 and 1808 it had ended in every single state -- as it was in the south where the vast majority of blacks lived (and by 1900 90% still lived).
Discriminatory laws in northern colonial America persisted but were not protected by "one-party rule" as they were in the Jim Crow south and were not equally authoritarian. In the Jim Crow south they were a strict form of social control intended to keep people in indentured servitude, take their voting rights away and even seize their children for labor purposes.
I'm not absolving the north of any racism or discrimination,
12
@Louise Knight You don't know what authoritarianism means. Authoritarianism is what was done to Jews in 20+ countries for a millennium. Slavery was common everywhere (guess who built the Coliseum? Salves from .... Jerusalem). All of this was quite common and the only unique thing about the US is that it is the only country in the world where the majority gave up 350,000 lives to free the minority.
8
Mr Bouie's analysis is certainly correct, but I would argue that Trumpism is merely a more extreme and openly racialized version of the neo-liberalism working to undermine US democracy since the Reagan administration, if not earlier. From the 1980 election onwards, under the mantle of neo-liberalism, corporate elites have led a step-by-step dismantling of the New Deal, whose ultimate goal is to wrest all political power from the working-class, and reduce the majority of Americans to a state of precarious employment, debt peonage, and political impotency. Both of our political parties have been complicit, and today the US is arguably a “duopoly,” with a two-party system that consistently produces the same results—a disempowering of the working class—no matter whether Republicans or Democrats rule. Trump's authoritarian stamp is rooted in the exorbitant power of our corporate "aristocracy," and their desire for a return to the semi-feudal economic relations of the Old South.
345
@ando arike - Can you provide any specifics instead of just general blabber.
How has the new deal been "dismantled"? It has continued to be expanded, not dismantled. Expansion of what Social Security will pay and the amount invested in social programs by the Federal government has never been higher.
Name one "new deal" program that was "dismantled".
18
@ando arike
Huh? Dismantling the New Deal?
Social programs—“entitlement spending”— has increased nonstop for generations. Real, per capita, as a percentage of GDP—however you want to measure it.
This has been true for 80 years, through both Republican and Democratic administrations.
9
@John
Not sure which planet you're living on, John, but since you asked, here are several examples of how the New Deal has been dismantled:
1. De-unionization through the off-shoring of manufacturing and weakening of pro-labor laws.
2. Financial sector deregulation, most notably the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.
3. Continual lowering of tax rates on the wealthy..
4. Continual attacks on the Food Stamp program.
5.Weakening of unemployment insurance program
6. Stagnation of minimum wage
BTW - Social Security has been on the chopping block for decades...
181
Mr. Bouie might like to come to Alabama to observe & report on its Super Tuesday primary election.
Exhibit A: The increasingly strict enforcement of voter-ID laws requiring state-issued photo IDs at polling places.
Exhibit B: The state's byzantine 1901 constitution. It enshrines the primacy of the state legislature over localities. Some changes at the county & city levels require amendments to the state constitution, subject to popular vote, for implementation.
Exhibit C: The 3 March ballot has a referendum to amend the state constitution to abolish the current, popularly elected, state-wide board of education (which oversees K-12 curricular standards, among other duties) and replace it with a new board _appointed by the governor._
Alabama's Republican Party has a supermajority in both chambers of the state legislature, and is dominant in many county & city governments as well. Every governor for more than 20 years has been Republican.
But the state board of education amendment might be a bridge too far even for Alabama's Republicans, many of whom seem to remain nostalgic for Jim Crow and the "Lost Cause."
Exhibit D: The Republican primary for U.S. Senate, pitting a former football coach & a currently serving congressman who are unabashed Trumpistas, the pedophile twice-fired State Supreme Court chief justice, and the former AG who looks _great_ compared to Bill Barr.
Stay tuned. There's _a lot_ more going on than the Democratic presidential race.
260
I suppose you could see the referendum to make the Alabama state board of education appointed rather than elected as anti-democratic if you have not paid attention to the vote-pandering antics of board members over the last three decades, or are willing to ignore the abysmal state of most of our public schools. Will an appointed board perform better? It might not, but it could not perform worse.
8
@Another Reader I would guess it's about teaching evolution and an honest view of American history, and if the government of Alabama wants to change those things, they aren't going to do it for the better.
15
I was really happy to read this article. I am a teacher, and when we approach Jim Crow we don't teach that it was an authoritarian regime. We teach about racism. By not talking about authoritarianism, we imply that a government system that systematically excludes participation by a targeted group of citizens can still be a democracy. The U.S. was not a democracy under Jim Crow. The fight against Jim Crow was a fight for the rights of Black Americans and a fight for all of us to live in a country ruled by a democratically elected government.
661
@JO How could it be an authoritarian government when it was the Federal Government who sent troops into the South to enforce desegregation.
In the end the Federal Government in the late 50's (led by a Republican) sent troops to protect the rights and begin the long path to desegregation.
May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional. The Brown v. Board of Education decision was historic and began the process of true desegregation.
3
@John You answer the question in your first paragraph with the phrase in your second paragraph: "in the end." Long time between the 1890s and the 1950s!
58
@John
Now thoroughly undercut by private schools , including religion-specific ones that are partially government funded.
36
JIm Crow may have also destroyed the civil rights of poor whites along with blacks, but as long as they were allowed to feel superior to blacks, they weren't too upset about it. When they were forced by the federal government to go to school, ride and eat with blacks they joined the southern plutocrats and gradually withdrew from the Democratic party.
Now the children of Jim Crow, anti-North culture control the Republican party and find Trump's words and actions exciting.
Meanwhile, liberal democrats have failed to accomplish major socio-economic progress, even while having super majorities.
The Watts riot occured less than a year after LBJ ended Jim Crow. Obviously, most racial strife is about the money. Minorities can't make the system fair with their votes alone, they are the minority.
White Americans, as a whole, are fine with economic justice, as long as we don't have to pay for it. That's how we ( all people, actually) are. LBJ's "war on poverty" included no major infusion of tax money. That went to fighting Viet Nam.
18
"It took two decades of disruption — the Great Depression, the Great Migration and the Second World War — to even make change possible, and then another decade of fierce struggle to bring democracy back to the South."
During which time and shortly thereafter, southern white Dems switched and virtually seized control of the Republican party, certainly partially motivated by deep cultural resentments towards the powers that once destroyed the slave economy and then Jim Crow.
Is a democracy really a democracy when it becomes dysfunctional? When a free press misinforms and perpetuates this dysfunction?
When the people willingly allow authoritarianism or theocracy through their votes?
387
@alan haigh we also seem to forget to mention the Supreme Court’s role in the matter. Everyone needs to take thirty minutes to listen to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast episode titled “Miss Buchanan’s Period of Adjustment.” It’s about the disappearance of African American teachers during Integration due to the Court’s decision to go with the Southern way of thinking.
We lost so many wonderful black teachers during the 60’s due to the Southern influence on SCOTUS. I am personally terrified that Trump’s Justices will do similar harm. Authoritarianism, when backed up by the courts, is essentially the endgame.
86
@alan haigh If they willingly "allow," or outright desire, authoritarians and theocrats to come to power, perhaps it's a return to the norm. This era of liberal democracy is a blip on the radar in contrast to the vast stretches of theocratic and authoritarian governance. Rousseau claimed, did he not, that man is born free but is everywhere in chains? Well, de Maistre replied, that's like saying sheep are born carnivorous but everywhere eat grass.
Hannah Arendt wanted everyone to participate in the political process, because she thought it was essential to give people meaning, a say in constructing the human artifice, something that would live beyond their own lives. But she didn't mean "Get out the vote!" If this is the way we're going to govern ourselves, with political participation being much like cheering for a sports team, I'm not very optimistic. I don't see what purpose is served any longer by intermediating institutions designed to check uninformed mass opinion. Bloomberg was a Republican, Sanders an Independent, and Trump cared nothing for the GOP. All of these people are using political parties to elevate themselves, all while trashing the very parties whose nominations they seek.
The biggest problems in America, looked at in a certain way, stem not from elites having purchased the political system, but rather from a political system that is too responsive to ever-changing mob opinion, and whose members are neither able to see beyond their noses nor to compromise.
7
@David L, Jr. There are two kinds of people in America and the modern world, owners and employees. Both groups imagine they are entitled to more than their fair share, but only owners have the power to enforce their crooked math and this power is amplified in the U.S. political system
The rest of the world has known about this for ages but the American people tend not to want to know- as long as things are good enough for the majority of us.
13
This is a terrific column. Thank you very much.
3
/thank you, Mr. Bouie. I learned a lot!
America’s Original Sin: the gift that keeps on giving.
3
Thank you for this article Mr. Bouie. It is informative and thought-provoking.
17
I agree, Democrats who implemented the Jim Crow laws in the South were evil and disrespected human rights of all African Americans.
Thank god 80% of Republicans voted in favor of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
4
@John
Sadly you forget the fact that since then, Republicans have done everything in their power to keep the party white and restrict any progress made by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
19
@John
The Republican Party today is not the country club Republicans of 1964.
Those Southern Democrats are now Trump Republicans.
When Lyndon Johnson passed Civil Rights, Nixon and other Republicans started the Southern Strategy, the plan to convert the Southern Democrats who didn't like Civil Rights to Republicans.
Ronald Reagan helped with his dog-whistle politics of welfare queens.
I always laugh when Republicans claim they are the party of Lincoln.
They are not. If Lincoln were alive today, he would be a Democrat.
54
@John That of course was before Richard Nixon eagerly invited the resentful Southern "Dixiecrats" into the GOP.
3
Went to a big dinosaur show last night in Pensacola and a couple of restaurants, and I think I saw what will be the ultimate death of Jim Crow: miscegenation, perhaps the worst nightmare of white Southern mentality, at least the perceived and stereotyped Southern mentality.
I saw mixed couples everywhere. In the Deep South. No one batted an eye; don't know what they were thinking, though, maybe about bringing it up again at the next Klan meeting. Speaking of which, I knew of Klan meetings in Texas, but have yet to see or hear of one in Florida. Howsabout them apples?
2
"Southern conservatives beat back Populism and biracial democracy to build a one-party state "
This just goes to show how meaningless the word "Populism" is. How can the same word be stretched to cover a biracial reform movement in the 1880s and a racist dicatator-wannabe in the 2010s? The Times needs to stop using the word.
2
@Charlesbalpha No, you need to understand what "populism" is, and the Times is not the best place to look for a good analysis. Populism has historically had left and right variations, and the current rise of Trump and Bernie exemplify both. The weakness of populism is its focus on "leaders" and it's tendency towards class collaboration and dependence on elites and electoralism rather than depending on building lasting working class political organizations of revolutionary self-defense. Left populism borrows a critique of concentration of wealth and power at the top from socialism and an emphasis on popular mobilization for social and economic reforms with a focus on the electoral arena rather than mass direct action. Right populism tends to direct popular anger against traditional scapegoats - foreigners, people of color, cultural dissidents of any strip - to deflect popular animus away from the concentration of wealth and power at the top and to promote a return to an imaginary "golden age" in the past. Both types of populism channel working class anger away from a direct revolutionary confrontation with capitalism and toward accommodation with it.
8
Indeed it was "overseas" that looked to the American south to create their own authoritarian systems.
The Jim Crow laws were used as the legal basis for the Nuremburg Laws of Nazi Germany. With one exception. While the United States held that "one drop" of Black blood made a person a member of that race, the German legal scholars found that way too harsh. So someone with one Jewish grandparent who did not identify as Jewish was deemed Aryan.
This is all documented in the book "Hitler's American Model."
11
Excellent essay; reminds me of the 1619 historical essay series which tells me that to be accurate, the U.S.A. history needs to be revised to reflect the native American and African American experience. Their fate is the true measure of our history.
We are taught in high school that our nation sought independence from a despotic king because the king “taxed without representation,” “quartered troops in colonialists’ homes,” conducted forced conscription of American sailors at sea, and so on.
However, the first of the 1619 essays alerted me to the primary b reason for the American’s war against the Crown: Southern slave owners (some of the richest people in the world at the time) in particular could see that the English were turning against slavery and would inevitably outlaw it in the colonies. All the talking points about “taxation without representation…” was a propaganda talking point to rally the northern militia against the King.
Finally, the other issue that drove the Northerners in particular to revolt against the King was the law that said colonialists shall not migrate west; the land west was a preserve of the Crown and so colonialists were forbidden to go there; our good hero Daniel Boone disrespected the wishes of the King of England.
Sadly, the noble, abstract points of American History (the Bill of Rights, and other amendments) are distractions, even disinformation, from the essential land grab and ensuing violence that defines American history.
10
@Chuck
Each and every country has its mythological underpinning. What matters are the underlying values. So long as every American citizen, no matter the colour of their skin, could swear allegiance to the beautiful US flag and feel proud of their free and democratic and highly advanced nation in spite of their de fact second-class citizen status, the underpinning was working.
The Trump presidency and the reactionary arc followed by America ever since the Reagan administration, however, has revealed in an increasingly stark manner the dark side of America, and that dark side consists of the legacies of genocide and slavery, its two foundational sins. The tension between the underpinning and reality is reaching the breaking point.
It is up to the American people to reverse that arc before it is too late.
10
Thank you, Mr. Bouie. This is a very valuable column. It's curious how many (white) historians have quite explicitly described the New South movement is progressive (but then, think of all of the--white--historians who've described Woodrow Wilson as progressive, and who simply have ignored his race policy and his opposition to women's suffrage). Now that we have historical models like Stalinism and Nazism, a new American authoritarianism might, over time, go (even) farther than Jim Crow did. Curiously, Donald Trump's arbitrariness and lack of interest in governing and details might actually slow the process down, even while he'd be a great enabler.
3
Thanks for those penetrating thoughts, but isn't it evident that authoritarianism is full blown in the workplace of every wage and salaried worker? Isn't this germane to the subject you address? Does democracy exist in the workplace? Of course not. Tyranny exists on a daily basis in the lives of workers. This fact is reflected in the political system where racism is employed to obscure and control the central issue economic tyranny.
6
Really brilliant and important column. Thank you. It is constantly necessary to remind ourselves of the terrible injustice upon which our country was built.
When will men ever stop hoarding wealth and protecting power? When will they ever stop killing each other, suppressing each other, and committing genocide to get wealth and power? When will people who call themselves Christians and “people of God” ever find the love that casteth out fear? When will they ever grasp that insane amounts of power and money do not give us anything we are actually here for? We are here to learn the virtues, in whatever way you conceive them. For Christians, it is the Sermon on the Mount, and Paul’s “Fruits of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, goodness, and self-control. What in all of our vast history of hatred of blacks and genocide of native Americans is consistent with these? How can we insist this is a Christian country, and go to church on Sunday, when what we really want is not God but money and power?
8
This confirms the fact that bad people are pretty much evenly distributed throughout the world. Why wouldn't they? A human being has between 20,000 and 25,000 genes, and in all that genetic mass there lurk the "bad person" genes, ready to pop out into the world with clockwork statistical precision. It never stops. True democracy is a half drowning person barely coming up for air from time to time in a frothing sea of bad people.
3
As you see any constitution is not effective if a vast majority, authorities and a relevant number of courts included, has decided just to ignore its rules.
This is called the "Böckenförde dilemma" of 1964.
"The liberal (German "freiheitlich"), secularized state lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself. This is the great adventure it has undertaken for freedom's sake. As a liberal state it can only endure if the freedom it bestows on its citizens takes some regulation from the interior, both from a moral substance of the individuals and a certain homogeneity of society at large. On the other hand, it cannot by itself procure these interior forces of regulation, that is not with its own means such as legal compulsion and authoritative decree. Doing so, it would surrender its liberal character (freiheitlichkeit) and fall back, in a secular manner, into the claim of totality it once led the way out of, back then in the confessional civil wars."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6ckenf%C3%B6rde_dilemma
Here the link to the original text and to more criticism
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6ckenf%C3%B6rde-Diktum
Simply spoken: If enough authorities agrre to ignore the rules in practise it will just a piece of paper no matter what´s written on it.
It´s well known in international constitutional law but not so much in USA.
10
Wow, great article. Thanks for elucidating the reality of Jim Crow and its beginnings in conflict between agrarian populist movements.
As usual, most Americans are clueless as to how often the seeds of greater horror were often planted and tested here first: Jim Crow laws were used by Nazi Germany as models for their own Nuremberg laws against Jewish citizens. With a more ruthless bureaucracy, that eventually led to the extinction of millions of Jews, Poles, and other "undesirables" across Europe.
The difference between us and Germans and Poles today: They actually acknowledge the horrors that happened, and have openly resolved to never let that happen again.
12
@JCTeller
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/world/europe/germany-mayors-far-right.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Some trump supporters here seem to think that because America is a 'democracy', it cannot fall into authoritarianism, cuz that's foreign.
America is a secular republic, but trump supporters are all on board to make it a theocracy, with the general 'evangelical' community large and in charge.
America is a land of immigrants, but trump now uses poor dark people as the 'despised de jour'. And his supporters can't see the history of the despised Irish, Italians, Africans and now Central Americans. They need to despise 'others' to reign with supremacy, and trump certainly delivers that comfy white resentment!
America is a representational gov't, but now trumpies openly shrug at Putin getting to represent BIGLY.
At some point when America 'was great', we knew the Russians to be unworthy of alliance; sneaky assassins of their own people. Now, it's actually 'conservatives' who tell us that our intelligence agencies are deep state machines in service to Nancy Pelosi, and Putin is our pal. The craziest lies are now necessary. But your emperor really has no clothes on!
America is a set of ideals and values; precious and exceptional in this world of vicious power struggles. 'American exceptionalism' is gone for trumpies. It's now trumpocracy and love of....vicious power struggle.
To those who say that our Shining City can never slide down the hill; how did the mighty Roman Empire fall then?
'Wrapped in the flag and carrying a Bible.' Fascism, American style.
14
Anyone old enough to remember how the apartheid system in South Africa dealt with anyone who dared to oppose it can see that authoritarianism is almost required to keep such an unfair and unjust system in place for any length of time.
In the final years of apartheid, South Africa had to resort to secret police, and spying on neighboring countries to keep any group or individual who opposed apartheid firmly under control.
3
I'm reading "Pillar of Fire, America in the King Years 1963-65". This is book two of Taylor Branch's iconic, historic trilogy. The pain, suffering, fear and heroism of those who worked to liberate oppressed black Americans from southern
(and northern) segregation puts 'noir' fiction to shame. Read it and weep for America of 60 years ago.
It is not hard at all to imagine a return to an America where People of Color and the poor are subjected to biased law enforcement favoring white plutocrats and constituents who instill fear in the rest. "Make America Great Again" is a hearkening back to those deplorable times by nostalgic bigots. It is a clear call to authoritarianism. Ends justifying means.
Authoritarianism and fascism will ring hollow and off-putting to most Americans until we understand that there are gradations and a well known progression. The first steps, maligning truth, mainstream press and the enforcers of rule of law is already well underway. Read Lawrence Britt's "The 14 Characteristics of Fascism" or any other well researched study of authoritarianism takeovers and weep, America...!
No! Never! Not here! ...We overcame Jim Crow segregation but it took over 120 years. We don't have that kind of time. Arguably we have until November of next year and a clear remedy. You don't experiment with fascism, you fight it...
6
This is a great argument for why white Democrats need to stay home for a few primary cycles and let POC Democrats pick our candidates. What is the downside? There is not one.
2
Having been born and raised in the Deep South, I can appreciate the truth of the authoritarianism here because I saw it with my own eyes. But I moved away from the South in 1981 and watched good old American Midwestern racism for decades. While authoritarians ruled in the South, in the north the US imported millions of white immigrants to build its cities and bridges and agricultural might. Black people in the Great Migration could not assimilate because of the color of their skin and ended up in ghettos by economical forces such as redlining and social forces such as sundown towns. The whole country can use a long hard look in the mirror.
19
I will never understand why this is not the Democratic Party's overwhelming rallying call. Yes, racism, class inequality, etc. are all prevailing problems in our society; but here we are, in this moment, watching an elected, popularly supported, group of Americans openly dismantle our democracy. We all see it, we all acknowledge it: Republicans are willing to trade our constitutional rights, freedoms, democracy to achieve sustained power and economic growth. You don't hear denials anymore, just "The Democrats are so wrong that they deserve it."
It doesn't matter if you are a racist, an aristocrat, man, woman, socialist, alt-right, religious or atheist. You should value democracy higher than any other belief. The government should be led by people who believe in its basic functions. No one should be above the law. These should never be 'partisan' ideas.
15
This was great!!!!! Amazing! To the point! Loved it!
2
We often define authoritarianism as a function of the state, a characterization of the limits (or lack thereof) of its powers, and a lack of legal protections for individuals when confronted by the power of the state. But in the US South, the state had ceded power to local institutions: the Democratic Party, large corporations, and corrupt political machines. Under such a system, local sheriffs would charge black men with picayune offenses and literally sell their labor to corporations and state run businesses. Men were literally taken off the streets to die in labor camps. Dennis Blackmon's "Slavery by Another Name" details this authoritarian regime.
6
Why not do a counterpoint article to argue that a Bernie Sanders presidency could lead to a dystopian Stalinist nightmare of purges and pogroms? I just don't see these kinds of articles as remotely helpful to a constructive national discourse. This is the equivalent of a political bucket of chum.
8
How unfortunate that your position reflects an inability or perhaps even an unwillingness to look back at America’s faults for helpful pointers regarding its present and its future. Let’s actually learn something from our own history and, where it has drifted so far from equality under the law, determine how to do better tomorrow and the day after.
15
@Mark Larsen Well....sure.....but my larger point was that extrapolations can be pretty useless and sometimes even dangerous. I could take Sanders socialist leanings, point out the obvious connections to Marxism, and then roll out a litany of abuses by regimes espousing those tenets. All those things would be arguably true, but that doesn't make them realistic or even insightful. Here's an example: while it is true that Nazi Germany restricted gun ownership and exterminated people, it doesn't follow that American gun control efforts would lead to a holocaust. I could cherry pick the connections to make a cognizable argument with annotations, but it's not actually reflective of reality. Mr. Bouie and others like him, in my opinion, devalue the cause when they engage in what amounts to journalistic histrionics designed to incite fear.
Truth.
Vote Democratic this Election.
An inversion of the historical situation.
The fabric of our republic (“if you can keep it”) depends on it.
This is not the country whose Military I served in forty years ago was.
(The Planetary ecosystem too, but trivial issues...)
1
There is another huge difference between the risks to America and the reality of Russia under Putin and Turkey under Erdogan.
America has been better. Much better. Vastly better. We are facing decline. It is a steep decline, and fairly rapid now. The slide is accelerating.
Russia was worse. Putin is an improvement over Stalin. He's an improvement over Yeltsin too, as seen by Russians who were starving in a totally broken society.
Turkey was worse. Erdogan brought in democracy, to a country benighted by dictatorship of its military. See the movie Midnight Express for our full understanding of just how very bad Turkey was before Erdogan.
So Putin and Erdogan are incomplete steps up from far worse. Their trajectory is upward. Much improvement is needed, but much has happened, and they themselves did much of that improvement.
What Turkey and Russia need is the next things, to continue the improvements. They must not stall out now, with these two as good enough, these two not trying to do any more.
What the US needs is to check its precipitous decline. We must stop the process of what we are becoming, to return to what we were before.
Turkey and Russia are in the process of putting it together. The US is well down the road to tearing it all apart.
That is a very different place to be.
6
This is good work and a sobering reminder of how not only African-Americans, but all those living in precarity will be hurt by a system (using mechanisms like Citizens United enabled legalized bribery) designed to protect and enlarge the fortunes of the already fortunate at the expense of everyone else.
5
"an authoritarian government with a democratic facade..." I thought that's what we have now?
3
It seems we’re still writing and rewriting post Reconstruction America; because we are still inside of it.
4
Thank you, Jamie, for your unyielding determination to remind us of the egregious behaviors whites have committed in the past. And they continue to do so - which is such an important point.
4
I am at a total loss to grok the paucity of the Spirit, the meanness of the Soul, that defines the worldview of those who must deem The Other to be Less-Than (absurdly based on skin color) in order to feel better about themselves. Sad!
5
As usual, Jamelle has written a stirring piece. Too bad it is loaded with all kinds of unsubstantiated (i.e., he doesn't bother to back them up) claims about Trump and today's Republicans, and coupled (of course) with a link to the various buzz words and phrases today's Left has mainstreamed - authoritarianism, Jim Crow, voter suppression, und so weiter - and a none-too-subtle use of the word "conservatives" in an attempt to steer clear of and soften the reality of the Democratic Party's gruesome past.
3
@smacc1 Ha the USA's Democratic Republic has allowed the USA to listen to Devil as well as the Angels. It has been a mighty tussle and one we appear to be losing.
America has a gruesome past and those that are gruesome, run from one party to the other. The Democrats strove towards that Angels of our Better Nature with the recognition that the Jim Crow south was something to remove; however, the Racist Democrats switched parties to become Gruesome Republicans. Follow the history of Storm Thurmond to see what the Republicans have become; Gruesome.
3
@smacc1
This might come as a surprise to you -- but authoritarianism, Jim Crow, and voter suppression are more than just "Left" buzzwords.
They are also a reality of the direction this country is going in.
1
@smacc1
I wonder if conservatives ever ask themselves: Considering the terrible past of the Democratic Party, what is it about our (the GOP's) present policies that drive 90+% of African-Americans to vote for the Democrats? Consistently.
4
“The past is never dead,” Faulkner writes in Requiem for a Nun. “It’s not even past,” a truth trump underscored recently when he lamented South Korea’s historic Oscar win by saying, “Can we get Gone with the Wind back?” The whole ugly antebellum mindset is no more dead than Jim Crow. For a little while, thankfully, it seemed to be on life support; but under trump, it has begun to thrive.
4
A much needed and clearly written, stimulating reminder.
About what has been. IS. Can be. When complacency and
complicity are enabled. Even promoted. To co-exist.
In a semanticized “democracy.” In a divided nation.
Of diverse Peoples.Ideas.Norms. Values. Ethics.
Faux-religiosity.Weaponized-words. Alt-facts.
People transmuted into numbers in a
culture seeding innumeracy. A letter-united USA
which tolerates anchored policymaker’s harmful personal
unaccountabilities. Revised, unremembered histories and
living- legacies of a daily, toxic, WE-THEY culture.
Which, in addition, and paradoxically, offered MANY,
many opportunities. Depriving all too many their share of...
Enabled, fostered, allowed by each of an US. In diverse ways.
THEN. Each day, NOW. Tomorrow? Personal choices.
1
This government has been just that for centuries, i.e., "an authoritarian government with a democratic facade." There has been no time in the history of this country, since white settlers arrived, that racism and bigotry did not exist—ever. This country was founded on racist genocide and built by slavery, indentured servitude and the oppression of women. Certainly, this country is not alone. That's how the vast coffers of private wealth have been filled throughout history—through class oppression of the wealthy over the poor—and it continues today all over the globe. This is what has to end if humanity is to survive in order to save the world from war and environmental destruction. Capitalism and production for profit has to be replaced by socialism and production for need and want put into its place. It's the only way we can democratically organize ourselves to into a society that fulfills human needs and wants and protects our environment instead of having to devise even more deadly weapons of mass destruction, the police, the military and the prison industrial complex to keep the masses in their place— all the things capitalism needs to protect the wealth and power of the super rich.
3
Mr. Bouie writes, "I’m not saying a new Jim Crow is on the near horizon (or the far one, for that matter)."
Well, if he isn't going to say this, I will. I am not African American, but I am a person of color in this country, in my 60's. And in my lifetime I've seen incredible gains in civil rights among all people, and more recently, seen a staggering erosion of those rights for minorities.
This country's demographics point to the return of Jim Crow - and in fact, will broaden it to include other minorities in addition to African Americans.
And what is this demographic? A shrinking white population. A population that may no longer be the majority within the next thirty years.
And Trump's election and lock on his base shows that their votes are entirely driven by race. They cannot stand the thought of the success of those of us in minority communities, and claim that we "took something away" from them that was rightfully theirs.
The plain fact is, whites are terrified to lose political control of this country. Trump's ascendancy is coupled with a rising - and dangerous - white nationalist movement. This is no coincidence. He knows this is his base - and he continues to feed the beast by telling them that neo-Nazis and the KKK are some very fine people.
We have already seen that Trump voters want to retain power, even if they are a minority. Their notion of country is wholly based on race. And Jim Crow is returning with a vengeance.
9
It must be wonderful to have a time machine!
"I’m looking for like … let’s get ‘Gone with the Wind,’ can we get ‘Gone with the Wind’ back, please?" Subtle, Trump is not. Bouie's is an excellent reminder of a history it seems only white liberals want to forget, because others are remembering it all the time to recreate it.
5
Mr. Bouie, in case you didn't get the memo, but Jim Crow ended 55 years ago when the Civil Rights and Voting Rights act were passed and signed by LBJ.
5
@Charlie Reidy pretty sure he knows that:
"It took two decades of disruption — the Great Depression, the Great Migration and the Second World War — to even make change possible, and then another decade of fierce struggle to bring democracy back to the South."
1
+1 Better than your average NYT column, and they average is pretty high. Minority Democracies (for such I call them, an authoritarian democracy might actually command a majority) are incredibly stable. The antebellum state governments are one example. Wilhelmine Germany is another. It took WWI to dislodge the German autarchy. It took the Civil War to knock the foundations of the south--but even then the war once won, was lost again. Not to put too fine a point on it but the entire United States government is at its core a minority democracy designed to maintain the power of white people. The voting disfranchisement, the prison system, the police beatings....it's all there.
3
I fail to see when the southern states have ever been democratic. The veneer of democracy exists, but not the true substance.
9
The authoritarianism of Jim Crow was also a reversion to an earlier antebellum model.
In the early 1800s, as abolitionist ideas began to spread in the north, the southern states aggressively clamped down on free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.
Some of the religious dominations split, the Southern Baptists being the best example. Northern Baptists often led the charge against slavery--Southern Baptists endorsed slavery enthusiastically.
The long rule of the Dixiecrats after Reconstruction was a sort of reversion to norm for the South. In essence, from the 1890s to the 1960s, we had a de facto 3rd party in the nation.
4
I am curious about John Adams, a one term and not to successful president, authoritarian tendencies. Given the South's failure in almost every category, except when the national government intervened, it does not speak well for what Jim Crow accomplished.
3
A well-argued and persuasive essay that draws disturbing parallels between Jim Crow's resurgence and the current time. I'm less optimistic than Mr. Bouie that we "might be on a path," although I appreciate his effort to raise alarm in a measured tone. With the voter suppression efforts in 2016, particularly in Florida and Georgia, the GOP's targeting through litigation of the protections of the Voting Rights Act, and the efforts across the nation to disqualify voters, we seem to be moving down that path already.
It's particularly disturbing to consider one particular parallel with the Jim Crow era:
This authoritarian regime described in this column was built by poor white people who were convinced by wealthy Southern white elites that their poverty and disenfranchisement was the fault of black people, and not the greed of their white masters.
27
Only when I read Bruce Watson's Freedom Summer did I realize that the tactics used against Civil Rights workers and their white southern allies were those of totalitarian governments. Before that I supposed that discrimination against African-Americans in the South was a specific, isolated phenomenon. Thank you for giving us the larger context.
15
"Americans don’t usually think of Jim Crow as a kind of authoritarianism"
I'm perfectly aware that the pre-civil-rights South was a dictatorship in disguise. In the later 1940s a gubernatorial candidate seized control of the Georgia State Capitol after losing an election, and had his cronies in the Legislature declare him the legal governor. That's the sort of thing that happens in dictatorships with no rule of law. It could probably happen again .
The fake governor's name was Herman Talmadge. Years later, amazingly, he was put on the Senate Committee investigating Watergate. Maybe they thought he was an expert on burglaries.
9
@Charlesbalpha
And the beautiful bridge from South Carolina into Savannah is the Talmadge Bridge. They should change the name and honor someone decent!
2
Thank you for the insightful and realistic description of authoritarian behavior in our own country. It's a much more accurate description of this mean-spirited, power before equality nature of our culture.
7
Let's remember that the "great progressive era" of FDR and the New Deal protected Jim Crow and white supremacy. Those states voters and their powerful politicians were not "progressive' except for whites. They now vote Trump and the GOP.
"Representative Rankin of Mississippi in the 73rd Congress of 1933, speaking on the House floor in support of funding FDR's Tennessee Valley Authority, said that the TVA will "produce more energy than the labor of all the slaves freed in the war"..... Remarkable in his reelection of 1936 was the degree of support he (FDR) secured across the Deep South. Roosevelt's reelection was endorsed by 87% of voters in Alabama, Georgia and Texas, 89% in Louisiana, and an astonishing 97% in Mississippi and 99% in South Carolina, where some counties reported not one Republican vote."
"Fear itself", Ira Katznelson
5
One thing I'm curious about. Are there documented examples in the Jim Crow era of poor whites wanting to vote and being denied? It seems to me that the disenfranchisement measures were pretty exclusively aimed at blacks, and that the whole point of the grandfather clause was to make sure whites didn't get caught up in them. I'm just curious as to whether in practice there were cases of whites actually being turned away from the polls? Or was it more of a general discouragement from voting?
5
@Bert Clere And another question to ask, were any working class whites who "fused" their economic well being to the free association of coloreds ever killed, lynched or robbed?
I have read Howard Zinn's Working People's History of America and he discusses this very exciting period of time of political populism, but as the author of this article points out, the "left" in the South was pretty much wiped out in what was in essence a violent counter-revolution. Not only were voting rights virtually ended for blacks, the well-to-do and willful blacks were lynched, had businesses destroyed, land confiscated, and so on.
Modern authoritarians know enough about history to know they don't need to re-build the Jim Crow apartheid system, a simple gerrymander, scrubbing of the voting rolls, limiting of voting sites, ID requirements is sufficient to secure power.
And sadly, President Trump is the apotheosis of the modern Republican presidency, and he does resemble the likes of Orban, Erdogan, but fortunately, has not followed the path of Mr. Assad in Syria.
3
This is a very good summary of the authoritarian history of the US south. It appropriately refers to the "southern Democratic Party."
I think such essays should note that, when the national Democratic Party, eventually, belatedly put reform pressures on the southern Democratic Party, the southern Dems abandoned the national Democratic Party and were enthusiastically welcomed by the national Republican Party, where they reside today.
The Southern authoritarian system regularly re-elected the same members of the House and Senate, who rose to many committee chairmanships, thus giving the south outsized influence upon our national legislation - for the worse.
Moreover, the romanticized and courtly image of the south, depicted in novels and movies, without proper context, tended to blind other parts of the Country to the cancerous authoritarianism of the south.
The remnants and influence of that history continue to undermine out Country to this day,
22
What an excellent essay! Let's add Shelby County v. Holder, the disgraceful 2013 Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act, and congressional Republicans' seven-year refusal to bring a voting rights bill to the floor, as emblematic of the authoritarian Jim Crow "democracy" now evident nationwide.
18
Looking at the locations of commenters on Mr. Bouie's insightful piece, I so wish more people from the South had read and responded to it. As a lifelong Tennessean, I have seen the perniciousness of Jim Crow, from the local level (Chattanooga city government being forced in the courts of the 1980s to do something about school segregation, creating the magnet school system, and subsequently depriving magnet schools of adequate funding) to today when the Governor opposes the removal of a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state capitol.
It all comes from a "Heritage not Hate" mindset that is a direct descendant of the "Lost Cause" narrative of the Jim Crow era.
Trump's popularity here is as Southern as grits and gravy.
17
@Kathy Veazey That's pretty much the same here, further north, except Louisvillians have this absurd notion that somehow our city has been an exception to segregation, discrimination, and nonsense Confederate veneration because, well, I don't really know why. Our history is pretty terrible, from being the location where slaves were "sold down the river" to New Orleans (that's how that particular phrase originated), to Muhammad Ali throwing his Olympic medal in that same river.
Recently, our lame-duck (Bloomberg-endorsing, btw) Mayor Greg Fischer had a Confederate statue near the University of Louisville main campus torn down... only to sell it down the river (see, there's that phrase again) to Brandenburg, launching point of John Hunt Morgan's raids on Indiana. Still standing in Louisville's Cherokee Triangle neighborhood is a statue of John B. Castleman, one of "Morgan's men" who was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson despite killing Union troops in Missouri. He later founded Louisville's park system, and objected to integrated parks, and led the Louisville Legion in the Spanish-American War. A real charmer, indeed!
There's a recent mural painted downtown a few blocks away from where Louisville's slave auctions were held. It reads: "A History Worth Repeating." I beg to differ.
5
Democracy in America began at the earliest in 1965 with the Voting Rights Act, although an argument can be made for 1971 with the 26th Amendment. It began to end in 2010 with the Citizens United decision and was perhaps mortally wounded with the Shelby County v. Holder decision in 2013. Democracy in America didn't even make it to 50. That is tragic. Simply holding elections does not mean that we have a democracy.
59
@Fred What your very salient point reveals is that by 2010 the modern corporation has evolved to replace the simple family structure of Southern apartheid as the tip of the iceberg of modern political and economic power.
9
@Chuck
Mind blown. There's at least one PhD thesis and a follow-on book for the above-average PoliSci student in these two comments!
4
The words of the founding fathers, pursuit of happiness, all men are created equal, were in their mind only applicable to white people, specifically males. It never occurred to them that these words and ideas applied to africans, American indigenous peoples, and those of non-Christian religions, if it did, we would have a different United States today and it has been such since 1492 at least. And, once it was pointed out, it was clearly defined as such, either through laws, violence, and religious dogma. And today, it is clearly happening in this country and every state. Trump would have never been elected otherwise, nor Nixon, nor Reagon, nor Bushes. The electoral college is a clear check point to keep the masses under control, each time it came into play, it clearly benefited the rich, white voters.
18
The basis of this article is : “Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America’s Deep South, 1944-1972,”
That was 50-80 years ago. This is not living memory other than some AARP Boomers.
In the same time frame - the Germans killed 1/3 of my father's family, and then the Communists imprisoned 1/3 of my Mother's family. To be blunt - starving to death in a ghetto or slave labour in a gulag does not compare to separate drinking fountains. The USA has issues - but when you look at 1944-1972, it was a shining city,
In that time frame - there were hundreds of lynchings, and tens of millions of murders in Europe and Asia.
8
@Tom I think this is a good point.
However, the difference in scale of the suffering/murders between the authoritarian regions of the USA and those of Europe may simply be an accident of history.
Jim Crow meant de facto slavery for blacks living in the South. Blacks had no legal recourse and no defense against arbitrary murder and white terror.
It may be the only reason African Americans did not suffer genocide in the USA was because the Southern economy needed them for their cheap labor.
In fact, during the early years of the Great Migration of 1915-1975, some southern localities were so alarmed at the prospect of losing their African American population that they put a bounty on the heads of any white northerners trying to recruit blacks for factory jobs in the north, and occasionally blacks attempting to migrate north would be rounded up by white authorities and shipped right back to the cotton fields.
6
@Tom Not to take away from what was going on in other parts of the world, but the article is specifically about what was going in the US during the Jim Crow era in which many of our grandparents and parents were alive. To trivialize what many black people were going through is shameful and if you actually read the article you probably would not have left such a careless comment.
9
@Tom
"To be blunt - starving to death in a ghetto or slave labour in a gulag does not compare to separate drinking fountains. "
to be be blunt, you are demonstrating a real lack of historical knowledge. The point is not whether germans and soviets murdered more people than were murdered by the southern regimes. Andt was much more than seperate drinking fountains. It was false imprisonment of afro-americans in orer to force them to work in mones and on the farms of euro-american large farms. It was about the lynching of afro-americans who objected, or simply for "fun". It was about wholesale sexual assault without victims having any recourse to the criminal justice system. It was a refusal to provide health care for afro-americans. It was a refusal to provide education for afro-americans. It was forcing afro-americans to work under inhumane conditions without adequate wages. It was about forcably prohibiting afro-americans even moving out of the south.
your attempt to minimize what jim crow was about simply shows a complete lack of understanding of the political and moral underpinnings of the south and by extension the lack of care and concern on the part of the rest of the US governmental structures.
12
I'll go one step further by saying a new Jim Crow era is already upon us -- and the signs are everywhere.
Starting with a Trump administration that is in no way racially representative of the diversity that defines this nation, and the fact that there are basically no faces of color in the all-white G.O.P. and Senate that essentially governs us.
Then there are the laws being enacted that continue to discriminate, whether it's the travel ban to Muslim and African countries, or the Republican gerrymandering of Black electoral districts or the assured concentration of wealth in select hands, this country is racing back to its dark past of racial segregation disguised by a president who likes to wrap himself up in an American flag and appeal to white nationalism.
Anyone familiar with this country's history sees the signs and knows where it's all going.
The question now is whether we'll wake up in time to alter the course.
48
My only difference with this excellent historical analysis is that it does not take things far enough back. I've always thought of the post-Reconstruction South as a largely successful effort to restore the pre-Civil War system. Then wealthy quasi-aristocrats ran an oligarchy modeled explicitly on the slave-holding ancient Roman republic. The propertied white male ruling class saw itself as the heir of the Roman Senate, which might have been "democratic" amongst themselves but held virtually all power and property, treating both slaves and "free" citizens as clients. This system was a template for the early U.S., and it remains part of our political mythology. Its underlying principle of rule by authoritarianism (or by terrorism, when necessary) seems to be shared by most of the 1% as well as the Republican Party.
9
Excellent insightful and historically referenced article...and great reminder from where we've come. One disagreement: I think that Bouie is too optimistic about where we're going.
Even if the vast majority of Americans become anti-Trump and vote against him in the coming presidential election, who's to say that the election won't be fixed by Russian hacking and a failure of the Administration and Senate Republicans to do anything about it. We will no longer be a Democracy, even if most of us vote to keep it.
14
I learn so much from Jamelle Bouie. Astonishing things. Never heard of the "Red Shirts" in my life. Thanks for the book recommendations!
23
But you have to ask -- if the Fusion voters controlled the legislature and governorship of North Carolina, why couldn't they use the levers of state power to stop the terrorism of the anti-democratic forces?
What happened there?
3
@David
You may want to refer to the quote by Mao:
"Power flows from the barrel of a gun"
Having money also helps.
2
@David The massacre of black leadership in Wilmington, North Carolina and later the complete leveling of the Black Wallstreet in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is what happened. These mass killings of people and destruction of property were carried out in Florida and other states aw well. It's like what happened to the Cherokee under Jackson in the 1830's: total displacement.
The black and whites who rallied in common cause (Fusion; great idea by the way) for economic well-being in the late 1800's were put down by white rascists who out-numbered and out gunned them.
The Whites who led the pogroms were as mean and nasty as the worst German NAZI's.
2
“Statehood was conflated with party, writes Mickey, “and party disloyalty with state treason.”
Funny how we've been calling Trump a "cult" figure who demands loyalty just as the southern states and their power brokers did in the reconstruction south. And yet, we can't forget Trump's autocratic behavior still does mirror garden variety despots in Europe or even, for that matter, anywhere.
But if Trump is a 'home grown' authoritarian we can't leave out the American mafia so prevalent in Chicago and NYC from the 30s-up to the present day.
His behavior and executive style is certainly mob-like--surrounding himself with "family, thumbing his nose at the legal community, refusing to adhere to accepted norms,
The only thing missing is the Mafia's code of silence--a mob capo would never broadcast his intentions to the world.
11
Thank you again, Mr. Bouie, for another history lesson; a lesson that shines as much light on the present as the past.
It seems the issues that inspired the Civil War have never been resolved; and that that ugly, bloody war has continued to run hot and cold at times. I think we are entering a period of increased heat that could easily come to blows again.
It is interesting that the political polarity of the two major national parties has flipped 180 degrees since the early days of Jim Crow. Earth scientists tell us that the magnetic polarity of the planet does the same from time to time.
9
Earth to Jamelle, America is not, has never been, and never will be a democracy. It has always been a conservative republic as opposed to conservative monarchy. It is barely left wing historically at all. Especially when compared with modern Europe republics let alone the ancient Greeks.
11
@Peter
Great article but somewhat missing a key point. USA is authoritarian by design. it is "democratic" only in that voters get to occasionally choose new dictators every few years and that you can legally bribe the dictators to get a few favors before they take "office." See Chomsky.
What Jamelle is describing with respect to the South is a dangerous step further - tyranny and totalitarianism - and yes it can and is happening here.
5
The country managed to achieve significant democratization in the 20th Century, and particularly in the post-Jim Crow decades. We can try to sustain that democratization, or we can move back toward a more authoritarian society. I'm prepared to struggle to sustain the democratization, especially knowing that it is a young and fragile state for this country.
3
@True Believer
I wouldn’t go that far but it would just be more of the same. The only way we will get full blown fascism is if Socialism wins and actually tries governing on its platform. It would definitely make crypto fascists into the real thing. That being said there is zero chance enough Dems will get behind Bernie.
Very accurate insights. American voters do not read or learn from our history. Racism was and is the single most important factor in Trump's election, and it will be so for his re-election. How long ago was MLK killed? When was the last time George Wallace ran for President? Does anyone know about the Tulsa riots? Racism is ingrained in our history and, more importantly, in the minds and hearts of half or more of White America. Current Democratic Party leaders seem to have forgotten our history and fail to recognize the importance of the Black vote. The Party has systematically eliminated each Black candidate, forgetting that millions of Blacks who voted for Obama did not vote in the devastating 2016 election. Continue your focus., particularly for what remains of Black History month.
11
Many of us have made variations on this theme: authoritarianism has deep roots in America, mostly in the South. A tension between decision making an community (think Benjamin Franklin as a soft example) and the slave-holding south, and not too surprisingly, some of the Spanish heritage bent on serving king and church. And there was an unthinkably bloody civil war about it all. Trump and the current republican party are an all American experience. Authoritarianism is back, no lurking in the shadows, but sitting in the White House and in a good portion of Congress.
7
We can only change who we are (America) with the self-realization of who we were (America). JMO.
2
It’s pretty simple what to expect and even more so if this unleashed monster has a second term. trump and his father were convicted of racism in their real estate rentals in New York City. So, do you think that mode of thought was ever erased from his mind?
“There are good people on both sides” tells a whole lot.
9
Thank you, Mr. Bouie. I'm glad to see this point emphatically made: the Jim Crow south was an authoritarian, terrorist state. I came to this conclusion years ago after reading Elizabeth Wilkerson's magnificent book, The Warmth of Other Suns. We don't need to make analogies to Nazi Germany or Mussolini's Italy, or breathe sighs of relief that we haven't been reduced to those levels of horror. Oh but we have, in the very recent past, and those levels at our doorstep once again. We need more essays like Mr. Bouie's, and more active resistance to the white supremacist autocracy that looms on the near horizon.
27
It's no coincidence that the parts of the country, organizations and people that support Trump were the most totalitarian in enforcing the the Jim Crow tyranny.
Their idea of freedom is that they have the freedom to control others behaviors and thoughts. Further, their use of religion to accomplish their goals should not be ignored.
23
The one giant step that is needed, and thus far been squashed by the boot of fascism, is the alliance between working people of all races, beliefs and ethnicities. As whites have gone all in on identity politics, they hold the winning hand for now. Whether or not the the younger population can put to rest the bigotry and fear that leads to chaos remains to be seen.
9
The United States is, has been, and will continue to be an authoritarian state.
That is unless the body politic undergoes deep reflection on its punitive heart and vows to change. The big thing that White America is coming to recognize is that the country is becoming an unconsolidated, illiberal democracy. Reflect hard; self-platitudes and feigning ignorance won't save save you.
8
This is superb, Mr. Bouie. The post-civil-war South had no interest in democracy because for the elites, it was about getting back to business as usual. And Southern society depended upon a hierarchy, on people “knowing their role.”
In Alabama, we are still governed by the racist Constitution of 1901, in which African Americans were disenfranchised, their farms seized, and “separate but equal” ruled society supreme — and we all know there was nothing equal about it.
Booker T. Washington wrote to the State Constitutional Convention on behalf of the 800,000 African Americans in the state, asking for “some humble share in choosing who may rule over us.” He was wholly ignored, made to “know his role.” This letter, one of the most eloquent letters I’ve ever read, was signed by several prominent African Americans, and was truly a harbinger of what was to come. Some parts are heart-wrenching.
Slave owners figured out how to rile up poor whites about “states’ rights” so they’d fight the Civil War. Most white Southerners still don’t think the war was about slavery. And Gone With the Wind was not racist simply because Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for Mammy. Uh, McDaniel wasn’t even allowed to sit at the same table as Vivien Leigh. But Southerners rejoiced when she won, and why? Because Mammy knew her role.
Authoritarian regimes don’t care about TRUTH, but about preserving roles within the hierarchy. Notice how Trump never criticizes people who “know their role” in serving him?
19
The way I heard it, Hattie McDaniel wasn’t even asked to the Oscar Awards. Clark Gable, to his enormous credit, said he would boycott the event in protest. It was Ms. McDaniel herself who called, thanked him, and encouraged him to go anyway.
5
The white south was built on authoritarianism as a tool of white patriarchy. Most white southerners outside of the cities see authoritarian government as comforting because it seeks to control the unrest they see is as a constant threat.
Slavery required a constant assertion of white power; even now the conventional white south does not know how to function as a society without it.
9
Oh, this is silly hyper-ventilation. I do not like Trump, not at all (on Russian TV I have been a harsh critic). He's vulgar and ignorant and yes, he plays on people's fears. But a would-be authoritarian? Based on what? Firing some officials he considers disloyal? Some tweets trying to influence the courts (unsuccessfully). Rather weak Republican efforts to discourage Democratic votes? Judicial appointments you don't like? All pretty mild stuff, and much of it within the bounds of ordinary politics. And the comparison to Jim Crow is ludicrous, requiring ID to vote is not the same as lynching. And the electoral college advantage for Republicans is by chance, not design, it's just a feature of our system you need to change, or otherwise live with it. I ssuggest Mr. Bouie reread Woodward and give this a re-think.
5
I agree that comparison with Eastern European autocratic governments is in error. Maybe the country we are most likely to resemble is Apartheid South Africa of the 20th century.
10
Hmm...I think you need to make more explicit the connections between Jim Crow and today's authoritarian impulses. Agreed that the one-party South with voter suppression and terrorist violence was undemocratic. Does voter suppression today as well as the rise of white nationalism bode the same?
2
Jamelle,
Just open your eyes and look around, Immigrates are being hunted and extinguished in the name of the new Jim Crow. It is all the same, including a form of slavery (the pickers), the intimation (currently ICE), Jim Crow itself denying freedom and liberty, and finally the prisons.
Please see the new CNN series called, "What's eating America". Without our immigrants, who would pick our crops, kill our chickens because no white "Americans" would want these jobs and toil for so little wages while living each day in fear of deportation.
American's have become the symbol of mean-spiritedness and fear and have found their leader an equally mean spirited and fearful individual. Who is using the fear of those others, those villains, those democrats, "lock 'em up". While he uses their anger for his own gain. While the Republican Party remains steadfast in their power, similar to the old Democratic Party of the South. Everything comes full circle.
2
Martin Luther King Jr. understood that the struggle for civil rights went well beyond the Civil Rights Act, he knew that long suffering black men and women were only one victim of southern authoritarianism, poor whites were victims as well (the fact that he could see past the racism that pervaded that segment of the population was one thing that made him great). The south to this day is largely a one party system, the name of the party has changed and the acceptable tactics; but the aim is the same. Southern conservative plutocrats are still virulently anti-labor, racist and self interested. They use all of the same tools that were used in past with the exception of blatant racist violence. They continue to try and strip people of their right to vote, they continue to use race and religion to drive wedges between people and they corrupt the powers of public office to restrict electoral competition. So, we are to this day not as far away from the past as some might think and that past as Mr. Bouie says was undeniably authoritarian.
225
@Typical Ohio Liberal
We have not elected a real Democrat since LBJ and that was 50 years ago. The present destruction has been brought to us by 50 years of conservative and mostly Republican rule. It has gone exactly where it said it wanted to go. Until the people stand up against the tyrants we will continue to be a one party authoritarian state.
13
@Typical Ohio Liberal
In the end I think we're all victims and pay dearly whether we know it or not the inequality that short circuits a merit based society and prevents our country from operating at its' top peformance.
9
My wife is a political scientist and when she teaches authoritarianism, she specifically treats Jim Crow South as a form of totalitarianism. Mississippi at the time was called "the most totalitarian state in the country." In addition to institutional racism, you had:
• Police brutality and institutionalized violence
• A highly coercive system, with individual rights subordinated to this project
• Ordinary white citizens were complicit and participated in the violence (lynching, murder, and fire-bombing) and the enforcement of the system.
• African Americans did not receive equal treatment in justice system
• Dissent or protest extremely difficult
• Whites who dissented were treated just as poorly as blacks, that is, they were lynched and killed.
470
@Lodestar
Exactly. Totalitarian is the correct term.
It was also tyrannical in the sense that power was exercised cruelly and arbitrarily along racial lines - but of course the white nationalists didn't think that was arbitrary at all. And the point of the cruelty was to steal from the victimized.
38
@Lodestar
African Americans still do not receive equal treatment in the "justice" system. Look who gets longer sentences for the same crimes, who is most likely to get stopped and frisked, shot by cops, etc. And who his majesty decides to pardon--especially people like Joe Arpaio, who made a career out of abusing minorities.
45
@True Believer And just to parse words, we can't say the white apartheid system was "fascist" because that needs to be reserved for a system of corporation / state fusion. The South during Jim Crow was basically a feudal system, something we associate with the 1100's in Europe.
10
The southern Democratic Party didn’t just control all offices and effectively staff the state bureaucracy. It was gatekeeper to all political participation. An aspiring politician could not run for office, much less win and participate in government, without having it behind him. "... the state?” “It is the Democratic Party.” Statehood was conflated with party, “and party disloyalty with state treason.”
Southern conservatives beat back Populism and biracial democracy to build a one-party state and ensure cheap labor, low taxes, white supremacy and a starkly unequal distribution of wealth.
And there you have it in a nutshell. Replace "democratic" with republican and you have today's scenario, without the blatant, state sanctioned racism. Control of offices, gerrymandering, party politics, disloyalty (disagreement) = treason, one party - low wages - lower taxes - white supremacy - unequal wealth - It's today's regressive republican playbook.
173
@Moehoward Good points.
But can a largely regional party with maybe 42% of the population, representing substantially less than that in terms of GDP, impose its will on the majority indefinitely?
They are trying, but I think we can take our inspiration from the long struggle of African Americans for equal rights when putting together our playbook to make things right again. And we have more firepower than they did.
13
@Paul Gulino
1. Citizen's United
2. Voter Suppression
3. Electoral Colleges
And the list goes on. It's a hard pull.
16
@Jumblegym Yes, for now.
But indefinitely?
Demographics are working against the 42%. Voter suppression was eventually overcome by African Americans and the powerful majority can do the same.
And if all else fails, the blue states will inevitably come to question the wisdom of remaining in the Union at all, given its flawed Constitution and the prospect of perpetual abuse by the minority, and use their superior population and economic power to dismantle it.
Thomas Paine questioned whether an island should rule a continent. Should Kentucky indefinitely rule California?
21
“If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
David Frum’s quote can not be repeated enough, with one change. Every single day we see new proof that this president and the GOP have completely rejected democracy. There is no “IF” about it.
88
“Voter turnout for the U.S. population has stayed relatively stable since 1980 (with the exception of a slightly higher turnout in 1992 and a dip in 1996 and 2000). While whites traditionally have the highest voter turnout relative to other racial groups, Blacks have higher voter turnout than Hispanics and Asians. In fact, Black voter turnout was within 1 percentage point of whites in 2008 (65.2% compared to 66.1%) and was actually higher than whites in 2012 (66.6% compared to 64.1%). In 2016, voter turnout for Blacks dipped to 59.6%. While that number was lower than whites (65.3%), it was still higher than Asians (49.3%) and Hispanics (47.6%).”—Brookings Institute
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/09/12/setting-the-record-straight-on-black-voter-turnout/
2
Adams is wrongly accused here in passing by the writer.
Adams was so non-authoritarian that he didn't sack Washington's cabinet and so inherited a cabinet with whose temper and goals differed significantly from his. He alone of the major Founders had intense friendships with people he strongly disagreed with - though of course some of those went into suspension for stretches at a time. Adam was the warm-to-hot tempered guy in a Founding pool of calculating, cool to cold fish; he's the only one of the major Founders who would likely have found it congenial to engage personally with any of us. He was the bulldog of the Founders - eager to engage in pushing and pulling. That is the most remote temperament from authoritarians. It's not a temperament congenial to many of us today.
The Alien & Sedition Acts have a more complex history than is typically taught in American schools. Moreover, what remains little known today is that Jeffersonians were happy to enforce *state* level sedition laws - they objected to federal level ones. So they were not as stalwart defenders of free speech as simplified American history has made out.
5
To call a government a “democracy, only racist” is nonsensical. It is also absurd to call a government a democracy, but for sale, or a democracy where corporations have equal rights with citizens. It’s absurd to say that we are a democracy, but with a misinformed public.
Democracy has many pieces: equality of rights and power, standards of journalism and an informed public, freedom of speech, etc. The US has been brainwashed into seeing freedom of speech and journalism as enemies rather than complements (journalism is denounced as “fake news” or as “liberal media”). We’ve been told that unregulated markets and wealth are expression of freedom, instead of attacks on it. Democracy is a huge project, requiring legal, ethical and cultural structures. It was always more of an aspiration than a reality. Now, for much of the country and especially its most powerful citizens & institutions, democracy is an enemy to be contained, not an aspiration.
17
I think too many Americans are sleeping at the wheel while the country is being taken over, court appointment by court appointment, and by keeping the republicans in the majority in the senate stonewalling any piece of legislation that protects us from the presidency getting stronger and stronger. there is no longer separation of powers, it is an optical illusion at this point. The "United States" as we have known it as of late is no longer and we as citizens are powerless. we can only hope we get to have an election in November because if this guy gets desperate enough he can decide to cancel it. meanwhile, the democrats better find a way to meet in the middle and the big field of candidates is not helping at all because if the moderates stand behind one candidate in big numbers we can have a chance but if not, mr sanders will be our candidate and at that point republicans will be using the socialism term and coupling it with communism and we will lose. if we get four more years, that is it, he has a legacy of daughters and sons to come to power for eternity as far as I am concerned. this is a country I would not like to live in. put a few more dollars in people's pockets and that is all it takes for them to turn a blind eye. our institutions are breaking down. this might be the last year of democracy here.
23
@Rosa Why is it Democrats are only concerned about the power held in the Presidency when a Republican holds the office? Where was this concern from Democrats when President Obama held office for 8 years?
This would be seen as a more genuine concern if legislation was put forward by a Democratic congress to contain the power of the presidency when a Democrat holds the office.
Otherwise, it just looks like a political and partisan play for power.
6
@John Current president has hijacked the GOP to march in step with his henchmen and gang. Covering up alliance with Russia in elections, installing corrupt leaders to remove protections from environment, workers, families, people with disabilities. Undermining law enforcement and intelligence communities to pardon cronies and criminals. Attacking legal and undocumented immigrants, mostly non-white. Attacking legal asylum seekers. Trump is destroying Constitution. That is what Democrats is defending
9
@John Stop it. Obama never. pushed. the. limits. Obama also had a republican congress, headed by Mitch McConnell, who publicly vowed to block everything. Remember Merrick Garland? No, you don't.
America gets concerned when trump says he maybe should just be king. When he sneers at the requirements of his public service. America gets concerned when AGAIN, Putin gets to vote.
Also, your 'genuine concern' should be with current events. You know, hacking the sacred American vote. But you folks just can't get past your fee fees because a Democrat, and a black man, was president some years back.
Look, if Obama had committed impeachable offenses, you can bet your MAGA hat that republicans would sniff it out. They spent a lot of energy on stuff like that.
Now that trump is trashing all norms, you don't see a play for power in the, you know, party IN POWER. You see another instance where Democrats need to be polite because they didn't have scandals when Obama was president.
Our constitution doesn't punish presidents who don't abuse their power.
6
Thanks for bringing the focus to US history. However, another foreign comparison is also relevant, South Africa’s apartheid state of 1948-94, itself influenced by Jim Crow. For whites, there was a parliamentary system, with regular elections, and a system of not completely party-ruled courts, but there was also a police state, important opposition parties were made illegal, and the vast majority of people born in the country did not have basic rights of citizenship. There were even elections to the offices that administered Africans, but those institutions were designed to support, not challenge, white supremacy, and most blacks boycotted them. Only a long-lasting popular uprising, supported by international sanctions, eventually defeated this system. And the legacy of authoritarian rule and misuse of state power remains a severe challenge in ostensibly democratic South Africa today.
11
@Thomas McClendon You're so right. In South Africa they just cut to the chase and felt no need to put the blindfold on lady justice and declare that she is blind. In SA justice is the color white, and if you're of any other hue then it's best that you comply with rules set in force by the dominant culture which is nonblack and a minority in number.
1
All true. A vivid and authoritative account of this was Mississippi: The Closed Society by historian James Silver, who witnessed it at close hand as a professor at Ole Miss in the 50s and 60s.
5
The Donald plans to win reelection by ginning up his supporters so that they will turnout on election day and also by distracting, dividing, and demoralizing the democrats. It is in effect a replay of 2016.
The Donald continues a long tradition, especially in the South, of using racial/cultural/religious antagonism for political purposes. Often it is done more subtly and in code. Often the candidates are more well mannered and more polite. Remember the country club republicans.
The Donald loves being president and the center of attention 24/7 even when he is talking nonsense. But he is actually just a front man for "financial and business elites" who support him and then benefit from his policies such as the massive tax cut, cutting regulations, etc.
I thought recently of Thomas E. Watson. Watson was from Georgia and in about 1890 had the idea of running for office with the support of both white and black working people. He wanted to be a populist and organize the working people of both races against the "elites." He found out quickly that it would not work because the "elites" played the race card. He found out that if he wanted to be elected to congress he would need to be a racist.
Politics hasn't changed much. Candidates are still using racial antagonism to galvanize their supporters and to divide the electorate.
36
@Aubrey
Great comment. Regarding your statements: "Politics hasn't changed much. Candidates are still using racial antagonism to galvanize their supporters and to divide the electorate." Obviously the Trumpists are using this tactic, but I would warn the Democratic Party not to demonize 'old-white men' for short term gain. There are plenty of 'old white men' who are thoughtful, compassionate voters who likely will not vote for Trump but who may be driven from the polls by such antagonism.
12
@TDD Thanks for your comment.
Some of our democratic friends don't realize that when all is said and done, politics comes down to winning an election -- as in getting the most votes.
If the democrats could get all of the democratic leaning people to turnout and vote on election day, they would probably win. You can't do that by driving people away.
The Donald would love for the democrats to fight among ourselves and drive people away. He will be "egging" it on as a way to divide his opponents.
Best wishes and stay positive.
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Noting the rogue actions of the Republicans in Congress, Mr. Bouie concludes, "we might be on a path that ends in something that is familiar from our past — authoritarian government with a democratic facade."
Mr. Bouie is too temperate and naive in using the qualifier, "might," and the adjective, "authoritarian." We ARE on the path to TYRANNICAL government. In fact, we are further down that path than most of America realizes.
Trump is corrupt to his core and while Republicans know that, they deny it along with reality itself. They are foisting upon America Trump's corruption of the Constitution and airs of supremacy all the while giving Trump the veil of legitimacy and America a "facade" of democracy.
If America doesn't wake up soon, it will be too late to change direction.
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Just wait until the president either looses an election or wants a third term. Somehow he either won’t leave the White House, claiming a “rigged” election, or “arrange” a constitutional amendment for a 3rd term. The threat is real, not distant as claimed in the article. It can happen here.
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This is a beautifully crafted 'expose' for what are, essentially, the contours and inner workings of a "parliamentary coup d'etat": the overthrow of the existing order through non-democratic parliamentary means. We saw this writ small in Wilmington, NC and we saw it writ large in the stolen election (via the electoral college) of 2016. What happened to "one citizen, one vote"? What Mr. Bouie's article implies is that the right wing, neo-confederates don't have to overthrow our government through a military coup d'etat; all they have to do is pack the legislators and courts with like minded people and piece meal, over time, sever the democratic safe guards of our republic. Authoritarianism rules when good people stand by and do nothing. History tells us so.
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Mr. Bouie,
Another absolutely great bit of historical context editorial. Absolutely great reading.
I am learning.
From "The Warmth of Other Suns" I learned a great deal about the origins of Jim Crow and the Great Migration.
But, from your writing today I learned a bit about the use of violence, in America, to assure party supremacy in the context of fanatical, single minded, right to might, push to power by large landowners and powerful "businessmen".
Great work.
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Having lived in the South, I agree with Mr. Bouie. This is not just about racism, but authoritarian oligarchy build on the subjugation of people. As a white engineer in the Aerospace & Defense industry, my experiences are that the operations in the South stand out in their tendency to man-handle people. At the core is a tough, callous and brutal nature that shows no regard for others.
Me. Bouie connected the dots for me, showing that the authoritarianism that I see coming from the South and its politicians had its prototype in Jim Crow.
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@Kevin Blankinship
Kevin, I grew up in rural East Texas, which, admittedly was not near the heartbeat of the old south and its incredible violence.
However, as a youth in the 1970's, our schools were integrated already (no court order needed like in Boston in the late 70's), our basketball team utlized the best players, white or black did not matter, our classrooms were seated randomly and nobody minded sitting next to any person, black or white.
It is true that the homes of the African American community were substantially inferior to some whites, but, lots of whites live very poor as well.
Now? I live in Rochester, NY, which, 2020, a veritable Apartheid system. Blacks in the inner city, whites in the suburbs, and, an iron shield between the two areas.
Nothing like that really exists down south anymore, at least in the public school domain.
So, I can say, your experiential difference that you see is probably associated with your corporate culture rather than southern culture at this point.
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Yes. And Nixon's "Southern Strategy" was partly about moving the U.S. towards authoritarianism. The GOP has since accelerated that effort; Trump is their spearhead. There's no doubt about what's in store after November.
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@Grant I agree and predict that, win or lose, Trump will declare the election invalid, declare martial law and call out the troops...
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This is a great point. The conservative justices' opinion in Shelby County illustrates that Mr. Bouie is correct. Current conservatives want to bring back Jim Crow by taking away the franchise from minorities. The justices argued that the protective provisions in sections 4 and 5 were not necessary but the last gubernatorial election in Georgia showed otherwise.
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As long as the leadership touts "us against them" for political expediency, country will remain divided. Sad that nation hasn't learnt from dark chapters of our otherwise glorious history.
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Thank you for this terrific article. I wonder how many of our nation’s high school/college students have any comprehension of Jim Crow or Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance or the overt racism of Woodrow Wilson. Our education system has failed to tell the true story of our past, particularly in these areas.
Having grown up in a middle class, white community during the 60’s, everything that I have learned about each of these subjects has come from my own reading as an adult and, embarrassingly, fairly late in life. To see the candidates representing the diversity of our nation all having to drop out due to a lack of support, especially from communities of color, is disappointing in the extreme. To end up with a slate of elderly white candidates, with the exception of Mayor Pete, says a great deal about how far we have come, and how tremendously far we have to go.
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@JustinC: Amy Klobuchar isn't elderly either and Elizabeth Warren as a seventy-ish woman in great health may have been considered elderly decades ago, but nowadays the seventies are the new sixties...
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This fine historically informed article has a brief provocative digression from its main theme that initially puzzled me. The examples Mr. Bouie chose as authoritarian presidents were John Adams and Woodrow Wilson. Why those two? I’m guessing that in Adams’s case Mr. Bouie was thinking of the Alien and Sedition Acts which undermined the free speech provisions of the First Amendment during his administration. In Wilson’s case he was probably thinking again of repression of free speech under the Espionage Act in which some of those who actively opposed World War I were imprisoned. If Mr. Boiuie we’re inclined to be more provocative he could have included Lincoln for his suspension of habeus corpus during the Civil War. I would love to hear from anyone with more historical knowledge than I have on the reasons for Mr. Bouie’s choice of Adams and Wilson, two presidents who have inspired considerable admiration from some, as examples of previous authoritarian presidents.
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@Tom Tilitz A distinction should be drawn between a president, like Trump, for whom authoritarianism represents the preferred approach to governing, and presidents who, under severe pressure, on occasion resort to authoritarian methods, in order to thwart what they see as a greater evil. Lincoln faced a rebellion that threatened the survival of the Union. The Constitution authorizes suspension of habeas corpus during a rebellion,, and Lincoln resorted to that because in Maryland, treasonous officials threatened to take the state out of the Union, leaving the national capital completely surrounded by rebel forces. He later used the suspension under less justifiable conditions, but such a possible error of judgment does not mark him as an authoritarian. His entire career would refute such a characterization.
As for John Adams, his reluctant approval of the Alien and Sedition acts, which he judged necessary to thwart seditious behavior by his political opponents, was surely a mistake, but, as in the case of Lincoln, his entire political career demonstrates that this error was our of character.
Jim Crow politicians, like Trump, engaged in systematic, long term abuses of power. Lincoln, Adams, and Wilson, whatever their faults, differed sharply from those opponents of democracy.
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Woodrow Wilson brought Jim Crow to the nation's capital by segregating the federal workforce after being elected with endorsements from civil rights leaders like activiist William Monroe Trotter and even W.E.B. Du Bois who was then the editor of the influential NAACP publication The Defender, who I believe was convinced by Oswald Garrison Villard and others who had met with and received assurances from candidate Wilson.
The city was pro-Union during the Civil War and Reconstruction, blacks had achieved the right to vote three years before the passage of the 15th Amendment and many had government jobs. I always think of Duke Ellington's father who had a job at the White House.
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@James Lee FDR was the most dictatorial president in the history of the county. He threatened to pack the supreme court, he forced thousands of Americans of Japanese decent into internment camps. He also is the only president to serve a third term and ignore the two term limit all other presidents observed.
Name one thing Trump has done that comes close to FDR unilateral actions with the internment camps?
Great column..it reminds me that we already have soft authoritarianism: rule by the minority of the population that elected Trump and the GOP senate majority, and a governing strategy by Trump and the GOP that does not tolerate Democratic safeguards like Congressional oversight, media scrutiny, and equal access to the ballot box. The fact that on top of all this is a man who gives aid and comfort to white supremacists and who uses the Justice Department and the rest of the government to pursue personal vendettas shows that the authoritarianism has already begun. And it has, in the phrase of the Carpenters, only just begun.
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@Mike :
"We've Only Just Begun" is not "the phrase of the Carpenters," although they made the song popular.
It was written by my fellow ASCAP member (and current president) Paul Williams. It was a commissioned work, prepared to accompany a television commercial for a Southern California bank.
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@Mike The U.S. is a Republic and not a Democracy that is led by a majority. The states rights must be protected. Otherwise a few large states would dominate all the smaller states.
A National majority is not enough to rule.
@John : protecting the rights of smaller states is one thing. Allowing representatives of those states to restrict the right to vote for some people, or to block all consideration of a properly-nominated Supreme Court Justice, or to fire a spy chief for doing his job of briefing congress—that’s another thing entirely. We’ve got too much Republic, too little democracy.
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There is nothing past about Jim Crow. You now have a political party with control of the senate and the presidency that is admitting it. McConnell's marketer, Trump, is the front man and voice, but the nationalization of Jim Crow is the goal. And the most useful tool of conservatives, then and now, is domestic terrorism.
Based on the last three years, repeal of the 13-15th and 19th amendments doesn't look at all far-fetched.
Conservatives have always been as threatened by the Constitution as they are by the Gospels of the New Testament. This is why they struggle so hard to find ways around them. The double standard is the essential feature of all conservatism. The Constitution and the Gospels threaten to hold conservatives to account for their bad behavior and that is THE existential threat to a conservative.
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@Dan Conservatives uphold the constitution and haven't been the ones talking about eliminating the electoral college and packing the supreme court. That has been the Democrats.
No conservatives have talked about repealing any of the amendments you list above.
Neither party is blameless for our current state of affairs, why make up and project your bias onto conservatives. I'm sure you can find actual examples to prove your point.
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Ha ha. “Conservatives uphold the Constitution” indeed.
Trump has been in violation of the Constitution since the oath of office left his lips.
He continues to flout the rule of law on a near-constant basis and yet “Conservatives” (really right wing Radicals) support him and pretend to avert their gaze.
This is how the Constitution is supported?
Nonsense.
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@John
Conservatives have OPENLY talked about packing the Supreme Court: Exhibit A being Mitch McConnell himself. He openly obstructed Barack Obama’s constitutional right to appoint a supreme court judge.
He has quite openly acknowledged that this was part of his plan to pack the supreme court. In addition, he obstructed nearly all of Obama’s lower court nominations in the hopes that a possible Republican president could pack those courts. And he has succeeded.
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If you want to see what authoritarianism looks like in the US, just visit you local university.
There speech is regulated; anyone who doesn't ideologically conform is shunned or fired; people are required to make diversity pledges and take diversity course as a condition of employment.
Part of that ideology is the insistence of making anything and everything about oppressors and the oppressed. Very much like this opinion piece.
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@Matt: Are you saying that Black people were not oppressed well into the late 1960s when interracial marriages were still outlawed, and even enslaved until 1865? Talking about regulated speech: Ever worked for a large business? Your employer, whether a university or a large business, has the right to regulate your speech to confirm to its mission and values, which you agree to when accepting employment there. In fact, public universities have more limited options than businesses to regulate your speech if you are a faculty member due to academic freedom and the fact that government agancies have to abide by the First Amendment.
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@Matt well then, most corporations are authoritarian as well. No voting for most policy/leaders, banishment for deviating from top down dictates, non disclosure pledges...
All the author did was point out how strong and widespread our domestic authoritarian legacy is. Being on the wrong side of Jim Crow is far worse than being educated in a university system outside the conservative reality bubble.
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@Matt well then, most corporations are authoritarian as well. No voting for most policy/leaders, banishment for deviating from top down dictates, non disclosure pledges...
All the author did was point out how strong and widespread our domestic authoritarian legacy is. Being on the wrong side of Jim Crow is far worse than being educated in a university system outside the conservative reality bubble.
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This is an informative and intriguing article.
I would personally argue that the historiography of the United States as a whole - and the South in particular - has long avoided a serious postcolonial analysis that understands the US as a true international empire not substantively different from the European empires of the 19th-20th centuries.
As Americans, we tend to view the Revolution as the end of the US's colonial/imperial story, but US history after that primarily features the seizure of land from other nation-states and polities including both European empires but also real, stable indigenous political societies, all of which is coupled with the presence of an enslaved population for much of its history.
British colonialism in, say, India has been subject to sustained academic and cultural investigation into (and well-deserved criticism for) its oppression of subaltern subjects, but the US has always viewed itself as distinct from that post-colonial discourse.
I'd argue that's not because the existence of, eg, Oklahoma is fundamentally different from British Oudh or, even more similarly, Southern Rhodesia, but rather we've been uncritically accepting our own colonial rhetoric for so long that we conceptually divorce 'Manifest Destiny' from the Scramble for Africa.
All this to say that I might add to the article by saying that Jim Crow was an authoritarian colonial government, which is most comparable to the racist settler colonies of Europe (and Japan).
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@Chris
Well said. America's Achilles heel is it's stubborn inability to face it's sordid past. From its beginning its history has been written from a narrow white imperialist perspective. We have persistently substituted myths ("all men are created equal," "of the people, by the people..." etc.) for reality in a kind of obsessive secular religion in which those worshiped mythical abstractions obscure material reality.
Until we face our past and tell it's truth we will always be divided.
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@Chris So true. The slavery and Jim Crow systems were largely put in place by those with ancestry from the British isles. You often see Gone With The Wind referenced on old British sitcoms, showing how much the cultural resonance was transatlantic.
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Racism was the binding force under Jim Crow. No question it exists today, but it does not have similar power. I suggest the primary power behind today's situation is disillusionment, as both Parties share the blame for the downfall of democracy and the rise of money as what guides the system (granted the blame is not shared equally). The solution, something we are not seeing beyond vague statements such as Sanders that he will attract a new coalition, is promising a way out of today's morass through programs that attract popular support.
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@SDG It might be instead that a malignant form of capitalism was the 'binding force' and that racism was used to rally the white working class behind the business elite. Following Bacon's Rebellion, the Tidewater elite promoted racism to prevent blue collar whites from having common cause with African-American slaves.
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Our government institutions aren't being tested, they are being threatened. Yes, living in the South currently, I see voting manipulated and quite openly. I do see elements of Jim Crow in this manipulation. Dire, I see this election on the cusp of authoritarianism. It is that sick feeling of seeing history alive today that will be in the books decades hence. Our congressional elections are just as important as our presidential election to rescue this floundering ship of state from the depths of authoritarian rule.
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