America, the beautiful?
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 21, 2024
After I arrived in the United States of America in August 1964, I continued to follow the election battle between of Lyndon B Johnson, a Democrat, and Senator Barry Goldwater whom he defeated in the sixth most lopsided US election: Johnson won 44 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia; 486 electoral votes and 61.1% of the popular vote. Goldwater captured 52 electoral votes and 38% of the popular vote.
Goldwater suffered a deeper historical defeat than Kamala Harris received from Donald Trump, who received 312 electoral votes, 76,139,573 votes or 50.1% of the popular vote; while Harris received 226 electoral votes and 73,232,278 or 48.1% of the popular vote.
Yet, Goldwater never changed the extreme rightwing position he took at the Republican convention: “Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice, And...moderation in the pursuit of justice is no vice.” Goldwater also voted against the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, arguing that some of its provisions impinged on individual freedoms. (History, October 20, 2020.) In spite of his electoral defeat, his political philosophy formed the basis of the Republican’s extremism today.
LBJ was considered a “crude” white Southern racist but he understood the racial dynamics of the country. Bill Moyers, an aide to Johnson, recalls the political setting on the night the Civil Rights Act was passed: “I found him [Johnson] in the bedroom, exceedingly depressed. The headline of the bulldog edition of The Washington Post said, ‘Johnson signs Civil Rights Act’. The airways were full of discussions of how unprecedented this was and historic, and yet he was depressed. I asked him why...”
He said: “I think we’ve just delivered the South to the Republican Party for the rest of my life and yours.” The South has remained a major Republican stronghold until today.
Racism and misogyny are at the heart of America’s identity. Its first great sin was the annihilation of American indigenous people under President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837). He was one of the 12 slave owners (among the 18 presidents) who held office between 1789 and 1877.
After the Indians, Americans turned their diabolical wrath upon the African Americans.
The Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the enslaver. The officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate.
On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney issued the worst Supreme Court decision ever, He wrote: “[African Americans] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.” (The Dred Scott Decision.)
Justice Taney was a slave owner. At least 30 out of the 59 justices born during the period before the Civil War were enslavers, at least 30 of all 116 Supreme Court justices were enslavers.
Most US lynchings took place from 1900 to the 1920s, which led to the formation of the NAACP in 1909. This was followed by the civil rights struggles of the 1950s which led to the passages of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, respectively.
The annihilation of Native Americans and the enslavement of black people left an indelible mark on the American psyche. George Orwell notes that “the divisions between nation and nation are founded on real differences of outlook... When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air.
“The vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Yes there is something distinctive and recognisable in English civilisation” (“England Your England”.)
The Americans who slaughtered the Indians are part of the same civilisation that enslaved black people. It is the same people who came together and slaughtered Kamala Harris politically.
Misogyny was also at the heart of Harris’s defeat. Women were allowed to vote in 1919, 132 years after the US adopted its constitution. Of all the developed democracies in the world, the US has never elected a female leader. Given its history, it was a bit foolhardy to expect the US to elect a woman to rule America in 2024.
Trump would put up President Jackson’s portrait in the White House and the American people would continue to be guided by the same principles that guided the original 113 colonies. Racism and misogyny will remain the two pillars of America’s democracy for a long time.
—Prof Cudjoe's e-mail address is scudjoe@wellesley.edu. He can be reached @ProfessorCudjoe.
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