Useful Lies
How disdain for “cancel culture” has enabled white supremacy and the legacy of the Confederacy to survive and thrive for way too long.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s graph detailing when Confederate monuments and statues were erected and when schools named after Confederates opened.
The ridiculous excuse that conservative pundits and politicians trot out every single time the name of a Confederate statue or school or even military base draws criticism is equal parts formulaic and disingenuous. “The radical left is out of control! Who/what is next to be canceled? Where does it end?” And, of course, rational people can provide a simple response: “Somewhere.”
That’s how simple it is. The proverbial line is drawn somewhere, and it should not be up to disingenuous, dishonest, or misinformed people in positions of power and influence to determine where that line is.
The Tucker Carlsons of the world try (and fail, a lot) to tiptoe around the overtly racist talking point of “I miss when white men were the only ones in power and didn’t have to attempt to cater to other views or groups of people” by disguising it with buzzwords and phrases like the “American Dream,” “suburban life,” “low-income housing,” “I don’t recognize this country anymore,” and many, many more.
Another tactic that works incredibly well is to paint minorities and other disadvantaged groups as trying to attack “us” (white people and mainly white men) and “our way of life.” This dog whistling is so effective and pernicious that white people have been able to resist and prevent things as essential and just as desegregation and integration, and paint anything other than ultimate reverence to police and law enforcement as “radical” and “dangerous,” while ignoring the plight of minority communities as whole, and especially the Black community.
It’s also the most effective tool to completely separate the Black Lives Matter movement from police brutality, economic injustice and systemic racism, and turn any possible bad actors into radical, dangerous criminals that discredit the entire movement. On the other hand, police often get the “bad apple” argument thrown around at their defense by these same people, who conveniently ignore the rest of the “bad apple” saying, which is “one bad apple can spoil the barrel,” meaning that one bad cop can negatively influence the attitudes and actions of the entire department and the law enforcement system as a whole, and have a drastically negative impact on the reputation of law enforcement.
The concern of Carlson and other conservative commentators seems to shift quite a bit when thousands of mostly white people storm the Capitol or when a guy like Kyle Rittenhouse opens fire on several protestors in Kenosha, Wis., killing two men and injuring another, or even when someone, who is usually white and almost always male, carries out a mass shooting. Fleshing out the data behind that claim, you can see that since 1982 (the first year of data on mass shootings), there have been 65 mass shootings with 10+ victims (both injuries and deaths). Of the 66 total shooters, 42 have been white males (~63.6%), eight have been Black males (~12.12%), seven have been Middle Eastern males (~10.6%), three have been Asian males (~4.54%), two have been Latino males (~3.03%), one was a Native American male (~1.5%), one was a Middle Eastern female (~1.51%), and two were males of unclear race (~3.03%). Of the 2,081 total victims, white males were responsible for 1,536 (~73.8%), Middle Easterners were responsible for 246 (~11.8%), Black males were responsible for 130 (~6.2%), Asian males were responsible for 83 (~3.9%), Latino males were responsible for 38 (~1.8%), Native American males were responsible for 15 (~0.72%), and males of unclear background were responsible for 33 (~1.6%).
When discussing the Capitol insurrection, Carlson has argued that political propaganda “is its own form of violence,” that it was not an insurrection, compared media coverage (rightly) calling it an insurrection to a doctor “claiming that your broken arm is stage four pancreatic cancer,” and finished with the trademark sign of a fear-mothering segment on Fox News by saying, “And indeed, something very dark is going on right now.” This unsubstantiated argument that America is crumbling or going down the wrong path and succumbing to “cancel culture” is the central theme to almost every minute of Fox News coverage, and creates an environment where they can spend weeks whining about Dr. Seuss’ estate discontinuing books or Hasbro changing the branding for a literal potato toy or whatever the hot topic of the day is.
I say all that to say this: Removing Confederate monuments and statues and renaming schools and military bases named after Confederate soldiers or leaders should be one of the least controversial ideas in a country that supposedly got rid of Confederacy and white supremacy after the end of the Civil War.
To me, that’s the idea that is the most poisonous to our collective thinking regarding white supremacy and the Confederacy. Pretending as if we all just got along and integrated formerly-enslaved Black people and other minorities into society after 1865 is about as absurd as it gets, because it conveniently ignores everything that happened between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement, and pretends that the Civil Rights movement fixed everything and leaves Black people and other people of color with no excuses to not be as successful as their white counterparts.
If you’d like some proof of that statement regarding the time period immediately after the Civil War, I would direct your attention to the 13th Amendment of the Constitution:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Yes, you read that right. Slavery was (and still is) outlawed in the United States and any territories under the United States’ jurisdiction, except as a form of punishment. Is it any wonder that law enforcement groups began as slave patrols and continue to criminalize minorities, especially Black men, as our society continues to direct literally billions of dollars into law enforcement every year instead of social welfare? It’s easier to just throw someone in jail than it is to invest in their community and put money and effort into improving their material conditions.
That brings me to another key element of the Civil Rights movement and Black peoples’ fight for equality. I’m going to guess that very few people know that the full name of the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech, was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. That’s because the jobs part was just as vital of an element for ensuring equality in this country, as discrimination in housing and every other part of life had pushed Black people into neighborhoods with very little opportunity for economic advancement and subjugated them to cities with very little resources due to white flight to the suburbs.
But our education system has disincentivized any version of history that isn’t as flattering as possible to our founding fathers and nearly every powerful person in our country’s history, and treats the fact that the systems put in place that just so happened to treat non-white people as inferior as incidental or just another hurdle that the great United States overcame. That version of history scrubs clean this country’s legacy of white supremacy and leads to kids (who eventually turn into adults) embracing the idea that the playing field has been basically level since the (incremental) changes brought about by the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. It’s oversimplified for a number of reasons, but the main one is fostering an idea of American exceptionalism, while ignoring the country’s legacy of subjugation of everybody outside of wealthy, white men that continues to this day.
There’s no better explanation of the evolution that systemic racism and discrimination underwent during the late 1970s and 1980s than the infamous 1981 “Southern Strategy” interview with Republican operative, Lee Atwater. Just a warning for the below excerpt, it’s pretty disturbing and it’s transparently and horribly racist. Atwater explained how Republicans could win the vote of racists without explicitly saying racist things or sounding racist themselves, saying the following:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N*****, n*****, n*****.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n*****’— that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘N*****, n*****.’”
That’s the whole game right there. Make the racism palatable enough to hide your true intentions and feelings and people will adopt the ideas and fervently defend them from the idea that they’re rooted in racism, because it’s human nature to double down and dig deeper in, rather than doing some self-reflection and admitting you’re doing something wrong. Ignorance truly is bliss.
The most disgusting element of the right’s defense of the Confederacy and Confederate relics is the idea that removing Confederates’ names from schools or military bases or removing monuments to virulent racists that believed that Black people were inferior and should be subjugated forever is something our country should be worried about. Allowing people like Tucker Carlson to espouse the easily-disproved idea that the removal of monuments or renaming of schools and military bases is “erasing history” or “canceling” figures of the past is the exact type of slippery slope that conservatives — Tucker Carlson, especially — have warned against for years.
But guess what? If what you’re doing is offensive to those who revere Confederate soldiers and leaders and segregationists, I’d argue that you’re not the one that deserves to be chided for “erasing history,” because reasonable people will agree that statues, monuments, military bases and schools should not be named after people like Robert E. Lee.
Ironically, in 1869, a year before his death, Lee himself declined an invitation to build memorials on the battlefield of Gettysburg and made clear that he was against the idea, stating the following:
“I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”
Another piece of propaganda that Americans are fed all throughout elementary, middle and into high school is that, while slavery was obviously awful, the main cause of the Civil War was the Southern states’ desire for states’ rights. But, conveniently, anybody who hides behind the states’ rights argument never seems to have a good answer for how the desire to continue slavery on the basis of economic need could be separated from those states’ rights.
In fact, in four of the five declarations of secession (Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas), the states outright argue that slavery is necessary for their economic success or freedom from overreach by the federal government and is a driving force behind their secession. Only Virginia’s declaration does not explicitly mention slavery as a reason for secession.
Here are some excerpts from the declarations of secession of each of those four states:
“The North demanded the application of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts of the public domain then and in all future time. It was the announcement of her purpose to appropriate to herself all the public domain then owned and thereafter to be acquired by the United States. The claim itself was less arrogant and insulting than the reason with which she supported it. That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity.”
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.”
“These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”
“It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst. It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.”
“A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that ‘Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,’ and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.”
“She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery — the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits — a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.”
So, there’s your proof that the argument that the Civil War was just about states’ rights and the federal government overstepping boundaries is ludicrous, thanks to some useful context about which boundaries specifically they were upset about being overstepped, mainly concerning the institution of slavery.
There were four clauses of the Constitution of the Confederate States that codified slavery. Article I Section 9 Clause 1, Article I Section 9 Clause 4, Article IV Section 2 Clause 1 and Article IV Section 3 Clause 3.
Article I Section 9 Clause 1:
“The importation of negroes of the African race from any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.”
Article I Section 9 Clause 4:
“No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”
Article IV Section 2 Clause 1:
“The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.”
Article IV Section 3 Clause 3:
“The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several States; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.”
The least fun “fun fact” I’ve ever heard came from John Oliver in an August 2020 episode of Last Week Tonight, when I learned that the only successful coup d’ètat to ever take place on American soil was carried out in 1898 by an angry mob of around 2,000 white men that killed at least 60 Black residents and replaced the aldermen of Wilmington, North Carolina with white supremacists.
In that same episode, Oliver makes the best argument possible for fully reckoning with the Civil War, slavery and all the relics that remain in our current systems.
“…ignoring the history you don’t like is not a victimless act. And a history of America that ignores white supremacy is a white supremacist history of America.”
By feigning ignorance about the real reasons for the Civil War or proposing that America has undergone a complete transition since then or even blaming Black people and other minorities for their own deaths at the hands of an unjust justice system, people are ignoring the inconvenient parts of US history and atomizing injustice and racism down to individual actors, rather than recognizing that our system was set up to maintain the status quo of wealthy, white men reigning over subjugated Black and other minority populations.
That is an essential framework to understand why any movement like Black Lives Matter or any concept like defunding the police are so easily conveyed as “radical” and “dangerous” and anti-American by pundits like Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham or any other right-wing commentator.
The white supremacist ethos is so central to American society that it’s pernicious influence persists through things like segregated school systems, redlining, gerrymandering, dress codes and rules against certain hairstyles at restaurants, schools and places of business, discrimination in loan applications, and most importantly, policing and criminal justice.
So, even though slavery is outlawed (except as punishment for a crime, thanks to the 13th Amendment) and the racism and discrimination isn’t as explicit today, the implicit biases and not-so-subtle language used to deride Black people and other minority populations help draw a direct line back to the states that felt so strongly about maintaining the institution of slavery that they fought in a four-year Civil War against their fellow countrymen and defended the right to slavery by saying that it was “a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.” Advocating for slavery forever should be a pretty clear sign that this was not about states’ rights or tyranny from the federal government, but rather, the subjugation of Black people and subjecting them to white supremacy forever.
One of the main arguments against “cancel culture” is that using modern standards to judge someone’s actions from decades or even a century and a half ago is not exactly fair and ignores the context of that era. Also, it’s very easy to say, in 2021, that you would have been against slavery or segregation or any of the other deeply racist and discriminatory actions of past generations, but the reality is that it’s almost impossible to know that for sure. What we do know for sure is that you can look back and say that things like slavery, segregation, redlining, and other subtle forms of racism are wrong and should not have those that perpetrated them be celebrated or revered through statues, schools, monuments, etc. Nobody is perfect, but we’re not asking for perfect. We’re asking that people like Robert E. Lee don’t have statues on public display, because not only did he himself make it clear that Civil War figures should not have statues and monuments built for them, but there’s a much easier, less controversial and less hurtful way to honor past figures: museums. If you want to honor figures of the past, you need to be completely honest about their actions, words, and feelings regarding movements against injustice. You can’t just ignore the parts of history that you don’t like or are inconvenient.
That brings me to my final point regarding the outrage machine at Fox News and how much of their coverage relies on faux outrage surrounding “cancel culture.” This deliberately deceptive and conveniently one-sided obsession with “cancel culture” came to the what should’ve been the perfect conclusion thanks to none other than Tomi Lahren. Just a few months ago, on March 2, Lahren and the other members of Fox’s Outnumbered worked themselves into hysteria regarding Dr. Seuss Enterprises discontinuing the publishing of six books because of racist and insensitive imagery. Her proposed solution was “always more speech” and more discussion of anything that’s perceived to be offensive, as well as conservatives embracing some cancel culture of their own. After a warning that liberals and progressives are “going to cancel everything,” she followed it up with this:
“It’s time we start fighting back. It’s time we start canceling the companies that cancel other people, that cancel other ideas and say, ‘Hey listen, we don’t like how radical you’re being with your cancel culture so we’re not going to shop there.’”
A prominent figure on Fox News telling their audience to start engaging in cancel culture of companies that cancel other people and other ideas is the perfect encapsulation of why faux outrage sells. As long as there’s someone else or another group or person to be mad at and cast as an “other,” or an enemy, you can never lose.
If someone wants to teach American history from another standpoint and using another perspective (like the 1619 Project), you boycott them and threaten to pull funding from schools that use it in lesson plans and also propose your own version of history, which, not totally unlike the current version, teaches an incomplete, somewhat inaccurate history that portrays America as an infallible superpower that is unequivocally the best nation on Earth, while casting aside any criticism as “un-American.” But, that’s apparently not “cancel culture,” according to Fox and the right.
If Dr. Seuss Enterprises wants to stop publishing books that contain racist and insensitive imagery, you buy up all the Dr. Seuss books you can to teach Dr. Seuss Enterprises a lesson about “cancel culture.” I mean, I guess. I don’t see how directly providing the company that decided to take the action that you’re calling “cancel culture” with even more money and support is effective, but sure.
If a company that makes a toy potato — yes, a toy potato — wants to rename their brand from Mr. Potato Head to Potato Head, while continuing to make Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head toys and simply providing more options for accessories, buy up all the Mr. Potato Head toys you can because they’re somehow not going to be available. Okay.
If a platform like Disney+ decides to air a content warning before certain episodes of The Muppet Show to let audiences know that some aspects of the episode haven’t “aged very well,” so to speak, then I guess the Muppets have been “banned,” at least according to Donald Trump Jr.
If a company like Coca-Cola wants to express their dissatisfaction with Georgia’s new voting rights law that will, in reality, restrict voter access and disenfranchise people, especially people of color, it’s time to boycott Coca-Cola and stay away from #WokeCoke. But, according to those on the right, that’s not cancel culture.
If Delta Airlines wants to express their dissatisfaction with the repeatedly-debunked notion of widespread voter fraud, and emphasizing their disappointment with that aforementioned Georgia voting rights law, it’s time to stop flying Delta. Again, though, in their minds, it’s not cancel culture. What’s especially great is that people are comparing having to show ID to fly and showing ID to vote, when they’re not even remotely the same. One is supposed to be a sacred part of the democratic process and the other is an elective travel decision.
This fantasy world where everything and everyone is supposedly out to get those on the right has given them almost unlimited ammunition in the so-called “culture wars” that so often amount to inane “controversies” that have been blown way out of proportion to try and stir up anger and generate fear into the minds of audiences on the right.
Another key element of their hypocrisy is that instances like those above are conveniently framed as “boycotts,” instead of “cancel culture,” when, in reality, they are essentially the same thing. It used to be called “voting with your wallet” or “letting the free market decide,” but that’s somehow disappeared from the lexicon of conservatives and those on the right. For some reason, they’re incredibly inconsistent on this issue. I wonder if it might be hypocrisy and political jockeying that fuels their outrage, rather than actual, genuine feelings about the policies of the companies that are being “canceled.”
The “Who’s next to be canceled?” arguments ring especially hollow when you consider that nobody is asking our history to be changed. We’re asking for certain figures to be contextualized and not have our past figures live in a state of total praise or total condemnation. The difference between building statues of Confederate soldiers and leaders and putting them on display or naming a school or military base after them, and simply confining their statue or monument to a museum where you can provide meaningful context for their actions is that one serves to glorify them and the other serves to emphasize their importance in the course of our country’s history without glorifying ideas like slavery, segregation, and the subjugation of Black people and other people of color.
Sources:
Southern Poverty Law Center — https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy#methodology
Tucker Carlson Media Matters — https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-it-was-not-insurrection
Declarations of Secession — https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states
Confederate Constitution — https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp
Fox News Cancel Culture Rolling Stone — https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fox-news-dr-seuss-cancel-culture-1135389/amp/
Lee Atwater The Nation — https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/tnamp/
Mass Shootings in US Mother Jones — https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/
Census Data — https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219
1619 Project USA Today — https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/4454195001
Last Week Tonight — https://youtu.be/hsxukOPEdgg
U.S. News & World Report — https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/data-show-deaths-from-police-violence-disproportionately-affect-people-of-color
Mapping Police Violence — https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends
Statista Database of Fatal Police Shootings — https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/
