Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

** 31-May-2020 World View: Racial Riots and the Ku Klux Klan


We're in the midst of continuing racial riots in numerous cities
across the country, with property destruction in some cities.
Some people are predicting civil war, and one person in this
forum are comparing America to South Africa. (Why not Syria?)

But I've lived a long time, and I've seen several race riots, so I
don't share any of these dystopian views. The ones that stick out in
my mind are the Los Angeles Watts riots in 1965, the attacks on the
Democratic political convention in Chicago in 1968, and the Rodney
King riots in Los Angeles in 1992. These incidents all fizzled within
a few weeks, or by the end of the summer, and the press commentary was
pretty unanimous that the rioters were mostly blacks fighting each
other or looting black-owned businesses. I've always considered that
to be, well, peculiar, since while the riots were on, the commentary
was that the rioters angry about the police. At least in my memory, I
can't recall any incidents that the black rioters formed battalions to
attack and kill policemen or white residents.

As far as I can tell, the same kinds of things are happening now.
Black rioters are destroying businesses in their own neighborhoods,
with no attempts to kill or even confront policemen, although one
vacant police station was burned down. The only two major corporate
targets that I heard in the news were the Target store in Minneapolis
and CNN headquarters in Atlanta. Apparently blacks are furious at
Target for supporting law enforcement ever since the occurrence of a
crime spike in Minneapolis in the mid-1990s. And CNN, of course, is a
Democratic party target, like the Democratic national convention in
1968. In both cases, the result was looting, but no physical
violence. So the point is that the black rioters seem to be targeting
each other and other Democrats.

***
*** Racial violence and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
***

I'm hearing commentary saying that Derek Chauvin, the white policeman
who murdered Floyd George, the black victim, was a "white
supremacist." I've also heard commentary that Chauvin's acts were
typical of racist incidents that have been going on in America for
centuries, including slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow laws.

All of that is almost certainly true, although most the people making
those criticisms don't have the vaguest clue of the meaning of those
claims.

Chauvin held his knee on George's neck for over 8 minutes, when George
was saying, "I can't breathe." Why would anybody do anything so vile?
It's incomprehensible. If it had been for 8 seconds, it might have
been attributed to normal police work, but 8 minutes goes so far
beyond "normal" that it's clear that Chauvin must have some enormous
mental issues.

But in fact, Chauvin's behaviour actually was "normal" for a certain
group of people -- members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). For more than a
century following the American Civil War, KKK members tortured, raped
and lynched blacks, doing exactly the kinds of things that Chauvin was
doing, or worse.

I haven't found any news reports describing Chauvin's early life, but
it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he was an admirer of the KKK,
and may have been the descendant of some Grand Kleagle (or whatever
the title is) of some great KKK leader.

The Civil War opposed the North versus the South. Abraham Lincoln was
the first Republican president, and he was hated by the Democrats as
much as Donald Trump is hated today. The Democrats opposed the war
and Lincoln's handling of the war, and demanded that Lincoln negotiate
a settlement and end the war. According to the 1864 Democratic party
platform, "The aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve
the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired," meaning
that slavery would continue as before. The support of "states rights"
became a key Democratic party policy for well over a century,
especially in the "Democratic South."

That's not to say that all Democrats were in favor of slavery. The
point is that the Democrats were deeply split on this issue. The
Republicans were pretty much unanimous in opposing slavery, and the
1864 Republican platform said, "That as slavery was the cause, and now
constitutes the strength of this rebellion, ... justice and the
national safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the
soil of the Republic." So Republicans unanimously opposed slavery,
while the Democrats were split, but predominantly favored slavery.

After the Democrats lost the Civil War, Democrats, especially Southern
Democrats, did everything they could to reverse the outcome in other
ways. Suddenly, there were a lot of freed slaves in the South,
looking for places to live and looking for jobs. Southern cities and
states enacted "Black Codes," which tightly controlled where and how
formerly enslaved people could work and for how much compensation,
where they could live and travel, and whether they could vote. Under
these laws, blacks could be arrested and sent to labor camps, where
they were effectively enslaved again.

The Ku Klux Klan was a private militia of the Democratic Party,
formed after the civil war. It began in 1865 as a private club
for Confederate (Southern) war veterans, and turned into a secret
society claiming many high officials as members. As an example,
Democrat Senator Robert C. Byrd was an "Exalted Cyclops"
in the KKK in his youth, and in 1964 he filibustered
against Lyndon Johnson's Civil Rights Act, although by the time
he died in 2010, he said he regretted those actions.

The "Black Codes" were mostly local laws enacted in the South, but by
the 1880s they were evolving into "Jim Crow" laws in states across the
South.

So KKK members, Southern Democrats, perpetrated beatings, lynchings
and private enslavement of blacks for well over the next century,
using the Jim Crow laws to their advantage. These vile acts were
condemned by a minority of Democrats and by almost all Republicans.
By today, the KKK and Jim Crow laws have almost entirely disappeared,
but the actions of Derek Chauvin show that there are still plenty of
vestiges remaining.

So you have various commentators calling for an end to racism
in the United States, and for investigations of racism, etc.
That will absolutely never, never, never happen, because
the Democrats are the perpetrators, and they will never allow
such investigations to occur.

Racism is an internecine war raging in the Democratic party, with
Republicans as collateral damage. Racism is an issue that has split
the Democrats for almost two centuries. Republicans have consistently
opposed racism, the KKK, the Black Codes, the lynchings, the Jim Crow
laws and the discrimination from the beginning, so it's up to the
Democrats to resolve their own internal split to resolve America's
racism issue.

Meanwhile if you're one of those people who are expecting / hoping for
some kind of general uprising or civil war, then if I were you I
wouldn't bet any money on it.

***
*** Sources:
***

-- 1864 Deocratic,Republican platforms / The Two Roads to Peace
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_te...3&psid=432
(University of Houston, DigitalHistory, 2019)

-- Jim Crow Laws
https://www.history.com/topics/early-20t...-crow-laws
(History.com, 21-Feb-2020)

-- Andrew Johnson
https://www.history.com/topics/us-presid...ew-johnson
(History.com, 21-Aug-2018)

-- Jim Crow Laws
https://www.nps.gov/malu/learn/education...w_laws.htm
(National Park Service, 17-Aug-2018)

-- A Timeline of US Race Riots Since 1965
https://www.voanews.com/usa/timeline-us-race-riots-1965
(AFP, 30-May-2020)

-- America’s Race Problem Erupts Anew, Layered With Coronavirus
Tensions
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/30/ame...-tensions/
(Foreign Policy, 30-May-2020)

-- Exalted Cyclops / Sen. Robert Byrd dead at 92; West Virginia
lawmaker was the longest serving member of Congress in history
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co...01241.html
(Washington Post, 28-Jun-2010)