The Inevitable Patterns of American History, Part 3

A portion of America's southern border fence (New York Times photo)

Reading Greg Grandin’s The End of the Myth and Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage simultaneously left me with a sense of bleak fatalism… at first. Professor Grandin talks about how America’s frontier and overseas wars have consistently resulted in racial violence at home. Judge Gergel describes one such act of violence, when a decorated soldier, going home, found himself beaten blind for no greater offense than being born Black.

The continuity of patterns probably wouldn’t be lost on either author. What Grandin describes in the broad sweep of history, salted with specific examples, Gergel approaches from the specific, broadening out into larger structures. Reading these books, I can’t help the chill of recognition that America has a longstanding scheme to channel our aggressive tendencies outward, then act surprised when the aggressive people come home more prepared for violence.

However, as tempting as it becomes to see American history as an irresistible trend toward racism, violence, and war, these books offer readers an opportunity to see history’s living dynamic. We aren’t beholden to the past, because we can change; we have changed. And it has happened because individuals, motivated by the belief in their own rightness and America’s stated principles, have demanded Americans do what we know is right.

Professor Grandin writes that military intervention has historically channeled America’s racial animus outward. Much racial language that still permeates our national vocabulary originated in war; I grew up hearing my father repeating Vietnam-era racial descriptions (a fact that, to his credit, now embarasses him) which I considered simply “normal.” Because inevitably, veterans come home, bearing the propaganda they’ve learned with them.

Nor can national officials claim they don’t this. Judge Gergel writes that Sgt. Isaac Woodard’s beating, which motivated President Truman to desegregate the military and federal government, came amidst a rash of postwar racial violence. Sgt. Woodard stood out only because he survived his attack. Truman felt pressed to do something because he remembered the outbreaks of racial violence following World War I, in which he served.

But Truman also felt pressed to do something because activists pressed him. Truman sat down with activist leaders, including Walter E. White and Thurgood Marshall, intending to repeat his advisors’ official line that the federal government couldn’t do anything precipitous. We need to act gradually, to introduce legislation and deliberate upon it with modest speed, Truman’s official script went. Until activists confronted Truman with facts, and he rejected his script.

America's frontier myth, as depicted by Currier and Ives

I have difficulty reading this history without seeing everything America’s faced since 2001. Faced with an aggressive desire to do something, though we’re not too sure what, following a national tragedy, America did what it’s always done. It sent troops overseas. Maybe America needed to topple the Taliban; maybe Saddam Hussein overstayed his welcome on the world stage. But the issues in these cases were inarguably domestic American issues.

Except, Grandin writes, this overseas intervention went pear-shaped in ways no prior American military entanglement had. Our invasions of the Philippines in 1898 or Vietnam in 1965 dragged on and became massively unpopular at home, sure. But with disasters like Fallujah and Abu Ghraib, we’d never seen things go as spectacularly wrong as they did in our post-9/11 interventions. These became truly historic cock-ups.

Thus we had veterans, steeped in racist propaganda (and don’t pretend Abu Ghraib was either not racist nor not sanctioned), dropped into a postwar America ill-prepared to handle their experiences. Many formed civilian “border patrol” vigilante groups, whose documented activities uncannily resemble Klan lynchings. America’s history of being afraid to harvest the seeds it’s sown continues. If only bold leaders dared to step in and say, “This isn’t my America.”

Sadly, we had three successive presidents, representing both major political parties, who were unwilling to pull a Truman and place justice over expediency. Our current President has actively fanned these flames. Circumstances probably would have changed little had the 2016 election gone the other direction; it’s been less than six months since Hillary Clinton suggested nations should appease their racist elements. Violence begets violence, irrespective of political party.

So yes, America has a history of racism, one that we’ve seen writ large since 2001. And we have presidents, and presidential candidates, urging gradualism, just as Truman’s advisors did. But we have one other thing Truman also had: the American people, believing, however tenuously, in the principles of our founding documents. That’s why, despite the patterns, I can’t surrender to fatalism. Because the patterns of American history aren’t as inevitable as they seem.