An Accurate Reckoning

The Sierra Club is coming to terms with John Muir's racism. I didn't not know about it, but it also comes as absolutely no surprise. Pretty much all you have to say is "White person who lived in America from 1877-1940" and I'm pretty sure you can find something appalling in their written record. This is the problem with "presentism." It establishes a standard that it is impossible for past figure to uphold.

If someone were to trash 19th century doctors for not using antibiotics, I think we would all scratch our heads and wonder what the hell this person was talking about. A 19th century doctor would have zero idea what antibiotics are. Much the same thing can be said for racism among white people until the Second World War.

Yes, there were some White people who held mildly racially progressive views by today's standards. John Dewey and Jane Addams and a few others. But even they would not be "anti-racist" by today's definition.

Racism was simply the unexamined status of America in the long period between Reconstruction and the Second World War. (I'm guessing the Holocaust and the Cold War combined to create a reckoning in America about the distance between our creed and our actions.) Basically, when looking at the past and past figures, you have to identify what racism is.  Is it a personal choice? An individual way of looking at people? Or is it a system of norms and values passed down through culture? Is racism an individual sin or the sin of the culture?  If it is the latter, then the racism of a Muir or a Wilson or a Roosevelt or a Ford is hardly to be a surprise.

When we have a "reckoning" about these past figures, we need to understand that what we are judging is less the individuals than the society that created them. Excoriating Muir or Wilson or Teddy Roosevelt or Henry Ford neither advances our understanding of how systemic racism works nor accurately leads to an understanding of that time period.  Much better to begin with an understanding of HOW racist America was during the Jim Crow era (and not just to Blacks), and then show how it could warp just about everyone. (Muir was a bit of a crank and didn't like most people, so I'm not sure about how relevant that is in this case.)

Edward Abbey - a natural heir to Muir - was asked about what "the problem" was with Native Americans. Why were they so poor, so prone to alcohol abuse? His response was that the "problem" with Native Americans was that they were just the same as everyone else. In other words, strip someone of their land, religion and culture, relegate them to reservations and impoverish them and anyone would wind up in rough straights. Similar things can be said about the "problem" with racist Americans during the Jim Crow Era. If all you are raised on is white supremacy, how - exactly - do you not become a white supremacist? One reason the Civil Rights Movement was successful was because the very means of protesting gave tangible lie to white supremacy.

If we want to understand racism, we shouldn't just point our fingers at past figures, cluck our tongues and shake our heads in disgust. We should understand how powerful racism can be when it penetrates all aspects of a society. We should not excuse Muir, Wilson, Roosevelt or Ford, but rather we should use them to demonstrate why the entire system was designed to produce people who felt this way. Otherwise, all we are doing is making ourselves feel better about our own rejection of retrograde beliefs without really examining the systems in place today.