washing dishes: a father’s glimpses

These stakes

By

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In the span of three pages of the Introduction to How We Win the Civil War: securing a multiracial democracy and ending White supremacy for good (published in 2022 by The New Press), Steve Phillips distills the defining issue of this time as:

I am trying to sound the alarm that our opponents are engaged in a continuation of the Civil War, have just recently tried to destroy democracy and move us into fascism. (page 11-12)

Which is preceded by:

Democrats remain reluctant to define and engage the actual fight we’re facing. A fight characterized by the battle for justice, equality, and inclusion by people of color and their allies, on the one hand, and by a virulent, fear-based white backlash on the other. (page 10)

Phillips is a dogged researcher, cunning historian and clever writer, such as citing a quote by Union general Charles Wainwright who described that Lincoln was surrounded by “a small number of abolitionist political leaders ‘who had negro on the brain.’” (11)

That’s comical — comically stupid. And a testament to how so many White people have thought and still think, live and operate with a blind faith in the inherent subservience of Black people. That a general in the U.S. Army that was fighting the Confederates would harbor such animus is unsurprising to anyone who knows a wee bit of U.S. history.

I want to re-write and give all attribution to the five point program that Phillips describes as the White supremacist gameplan of the last 157 years:

  1. Never give an inch
  2. Ruthlessly rewrite laws
  3. Distort public opinion
  4. Silently sanction terrorism
  5. Play long game

As I read this book, I’m marinating in the truth that when we fail to learn history we are bound to repeat it. As he writes on page 24:

much of the opposition [to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments] came from [members of Congress from] states that were NOT part of the Confederacy. Yes, you read that right. Black folks’ supposed allies hemmed and hawed when it came time to put a prohibition on slavery and racial discrimination in the U.S. Constitution…. Bear in mind that, having seceded from the country, no representatives of the Confederate states were even in Congress at that time, and yet the Hoise of Representatives still couldn’t pass an amendment outlawing slavery.