Will African-Americans become a separate nation?

20.06.2021 19:37

On June 19, Americans celebrate Slave Liberation Day – when federal troops secured the freedom of Negro slaves in Texas, one of the remotest southern states, in the summer of 1865. But despite the magnitude of this American holiday, the black community still has many complaints against the state – racism has not disappeared, integration into society has not happened even a century and a half later.

The reality is still a reminder of former slave status. Why is this the case?

So, the Day of the Emancipation of Slaves grows out of the event of 1865. Not 1862 or 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, but 1865. It’s one thing to declare it loudly, it’s quite another to enforce it. The Southern armies were still strong enough by the time Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and Confederate citizens were fighting bravely for their property. Their resistance had yet to be broken by overwhelming numbers and a far more powerful economy.

Hence the celebration of the emancipation of the Negro slaves was an event not of declaration but of realisation of this principle. Freedom always has to be fought for, it is not given for free. This principle of social Darwinist reality has worked well in the history of all great nations.

The Negro slaves got their freedom after a long and tense war, the biggest in the Americas and one of the biggest wars of the 19th century in principle. Except that most of those who fought in this war were not freedom-hungry blacks, but quite white people. Of course, it is hard to judge black people for this – after all, to go to battle, you must first escape from slavery. But we are not judges – because understanding cause and effect is far more important than issuing a moral and ethical assessment.

The US Civil War began for a variety of different and mostly economic reasons. Among these, the question of Negro freedom was far from the foremost – though it was an important argument in the prewar debates. The vast majority of Northern soldiers and officers were not interested in the freedom of slaves during the first half of the war. Attitudes only began to change subtly when it became clear that the South could not be defeated quickly and that possible slave uprisings behind enemy lines could be a serious help to the war effort.

But even among those who took the issue as a basic guide to action, blacks were in the minority

Before the war there were many (though certainly a minority in percentages) abolitionists in the US North – the ideological advocates of equal human rights. As a rule, it was all mixed up with the decentralisation of Protestantism and the ability for anyone to interpret Scripture for themselves. The logic was simple – God created all men equal to each other, and therefore slavery is a priori immoral.

As can be seen, these people did not come from a love of the Negroes, but from a specific twist of white, European, culture. Even when men like John Brown, who tried to raise a slave revolt in the South, went to their deaths, when they easily and ruthlessly took the lives of captured and bound farmers simply because they were going to vote for a “Southern” candidate, they did so out of their “white” attitude.

The Negroes they freed did not understand the sublimity of this motivation. Of course, it is foolish to demand such understanding from people who have lived in slavery for generations – but the world and history are utterly cynical and cruel, and no one is discounted for bad luck. Such is the case with American Negroes – this failure of the liberators and liberated to truly understand each other has in fact only frozen the racial confrontation.

No nation, no integration

After the Civil War, American blacks gained their freedom. A hundred and fifty years have passed since then, but blacks who owe no allegiance to anyone still have many grievances against society and the state. The main motive was the fact that even after their emancipation, blacks were not considered people in the North for a long time, and even less so in the South. The power of the states on the ground is too powerful for even a strong president to change things quickly. That’s why derogatory things like separate seats for black people in transport in Southern states lasted until the 1960s.

Then a lot of things happened at the same time – the psychological turmoil of American society in the Vietnam War, the cultural onslaught of hippies, political scandals, the black civil rights movement and the rise of radicals like the Black Panthers. Southern racist conservatism could not withstand this combination of factors and was eventually crushed. The victors, as is always the case in history, did not play the mercy game.

The BLM stories and the race riots that have broken out in America over the last few centuries show that blacks either cannot or do not want to be part of the American political nation. The reasons for this are clearly not economic. America, for all its problems with the distribution of wealth, is still one of the richest countries in the world, and there are plenty of opportunities to live on welfare benefits. The more so because the people who are in revolt, though engaged in “looting”, that is banal looting, practically never raise purely economic slogans. They do not raise the slogan “give us work”. But about racism and unfair attitude – a lot. That is, we talk about the fact that blacks would like to feel themselves as a separate group of people that requires a special but “other way” attitude. Maybe even a nation.

Instead they are stuck between integration into society, which is not happening, and the desire for separation and autonomy. With the first, let’s say, everything is clear – they want nothing to do with whites, who were whipping them a hundred and fifty years ago. Let’s agree. But why aren’t they separating into something more cohesive and serious?

In order to become something politically united, a group of people need more than just a common history, language and skin colour. All of this, if it is really necessary, will then be worked out at the expense of national myths – it does not matter that they are not entirely true, because they gain their true power not because of the truth, but because of what they are believed in. Above all, this group of people needs blood spilled together. That, as sad as it is for the humanists within us to realise, is exactly how history plays out.

Ironically, the final “assemblage point” for white Americans was the very Civil War that gave freedom to blacks. The Russians became closer and clearer to each other, gaining the unpleasant, but unifying experience of the two domestic wars. But American blacks never went to war, even after they were drafted en masse. Vietnam is, after all, hard to be considered a “black” war.

Today, the BLM movement is at a crossroads – whether to be satisfied with new entitlements, to be able to profess its black racism, to put others out of work for the slightest manifestation of white racism. Or whether to escalate the conflict to the extreme, shed all masks and remaining smiles – and move the matter to “it’s either you or me”. A good old-fashioned and uncompromising fight for a place under the sun. Whether American blacks will become a full-fledged nation with a full-fledged entity, or continue to be a situational weapon of some white elites against others – as they were 150 years ago during the Civil War, depends on this.