In America there is battle raging, it’s an extension of past battles, a Civil War that has never quite ended. We are still fighting to right the wrongs of the past, we are still striving to have an honest conversation about racism. Javar Hollins, a prisoner in Western Illinois Correctional Center, writes about his life, his memories, and the social inequalities that, he argues, played a role in losing his freedom to the “prison industrial complex” at age eighteen. Hollins essay brings up issues of public memory over race and racism that continue to be a contested and heated debate. Today, it infiltrates every aspect of life from cancel culture, to fights over critical race theory and classroom curriculum, to Black Lives or Blue Lives. American’s have been in conflict over the historical memory of race since the Civil War ended.
The Roots of White Supremacy
At the end of the Civil War, the country was attempting to redefine itself. New narratives emerged to celebrate the Confederate cause and served to subvert the new social order. The Lost Cause myth gained traction as white southern men and women were looking to create an alternate war narrative. The myth decreed that issues over states’ rights caused the war, rather than slavery. The proponents of the myth depicted emotionally attached slaves and loving southern families. They created heroic figures in Robert E Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson. They claimed the war was a “lost cause” due to the unfair industrial advantages of the North. They created a romanticism of the southern plantation that was brought to life in cultural creations such as Gone with the Wind. These myths infiltrated the public consciousness and could be found in classrooms and textbooks throughout the 20th century. Confederate monument building, flag bearing, and sympathy for “the lost cause” became part of the cultural fabric in southern towns and cities.
Why, then, are Confederate flags found across the country? This particular symbol has moved beyond southern cities and battlefields. As Hollins remembers, “At the age of 10, my older brother and I were placed in a home where our foster mother was white. She treated us well but my brother had to share a bedroom with her 17-year-old son who had a Confederate flag hanging on the wall and made a habit of telling us about our n***** lips” and “n***** noses until we decided to do something about it. When we reacted, it was us who were deemed the problem.” The Confederate flag has its roots in the Civil War, and to Black Americans has long represented racism and slavery. However, some argue that it has come to symbolize resentment at the growing power of non-whites. The death of Heather Heyer in 2017 at a Robert E. Lee monument protest, and the murder of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 by a white supremacist signaled a violent longing for the past. White supremacists revere symbols of the Confederacy as they attempt to reckon with a demographically changing country. The lost cause myth, although challenged by social historians after World War II and during the Civil Rights movement, has evolved to represent today’s ideology of white supremacy.
Are Things Different?
Javar Hollins grew up hearing tales from his grandfather from before the Civil Rights era. Hollins writes “My grandfather told me that things were different, that things were better.” He continues, “In his early years, my grandfather experienced the segregated south and the terror of open racism, northern ghettos, poverty, and the police oppression of Blacks.” Hollins life growing up in the 1980’s did not seem better. For him, racism was alive and well. “Looking at my life through the lens of his personal history, it was clear to me that all he saw was roses. Without question things had improved, but true social equality was still an ephemeral, distant dream.”
White Americans today believe that with the end of segregation and the changes implemented during the Civil Rights era, that racism has been eradicated. Modern racism is dangerous because it often goes unrecognized. As Hollins puts it, “The blatant bigotry and systemic racism of my grandfather’s era has given way to a latent and more insidious strain. I would argue that this new strain is more harmful because hidden things are easier to ignore.” Built into the American psyche are ideas of what sixties-era sociologists and policy makers derisively termed as “Black pathological” deficiency. In 1965, Daniel Moynihan’s report on Black families introduced this fraught conceptualization about the “problem” inherent to Black culture and Black families. While he admitted that racism was a part of the problem, Moynihan deduced that the disintegrating family structure was inherent to Black people and the family structure. This, he argued, threatened the middle-class progress of Black families. But the report ignored the systemic racism the Black population had long endured, and instead, blamed Black family structure for the lack of social and economic equality. More than that, as historian Elizabeth Hinton has showed in her work From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, the conceptualization of “Black pathology” was at the root of criminal justice polices that criminalized African Americans and constructed much of mass incarceration and the carceral state. Moynihan’s findings became embedded in public policy under the Johnson administration and Great Society programs. At the same time that the Civil Rights Era was making legislative gains, American racism was evolving to disregard institutionalized racism.
The belief that equality is limited by the deficiencies of Black family structure is still present today, ingrained into modern culture, law, and institutions. As long as this is true, the onus will be on Black Americans to change what they cannot change. Institutions must look to eradicate the built in racism that is hard to see and easy to ignore. Javar Hollins knows this all too well. He states, “For far too long, we have mistakenly believed that it is social equality, or the lack thereof, that is a minority problem, but it’s not. It is, however, a problem for minorities. Social inequality is an American problem.”
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