December 19th in the year 2016. Let’s watch what happens. Oh, shocker! White supremacy is alive and well.
“At the insistence of delegates from southern states … slaves–although denied the vote and not recognized as citizens by those states–were allowed to be counted as 3/5 persons for the purpose of apportioning representatives and determining electoral votes.” - The Constitutional Convention of 1787
When the founders of the Constitution were deliberating whether popular vote should elect the President of the United States, racist-slave owning-3/5 compromise-scourge James Madison proposed that to protect the institution of slavery, electors should determine the results instead. “Those dag nab Northerners will outlaw slavery before you can say James Madison is a sorry excuse for patriarchal constitutionality,” he is rumored to have complained. And so today, a Mississippian’s vote for the office of President counts more than a New Yorker’s vote. The hilarious part (more hilarious part?) is that progressives think only a handful of people in modern times would support a system that girds actual slavery. Fools. Haven’t you been paying attention? At least 60 million U.S. voters think such systems are not problematic.
“The new racism is denying racism.” – Bill Maher
The argument of the moment is, as you know, that just because these people voted for a racist, misogynist, xenophobic, fascist demagogue, they are not racist, misogynist, xenophobes. Yes, they are. The only reason one would support, discount, or disregard a candidate’s blatant ‘isms is because one believes one’s own issues to be superior to the prejudicial treatment of others. QED ‘ism. White supremacists are simply not what many might think they are (and are sometimes not White). Hint: if you’ve watched W. Kamau Bell interact with Klansmen on his CNN show United Shades of America and thought, “Wow! They talk to that Black man like he’s a person!” then you probably hold a much too narrow definition of what a White supremacist is. Example: my friend’s father both calls me “my little African” and throws his cane away in order to dance with me at his son’s wedding reception. He would challenge my right to equal employment opportunity while at the same time take a bullet for me if we found ourselves in the same fox hole. Example 2: a member of the California Bar wrote after one of my presentations on employment discrimination in the entertainment industry:
“My perspective now is to consider the white male akin to religion, historically it has provided the best and worst we can offer as humans. You really can accept as fact that one category of people can be the biggest problem and also the best solution historically.”
In the same message he offered to help me and my cause in whatever way he could. White supremacists can, yes, “love” the very people they believe are entirely beneath them. Humans are complicated. Just as the Nazis tried at Nuremberg didn’t present as sadistic monsters but instead dutiful husbands and fathers, so, too, are our White supremacists capable of civil behavior. They still think White people should reign supreme. Just ask “liberal” Hollywood types about the White hero-centric projects they produce and peddle. White supremacists: sometimes not White, sometimes not conservative.
Enter our electors. On December 19th, by deciding who becomes President, electors will either support or act to dismantle White supremacy. Some of the “liberal” ones are flipping their blue state votes from Hillary Clinton, so you know which side they are on. Their plan is to vote instead for a Republican alternative, probably John Kasich, in another myopic compromise of our most sacred democratic principles in order to make inroads in Republican circles toward nowhere.
This move is pulled from the same playbook that kept crucial legislation from passing during President Obama’s first two years as Commander-In-Chief when Democrats held majorities in both Houses. This time, “Hamilton Electors” leaders who don’t want either front-runner to become President have convinced some Democrat electors to call another losing play for their team, one that would derail any possibility of a Clinton presidency.
After all, if blue states turn, then electors abstaining in red states can’t do so in large enough numbers to swing the majority of the electors’ votes toward Hillary Clinton. Alexander Hamilton might at this point yell “Strategy be damned!” and argue that playing such a game violates the essential role of electors: to protect The People such that “the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”
Abstention perhaps falls in the Hamilton line, but using one’s power as an elector to install a surprise alternative because one doesn’t like the “second” place choice runs afoul of the very philosophies “Hamilton Electors” claim to support … but many electors (and citizens) couldn’t care less. They believe in strategy not values, not The People, not the Constitution, and certainly not equal representation and protection of the laws.
There is no neutral this time around, electors. A diverse majority community supported one candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton. To vote against its interests elevates a homogenous minority and its authoritarian calls to arms (this throwback Thursday: South Africa’s apartheid!). Any vote against Clinton also supports interference in our political process from dangers both foreign and domestic: Russian election tampering and an FBI agent (who apparently knew about the tampering) who arguably raised a question of impropriety solely in order to dissuade unsophisticated thinkers from backing Clinton.
A vote against Clinton also endorses misogyny which played an enormous role in what should have been a landslide of the electoral tally in the other direction. If the presidential race had been another type of hire, Human Resources would settle the dust with a decisive prohibition of employment discrimination and contract the more qualified candidate: Hillary “How The Hell Does She Motivate To Keep Helping You People” Clinton. But the nation’s deliberation was for the role of President of the United States. Somehow occupational qualifications are deemed less important than large numbers–albeit a minority–of voters endorsing someone who makes them feel really good about themselves and their supremacy.
I recently learned that Richard Tarr – my great^8-grandfather who first settled what is now Rockport, Massachusetts – is rumored to have bribed a jailer during the Salem witch trials era to hide some of the accused in Dogtown Common (Gloucester) until the witch scare was over. I think we forget how bad it can get, how badly people can behave. Slavery, genocide of indigenous populations, Japanese-American internment, and we’re the only menace who has ever dropped a nuclear bomb on someone. It is only denial that allows anyone to think those were one-offs.
And so, the electors will decide our fate in a week. They must choose a Clinton presidency or White supremacy. No, White supremacy will not go gentle into that good night, but on December 19th, electors have the opportunity to pull the plug. Make no mistake, electors; life or death is up to you.
SOURCES (accessed 13 December 2016)
Richie Bernardo. 2016’s States with the Most and Least Powerful Voters (17 October 2016).
Amy Chozicknov. Hillary Clinton Blames F.B.I. Director for Election Loss (12 November 2016).
Stephen Collinson. Obama urges Americans to give Trump a chance, CNN (updated 15 November 2016).
Michael Darer. Trevor Noah’s Interview With Tomi Lahren Is A Perfect Example Of Why The White Liberal ‘Discourse’ Fetish Is So Damn Absurd (3 December 2016, updated 9 December 2016).
Ron Elving. How Does The Electoral College Work, And Is It Fair? (6 November 2016).
Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Miller. Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House (9 December 2016).
Kamala Kelkar. Electoral College is ‘vestige’ of slavery, say some Constitutional scholars (6 November 2016, updated 7 November 2016).
Doug Linder. The Nuremberg Trials (2000).
Andrew McGill. The Trump Bloc: Donald Trump has won over many working-class white voters. But does he have anyone else? (14 September 2016).
Ellen Holmes Pearson. Iroquois and the Founding Fathers.
Ed Pilkington. Teen becomes seventh ‘faithless elector’ to protest Trump as president-elect (30 November 2016).
Matthew Rozsa. Donald Trump isn’t yet president, and the Hamilton Electors have one shot to make sure he never is (10 December 2016).
Dylan Thomas. Do not go gentle into that good night (1951).
Peter Thomas (30 July 2009), Sam Coulbourn (editorial changes 7 December 2010). Rockport’s Mill Pond, Dam and Millbrook Meadow.
The Constitutional Convention of 1787, University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Defendants in the Major War Figures Trial, University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Distribution of Electoral Votes. National Archives and Records Administration.
The Federalist Papers, No. 68. Yale Law School.
HLN. Bill Maher: ‘The new racism is denying racism’, (3 December 2012).
Population vs. Electoral Votes. cloudfront.net
We The People. When The Powerful Claim They Are Powerless: Part 1 - Electors (16 November 2016).