I got a familiar feeling after reading both Zinn chapters this week – having my bubble burst. While definitely not a feeling I enjoy, that emotion is immediately overcome with frustration about not being given an accurate account of events earlier in my life. Just as I had believed the dominant narrative about the founding of our country, I was also fairly naive when thinking about the Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation, and what Zinn calls the black revolt of the 1950s and 1960s. Reading these chapters make it abundantly clear that there is a glaring flaw in our education system. The Emancipation Proclamation is portrayed as the be all and end all of the abolitionist movement, when in reality the motivation for it was purely politically and economically motivated and the federal government actively fought to withhold the rights it had promised to black Americans. The fact that I am only now learning the extent to which this occurred at 19 years old is ridiculous to me.
Besides the failure of the federal government, I was struck by another theme in these two chapters – the pitting of poor white Americans against poor black Americans. Before the Emancipation Proclamation, poor whites were employed as overseers for plantations to stop them from helping slaves escape to freedom. Following the “freeing” (I don’t feel quite right saying slaves were actually freed after the Emancipation Proclamation alone after these readings), poor whites and poor blacks were competing for the same underpaid jobs and insufficient housing, perpetuating the same racism and racial violence that allowed upper class wealthy white men to maintain the same power and status they had before. While a hard pill to swallow, learning these facts and the true accounts of history is far more important than feeling comfortable with the wrong account.
It is a very hard idea to sit with in that poor white people and poor African Americans were sent to do similar things simply because they didn’t have money to provide themselves with land. There was something that struck my mind which was that white people that were poor were sent to dean with African Americans but because they were white they almost “saved” which was messed up in my opinion and almost everyone during this time.
It never made sense for me to believe that the Emancipation Proclamation was a true reflection of the North not having been just as racially biased and oppressive as the South. To this day, racism takes on various forms in various stages and degrees. Sure, most Southerners were blatantly racist and oppressive of Black Americans through the implementation of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and lynching. Yet, Northerners can be held to the same light as they are guilty of the economic suppression, isolation, and overall disparagement of Afro-Americans.
Anyone and everyone can be pit against Black people on the sole basis of skin color. Wealthy White men at the top in the economy and status can do anything to maintain their degree of a power dynamic. If skin color can be used to separate people who could possibly work together, then it will be used. If money and economic status can be used to separate poor people from rising up against the rich, then they will be used.
I agree that while it makes us really uncomfortable relearning history, it is crucial to question what we have always believed. I experienced the similar sensation of “having my bubble burst.” I wish our education system taught us these contradictions earlier.