Was Lincoln a Racist?

The Great Emancipator was far more complicated than the mythical hero we have come to revere.


By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.

I first encountered Abraham Lincoln in Piedmont, W.Va. When I was growing up, his picture was in nearly every black home I can recall, the only white man, other than Jesus himself, to grace black family walls. Lincoln was a hero to us.

One rainy Sunday afternoon in 1960, when I was 10 years old, I picked up a copy of our latest Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, and, thumbing through, stumbled upon Jim Bishop’s The Day Lincoln Was Shot, which had been published in 1955 and immediately became a runaway bestseller. It is an hour-by-hour chronicle of the last day of Lincoln’s life. I couldn’t help crying by the end.

But my engagement with the great leader turned to confusion when I was a senior in high school. I stumbled upon an essay that Lerone Bennett Jr. published in Ebony magazine entitled “Was Abe Lincoln a White Supremacist?” A year later, as an undergraduate at Yale, I read an even more troubling essay that W.E.B. Du Bois had published in The Crisis magazine in May 1922. Du Bois wrote that Lincoln was one huge jumble of contradictions: “he was big enough to be inconsistent—cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves. He was a man—a big, inconsistent, brave man.”

So many hurt and angry readers flooded Du Bois’ mailbox that he wrote a second essay in the next issue of the magazine, in which he defended his position this way: “I love him not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet triumphed. ….”

To prove his point, Du Bois included this quote from a speech Lincoln delivered in 1858 in Charleston, Ill.:

“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Say what? The Lincoln of 1858 was a very long way from becoming the Great Emancipator!

So which was the real Lincoln, the benevolent countenance hanging on the walls of black people’s homes, the Man Who Freed the Slaves, or this man whom Du Bois was quoting, who seemed to hate black people?

In the collective popular imagination, Abraham Lincoln—Father Abraham, the Great Emancipator—is often represented as an island of pure reason in a sea of mid-19th-century racist madness, a beacon of tolerance blessed with a cosmopolitan sensibility above or beyond race, a man whose attitudes about race and slavery transcended his time and place. These contemporary views of Lincoln, however, are largely naive and have almost always been ahistorical.

When Peter Kunhardt—my co-executive producer in the making of the PBS series “African American Lives”—asked me two years ago to co-produce, write and host a new PBS series on Lincoln, timed to air on the bicentennial of his birth, I realized that making this film would give me, at long last, the chance to ask, “Will the real Abraham Lincoln please stand up?” I also extensively researched and analyzed Lincoln’s writings and speeches for my book, Lincoln on Race and Slavery.

Lincoln’s myth is so capacious that each generation of Americans since his death in 1865 has been able to find its own image reflected in his mirror. Lincoln is America’s man for all seasons, and our man for all reasons. In fact, over and over again through the past century and a half, we Americans have reinvented Abraham Lincoln in order to reinvent ourselves. The most recent example, of course, is captured in the journey of our 44th president, Barack Obama, who launched his presidential campaign in Lincoln’s hometown, Springfield, Ill., cited Lincoln’s oratory repeatedly throughout his campaign, retraced his train route to Washington from Philadelphia and even used Lincoln’s Bible for his swearing-in ceremony.

On the eve of the 200th anniversary of his birth, the Lincoln fable is as vital today as ever. For my PBS series, I filmed all over the country, from a Sotheby’s auction where an obscure letter of his sold for $3 million, to the annual convention last summer of the Sons of the Confederacy, where one official told me that Lincoln is the biggest war criminal in the history of the United States, that his face should be chiseled off Mount Rushmore and that he should be tried posthumously for war crimes under the Nuremberg Conventions!

In the black community, despite strident critiques of his attitudes about blacks by historians such as Bennett, Lincoln continues to occupy a place of almost holy reverence, the patron saint of race relations.

But the truth is that until very late in his presidency, Lincoln was deeply conflicted about whether to liberate the slaves, how to liberate the slaves and what to do with them once they had been liberated. Whereas abolition was a central aspect of Lincoln’s moral compass, racial equality was not. In fact, Lincoln wrestled with three distinct but sometimes overlapping discourses related to race: slavery, equality and colonization. Isolating these three—like the three strands of a braid of hair—helps us to understand how conflicted the man was about African Americans and their place in this country.

Interspersed among these three discourses is the manner in which Lincoln seems to have wrestled with his own use of the “N-word.” Lincoln used the word far less than did Stephen Douglas, his Democratic challenger for the U.S. Senate, but he did indeed use it in prominent contexts including debates and public speeches. Even as late as April 1862, James Redpath recorded Lincoln’s saying of President Fabre Nicholas Geffard of Haiti (who had offered to send a white man as his ambassador to the United States), “You can tell the President of Hayti that I shan’t tear my shirt if he sends a nigger here!”

Lincoln despised slavery as an institution, an economic institution that discriminated against white men who couldn’t afford to own slaves and, thus, could not profit from the advantage in the marketplace that slaves provided. At the same time, however, he was deeply ambivalent about the status of black people vis-à-vis white people, having fundamental doubts about their innate intelligence and their capacity to fight nobly with guns against white men in the initial years of the Civil War.

Even as he was writing the Emancipation Proclamation during the summer of 1862, Lincoln was working feverishly to ship all those slaves he was about to free out of the United States. So taken was he with the concept of colonization that he invited five black men to the White House and offered them funding to found a black republic in Panama, for the slaves he was about to free. Earlier, he had advocated that the slaves be freed and shipped to Liberia or Haiti. And just one month before the Emancipation became the law of the land, in his Annual Message to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, Lincoln proposed a constitutional amendment that would “appropriate money, and otherwise provide, for colonizing free colored persons with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States.”

Two things dramatically changed Lincoln’s attitudes toward black people. First, in the early years, the North was losing the Civil War, and Lincoln quickly realized that the margin of difference between a Southern victory and a Northern victory would be black men. So, despite severe reservations that he had expressed about the courage of black troops (“If we were to arm them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of the rebels…”), Lincoln included in the Emancipation Proclamation a provision authorizing black men to fight for the Union.

The other factor that began to affect his attitudes about blacks was meeting Frederick Douglass. Lincoln met with Douglass at the White House three times. He was the first black person Lincoln treated as an intellectual equal, and he grew to admire him and value his opinion.

Three days before he was shot, Lincoln stood on the second floor of the White House and made a speech to a crowd assembled outside celebrating the recent Union victory over the Confederacy. With his troops and Frederick Douglass very much in mind, Lincoln told the cheering crowd, which had demanded that he come to the window to address them, that he had decided to recommend that his 200,000 black troops and “the very intelligent Negroes” be given the right to vote.


Standing in the crowd was John Wilkes Booth. Hearing those words, Booth turned to a man next to him and said, “That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God! I'll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.” Three days later, during the third act of Our American Cousin, Booth followed through with his promise.

It is important that we hear Lincoln’s words through the echo of the rhetoric of the modern civil rights movement, especially the “I Have a Dream” speech of Martin Luther King Jr. It is easy to forget that when Lincoln made a public address, he was speaking primarily—certainly until his Second Inaugural Address—to all-white or predominantly white audiences, who most certainly were ambivalent about blacks and black rights, if not slavery. When Lincoln talked about wrestling with the better angels of our nature, he knew whereof he spoke: about his audience and, just as important, about himself.

It should not surprise us that Lincoln was no exception to his times; what is exceptional about Abraham Lincoln is that, perhaps because of temperament or because of the shape-shifting contingencies of command during an agonizingly costly war, he wrestled with his often contradictory feelings and ambivalences and vacillations about slavery, race and colonization, and did so quite publicly and often quite eloquently.

So, was Lincoln a racist? He certainly embraced anti-black attitudes and phobias in his early years and throughout his debates with Douglas in the 1858 Senate race (the seat that would become Barack Obama’s), which he lost. By the end of the Civil War, Lincoln was on an upward arc, perhaps heading toward becoming the man he has since been mythologized as being: the Great Emancipator, the man who freed—and loved—the slaves. But his journey was certainly not complete on the day that he died. Abraham Lincoln wrestled with race until the end. And, as Du Bois pointed out, his struggle ultimately made him a more interesting and noble man than the mythical hero we have come to revere.



Henry Louis Gates Jr. is editor in chief of The Root. He is co-host of the PBS series Looking for Lincoln, which premieres Feb. 11 (check local listings for time). His book, Lincoln on Race and Slavery, is available now.

Why I'm Quitting Facebook!

You Can’t Friend Me, I Quit!

On Facebook's fifth anniversary, a not-so-fond farewell.

By Steve Tuttle | Newsweek Web Exclusive

I was a late convert to Facebook, the social-networking site that turned five years old Wednesday. I joined about a year ago at age 47, swept up in the massive wave of people turning the corner to the back nine of life, and pitifully trying to do what comes so naturally to our sons and daughters. My own 16-year-old, Grace, literally cried from embarrassment when I told her I was signing up, and she begged me through her tears not to do it. When it was clear that I was serious, she made me promise never to "friend" her. Since I didn't know what that meant at the time, I agreed. Last week I redeemed myself in her eyes, because I signed off of Facebook forever—or at least until Tuesday.

I had one of those Hallmark movie moments. I was sitting here at work thinking up my next pithy "status update," which is where you broadcast to all your online buddies in a few words what you're up to at that very moment—and finally came to my senses. "What the hell have I become?" I cried.

So goodbye 157 Facebook friends, 75 of whom I wouldn't recognize if I saw you on the street. Goodbye super nifty "Pieces of Flair" application, and the 1,332,359 members of the "I Don't Care How Comfortable Crocs Are, You Look Like a Dumbass" Crocs-hater group. Goodbye, William and Mary alums I barely remember from 25 years ago. Not you, Tom, the other Tom. Hello to actually working at my job again. Well, a little anyway. I wouldn't have been able to write this story about quitting Facebook if I didn't quit Facebook because I wouldn't have had the time.

When I think about all the hours I wasted this past year on Facebook, and imagine the good I could have done instead, it depresses me. Instead of scouring my friends' friends' photos for other possible friends, I could have been raising money for Darfur relief, helping out at the local animal shelter or delivering food to the homeless. It depresses me even more to know that I would never have done any of those things, even with all those extra hours.

I was so addicted to my imaginary playgroup, I put the Facebook application on my BlackBerry. That way I could know immediately when some kid who used to pick on me in elementary school was reaching out across the years to remind me that I still had cooties. Once I was so entranced reading my Facebook page on my handheld, that I lost sight of the actual faces of the people on the street around me, and came to only after I fell into the lap of a man in a wheelchair. I was hurt when he rebuffed my attempt to friend him, but it turns out real life doesn't have that feature.

Nothing personal, former Facebook friends: I'll miss those wall updates about doing dishes and changing the kitty litter. I'll miss seeing those artsy photos of beach sunsets and city streets covered with snow. I'll miss posting those, I mean. I'll miss your constant name dropping and updates that make sure we all know you're camping in a hemp tent on a sustainable emu farm in Costa Rica, or that you eat only dolphin-free tuna, and I should too. But most of all, I will miss those hundreds upon hundreds of baby pictures that remind me daily of how insanely happy I am that my kids aren't babies any more.

Then there's the whole anxiety-inducing to-friend-or-not-to-friend minefield that I won't miss at all. You get a request from, say, Spiffy McGee, but the name doesn't ring a bell. You see that you share a friend, so maybe he found you that way. Or you note that he went to your college, which makes sense, because there were a lot of WASPy "Old Virginia" guys at William and Mary with names like Biff or Buff or Ridge. So you think, what the hell, and you add him, and within minutes your wall is peppered with posts like "Spiffy McGee feels a deuce coming on" or "Spiffy ate the worm!" with photos to prove it. Then you feel pressure to say what you're doing to outwit Spiffy, so you write: "Steve is in a Honey Smacks mood this morning." Seriously, I wrote that.

Facebook status updates are the literary equivalent of inane cell-phone chatter, like when you're on Amtrak and the man in front of you can't stop talking loudly on his Bluetooth for one second, so you're stuck sitting behind him and have to listen to stuff like: "Hi, honey, I'm on Amtrak now. I'm sitting in my seat now. I'm taking off my coat now." Yes, I could always sit in the Quiet Car, but one of the last times I did that the train attendant kept waking me up every five minutes yelling: "This Is The Quiet Car! This Is The Quiet Car!"

Being on Facebook is like volunteering to receive spam, and the more successful you are at finding friends, the more spam you get! In the end, Facebook is really the emptiest, loneliest place on the whole World Wide Web. It's all static and white noise, and the steady streams of status updates start to look like ASDF, ASDF, ASDF after a while.

So I've decided now to do something more worthy and productive with all of my new free time. I'm going back to the original reality-based Facebook, the local bar where everybody knows your name, which for me is Off The Record at the Hay-Adams Hotel here in D.C. Status updates there are said in real time to real people, like: "That guy's got a problem with alcohol. I see him every time I come in here," or "How would the Civil War have changed if Abraham Lincoln had octopus tentacles instead of a beard?" (Thanks, Cliff Clavin). So goodbye, potential and former Facebook pals, all 150 million-plus of you, and hello, John Boswell, the best bartender in America. If any of you need to get in touch, check the third stool in, right side. If you want to friend me, buy me a beer.

Check this OUT!!!

Now that we are all reasonably satiated from an overdose of CNY bounty, here is a test to take that will REALLY make you work your sluggish mind!!!

http://www.evolutionary-metaphysics.net/enlightenment.html


Whoever got more than 5, let me know!! I want to know who is most enlightened. I only got 5 of course... not that enlightened I guess! :-)

13 Mei - Sumbangan Tulisan

13 Mei (tajuk rasmi belum ada)

Editor : Fathi Aris Omar & Jimadie Shah
Penerbit : Gerakbudaya

Prakata

Tanggal 13 Mei tahun ini memberi makna yang besar kepada rakyat Malaysia terutama generasi muda pasca 13 Mei kerana usianya akan memasuki 40 tahun. Akta Pertubuhan Belia dan Pembangunan Belia 2007 mewajibkan barisan kepimpinan dan anggota semua persatuan belia berumur di bawah 40 tahun yang secara tidak langsung meletakkan mereka yang tidak melebihi umur tersebut sebagai anak muda.

Lantas peristiwa 13 Mei 1969 ini akan menghampiri usia terakhir waktu mudanya dan akan menjadi dewasa seterusnya matang. Persoalannya sudahkah kita berjaya keluar dari hantu 13 Mei dan menunjukkan kematangan kita di dalam menghadapi segala masalah kaum dan agama yang kita hadapi di waktu ini?

Untuk menjawab persoalan ini, kami di Gerakbudaya ingin menghimpunkan penulisan dalam pelbagai bentuk serta lakaran dan foto dari anak-anak muda bagi menzahirkan penyataan mereka di dalam menyingkap tragedi ini.

Segala sumbangan akan diterbitkan di dalam buku yang akan diterbitkan oleh Gerakbudaya dan akan dilancarkan secara rasmi pada KL Alternartive Bookfest yang akan berlangsung pada 9 dan 10 Mei 2009 di Annexe Central Market.

Kandungan

Kami bercadang untuk memberi peluang seluas-luasnya kepada penyumbang untuk berkarya selagi mana memenuhi tema dan kriteria yang ditetapkan.

Tema utama buku ini adalah membuang hantu & momok 13 Mei demi Malaysia yang lebih baik.

Gaya Penulisan

Gaya penulisan seperti yang di bawah boleh diaplikasikan walaupun secara umum adalah bebas;

1) Kisah-kisah dari sumber sekunder seperti ibu bapa, cikgu, ahli politik, pensyarah dsb
2) Penulisan kreatif
3) Temu ramah orang yang terlibat dan merasai tragedi, tokoh-tokoh politik, sosial dll
4) Surat terbuka kepada politikus
5) Esei

Setiap karya yang dihantar hendaklah tidak melebihi 2000 patah perkataan , tiada minimum

Sumbangan dalam Bahasa Malaysia dan Bahasa Inggeris

Bagi yang membuat lakaran dan foto hendaklah tidak melebihi 4 muka surat

Setiap penyumbang hendaklah menggunakan nama sendiri atau nama pena yang dikenali umum

Penyumbang mestilah berumur 40 tahun ke bawah dan warganegara Malaysia

Jika anda berminat. sila nyatakan gaya penulisan yang dipilih

E-mel sumbangan dan segala pertanyaan dengan subjek ’13 Mei’ kepada zulhabri@gerakbudaya.com

Setiap penyumbang akan diberi dua buah naskhah buku serta berpeluang cerah menerbitkan buku bersama Gerakbudaya atau cabang penerbitan kami yang lain iaitu, SIRD

Tarikh tutup adalah pada 28 Februari 2009

www.gerakbudaya.com

Palestine - Israel

Hei people, want to have a discussion about the ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel? Can cover inter-religious discussion as well. How's that?

PopTEEVee

Hi gang,

This week, we speak with Balinese activist Termana Ngurah about the reformasi of the late 1990s, and its continued effects on the student and civil society movements in Indonesia. Check out the episode at: http://popteevee.popfolio.net/default.aspx?e=50

Termana took part in the recent REFORMASI'LAH! - Membincangkan (lagi) 10 Tahun Reformasi Malaysia dan Indonesia forum, comparing the different trajectories of the Reformasi in both countries. He shares with us how Indonesians became quickly disillusioned after the initial euphoria of ousting President Suharto, and decided to focus on building local communities and fighting against the State's interference in their personal lives and local politics. Lots of interesting parallels to consider for Malaysians.

Termana Ngurah is an activist with the Taman 65 collective in Bali, Indonesia. He is in KL for 2 months with the Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD).

Download, forward, embed!

Mark Teh (producer of Fahmi Reza's Revolusi 48)

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DEBATE DEC 2008

People,

Bar Council is organizing its inaugural HR Debate for participants next week!!!! FREE to watch and to see the fireworks!! This should be verrrrrrrrry EXCITING! So, do make time to go.

Unfortunately, no public transport to KDU College--you will need car or cab to get there--but can take LRT to Central Market or Masjid Jamek and walk to Bar Council Office, no problem. Very near both LRT stations.

For full info, please go check out: http://hrdebate08.wordpress.com/

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE (Topics will be given on the day itself so it will be a surprise!)

a) Day one (9 December 2008):
At Bar Council, 13, 15 & 17 Leboh Pasar Besar, KL
8 - 11 a.m. Opening ceremony

b) Day two (10 December 2008):
All events at KDU College , PJ Campus

10 - 11 a.m. Round one
11:30 - 12:30 p.m. Round two
2:30 - 3:30 p.m. Round three

c) Day three (11 December 2008):
All events at KDU College , PJ Campus
10 - 11 a.m. Round four
11:30 - 12:30 p.m. Round five
2:30 - 3:30 p.m. Quarterfinals

d) Day four (12 December 2008): Venue as specified below
10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Semifinals (Debate Category) @ KDU College
2 - 3 p.m. Public Speaking Preliminary/ Semi-Final round @ KDU College
8 - 11 p.m. Grand Finals & Closing @ Bar Council, 13, 15 & 17 Leboh Pasar Besar, KL

Bicycle Campaign

1.0 Introduction
Oppressed People’s Network (JERIT) has initiated a nationwide cycling campaign that carries the theme of ’Rakyat Pengayuh Perubahan’ which explains the rakyat drives the change. The participants for this campaign comes from various background such as from plantation workers support comittee, industrial workers’ coalition, farmers, urban pioneers, students and youth groups.

Other NGOs, trade unions, human right groups and political partys also will be a part in this campaign. The idea of this campaign is to reach the public by cycling to city and main town in Malaysia whilst spreading awareness on the issue that affects them extremely such as oil price hike, draconian laws against people, global issues i.e. food crisis and dying planet.

This core issues has been overshadowed by the twisted political scenario and economical that takes away rakyat’s mind and focus from the real problem their are facing daily.

Therefore, the cycling campaign would be a great move to empower the rakyat to focus on their real life issues and demand for change.

Main Objectives

1. To increase awareness to rakyat on their real problems and solutions.
2. To increase awareness among rakyat to be enviroment friendly to save our dying earth.
3. To popularise JERIT’s main demands amongst the people

• Enact Minimum wage Act
• Abolish draconian laws
• Adequate housing for all
• Controllled and affordable goods’ price
• Revive local municipal council’s election.
• Stop privitisation of public services such air water, hospitals and education.

Campaign Duration
The campaign will be tentatively launched on the 22nd of November 2008 and continues for three weeks.

Work Plan

1. 150 cyclist will cycle through at least to 50 state’s main town and city whistl distributing pamphlets.
2. Programmes like speeches, street dramas or carnival will be arranged and participated by the local people at the each stop in states.
3. A memorandum will be handed over to the Menteri Besar of each state during the cyclist tour in the respective state in order to get their support and endorsement on the JERIT demands.
4. The campaign will kicks of from three points of the country as mentioned in the route below :

• Northern Malaysia: Perlis-Penang-Perak-Selangor-Kuala Lumpur
• Southern Malaysia: Melaka, Negeri Sembilan, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur
• Eastern Malaysia: Kelantan , Terengganu, Pahang, Selangor, Kuala Lumpur

Highlight of the Campaign
The cyclist will be arriving in Kuala Lumpur and the highligh event will be the handing over memorandum to the Prime Minister at the parliament. This event will be witnessed by approximately 1000 people from the Coalition and partners in this campaign.

Expenditure
The total cost of the campaign is estimated to be around RM270,000.

Amnest-DEMA Human Rights Camp Penang

Calling all youths out there!!

Amnesty International Malaysia and DEMA will be organizing a 3-day Human Rights Youth Camp for the first time in Penang from 29th Nov - 1st Dec.

Come and learn about fundamental human rights, the Malaysian human rights realities, movies, games, exposure trip to see and speak to human rights victims and how they stand up for their rights, as well as discussions, sharing sessions with human rights activists and many more!

Fees: RM30 (inclusive of meals, accomodation, transportation for the exposure trip)

Venue: Yayasan Aman, Permatang Pauh, Bukit Mertajam, Penang.

Hurry! Register quickly as we have limited places!

For more information, please contact Yohen at 03-79552680 or Ti Hui at 017-6663855.

Itineraries:

Saturday
9-10am - Registration
10-11am - Ice breaking / introductions/ expectation checks
11-1pm - Introduction to human rights
1-2pm - Lunch
2-4pm - Analysis of Malaysian Human Rights Situation
4-6pm - Sex and Gender
6-8pm - Bath/ Dinner
8-830pm- Exposure Trip briefing
830-11pm - Human Rights Movie sharing
11pm - supper / end

SUNDAY
8-9am - Breakfast
9-4pm - Exposure trip to 4 different issues locations
4-6pm - Group discussion and preparations for presentation
6-7pm - Tele-match
7-830pm - Bath / Dinner
830-11pm - Group presentations
11pm - Supper / end

MONDAY
730-830am - Breakfast
830-11am - Case Study
11-1230pm - Activist Sharing session
1230-130pm - Lunch
130-3pm - Youth participation session
3-330pm - Introduction to AI + DEMA
330-4pm - Conclusion / end
4-5pm - Tidy up / Depart

*Issue and locations of the exposure trips will be informed to the participants at the venue itself.

Race matters in Obama's appointment

BY A. ASOHAN

"According to exit polls reported by the BBC, Obama got only 43% of the white vote compared with the 55% his opponent John McCain got. When it came to Hispanic votes, Obama scored 66% to McCain’s 31%.

But it was the black vote that was the most telling – McCain managed only 4%, while Obama scored a resounding 95%.

...

But the world’s declaration that America has looked beyond race in electing Obama is naive.
It is an important first step, sure, but America will only have transcended race when a white man votes for a black man, and a black man votes for a white man, without giving a damn what his skin colour is. "

Read more here.