White Rage by Carol Anderson

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This book has been on my list since just after the last presidential election. In all honestly, it has proven to be as good of an explanation for what I have seen and heard from people I know - including relatives. There was a disconcerting vibe soon after the election of President Obama among many of the white people I knew, particularly white Evangelicals of a certain age, but I couldn’t really put my finger on it. 

I recall a conversation with a man from our former church. He was (and presumably is) a basically nice guy, more reasonable than most, but with redneck roots and a deep commitment to a certain political party. I recall mentioning something about how Obama (full disclosure: I didn’t vote for Obama either time - one of my regrets) was a thoroughly decent person, probably the best human to be president during my lifetime. I mean, faithful and kind and supportive toward his wife; a loving and involved father; a man who seemed to genuinely care about others; thoughtful and informed - the sort you would love to have over for dinner.  (I was born just before Jimmy Carter was elected, so I have no memory of his time in office, although I would rank him as the best human being to be president in my lifetime, with Obama in second place.) This brought a chilly response I didn’t expect. While most white conservatives I know freely grant that Carter is a good man, even if they dislike his politics, Obama got no such acceptance. 

In contrast, I was talking with a relative in summer of 2016, and got a totally different sort of reaction to a different person. I walked out of a conversation after a different (closer) relative made a pretty nasty and xenophobic statement about refugees - that could be a whole post in and of itself: the grief I have had as a result of that discovery has been harrowing. In any event, this relative tracked me down and talked a bit. I expressed my fears (which totally came to pass) that there was literally no amount of racism and hate that would be a deal breaker for white Evangelicals. Somewhere in that conversation, this person expressed that one point in Trump’s favor was that his kids turned out well. 

To say I was flabbergasted was an understatement. Trump never raised his kids - he has repeatedly said that childrearing was women’s work. And as far as that goes, the Trump children may have inherited wealth (which is essentially the only reason anyone thinks they turned out) and appear to be every bit as racist and hateful and corrupt and vacuous as their father. 

So why did we never hear about Obama’s kids in the same way? 

Hmm. Something to think about. 

[By the way, for me, the worst thing about the Trump Era has been losing my illusions about my extended family. I really thought - or was it hoped? - that they were better than this. Apparently not.] 

Carol Anderson has a theory, and, given the many additional things I have seen and heard since the election, I think she is absolutely spot on. To wit:

After every gain that non-whites - particularly African Americans - have made, there has been a backlash of white rage, expressed primarily through the “legal” methods of power and violence. Through legislation, the courts, and other means (including open violence), whites have responded to Black ambition with hate and oppression. 

Let me be clear about one thing regarding this book: Anderson has done her research. The book is built upon literally hundreds of direct quotes from primary sources. All of the horrifying and vicious things said and done happened - there is no question of that - and this process of violent and nasty reaction against the loss of white privilege continues to today. 

The election of Trump is the most visible, but far from the only evidence of this. 

Anderson focuses on five seminal events in American history which involved African Americans making incremental strides toward full emancipation and citizenship. She then shows how these gains were attacked by the white establishment, erasing much (although not quite all) of the gains made. 

These events were, in historical order: (1) The abolition of slavery following the Civil War, (2) The “Great Migration” of blacks out of the South during the early 20th Century, (3) Brown v. Board of Education, (4) The Civil Rights Acts, and (5) The first black president. In each case, the gains were followed by a paroxysm of white rage and successful efforts to limit and reverse the gains. 

There is way too much in this book to try to detail here - you really need to read it for yourself. Here are some highlights. 

First, Anderson puts her finger on the key fact: 

“The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is the problem; rather, it is blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship. It is a blackness that refuses to accept subjugation, to give up.”

I hear this echoed today - it’s mostly dog whistles now, but in the era of Trump, it has been more explicit. “I don’t wish minorities ill - I just don’t want them in my neighborhood and in my kids’ schools.” It’s the whole “uppity negro” and “entitled immigrants” thing once again. 

In fact, the most shocking part about the book to me was just how much the exact same arguments - literally the exact same words - were used in 1865, in 1915, in 1947, in 1966, and in 2019. Nothing. Has. Changed. We are still racist AS FUCK in this country. 

That’s not to say that nothing at all has changed. Clearly, progress has been made, although not in a linear manner. Every “whitelash” has been only partly successful, and anti-racist people of good will have and continue to push back. With their - our - efforts over the centuries, the arc of the moral universe may be long but it has been bent toward justice, as Unitarian minister Theodore Parker said in 1853. (MLK, among others, would borrow this quote in the decades to come.) Things have changed for the better, and with the efforts of people of good will today, they can further change for the better. 

We have a lot of work to do, clearly. 

Here is a quote from the Louisiana Constitutional Conference in 1865. Having lost the civil war, those in power were determined to keep the black population subjugated:

“We hold this to be a Government of white people, made and to be perpetuated for the exclusive benefit of the white race.” 

This was no outlier, either in place (most of the South adopted similar terms, and the North enforced de facto Jim Crow) or in time (the obvious ongoing voter suppression laws openly targeting black and other minority voters.) Or the lovely rhetoric about how “they” (minorities and immigrants) are taking what belongs to the “real Americans” (white Americans.) Again, when it comes to attitudes, not much has changed. 

The book spends a good bit of time on education - with good reason. That particular issue has been a sore point for white rage ever since blacks were first enslaved. First with the prohibitions on teaching slaves to read. Then, with the opposition to schools for the children of freed slaves. Obviously, the opposition to the desegregation of schools after Brown. Ever heard of “segregation academies”? Or how about the founding of the Religious Right for the purpose of keeping certain “christian” colleges segregated? Or the way we continue to use neighborhood de facto segregation to keep our schools mostly segregated now. 

This is not an accident. The ongoing efforts to ensure that whites get a superior education are intentional and have a specific purpose. As Anderson puts it:

As in most oppressive societies, those in power knew that an educated population would only upset the political and economic order. 

Anderson returns to this idea later as an explanation for why the United States has such a massive education gap that puts it below other first world (and some third world) nations. 

Although I was familiar with some of the history in this book, I was a bit surprised by the details of the Great Migration - particularly the many laws aimed at preventing blacks from leaving the South and seeking a better life. They were literally criminalized for trying to leave. (Hey, there is a good bit of an echo in our own time’s xenophobic opposition to immigration. Can’t have those uppity folks trying to better themselves…) 

Again, this response was triggered by black success. Any black person or family who got too “uppity” was a target for violence. (I recommend Black Boy (American Hunger), The Devil in the Grove, Strange Fruit, and Remembering Jim Crow for more on this.) Anderson quotes a former sharecropper, Ned Cobb, as pointing out, “They looked hard, didn’t stop lookin...they didn’t like to see a nigger with too much; they didn’t like it one bit and it caused ‘em to throw a slang word about a ‘nigger’ havin all this, that, and the other. [Whites] hated to see niggers living like people.” 

Again, you hear the exact same thing now - about how “those people” get benefits that white people don’t. (Personal experience in my legal practice, by the way.) 

Then - as now - there was a huge irony in the fact that those who most loudly boosted “capitalism” were the same ones who were most panicked about the migration. 

City councils, state legislators, and police forces were determined to punish those, who, in a capitalist economy, offered African Americans a better employment opportunity. 

Ditto today, with those most panicked about “socialism” rallying around tariffs and immigration restrictions to (supposedly) protect the deserving “real Americans” from actual competition. Again, racism is the common thread. 

There is a particularly harrowing legal case in the chapter on the Great Migration. An educated and successful African American physician dared to purchase a home in a white neighborhood in Chicago. The white citizens came to shoot and burn him out. He and some friends and relatives stood their ground - and shot back. He was charged with murder (among other things) for defending his right to stay in his own home. 

The case was picked up by the NAACP, who hired as part of the team, a very familiar lawyer: Clarence Darrow.

Now, let me be clear about this. In the Fundie culture I was raised in, Clarence Darrow was considered the epitome of evil. I mean that literally. The Fundie A Beka curriculum we used for history tarred him as one of the most evil men of all time, and an example of all that was wrong with the modern age. If you didn’t guess why, it was because he was on the “wrong” side of the Scopes trial. Darrow defended the school teacher who violated state law by teaching Evolution. Looking back, of course, it is easy to see the case in a very different light. It has been a long time since I believed in the Young Earth Creationist bullshit, but I also understand better (as a lawyer) what Darrow’s point was. Simply put, Darrow advocated for the freedom of the teacher to actually teach science, not religious dogma. Subsequent experience has shown that the one thing religious Fundamentalism fears more than anything else is that their cherished dogmas might have competition. And that rational minds, when given the choice between reality and perceived theological needs (to borrow from Peter Enns), might choose historical and scientific truth instead of dogma. In this particular case, Darrow was a serious badass, eventually winning an acquittal. Suffice it to say that over the course of my nearly twenty years in legal practice, I have come to appreciate Darrow (and Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Thurgood Marshall) as the giants of jurisprudence that they were. 

Once again, this issue of intimidation of African Americans for daring to live in white neighborhoods is still with us. Obviously, the phenomenon of “white flight” continues to be a thing. I know a lot of people who have left California to move to whiter states - often intentionally. I have heard a lot lately about “everybody wants to leave California” and “California’s traditional middle class has left.” Nice bit of coding for what has really happened: California has become “majority minority”: there are more non-whites here than whites, because of non-white immigration and white flight. I personally like it here. I mean, we have a huge issue with housing affordability (the legacy of Prop 13 and restrictive zoning), but the diversity is wonderful. 

How about another issue which has been in the news, but is absolutely nothing new? “School vouchers” have been a big thing in homeschooling and Fundie circles for a few decades. The basic idea is that students would get vouchers to spend on private (and religious) schools, rather than public schools. In practice, there are huge problems with this idea, among them the way that whites tend to locate said private religious schools in places that lower income people (and minorities) can’t easily get to. 

But I was rather surprised to find that the idea itself goes back to...wait for it....the South in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education. Faced with a mandate to integrate schools, Southern states literally shuttered their public schools and provided white families with vouchers to segregated private schools. 

Say what? 

Yes, this actually happened. Rather than share with non-whites, they chose to end public education. 

Needless to say, this was a bit eye-opening. I mean, I understood the racist impulse behind the push for vouchers, having grown up in a minority-dominated neighborhood and having heard far too much about how the “wrong sort of kids” were in public schools. But to see it in black and white - the obvious straight line between Jim Crow and Betsy DeVos - it made my blood run cold. It is becoming increasingly impossible to deny that the Religious Right is truly the latest iteration of the Klan. 

And another link is in tactics. In the wake of Brown, one strategy that the Southern states took was to pass clearly unconstitutional laws, over and over and over, in order to tie up the resources of civil rights groups fighting them. This was (and is) a complete abuse of the legal system and process. But doesn’t it sound familiar? 

Yes. Yes it does.

Because the EXACT SAME TACTICS are used by the anti-abortion industrial complex. And you know, it is the same people too. Not much has changed. 

Anderson makes an intriguing point when it comes to the aftermath of Brown. Since that decision, a tremendous amount of energy and effort and emotion has been poured into keeping schools segregated. And, naturally, to ensure that African Americans and other minorities are not given full and equal education. What has been the result? 

Well, there remains a HUGE racial education gap in the United States. That’s not good. But also, the United States fell behind other countries in education. 

The refusal to implement Brown throughout the South even in the face of Sputnik -- not only as the law or as simple humanity might have dictated but also as demanded by national interest and patriotism -- compromised and undermined American strength. 

Once, 40% of the world’s scientists and engineers resided in the US, it is down to below 15%. And, it is safe to say, our current anti-immigrant policies and vicious hatred are likely to push future intellectuals to less bigoted countries. We have and are continuing to commit intellectual suicide to preserve our racism. 

Now, of course, we deny any such racism. (Even as it becomes more and more obvious in the age of Trump.) Anderson spends a number of pages detailing how after the Civil Rights acts were passed, the rhetoric shifted from obvious racism to dog whistles. Basically, nobody wanted to admit being in the Klan (although that has shifted since Trump), so code words were used to preserve systemic racism. I can think of so many code words I inadvertently heard - and used myself (sorry!) in my teens and twenties. “Thug.” “Urban.” “Slum dweller.” “Strapping young buck.” Damn, that’s embarrassing. As is hearing the same whistles from my extended family and members of my former faith tradition. It is one thing to kind of live in those polluted waters, and another to see the actual history behind the terms - and the way that the same rhetoric has just been masked to avoid the obvious racism. Only to return in full force once Trump “made racism great again.” 

I want to end with a final bit on voter suppression. One of the things that really changed my mind on politics was the obvious attempts by certain Republican dominated states to disenfranchise black voters. And I mean literally studying how groups voted and targeting changes to the law to make it harder for blacks to vote. 

Anderson gives a good history of the Voting Rights Act (of 1965), and exactly what it accomplished. Prior to the passage of the act, a mere 6.7 percent of adult African Americans were registered to vote. A mere three years later, due to the changes brought by the act, that number rose to 59.4 percent. 

Holy shit. 

And this was mirrored throughout the South. The Voting Rights Act made a world-changing difference. 

And it has also been followed by a concerted effort to roll back the protections, naturally. This gained momentum after the election of Barack Obama. That election revealed an inconvenient truth: the voting populace was becoming less white - and younger. And the non-white and younger voters were NOT voting for Republicans. 

While that reality could have -- or more to the point should have -- signaled an opportunity for the GOP to reexamine its platform, the sclerotic hardening of the “conservative” notions that moved the Republican Party from centrist right to right-wing made it increasingly difficult if not impossible to adapt the GOP’s policies to address the overriding concerns of this wave of newly engaged voters. 

So, being unable to adapt to changing times without pissing off the old, white, bigoted, Evangelical base, the GOP had to resort to voter suppression. (Which at minimum flipped the Georgia Senate race.) With a demographic apocalypse at hand, the only thing left for the GOP is open and flagrant vote suppression. That’s all they have. As the Boomers die off, and the country continues to shift to younger and browner citizens, the GOP has nothing left to offer. It has gone so far to the right during my lifetime as to lose my vote. A mere 17% of young Californians are registered Republican. (Thanks in large part to the debacle of Prop 187. It is easy for non-Californians to forget that California was a Republican-leaning purple state for most of my life. In the aftermath of Prop 187, even white voters fled the GOP.) Most likely, the GOP has 20 years to continue its voter suppression efforts or it will have to change or die. Unfortunately, it has successfully packed the Supreme Court, and the forces of racism will, as they did at various points in our history, be able to sustain racist policies. (These sad episodes are detailed in the book. Plessey v. Ferguson is just one in a line of shameful decisions.) 

There is insufficient room in this post to really get into the details, but the careful targeting of voter laws is so obviously about keeping the “wrong” people from voting. Namely, minorities and impoverished people. But mostly minorities. It is flagrantly obvious. Seriously, get the book for this part alone. 

In the end, this book left me with some conflicted feelings. On the one hand, it is depressing to see the sordid history. The United States is so very fucked up, and has been since the beginning. Our national sin is racism, and we continue to return to our vomit, as the good book has it. Furthermore, given the GOP packing of the courts, the return to open racism under Trump, and the lessons of history, it is obvious that we are in for a rough stretch. And by “we,” I probably should mean “non-whites.” We are in the middle of a paroxysm of white rage right now, a whitelash against Obama and demographic change a changing America. “Make America Great Again” is nothing more than a call to return to a time when women and n----rs knew their place, a cry of rage by whites at the very idea that they might have to make room at the table. 

On the plus side, though, progress has continued despite white rage. The good people of the world have continued to push for positive change, and it has come, incrementally. I hope I live long enough to see another era, when the damage from this one has been undone and we can move forward again. There are positive signs. In the previous iterations of white rage, racist bigots were the majority. I am not sure that is the case anymore. Trump is the second president in the last three to win without a majority of votes - and that despite the suppression of black votes. White Evangelicalism, the biggest incubator of racist hatred, is on the decline - this is, in my view, their last gasp of rage before their decline into cultural and political irrelevance. When the Boomers stop writing checks, we will see mass bankruptcy among churches and para-church hate groups. Yes, this will likely take a few decades - I will be an old man - but we can do it. 

As I noted above, this book is thoroughly researched and footnoted. Prepare to have your idols thrown to the ground, from Lincoln to Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt to Eisenhower to your favorite modern conservative politicians. White Supremacy is endemic to our nation, and inescapable in our history. Until we truly confront that reality - and repent - we will continue to suffer the devastating effects of that poison. 

I am putting this book on my list of suggestions for those who, like myself, are working to detox from a lifetime of immersion in toxic politics and theology. 

***

If you haven’t read it, the Washington Post article which sparked the book is fantastic. 

***

Just a reminder: Roy Moore, that darling of white Evangelicals, in an address to a religious conference, that the Voting Rights Act (and the Civil Rights Act) were America's biggest mistake. And people wonder why I left that cesspit? Or why Evangelicals are viewed with contempt by those outside the bubble? Take a look in the mirror...

Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith

Source of book: I own this.

This was my selection for Banned Books Week. It took longer than a week, but I did start it during Banned Books Week. 

Just as a reminder, I use the week to read books which have been banned, which means that a government has outlawed sale, publication, or possession of the book. I do not count challenged books - those which citizens or parents have sought to keep out of school curricula or libraries. This isn’t because I think challenges are uninteresting, but because I wanted to focus my once-a-year project on those where the power of the state was employed in censorship. I believe that is a different level from a challenge. After all, any library has limited space and budget, and decisions must be made. (Personally, I would have preferred an extra - and local - copy of The Rest is Noise rather than one of the 20ish copies of Eat, Pray, Love.) Likewise, students can only study so many books, and the choice of which to study is a judgment call.

Here are my past selections, plus the introduction to Banned Books Week.

Thoughts on Banned Books Week

Areopagitica by John Milton (2011)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (2012)

The Quest for Christa T. by Christa Wolf (2013)

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (2014)

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (2015)

July’s People by Nadine Gordimer (2016)

Into the River by Ted Dawe (2017)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

***

“BANNED IN BOSTON!” is now a bit of a badge of honor, and it has a long history. Strange Fruit may not have been the first work that the overzealous Boston city officials (influenced by Anthony Comstock and his eponymous law), but it was the first number one bestseller to be banned in Boston. 

Strange Fruit was ostensibly banned due to references to sex - which are both crucial to the meaning of the book and handled in a tame manner by today’s standards - but everyone knew the real reason it was banned: the book is about a forbidden sexual and romantic relationship between a white man and black woman. In the Jim Crow South, this was literally illegal at the time the book was written - and was considered immoral and scandalous even in the North. 

It took me a while to get into the book, mostly because the first 50 or so pages jump around in time a lot. We know very early in the book what has happened: Tracy Deen has gotten Nonnie Anderson pregnant, and she is happy about it. Smith then fills in the backstory of both families. Nonnie Anderson is an elegant and educated young African American woman. Her family is well respected (after a certain fashion), and Nonnie turns everyone’s head. Her sister, the stolid and responsible Bess, can’t understand why Nonnie still works as a maid, rather than go north with their brother Ed, who has gotten a white-collar job. Nonnie claims to just not be ambitious, but the real reason is that she loves Tracy Deen.

Tracy is the feckless son of the local white doctor (the black doctor, Sam, figures prominently in the book as well - he is the best and most complex character in the book, in my opinion.) As we learn, when Nonnie was age 6, she was saved from a sexual assault by a group of white boys by Tracy. This is a moving incident, because the boys assume that Tracy “owns” Nonnie, and that is why they leave her alone. The idea that raping a black child was wrong never occurs to them. 

In fact, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that many - maybe most - of the white men in town have had sex with black girls and women. Some of them openly keep a black woman as a concubine. (“That’s the bible word for it,” Tracy says.) 

Tracy is, despite his inability to figure out what he wants to do with his life (other than that he hates his dominant and controlling mother), isn’t a bad guy. He and Nonnie do eventually become sexual, coming together occasionally in their teens and then after she returns from college, and he from World War One. It is in their 20s that she gets pregnant - to his surprise - he figured that a college educated woman would somehow just know how not to get pregnant. (He’s not the sharpest tool, but, to be fair, men didn’t really learn about female bodies at that time. Information on contraception was still illegal to distribute in Georgia.) 

This pregnancy, naturally, causes no end of trouble. 

In a perfect world, Tracy and Nonnie would marry, and probably have a happy life together. Tracy actually considers taking her to France, where interracial marriage was accepted. But he has no nerve, no career other than his parents’ attempt to get him to take over the family store or the old farm. Nonnie doesn’t seem to know exactly what she wants. It is implied that she would accept being his concubine, but we never really know her thoughts on this. She is too smart to think he will marry her, and she never asks him to. 

Tracy is pressured by his family to finally “go straight,” which means joining the church, getting married, and settling down. The preacher (a complex character who combines some good traits with the wrong kind of pragmatism) tells Tracy that most men have had “nigger girls,” but that God wants him to repent of that and marry a virginal white girl. Tracy’s mom has the perfect one picked out. Tracy isn’t attracted to her, but he can’t tell his mother no. 

In an attempt to both “go straight” and settle things for Nonnie, he borrows a large sum of money from his mother (no questions asked), and tries to bribe Nonnie to marry the Deen family cook, Henry (who was Tracy’s childhood companion), and Henry to marry her. Henry doesn’t want to - he is in love with Dessie - but he can’t talk back to a white man in public. 

The meeting with Nonnie goes even worse: Tracy ends up hitting and raping her as a thoroughly unconstructive way of attempting to compartmentalize his relationship with her as “she’s only a nigger - they manage.” Meanwhile, Ed overheard the conversation with Henry, and when he sees that Nonnie is traumatized, he shoots and kills Tracy in the dark. 

With Sam’s help, Ed is rushed back to New York before the body is discovered in the woods. Henry is blamed for the death, and despite the efforts of Mr. Deen and the local factory boss (another complex and semi-decent character), is taken from jail and lynched. 

Billie Holiday claimed that Lillian Smith named the book after her song about lynching of the same name. Smith never confirmed this, and said that she meant “strange fruit” to mean the way humans, black and white, are twisted and damaged by America’s racist culture, rather than a literal reference to lynched bodies hanging in trees. It sure seems as if there was an intentional connection. 

There is lot to unpack from this book. The summary of the plot fails to capture all of the different facets of Southern Jim Crow culture - Smith grew up in the South, and portrays the culture with accuracy and detail. It is an unsparing portrait, painting the many ways in which the underlying belief in the superiority of white-skinned people warps and damages and destroys. 

Smith does not go easy on the role of religion. This part of the book was spookily familiar in the Trump era, where the Ku Klux Klan is again in open collaboration with white religion. It is no surprise that Smith deftly exposed the hypocrisy of Southern religion. As a young adult, she rejected religion, in part because of her experience with the double standards of the Southern church. In addition, Smith was outspoken in favor of civil rights for minorities - and also for women - both of which positions made her unwelcome in church. 

If that weren’t enough, Smith was lesbian in an era when it was even more taboo than racism. She lived with her partner, and the two of them published a magazine together. As their letters (discovered after their deaths) made clear, however, they were more than business partners. Lesbian themes make it into Smith’s books, including this one. Tracy’s younger sister (the one who seems made to succeed - and who is one of the very few truly progressive characters in the book) has a naked female figure in her drawer, and a relationship with another woman in town is hinted at, although not expressly stated. 

Another controversial theme in the book is abortion. Tracy and Bess and others wish Nonnie would just make the issue go away by quietly aborting the pregnancy. The local black herbal healer can get her some herbs, or she can go to the city and see a doctor there. But it isn’t just Nonnie. A 14 year old white girl gets pregnant from a young white boy, and her father goes to Dr. Deen to beg that he perform an abortion. There is an extended internal monologue where Dr. Deen wrestles with his conscience. What is most devastating about this is that he is clear that he would do the abortion without question if she had been raped or if the father was black. But, because it was consensual and the father is white, he can’t bring himself to do it, although part of him wishes he could. He ends up referring them to a city doctor. 

I noted above some of the more complex and conflicted characters. One of them is the newspaper publisher, Prentiss Reid, who has to keep his progressive ideas to himself or go out of business. It is an uncomfortable compromise - one made necessary by the culture of racism. He is also one of the few openly non-religious characters. He delivers this zinger to the daughter of the mill boss (who is more genuinely progressive):

“You’ve got it wrong, haven’t you? What they want you to do, my dear, is sponsor religion, not practice it. Don’t let your conscience mix you up. If you practiced the teachings of that man Jesus here in Maxwell, we’d think you were crazy - or communist. Don’t make any mistake about it--be damned embarrassing.” 

Not much has changed, alas. Try to actually practice the teachings of Christ these days, and you will, like me, be asked to leave the church. Know what else hasn’t changed? Religious views of gender and race. As Preacher Dunwoodie tells Tracy:

“On this earth, there’s two worlds, man’s and woman’s. Now, the woman’s has to do with the home and children and love. God’s love and man’s. The man’s world is--different. It has to do with work. Women teach us to love the Lord, and our children, and the we build the churches, don’t we, and we keep them going….Now, when a man gets over into a woman’s world, he gets into bad trouble. He don’t belong there...Too much love makes you soft.” 

He goes on to explain that being a good Christian means very different things for men and women. And yep, I feel like I have heard this sermon more than once. 

Tracy is susceptible to this sort of thing, of course, and finds himself trying to justify abandoning Nonnie. 

It’s like an obsession. Seems true to you, but everybody says it isn’t. You can’t love and respect a colored girl. No, you can’t. But you do. If you do--then there must be something bad wrong with you. It’s like playing with your body when you were a kid. You had to touch yourself. It felt good. It was good. But everyone told you it wasn’t good. Said it would drive you crazy or kill you. Decent people didn’t do it. Well...you did. You did it and liked it. And felt like hell afterward. You’d outgrown that. Now the preacher said time to outgrow this other. Past time. 

It’s this sort of gaslighting that characterizes so much of religious teaching about sex, of course. But in the American version, the sexual puritanism and the racism are one and the same. They are inseparable. Tracy never does get over Nonnie, as much as he tries. 

You’d think God wanted to play a fine joke and had made Nonnie. Here, He said, is a woman any man would love and be proud of. She has everything you could desire. But you can’t have her. No. You can have sips and tastes, but you can’t have her. And you’ll be ashamed and sneak around and feel nasty...That’s the price you have to pay--for the sips. 

Well...white men had paid it before. And thought it cheap. Guess he could too. 

This casual disrespect for the humanity of non-whites permeates the culture in the book. Even the “good guys” accept white supremacy at some level - nobody can escape it. Ms. Sadie, who is horrified by the way white men treat blacks, still thinks that “the entire Negro race was a mammoth trick which nature had played on the white race.” 

There is another great line about Mrs. Stephenson, who is quietly a loving and gracious person - but one who was strangely detached. 

You had a queer feeling about it--as if Mrs. Stephenson had died some time when nobody was noticing and now nothing was left of her but good deeds blooming like little flowers on her grave.

I want to return a bit to the role of religion as shown in this book. Preacher Dunwoodie shares something with modern preachers: he wants to save the “respectable” sorts. Meaning the wealthy, who will keep the church in business. All the Tracy Deen’s of the world are nice and all, and it is a good thing to save the mill hands, but what he really wants - and how he knows God is blessing his ministry - is for the “prominent citizens” to return to the church. And my goodness is this still true. I firmly believe one of the reasons my former pastor couldn’t do the right thing - even a little thing like keeping hate groups out of the church - is that certain prominent (and tithing) members were the driving force behind it. Address the white supremacist beliefs, and he would have lost some of his financial base. It’s that simple. 

But white supremacy goes deeper than money in religion, then and now. There is a chilling scene when the lynching party sets out. Smith makes it clear that the point isn’t justice - it is putting the “nigger in his place.” And lynching, just like our current cruelties toward brown-skinned people, is driven by a weird religious feeling. Smith describes it thus:

And sometimes there was laughter, or drawled words of voices not unkind in sound and not without humor; but eyes were hard and hating as they hunted a black victim to sacrifice to an unknown god of whom they were sore afraid. 

There is so much fear in white religion in America. A desperate fear of outsiders, of people who are different, whether racial minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ people, atheists, and especially people who don’t vote for Trump. Lillian Smith is on to something here - they seem eager to sacrifice other humans to an unknown god who they cannot name, but who terrifies them. Every time you see a brutal and cruel separation of immigrant families, children in cages, another African American murdered by the cops, or another gay or transgender person denied housing or a job - well, you are seeing a human sacrifice to a terrifying god that Evangelicals cannot name, even to themselves. 

Near the end, even as he realizes he can’t really publish an anti-lynching article, Reid thinks to himself of the core problem. 

That’s the South’s trouble. Ignorant, Doesn’t know anything. Doesn’t even know what’s happening outside in the world! Shut itself up with its trouble and its ignorance until the two together have gnawed the sense out of it. Believes world was created in six days. Believes white man was created by God to rule the world. As soon believe a nigger was as good as a white man as to believe in evolution. All tied up together. Ignorance. Scared of everything about science, except its gadgets. Afraid not to believe in hell, even. Afraid to be free. 

You can perhaps put “Evangelicalism” in for “South,” and “White Republican Americans” for “white man.” It’s the same thing today. Walled up in its own bubble of fear and ignorance and hate. It has been nearly three years since I left that cesspit, and as time goes by, I am ever more thankful I got out. 

This wasn’t an easy book to read. There is so much darkness in the human heart, and so much destruction caused by racism and hate. And religion, then and now, seems all too eager to feed the hate. This book is well worth reading, though, and shines an uncomfortable light on the dark realities of our culture. 

***

My wife found this book for me used. This hardback was the 13th printing (copyright 1944) Inside are a few notes by the previous owner, Kae Bell, and an inscription from the person who gave the book to her, apparently in 1944.

 Click to expand. The inscription appears to read "To Kae "44 from Bobby and Jan."

 

"Good comparison of life of a white & negro - so different? Afraid not. Damn these prejudices."

"Life goes on....... with or without the necessary corrections --"

***

Take it away, Billie Holiday:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop