The Complicated Lincoln and Our "Post-Racial Society"

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is telling me on the teevee, among other things, that Abraham Lincoln was a product of his time, which means that he said things like this:

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.

This doesn't mean Lincoln wasn't opposed to slavery.  He famously said: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong."  But he wasn't an abolitionist; he would have preferred to let slavery exist where it long had, but felt his hand forced by the course of events.  And his ideal solution to race problems in the U.S. was "colonization":

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."

Starting in 1822, ex-slaves colonized/migrated to/were exiled to Liberia in an attempt to resolve racial tension in the U.S.  (I can imagine Trent Lott thinking ... if only the Liberian experiment had been more successful, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years.)

The plan didn't have the intended effect in the U.S. and it didn't work out too well for Liberia, either.  Ethnic tensions resulting from the colonization helped destabilize Liberian society, leading to a military coup in 1980 and a U.S.-supported dictatorship that fell in 1989.  A horrific civil war followed, with an estimated 200,000 killed and peace only coming to the exhausted country a few years ago.

Given the intertwined history of the U.S. and Liberia, some refugees from the conflict made their way here, many of them settling in the Philadelphia area where I work.  The U.S. government established a form of temporary respite which has been pared back and is now set to expire completely at the end of March.  DHS now routinely argues in asylum proceedings that Liberians who experienced horrors during the war can return safely and should be deported.

Flaws in the U.S. asylum system have led to denial of valid asylum claims of many people in desperate situations from places like Haiti, Liberia, the Congo, and Zimbabwe.  There is now a modern version of the Underground Railroad to try to save these people's lives, though I won't get into the details here.

The rosy view of Lincoln as savior of the race goes hand in hand with the view of many Americans today that we live in a post-racial society.  The reality in each case is more complicated.

Even so, of course, Lincoln's efforts ended the institution of slavery in a much more racist society than today's.  From one of the 14,000 biographies on Lincoln comes a quote from an address by Fredrick Douglass on Lincoln in 1876:

Viewed from genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.

On my more optimistic days, I hope that Barack Obama, perhaps finding himself in similar circumstances, could take similar steps for immigration policy or even foreign relations more broadly.  But we can't pin our hopes on historical happenstance and individual leaders--the solutions lie in organizing, informing, empowering, litigating, persuading, and voting.