“I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary!…This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.” Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852
“I, too, sing America.” Langston Hughes
If a politician died and no white people wept, would he be painted an American hero?
If he drew throngs of mourners made up almost exclusively of minorities, would the mainstream news media insist that he was universally loved by all Americans?
Would the networks subject their viewers to the 24/7 non-stop hero worship being accorded Ronald Reagan, if all but a tiny handful of the thousands and thousands of Americans paying tribute were brown instead of white?
I think not.
In its eagerness to characterize Ronald Reagan as an American icon based upon the “outpouring” of grief at his passing, the media are ignoring an important yet unavoidable fact: there are hardly any people of color singing Reagan’s praises. For days, we’ve watched eager commentators tell us ad nauseam that the mourners waiting to view Reagan’s casket represent a “cross-section of America.” But if they just turned around, they’d see what we see – a virtually all white tableau snaking behind them. This backdrop sure doesn’t look like the America I know.
How hard is it to notice that, in a city that’s more than 60% black, so few people of color have bothered to wander over to the Capitol to bid farewell to President Reagan? Yes, a few were spotted here and there and, of course, dark faces abounded among the military personnel participating in the solemnities (thanks to our integrated armed forces, there was more color in the Color Guard than in the crowd). Otherwise, it seemed that most of the handful of black folk not decked out in full ceremonial dress were there not to see Reagan but to sell water, snacks and souvenirs to the white folks who were there to see Reagan.
If they bothered to leave their cozy perches on the Capitol lawn and venture a few blocks in any direction, the network reporters might actually pick up a different perspective, a perspective they aren’t getting from the self-selected masses gathered to honor the former president.
To many of us, Ronald Reagan was not a great man. He was not a hero. In fact, many of us have nothing but painful memories of his presidency and what he stood for.
This pain was first inflicted like a punch in the stomach back in 1980 when Ronald Reagan journeyed to Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the murder of three civil rights workers 16 years before, to kick off his general election campaign with a speech endorsing states’ rights.
“I believe in states’ rights,” he said on that August day. “I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment.” He went on to promise to “restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them.”
Black Americans – and those hostile to our interests – knew exactly what he meant. “States’ rights” has long been a code word for segregation, discrimination and massive resistance to the federal government’s efforts to stop southern states from oppressing blacks. States’ rights was the excuse given for denying blacks the right to vote, access to public accommodations, equal protection of the laws. It was such a deeply held principle among some Southerners that they even lynched folks who interfered with it.
And Ronald Reagan turned up in the place where James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were murdered for registering black voters, to affirm his commitment to the principle that led to that and countless other terrorist acts and to promise that he would fight to turn back the clock to the days when local governments had the power to treat minorities any way they damned well pleased. And the 30,000 white folks who crammed the Neshoba County Fairgrounds that day cheered him wildly and then helped send him straight to the White House.
Once there, Ronald Reagan proceeded to do exactly what he had promised, spending the next eight years diligently rolling back important civil rights gains (with the help of Attorney General Ed Meese, an eerie precursor to John Ashcroft). During his tenure, Reagan transformed the War on Poverty into a war on the poor. He divided and agitated Americans by injecting racist stereotypes (remember “welfare queens?”) into the public discourse. He worked to dismantle affirmative action and thwart reasonable civil rights remedies, coddled and abetted South Africa‘s apartheid regime, and appointed federal judges who believe that civil rights laws are valid only when used to protect white men from “reverse discrimination.”
Ronald Reagan was not a hero to minorities, to women, to the poor or to anyone who cares about civil rights and equal opportunity. To us, his administration represented little more than callousness and retrenchment. And now that he’s gone, his partisans, with the enthusiastic assistance of an uncritical media, are orchestrating the transfiguration of this flawed man into an affable, larger-than-life myth. But those of us who bore the brunt of this president’s policies and philosophy and are still trying to clean up his messes know the truth behind the grin. And it still hurts.
So, it’s perfectly understandable that minorities are not falling all over themselves to pay tribute to this man who did so much harm. Nevertheless, the press has virtually ignored the glaring absence of color in the Reagan love-fest. Instead, they are feeding us a bizarre illogical syllogism – because Reagan is loved by all Americans who love him, Reagan is loved by all Americans.
The over-the-top, adoring and revisionist coverage of Ronald Reagan not only brings back the pain he caused so many of us, but is also a jarring reminder of an ugly assumption that underlies it all: white Americans are the “real” Americans while the rest of us still just aren’t heard and still just don’t count. We should either get with the program or get out of the way as “America bids farewell” to its hero, with or without us.
But if the media stop their heavy breathing for a spell, they could hear our silence. If they take a closer look at those standing in line to lionize Ronald Reagan, they’d see us, the darker brothers and sisters who are not there.
And if they ask why, they’ll catch echoes of Frederick Douglass and Langston Hughes in our answer: “This president is your hero, not ours. And we, too, are Americans.”