{"id":137978,"date":"2021-01-22T12:25:39","date_gmt":"2021-01-22T17:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=137978"},"modified":"2021-02-10T09:06:36","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T14:06:36","slug":"not-so-fast-with-the-time-for-unity-say-bates-scholars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2021\/01\/22\/not-so-fast-with-the-time-for-unity-say-bates-scholars\/","title":{"rendered":"Not so fast with the ‘time for unity’ calls, say Bates scholars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, <\/strong>you heard variations of this line: \u201cThis is not who we are.\u201d On Inauguration Day, you heard variations of this line: \u201cNow is a time for unity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not so fast, say Bates social scientists who spoke on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Bates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea that \u201cthis isn’t who we are,\u201d that \u201cwhite supremacy and democracy have not been in fundamental contest for at least the past 150 years, is just a dangerous misconception,\u201d said Assistant Professor of History Andrew Baker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a>
Assistant Professor of History Andrew Baker (center) teaches \u201cBlack Resistance in U.S. History” in 2019. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A call for unity is equally problematic, said Professor of Politics Stephen Engel. A functioning democracy depends in large part on the political opposition remaining loyal to the constitution and the rule of law. The events of Jan. 6 clearly violated that idea. But recovering a critical component of democracy, however, does not \u201ccome through any blind call for unity,” he said. “It doesn’t come by sweeping aside the deliberate violation of constitutional principles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joining Baker and Engel were Professor Emerita of Politics Leslie Hill, Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman, and budding scholar Allen Sumrall \u201916, who is working on his Ph.D. in government and completing law school, both at the University of Texas at Austin. The session was moderated by Noelle Chaddock, vice president for equity and inclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One flag tells the real story<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Of the various banners and flags toted by the insurrectionists, such as Trump banners, the current American flag, the Confederate flag, and the 1776 flag, Andrew Baker says to pay attention to the latter two, especially the Confederate flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1776 flag \u201cis essentially how the insurrectionists saw themselves, as American patriots.\u201d But don\u2019t be fooled: \u201cFascist or proto-fascist movements often invoke history to justify what they’re doing in the present.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Baker, a historian of 19th-century U.S., \u201cthe flag that really stood out to me was the one that said the quiet part out loud\u201d: the Confederate flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at the Civil War and its problematic aftermatch, Reconstruction, not the American Revolution, is perhaps \u201cthe more accurate way of imagining\u201d what\u2019s happening now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reconstruction \u201cwas a contest between white supremacy and democracy.\u201d Following emancipation, Black people were given the right to vote, which triggered a \u201cviolent white supremacist backlash,\u201d including the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, \u201ca paramilitary terrorist organization designed entirely to subvert democracy and to reorient Southern politics along the lines of white supremacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In subsequent years, the South gained \u201chome rule,\u201d says Baker, and Jim Crow was born and thrived until the \u201cpartial success\u201d of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and \u201960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"FILE
As President Trump speaks, Confederate-themed and other flags flutter in the wind during the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C., before a mob stormed the Capitol. (AP Photo\/Evan Vucci)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is<\/em> who we are<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

As she watched the insurrection unfold on TV, Leslie Hill was also struck by the \u201cthis is not who we are\u201d narrative coming from members of Congress and others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI kept thinking to myself, \u201cWait a minute. What are you talking about? If one thinks about the history of this country and the symbolism of racism, of Nazi ideology, that was on the signs and the symbols used by folks who were breaking in, I thought to myself, \u2018Yes, indeed. This is who we are.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The call to \u201cmove on\u201d does a \u201ctremendous disservice, because the responses to this riotous, violent white supremacist mob is indeed characteristic of who we are, and just how central race and white supremacy specifically had been to U.S. politics.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Discussing
Leslie Hill leads a Martin Luther King Jr. Day workshop at Bates in 2017. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, \u201cAmerica’s original sin \u2014 the expropriation of Indian and Mexican lands, the exploitation of African labor, the uses of and undervaluation of Chinese labor and immigrant labor \u2014 has been an ongoing, consistent part of our country’s history. Trump\u2019s speech to marchers on Jan. 6, to \u2018take back our country,\u2019 advances the kind of myths that enabled America’s original sin and its legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People misunderstand impeachment<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Many people think that \u201cyou can’t impeach someone unless they’ve broken a law or done something indictable,\u201d Sumrall explained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s not accurate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his published research, Sumrall has found that people began thinking of impeachment as a legal process in the early 1800s with the nation\u2019s second and third impeachments, involving judges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than a legal process, impeachment is a tool that Congress has \u201cto remove officials who are abusing their office. It\u2019s a punishment,\u201d he said, and is needed to assure balance of power among branches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alexander Hamilton summed up impeachment \u201cpretty well,\u201d said Sumrall, in Federalist 65<\/em>, saying that impeachable offenses \u201care of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Allen Sumrall ’16 is pursuing both a law degree and a Ph.D., specializing in public law and American politics, at the University of Texas at Austin. (Photograph courtesy of the University of Texas at Austin)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In this sense, \u201cpolitical\u201d doesn\u2019t mean ideological or partisan but \u201cthe integrity of the political system,\u201d said Sumrall, who is pursuing both a law degree and a Ph.D., specializing in public law and American politics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTrump’s conduct over the last four years, frankly, but particularly most egregiously last week, really fits this definition to a T,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a classic, paradigmatic case for impeachment: inciting a violent insurrection on the steps of the Capitol with the hopes of that members of Congress will be taken prisoners so they cannot certify the results of a legitimate democratic election, and then failing to do anything about it while it plays out on live TV is exactly what impeachment was designed for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The media and others are advancing individualism at the expense of community<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In making sense of the insurrection, Stephen Engel quoted feminist media studies scholar Marian Meyers, who wrote that mainstream media, such as TV, film, and other forms of cultural representation, have effectively sold an \u201cagenda and ideology that supplants as societal goals the notions of democracy, equality, the common good, and community with neoliberalism, freedom, individualism, and choice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engel says that those latter ideas and values have been readily \u201cpicked up and articulated in legal academia and legal movements, particularly the conservative legal movement, as well as on the Supreme Court, particularly by Trump’s three appointees, who were favorites of the Federalist Society.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"2018<\/a>
Stephen Engel teaches Constitutional law in a Pettengill Hall classroom in 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With that reframing ongoing, \u201cit\u2019s hardly surprising that a year into a global pandemic, an act of public responsibility and community health such as wearing a face mask can be perversely warped into a violation of individual choice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, when citizens come to value individualism over the common good, \u201cwe should not be surprised to see a political mob descend on the Capitol with their baseless claims that their<\/em> freedom is disregarded, that their<\/em> voices are the ones that are silenced, that their<\/em> choices are the ones that are disrespected and it’s their<\/em> individual rights that are not upheld \u2014 all evidence, of course, to the contrary.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Impeachment is preferable to the 25th Amendment<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Engel said it\u2019s perhaps better that Trump was impeached, rather than removed from office through the 25th Amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just maybe, Congress is willing to \u201creassert its co-equality after ceding so much responsibility to the executive branch over the course of the 20th century.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, he said, there are sections of the 14th Amendment, Section 3 \u2014 which \u201cmaddeningly, like so much of the Constitution,\u201d seems incomplete \u2014 \u201cthat permit Congress to \u201cessentially boot out its own members. And this may come into play as we investigate whether there are members that aided and abetted the mob.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that \u201cpower will surely be rebuffed by another part of the Constitution by members\u2019 claims that they’re protected by the long shadow cast by the speech and debate clause.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Constitution as \u201cparchment\u201d<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Constitution is \u201cparchment,\u201d said Engel, in that \u201cthere’s nothing within it that compels its pronouncements to be observed.\u201d Enforcing the Constitution is \u201cup to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are beyond just “moving on”<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Like a dysfunctional family that sweeps problems under the carpet, the current calls for unity, such as those heard at the inauguration, will only sow seeds of future trouble. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Trump is gone from office, \u201cyou can’t move on without any reckoning of accountability,\u201d said Engel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

History explains why. During Reconstruction, when the forces of democracy and equality gave in to white supremacy, \u201cit created a hundred years of Jim Crow oppression. Democracy needs to be vigorously defended against anti-democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Constitution provides the tools for this defense, in the form of expulsion, impeachment, the 14th Amendment, the 25th Amendment, \u201cto say nothing of the popular power of election,\u201d Engel added. \u201cI think we shouldn’t shy away from learning about and using these tools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The danger of pushing the myth of voter fraud is now clear<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Though the forces of white supremacy have maintained a steady drumbeat of voter fraud for two decades now, numerous studies by scholars and audits by state and local officials have never found \u201cany evidence of systematic or widespread voter fraud,\u201d said John Baughman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, this \u201cdrumbeat built sufficiently to the point that states started adopting these voter ID laws and other restrictions on voting,\u201d he added. \u201cThese laws affect citizens disproportionately due to issues of access and the cost of IDs, and, more insidiously, particularly affect Black voters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman, seen in 2018 in the Muskie Archives. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The racist rhetoric around voting \u201cinduces changes in election administration that disproportionately affect black voters.\u201d For example, \u201cBlack voters are more likely to be asked for an ID even in jurisdictions that do not require ID.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, when he was elected in 2016, Trump \u201cclaimed without evidence that more than more than 3million people had voted illegally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he lost the 2020 election \u2014 \u201cby all accounts conducted extraordinarily well under extraordinary circumstances\u201d \u2014 and then \u201clost nearly every court case that was brought regarding the election,\u201d he continued to claim voter fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baughman has called Trump\u2019s behavior a \u201cgrift and a con.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, we see that \u201cit was a con with grave effects, because allies and supporters echoed and amplified the claims of the stolen election,\u201d Baughman said. When people no longer believe that elections work, \u201cthey resort to other methods to hold onto power. That’s when they take up violent insurrection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t expect white supremacy to fade away<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Sumrall pointed to research in the 1980s by the scholar Verta Taylor suggesting that social movements \u2014 she was looking at the American women\u2019s movement \u2014 don\u2019t come and go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, they sometimes hibernate. \u201cThey go into these abeyance periods where they’re kind of underground,\u201d but continue to exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor\u2019s research has been extended, Sumrall says, \u201cand it’s shown that white nationalist movements have gone through cyclical abeyance periods and multiple iterations from Reconstruction into the 20th century.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Again, when talking about healing and reaching across the aisle, pretending that white supremacy is a fading danger, \u201call we’re going to do is sort of postpone the inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exactly, said Baker. \u201cWhite supremacy historically lashes out in especially violent ways when it’s under threat: Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and the era of Trump.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enough with the \u201cI have a dream\u201d speech<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Hill and others on MLK Day at Bates said that focusing on the dream part of King\u2019s speech does a disservice to anti-racist efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A more realistic, and perhaps cautionary, speech by King, is what\u2019s known as his \u201cBeyond Vietnam\u201d speech, delivered exactly one year before he was assassinated. (Another helpful speech, suggested by Associate Professor of Michael Sargent during another session, is King\u2019s \u201cLetter from a Birmingham Jail,\u201d for how King lays out a \u201cframework for direct action.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cBeyond Vietnam,\u201d King highlighted the three forces that, working together, \u201cthreatened to usher in the destruction of America: racism, economic exploitation, and militarization,\u201d said Hill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis triple threat was on full display during the insurrection and mob violence at the Capitol and in its aftermath: racist and Nazi insignia; the desperation of people who are feeling economic fragility, not only inside the hall, but certainly outside in the supporters, both in Washington and online; and the militaristic, violent tactics that they used to storm the Capitol, were on display.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than the \u201cknee-jerk\u201d response to the violence in Washington, D.C., in the form of a massive military response, what\u2019s needed is \u201cleadership that is willing to think critically, leadership that is brave enough to think against the grain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leadership is needed \u201clocally so that people come together to protect those Congresspeople who have stood up and said, \u2018I’m going to try to do the right thing.\u2019 They need protection because they’re being threatened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need verbs, not nouns<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It takes an \u201cactive citizenry to actually make democracy real,\u201d Hill said. \u201cAnd, I would argue, we need not the noun. We need the verb. We need democracy making. <\/em>And we each need to see our own responsibility in making democracy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sumrall indicated that scholars of democratization and comparative politics know that in other countries, broad pro-democracy coalitions take action to expressly repudiate authoritarian and white nationalist politics. \u201cAnd insofar as we’re just talking about healing, we’re not doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are we a democracy?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Bates scholars gave the U.S. some tough love when it came to a deceptively simple question: \u201cAre we a democracy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we’re looking at one fundamental tenet of democracy, the peaceful transition of power, we’ve failed on that,\u201d said Baughman. \u201cNot just because of the insurrection, but because now the peaceful transition on Wednesday depends on a military occupation of the capital, to be blunt about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suppose, he said, recent events are an aberration. \u201cThere’s still another reason why we can’t quite call ourselves a full democracy right now.\u201d A Democracy entails \u201cshared rules of the game for the allocation of power,\u201d he added. \u201cThere’s no agreement on those fundamental rules currently. Until there is wider agreement on those fundamental rules, I don’t think we can call ourselves a real democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether the U.S. is a democracy isn\u2019t a yes-no answer<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, a binary yes-no discussion of whether the U.S. is or isn\u2019t a democracy isn\u2019t \u201ctheoretically robust or empirically correct,\u201d says Sumrall. \u201cIt\u2019s a process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, said Sumrall, if one takes a very long view, \u201cthe insurrection might not necessarily represent democratic decay or the death of democracy, but rather the very process of democratization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political progress in American is not linear<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The process of democracy is not linear, said Baker, like a graph that shoots upward with 1776 as its starting point, with Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King as key data points in the climb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The election of Barack Obama fed into that false narrative of linear progress. \u201cWe imagined that American racism had been resolved. If we had been more attentive to history, we probably would have realized all along that linearity and linear progress is not a way that we should conceptualize American democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognition that the promise of progress can end in failure, \u201cI would hope it would lend urgency to this moment beyond Joe Biden becoming president, and all of us sitting back and saying, \u2018Wow, we dodged the bullet. America is truly in the clear.\u2019 I think that would be the biggest possible mistake that we could make, and history is screaming at us that to do so would be potentially disastrous.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. might still be having growing pains<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. is a 244-year-old country, but not a very old democracy<\/em>, suggests Engel. In terms of resembling a democracy, maybe it dates only to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe’re a young democracy in that sense. Those who held power for so long are now reacting to the reality that a robust, multicultural, diverse democracy is going to have to be more open to different folks having different power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, he concluded, \u201cI think \u2018what we are\u2019 was made manifest in actions like the Jan. 6 insurrection and how we choose to respond to them.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recovering our damaged democracy does not \u201ccome through any blind call for unity.” Plus, the events of Jan. 6 may, in fact, be who we really are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":138027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,195,224],"tags":[5709],"class_list":["post-137978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-news-politics","category-society-culture","tag-martin-luther-king-jr-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137978"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138033,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137978\/revisions\/138033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}