The Problem and the Whip
I can’t get out of my head this formulation from Frederick Douglass. At Metropolitan AME church in 1894, a year before his heart gave out, he thundered from the pulpit that “the South [and, by extension, the nation] has always known how to have a dog hanged by giving him a bad name.” Douglass said,
“When it prefixed the negro to the national problem it knew that the device would awaken and increase a deep-seated prejudice at once, and that it would repel fair and candid investigation. As it stands, it implies that the negro is the cause of whatever trouble there is in the South. In old times, when a little white child lost his temper, he was given a little whip and told to go and whip “Jim” or “Sal” and thus regained his temper. The same is true today on a larger scale.”
With a small detail about the cruelty of slavery — that a child was given the whip to calm him down — Douglass revealed the essence of a national ritual repeated across generations: Black people (and those considered “other”) are made the scapegoat to calm an intemperate nation. Calling attention to the problem of the “other” can awaken and increase deep seated hatreds. So, whenever the country feels like it is coming apart or a problem threatens the order of things, white America reaches for the whip.
This came to mind as Trump railed on Thanksgiving evening about Afghan and Somali immigration. After the shooting of National Guard members, Andrew Wolfe and the death of Sarah Beckstrom, Trump went on a rant on Truth Social. He wrote:
“Even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and depart any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
In this moment, when the question needed to be asked, why were the soldiers in Washington,D.C. in the first place, why did Trump decide to deploy troops in American cities, he reached for the whip. The problem was immigration — the Afghan, those from Third World countries, people who are non-compatible with Western civilization.
Trump sought to activate the ugliness that is the bitter sediment at the bottom of American life (like the bitterness at the bottom of the cup). He declared that “only REVERSE MIGRATION can cure this situation.” In effect, that only by making America white again (MAWA) will the “problem” be resolved. But this is the ruse aimed at calming an intemperate nation – people too concerned about affordability and the Epstein files.
What led to the senseless death of Sarah Beckstrom can’t be blamed on immigration. Trump wanted to appear strong and tough on crime. He wanted to activate all the fears that come with that bogeyman. And he deployed troops who were not trained to police communities to an American city. Sarah Beckstrom’s death, her blood is on his hands. And he doesn’t want us to see that.
He wants to distract. And what better way to do that than to stir up hatreds. So, again, he offers the whip.
Douglass understood in 1894 that to call the crisis in the United States the “negro problem” was, in effect, to make “the negro responsible and not the nation.” We were to blame for the race problem. Douglass understood how hatred works in this place. Lurking. Whispering shadows. Ready to overwhelm and overrun everything. The problem was not us, he proclaimed, but a country willing to tolerate, if not embrace, evil.
If we are to get at the heart of what ails this nation today, we have to stop scapegoating others and uproot the sentiments that make that scapegoating possible. We must refuse the comforting illusion that the problem rests with so-called others and confront the bitterness at the bottom of the American cup.
That’s the real bogeyman.
As a 70 year old white woman, I do not want to live in a white Stepford society. I crave the diversity and richness of a multicultural community. Based on equality and inclusion with justice for all, healthcare and freedom from want for all. We have the resources to make this dream a reality! I wonder if we Americans have the will to make it a reality?
Frederick Douglass. 1894. And we are still at it. This ghastly image: "In old times, when a little white child lost his temper, he was given a little whip and told to go and whip “Jim” or “Sal” and thus regained his temper. The same is true today on a larger scale.” And it's universal. Scapegoating is what every would-be tyrant today uses and it still seems to work. So we're in a race against ourselves. Will we wake up in time? Will enough of us wake up? Will we finally overcome?