40 Credits & A Mule, Part VII – Sleeping Giants

January 26, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

I gotta say, this blogging stuff was so much easier when Dr. Barresi was saying crazy stuff to local news stations for me to excerpt and mock. Of course, the #WTF? stuff is always more fun than the #WhatNow? parts – just ask any Middle Eastern country on the long side of revolution in the past decade.

It’s taken me awhile to get to the dramatic conclusion of this epic, so let’s review – “Previously, on Blue Cereal Education Dot Com…”

Part I – I made the case that land ownership was central to citizenship, suffrage, and participation as a ‘full American’. This seemed reasonable, and by the standards of the day was a huge expansion of democracy and the ability of the ‘common man’ to claim a voice in his government. It did not, however, include everyone we would consider appropriate today – it was a white man’s game.

Part II – Land ownership carried mythical benefits alongside the practical. In addition to being a source of opportunity, income, and republican (small ‘r’) participation, it promoted an agricultural lifestyle – hard work, responsibility, patience, and fortitude. I’d include ‘grit’, but I’d need a ‘trigger warning’ – people are touchy about that one for some reason…

Part III – The combination of practical needs, terrestrial benefits, and supernatural calling led an expanding ‘Merica to treat the Native populations and Mexico as obstacles to overcome rather than peoples to be engaged. The grand ‘us’ and ‘them’ of human history continued.

Part IV – Land ownership becomes a condition as much as an accomplishment. Because not everyone can ‘have’, those who do come to see themselves not as the most fortunate but as the most deserving. Those unable to procure land due to race (or gender, or whatever) were already categorized as ‘less than’ (hence their ineligibility), and this lack of opportunity became circular. Chickens and eggs – which came first, the unworthiness to be a full American or the lack of opportunity to fully participate in the republic?

Part V – Education is the new land. We advocate universal access. We extol it as the key to all things – fiscal opportunity, social advancement, moral purity, personal fulfillment. As with land, lack of access becomes lack of worthiness. Inequity leads to inequality leads to rejection leads to judgment – ‘us vs. them’ with a side of ‘what the hell is wrong with you people?’

Part VI – I suggested we’re doing with students and education what we spent a century and a half doing with various demographics and land ownership and a voice in the republic. I argue that we’ve conflated ability, opportunity, and values with personal worth and potential – to the harm of a substantial percentage of our kids.

I closed with a vague promise to resolve that in this final post.

But I can’t.

It’s just too big. Too many cultural, psychological, logistical, fiscal, emotional, and historical factors out of our control – some completely, others merely mostly.

I can shine some light on the nature of the problem. We may even find some consensus about what’s WRONG. The hard part is in the fixin’ – what we do INSTEAD. That’s the problem with revolutions – you may get enough people to agree about what to tear down, you just can’t get enough people to agree what to build in its place.

I have some more great analogies – one in which we demand coaches train their athletes in a wide variety of sporting events but we only measure races with hurdles, and we keep raising the hurdles for the kids who can’t jump them or who refuse to stay on our track. That’s a good one. There’s another in which some stuffy doctors present research showing the richest and healthiest people in the world eat mostly vegetables and pâté, so they push through legislation mandating a vegetable and pâté diet (without providing the funding to properly prepare either). That was fun, too – and it had the cutest clip-art.

The point of the first, of course, was that hurdles are an inadequate measure of all possible athletic ability, and that not everyone has the same athleticism or interest – for a wide variety of reasons. The second was about correlation and causation – the rich and healthy eat pâté; pâté doesn’t make you rich and healthy. Successful students pass stupid tests; stupid tests don’t create successful students. Like I said, I was pretty amused by them.

But I’ve already laid out six posts of historical analogies involving land and culture and race. These not only make it sound like I’m smarter than I actually am, but they correlate in a very real way with actual problems in education today.

It’s time to fix it.

Are the schools going to be a part of that? They’d have to, I’d think. But they’re not enough.

We need to change the way we think about race and poverty and culture and American values. I’m a big fan of our founding documents and ideals – heck, I even still like capitalism. But we’ve managed to maintain an ugly leavening of racism, elitism, and outright social Darwinism through too many eras to believe it’s not deeply entrenched in the problems we face today.

We need to ask ourselves why so many kids from so many backgrounds find so little of value in the curriculums we push, or the values we demand they share. At best, much of what we prioritize seems pointless to them; at worse, it contradicts who they believe they are and the things they value. Ask your best students their honest opinions about what they’re learning in school – some find parts they really like, but I’m horrified how many confess they’re just doing what they’ve been told to do. They endure, and they get the grades, but that’s all.

It’s like being at the dentist for 13 years straight.

If we can look in the mirror and tell ourselves with conviction they’ll thank us someday because we know what’s good for them and they don’t, OK. Maybe so. But what did YOU carry away from High School that changed your life? Improved your world? Gave meaning to some part of your existence? If you CAN think of something, was it in the curriculum, or did it come from somewhere else?

It seems like most of what we do in school serves only to prepare students to do more of it in more school. That’s not just pointless – it’s unethical and abusive.

And stupid.

The title “40 Credits & A Mule” was inspired by several blog posts by P.L. Thomas about our American myth that students from poor families – especially students of color – who do well in school can overcome their background to the extent they’ll end up economically and socially on par with white peers. They don’t. Their circumstances improve, but you’re better off being a white high school dropout than black with a few years of college in terms of lifetime earnings.

The promise is there, you see – but it’s not substantiated by reality.

I don’t know how we fix it, but I think it begins when we refuse to perpetuate the lie. We refuse to give the tests that rank our kids by ZIP Code while claiming to rank them by accomplishments.

We refuse to follow the outdated factory structure mandated by our states and our expectations.

We refuse to continue forcing so many kids into a choice only between rejecting our system and everything it stands for OR accepting themselves as failures – unworthy players in the only game in town.

We refuse to turn our best and brightest into cynical rule-followers forced to seek ways to escape the reality of their daily grinds rather than embrace the many wonderful ways life can be lived productively and meaningfully.

We make them fire us and justify it. We make them cut our funding and explain it. We let them try to find someone to replace one of us, ten of us, a hundred of us, because we won’t do this to our kids anymore.

Let the State tell the papers why our entire graduating class doesn’t get diplomas. Let the universities explain why they won’t admit any of the thousands of young adults whose value we refuse to measure with a single number between 0 and 4 any longer.

I think I’m advocating revolution. Starting with you, and me, and like, one other guy who’s already pretty weird and we may not actually want on our team. If we were to win, I have no idea what we put up in place of what we’re doing now, but I know this has to stop.

That will probably be a non-issue for us, anyway. We’ll be early casualties, not heroes or leaders. And when we go down, I’m not sure anyone else is picking up this flag. Still… could be fun, don’t you think?

Wanna get in trouble with me?

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Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part I – This Land

Related Post: I See The Difference In Educational Privilege Every Day… (From the Washington Post / Daily Kos)

40 Credits & A Mule, Part VI: Return of the Jedi

January 15, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

This is part 6 of 7 – some recap seems in order:

Who gets to be a ‘full’ American? Who gets suffrage, representation, and due process?

Land-owners were the initial default. Land provided opportunity, American Dream-style. It was a universal measure of personal responsibility and capability. It inculcated virtue, and perhaps won supernatural favor. And, finally, it gave you a vested interest in the success of the young nation.

What began as a checklist for civic participation became the default measure of a man. What was intended to protect representative government from the incompetent or slothful became an anchor on those who didn’t fit certain checklists as of 225 years ago. You are unworthy. Not quite a full American – and thus not quite a full person.

The issue became your state of being rather than whatever rules you had or hadn’t mastered, or whatever goals you hadn’t met. It was self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing. It became circular:

Presumption: You provide for yourself and your family, so you are worthy to help run the country. You own land and do responsible things? Here’s your ballot.

Evolution: You provide and are provided for – because you are worthy. You own land because you’re so responsible – here’s your halo.

I suggest we’re doing something similar with education today – both public and higher.

Consider Alyssa – a wonderful young lady in AP classes from a two-parent Methodist family. She works hard, makes good grades, stays out of any real trouble, and wants to be a neuroscientist. Obviously she deserves some credit for her accomplishments. She’s demonstrated great capability, and made good decisions.

She’s also from the right family, and – more importantly – the right ZIP code. She goes to the right school, has the right social circle, the right economic status, and the right looks. She’s the right amount healthy and she was born at the right time for her particular skill set to shine. None of these things are entirely in her control.

She’s our ‘white homesteader.’ She’s done nothing malicious in making her ‘land’ productive. She does tend to wonder what’s wrong with students who don’t do the same – not out of racism or vanity, but simply because it’s bewildering to her that anyone would not want to do well, or not be able to do well. It’s just not that hard.

Compare her to Dionne – another wonderful young lady, but one from very different circumstances. Her life might be happy enough, or it might be reality-show dysfunctional, but in any case does NOT unfold in the same universe as Alyssa’s. All of the rules are different and their experiences mutually exclusive.

Dionne’s AP Chem grade (or the fact that she’s not even taking AP Chem) reflects many things OTHER THAN her capability or choices. Her ability and agency matter a great deal as well, but they’re not sovereign.

Dionne is a beautiful black girl, descended from freedmen. Plenty of Black Americans ‘bought in’ to Anglo-American values – they sought land, self-sufficiency, education, progress, etc. But they weren’t merely denied the resources to join such a culture – they were actively punished for making progress along those lines.

This didn’t stop the dominant culture from belittling them for not matching their successes, of course. It doesn’t prevent belittling those today who at some point simply changed their priorities and dropped out of that particular value system.

In Dionne’s case the issue is not emulating prior conditions, but overcoming them.

Anders is a kid who doesn’t want to be in your class – or anyone’s class – at ALL, near as you can tell. He’s not particularly defiant, but he’s also rarely tempted to give much. It would take three of him to make one passing student. His test scores put you on lists and you’re constantly asked to send him work he’s already ignored. You go to meetings about him called by his counselor; the parent chair is always empty.

Anders is my Amerindian, although he might be Hispanic, or White, or Black, or whatever – there are racial issues wound up in these, but they’re not exclusive or always definitive. Many Amerindians had no interest in the Anglo-American value system or way of life, but they were forced to partake – and stakes were high if they failed. They lacked buy-in, but they also were denied good tools, seed, land, etc. It’s not much of a stretch to think a comparable state exists between many teenagers and whatever public school system holds them captive in 2015.

Pick something your kids spend time on that you totally don’t understand – video games, soccer, angsty music, whatever. Something you at least partly despise. Master it. Spend the hours it takes to really get decent at Call of Duty. Practice soccer until you’re good enough to compete. Consume YouTube until you want to run hot skewers into your eyes and ears to make the bad things stop!

That’s how Anders feels about Grammar, and Physics. He may be right.

I’ll add a Zack – they’re always named something like ‘Zack’ – who’s surviving AP Chem and otherwise getting by even though he’s NOT particularly bright and doesn’t have a great work ethic. He’s charismatic, knows how to play the game, and while not exactly a charlatan, succeeds more through people skills and an instinct for edu-bureaucracy than anything. He’s probably destined for administration.

Which of these are worthy? Which deserve to be a full American? To get a full ride to an elite university? Which are making the best use of the opportunities presented to them, however flawed they may be?

You’re so thankful for Alyssa – students like her give you the energy to get through the day. But how often is Alyssa essentially rewarded for her upbringing and Dionne marginalized for not ‘working hard enough’? How angry does Anders make you even though he doesn’t really do anything to you other than not be taught? Zack’s an annoying little turd, but he’s passing and no one’s mad at you because of him so… whatever.

Anders has been given very little reason to adopt the same values and goals as the rest. For all our talk of nurturing kids’ individual strengths, his just aren’t on the curriculum map – and there’s nothing you can personally do about that. Dionne may have tuned out, but no wonder – even when she does ‘buy in’, she lacks many of the proper tools and supplies, literally as well as figuratively.

And Zack… well, there’s always that kid who just does OK for reasons you never quite understand, yes?

Changing the nature of American public school won’t be accomplished by ‘higher standards’ or tougher testing. We can argue about this set of standards or that for another ten years if you like, but – and I hate to be the one to break this to you – for the vast majority of kids not currently ‘succeeding’ in our schools, it just doesn’t matter one tiny little damn.

We have a culture fundamentally shaped by our past – that’s how history works, it’s why we study it. We have generations of mostly well-intentioned peeps whose views of one another are shaped by that history. Our psyches are riddled with logical fallacies and vestigial reactions we don’t even recognize. It’s not rational, it’s not fair, and it’s sure as hell not standardized.

We have a rather narrow definition of what sort of learning is valued and tested and college and career ready, and that means a rather narrow idea of just what kind of education we’re willing to begrudgingly and inadequately finance. Our definition ignores more reality than it includes.

Meaningful change might INVOLVE academic standards and teaching strategies, but it won’t be founded on them. It’s going to be people-heavy and cliché-light. It may not even begin in school. That’s what I’ll tackle in the next and final post on this topic.

It’s taken me six parts to try to unwind my version of the problem. That leaves me exactly one last segment in which to resolve it. I’m not optimistic.

Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part I – This Land

40 Credits & A Mule, Part V: Maybe Radio

January 13, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

The original element of despotism is a MONOPOLY OF TALENT, which consigns the multitude to comparative ignorance, and secures the balance of knowledge on the side of the rich and the rulers.
If then the healthy existence of a free government be, as the committee believe, rooted in the WILL of the American people, it follows as a necessary consequence, of a government based upon that will, that this monopoly should be broken up, and that the means of equal knowledge, (the only security for equal liberty) should be rendered, by legal provision, the common property of all classes.
In a republic, the people constitute the government, and… frame the laws and create the institutions, that promote their happiness or produce their destruction… It appears, therefore, to the committee that there can be no real liberty without a wide diffusion of real intelligence; that the members of a republic, should all be alike instructed in the nature and character of their equal rights and duties, as human beings, and as citizens…
(Report of the Workingman’s Committee of Philadelphia On the State of Public Instruction in Pennsylvania, 1830)

These were white working men in the semi-industrialized north. They lived in an age of reform – the time of Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Dorothea Dix, and Horace Mann. It is unlikely that most owned land. Their ‘report’ echoes that of other labor organizations of the era – we need universal public education for our kids.

This was not a majority sentiment.

It’s dangerous to project backwards regarding motivations and intentions, but it seems that even when public education was barely a thing, they realized it would soon become essential if their sons were to flourish in the next generation. I don’t know if they were worried about ‘personal fulfillment’ stuff as well, but I’m an idealist, so… let’s assume maybe they did.

Their report demonstrates impressive cognizance regarding their target audiences. Rather than plead on behalf their offspring, they argue founding values, and the well-being of the republic to those in positions to change the system – to pass the laws, devote the resources, reshape the society. They don’t ask for opportunities, even democratic ones; rather, they promise better citizens. They reference aristocracy and oligarchy, anathema to ‘real Americans’ a generation after the Revolution, and lay out a simply path towards better functioning. It’s a great argument.

It’s also about a century ahead of its time. Education was starting to matter in 1830, at least in the North, but land was still the universal key.

And then a century passed.

In the 1930’s, everything changed. The Great Depression, of course, and the Dust Bowl – game changers for the nation and for the world. Something else was going on as well, though – an abrupt shift in land ownership and what it meant.

Once California belonged to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was their hunger for land that they took the land… and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen. They put up houses and barns, they turned the earth and planted crops. And these things were possession, and possession was ownership.
The Mexicans… could not resist, because they wanted nothing in the world as frantically as the Americans wanted land.

Steinbeck was entirely capable of being racist by the standards of today, but I don’t think this was one of those times. His venom here is towards what we’d today call “the man,” and he’s mildly sympathetic towards Mexico’s loss. Keep in mind he was essentially a Socialist, which tends to happen to people who spend enough time among the disenfranchised.

Then, with time, the squatters were no longer squatters, but owners; and their children grew up and had children on the land. And the hunger was gone from them, the… tearing hunger for land, for water and earth and the good sky over it… They had these things so completely that they did not know about them any more… and crops were reckoned in dollars, and land was valued by principal plus interest, and crops were bought and sold before they were planted.

Jefferson would have peed himself. T.J. liked a good income, but he had a healthy sense of delusion regarding the holiness of agriculture as well. Remember Jesus turning over the tables of the money-changers in the temple?

Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops… Then those farmers who were not good shopkeepers lost their land to good shopkeepers. No matter how clever, how loving a man might be with earth and growing things, he could not survive if he were not a good shopkeeper. And as time went on, the business men had the farms, and the farms grew larger, but there were fewer of them…
And there were pitifully few farmers on the land any more…
(John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath – 1939)

Land didn’t work anymore.

It would still grow stuff – more effectively than ever, actually. But it wasn’t LAND (*cue majestic music*) in the way it had been land before. Jefferson’s agricultural ideal was all but extinguished, and the most sacred of pursuits – the one previously regarded as the best possible indication of a man’s capability, responsibility, moral potential, and stake in the prosperity of the nation – became just another business. It mattered, sure – but so did the weaving and the manufacturing and the shipping and the lawyering. It was no longer special.

This is not my anti-capitalism rant. I’ll leave that to Tom Joad and his spirit moving among the hungry children and such. I’m more or less a Libertarian, but the Libertarian Ideal in MY interpretation requires a capable citizenry with actual options and real opportunity. It’s fine to support free will and full consequences for our actions, but to believe this and sleep at night we need something akin to a ‘equitable starting position’ or the proverbial ‘level playing field’.

That’s not the same as waiting until you’re way, way ahead, and then suddenly cutting the ropes to the bridge. That’s not libertarianism, that’s just being a bastard. Not always a clear distinction, I realize, but an important one nonetheless.

But I digress.

Land was a big deal. It was readily available by some standards, and not at all available by others. It came to define more than your right to vote or otherwise participate – it blurred into individual worth and identity. It was taken from the Amerindians, who didn’t even buy into the system, and denied to Black Americans, who did. Eventually, it ceased to be what it had been – the key to opportunity, responsibility, capability… all the -ilities.

“Ma,” she said. Ma’s eyes lighted up and she drew her attention toward Rose of Sharon. Her eyes went over the tight, tired, plump face, and she smiled. “Ma,” the girl said, “when we get there, all you gonna pick fruit an’ kinda live in the country, ain’t you?”
Ma smiled a little satirically. “We ain’t there yet,” she said. “We don’t know what it’s like. We got to see.”
“Me an’ Connie don’t want to live in the country no more,” the girl said. “We got it all planned up what we gonna do… Connie gonna get a job in a store or maybe a fact’ry. An’ he’s gonna study at home, maybe radio, so he can git to be a expert an’ maybe later have his own store. An’ we’ll go to pitchers whenever… An’ after he studies at night, why – it’ll be nice, an’ he tore a page outa Western Love Stories, an’ he’s gonna send off for a course…”

Ma was right – no one knew what it was gonna be like. Rose was pregnant, so that’s literary, and Connie – ironically – wasn’t far off track in terms of how the future was going to work for those able to claim it. As in, NOT the Joads.

Right at the end of that conversation, the truck carrying them all to California breaks down. That Steinbeck and his symbolism – what a nut.

Education became the new land. There were hints in the early 19th century, and Connie Rivers had a glimpse of it, but it takes awhile to remake the core of a faith. Enlightenment ideals certainly should have anticipated this, but the New World had far more available soil than acres of free pedagogy, so…

Sometimes the beliefs shape the facts, sometimes the facts shape the beliefs. Land it was, then.

By the time of the Cold War, starting with the G.I. Bill, the rules had somehow changed. From there forward it’s all going to be about who shapes the learning. As Schoolhouse Rock so wisely intoned, “It’s great to learn, because Knowledge is Power.”

Exactly.

Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part I – This Land

40 Credits & A Mule, Part IV: The Measure of a Man

January 11, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

I previously covered some of the reasons land ownership was inseparable from representative government in the early American model, but I’ve left out at least one pretty important one.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edmund Pendleton, August 1776:
You seem to have misapprehended my proposition for the choice of a Senate. I had two things in view: to get the wisest men chosen, & to make them perfectly independent when chosen. I have ever observed that a choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom. This first secretion from them is usually crude & heterogeneous. But give to those so chosen by the people a second choice themselves, & they generally will chuse wise men…

Jefferson is suggesting a method of electing Senators similar to what was later done for the Presidency – a kind of electoral college. As is often the case with Jefferson, his hybrid of grand insight and colorful language is almost irresistible. He begins with typical Enlightenment precision followed by intentional understatement with a touch of ‘snide bastard’. The choice of the masses, left to their own direct democracy-type devices, “is not generally distinguished for its wisdom.”

Then the imagery – “the first SECRETION from them is usually CRUDE and HETEROGENEOUS…” Before you tab open dictionary.com, “heterogeneous” means diverse – in this case, an incoherent mess. And this is the guy who LIKES the common man – er… in theory. Kind of. Some days. From far away.

That the Senate as well as lower (or shall I speak truth & call it upper) house should hold no office of profit I am clear; but not that they should of necessity possess distinguished property… my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth.

The Senate was intended to be the more austere, deliberative body – holding longer terms and intended as a balance on the more reactionary House of Representatives, elected every two years and thus presumably more responsive to the whims of the people. Jefferson’s parenthetical commentary is a nod to the superior role and trustworthy wisdom of the crude mess-secretors from a few sentences before.

I said he was brilliant, not consistent.

In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest & more disinterested than those of wealthy men: & I can never doubt an attachment to his country in any man who has his family & peculium in it…

We can’t trust the rich and powerful to run things, but neither can we trust the destitute. The landed citizen, however, in composite with others of his ilk – THAT’s a foundation. He is “attached” to his country – he has his family and his stuff here. Of course he wants the nation to do well – he has a vested interest uncharacteristic of those without such things.

If I buy my groceries at Wal-Mart and they go out of business, it’s inconvenient but not devastating. I may shop there, but I won’t organize the shelves or clean the bathrooms because that stuff is neither my job nor my problem. If, on the other hand, I not only work there but have stock in the company – my entire life savings and retirement, perhaps – you’ll find me helping people even on my day off, and replacing the toilet paper without begin asked. In that scenario, I NEED Wal-Mart to survive. I’m counting on it to succeed. Its destiny and mine are the same.

Substitute ‘Merica for Wal-Mart (not much of a stretch, really) and there you have it.

I was for extending the right of suffrage to all who had a permanent intention of living in the country. Take what circumstances you please as evidence of this, either the having resided a certain time, or having a family, or having property, any or all of them. Whoever intends to live in a country must wish that country well, & has a natural right of assisting in the preservation of it. I think you cannot distinguish between such a person residing in the country & having no fixed property, & one residing in a township whom you say you would admit to a vote…

The final reason land was so essential to early American democracy was that it established a stake in the success of the nation for those who held it. There are no stakes higher than protecting one’s home and sustenance – men will do almost anything to ensure success, even become informed voters.

Well, that’s the theory, anyway.

After the Civil War, many Freedmen believed they deserved – and that they had in fact been promised – “40 Acres and a Mule.” Some had actually been granted such at the unauthorized discretion of Union generals who, reasonably enough, took land from defeated plantation-owners and redistributed it to former slaves.

These few instances were reversed to smooth the transition into Reconstruction and maintain the almost cultish commitment Americans had to property rights – and, apparently, irony. The freedmen received nothing.

Well, that’s not entirely true. They received freedom. That was a pretty big deal. But freedom to do… what?

With no education, no land, no resources, no momentum – what the hell were they going to do?

Many stayed where they were, working the same land they’d been working, in exchange for food and shelter. Others left their former “masters” and wandered, either seeking loved ones from whom they’d been separated or simply wanting to go… somewhere else.

Many ended up working for white landowners under various arrangements. The South had just lost a rather brutal war – they didn’t have money to pay anyone. But food, shelter, a place to be… that they had. Eventually sharecropping and tenant farming were ubiquitous.

Freedmen didn’t have any land, or a realistic way to obtain land. Carpetbaggers from the North began establishing schools, the government had a few agencies, but overall opportunity was… limited. Just over a decade after the South surrendered the war, the North surrendered Reconstruction and brought their troops home in exchange for the Presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes.

You all remember Hayes, right? A President for whom it was worth giving up the closest we’d ever come to realizing our founding ideals?

Yeah, me neither. And maybe we weren’t as close as we should have been in such a position – war won, Amendments ratified, South destroyed. But still…

Hayes fought bimetallism, stopped a railroad strike, and sped assimilation of Amerindians. In short, after Lincoln’s death, the Republican Party went to hell fairly rapidly. Their only real saving grace was that they weren’t Democrats.

The freedman had gained everything – in theory. On paper, they were FREE! The men could vote! Land ownership! Education! Equality before the law! Unalienable rights, in your FACE!

Without land, though, they couldn’t provide for themselves. The system didn’t facilitate advancement via laboring for others – just ask the Lowell Girls, the Newsies, or any ox. Freedmen (or others without land) couldn’t do the things people had been conditioned to expect as a prerequisite for suffrage – for being a ‘full American’.

Despite written law, it became difficult to vote. It was impossible to gain economic ground, individually or as a community. Expression is severely limited when any unpopular thought can result in loss of livelihood. How does one maintain a sense of self against so much negation? At what point do we become our labels?

That’s the suffrage part. If Jefferson was correct about the spiritual and moral benefits of ‘laboring in the earth’, working the land of another may or may not have been worth partial divine credit. In terms of ‘vested interest’ in our national success, whatever support black Americans lent to their country came without terrestrial reciprocation.

White men who succeeded under the system believed they deserved to succeed. Most had genuinely worked hard and made good choices by the standards of the time. It was not perhaps logical, but WAS very human, to see those who did NOT flourish as undeserving… obviously. We all want to be part of a good system, an ordered universe, and to be justified in whatever satisfaction we draw from our efforts. Generally, ‘facts’ adjust themselves to fit our paradigms rather than the reverse.

That’s not even a white thing – that’s just a people thing.

What began as a checklist for civic participation became the default measure of a man. What was intended to protect representative government from the incompetent or slothful became an anchor on those who didn’t fit certain checklists as of 225 years ago. You are unworthy. Not quite a full American – and thus not quite a full person.

The issue becomes your state of being rather than whatever rules you have or haven’t mastered, or whatever goals you haven’t met. It was self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing. It became circular.

And then it stopped being about land and started being about something else. A new ultimate requirement and cure-all, which must be made theoretically available to all for ‘democracy’ – such as it is – to survive.

Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part I – This Land

40 Credits & A Mule, Part III: Manifest Destiny

January 6, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

When my kids were little, we used to go to Bishop’s Cafeteria to eat with my dad. He was old, and old people like cafeterias – so we went.

My son would fill his tray with everything he could fit in, including that cafeteria classic – brightly colored, cubed Jello. My daughter was much pickier, but inevitably she chose the wiggly cubes as well. The boy would snarf down his selections in minutes; the girl would take hours if we let her.

It is worth noting that she didn’t usually eat the Jello.

She liked to look at it. The table would inevitably get jostled a bit, or otherwise nudged, and the Jello would wiggle. It’s what Jello does. She loved that. And, to be fair, that’s just as valid a use for Jello as any other. (Just because something is edible doesn’t mean it serves no other function – otherwise, neither houseplants nor family pets would be around long.)

But that’s not how my son saw it.

“Sis, you gonna eat that Jello?”

“No.”

“Can I have it, then?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s my Jello.”

“Are you serious?”

Of course she was serious. I had to question his bewilderment, given that this scene was played out repeatedly over the years. Still, his outrage seemed to build quite genuinely, every time…

“Come on, Sis – you’re not going to eat it!”

“No.”

“But WHY?!?”

“It’s MY Jello.” And at this point, she’d usually give it an extra lil’ nudge – *wigglewigglewigglewigglewiggle*

“DAD!”

“Yes, Son?”

He’d explain, as if perhaps I’d been on business abroad the whole time, rather than sitting there at the same table while things unfolded according to sacred family tradition. I’d express my condolences, but had to concur with Sis that the Jello at issue was, in fact, HER Jello. It didn’t help his case that he’d snarfed an entire platter of foodstuffs only moments before – including a very similar chalice of… cubed Jello.

It never went well.

As the United States began to expand west, its people encountered numerous native tribes who were – to be blunt – in the damn way. Our national sin in regards to Amerindians is not that we overcame them, it’s that we did so hypocritically. Rather than declare war, we declared eternal friendship. We killed them in peace and in the name of a faith built on martyrs, and took everything from them in the name of giving them everything we wished they wanted – civilization, religion, modernity.

To be fair, we needed the land. They had it, but… well, they weren’t really using it properly. The Plains tribes especially were the worst sort of land-wasters – hunting when hungry, gathering when gathering was useful, hanging out, carousing and eating and socializing and such…

We lacked the words to declare them hippies, but ‘utopians’ didn’t seem harsh enough. Not one single factory. Very little organized agriculture. No hospitals. No schools. Just relationships alternating with quiet reflection.

I’m overgeneralizing, of course – there were hundreds of tribes and cultures and such – but by and large, they weren’t doing proper America things with the lands they claimed as theirs. And, as with the Jello, subjected to repeated wiggling but remaining unconsumed, our frontiersmen forebears weren’t impressed by the arguments of those claiming that land ownership requires neither cultivation nor mall-building.

(And don’t even try to pretend there was no such thing as ‘owning land’. That doesn’t even make sense. That’s like saying you can’t own people – ridiculous.)

It was genuinely maddening. Let’s not overlook that. Mixed in with the greed and selfishness and prejudice and maybe even some dark damnable thoughts was palpable frustration – an almost holy outrage – that this land was being denied them by a people unwilling to do more than jiggle their Jello.

We needed that land – we deserved that land (because if having it allows us to establish worthiness, then we should have it BECAUSE we’re worthy – it makes perfect sense, if you don’t think about it too closely).

This is not just about me and mine – although it IS very much also about me and mine. We’re here as part of something bigger – something important – something holy – something democratic – something special.

Killing Indians for personal reasons wasn’t considered particularly onerous by the standards of the day. Most of the civilized world was still pretty comfortable with what today would be considered the worst sorts of racial and cultural elitism. This was beyond that, though – this was brushing aside a backwards culture and a darkened people (figuratively?) to make room for progress. Light. Democracy. The New Way.

Because we NEEDED this land for settlers. For homesteaders. For citizens. Without it, there’s no progress. Without sufficient land, the whole of-the-by-the-for-the concept clogs up – it could even fail. And if American democracy fails, the new nation fails. If it fails here, it fails everywhere. Tyranny returns, darkness wins, and monsters rule the earth.

Conflict with Mexico was not much different. Their culture was nothing like most Amerindian peoples, but neither did we particularly fathom or appreciate their social structure, economic mores, or anything else – nor they ours. Perhaps outright disdain for one another played a larger role than with the Natives, and certainly by that point the sheer momentum of Westward Expansion eclipsed whatever underlying values or beliefs had fueled it a generation prior, but whatever the immediate motivations, the same sense of unquestioned rightness oozed from the words and letters of those pinche gabachos manifesting their destiny.

It’s not logical, but it is very human to devalue how others process their world and the goals they choose to pursue. The Natives had every opportunity to make themselves productive – to get a little schooling (hell, we offered it to them FOR FREE), learn a little civilization, even to take care of themselves through the miracles of modern agriculture. The Mexicans had plenty of chances to be, um… not Mexican!

Let’s set aside for a moment that we were inflicting antithetical values and lifestyles on a diversity of proud peoples. We’ll ignore the generations of broken treaties and outright deception. I’d like to focus on the third element of the equation – the final key to mass failure by so many Amerindians.

Poor tools. Bad soil. Spoiled supplies. If there’s such a thing as a ‘level playing field’, this wasn’t it.

They were assigned a value system and lifestyle they didn’t want, with the full weight of state and federal governments forcing compliance. They were assigned the worst land on which to practice this new system, and given inadequate tools and other supplies. The stakes were incredibly high – at best, they were expected to emulate those with the right equipment, in which case they could perhaps almost survive as second-class citizens. More likely, they would fail, starve, or simply give up – this not being a game they’d wished to play anyway.

The dominant citizenry would then point to this “failure” and label them as lazy, incompetent, or otherwise flawed.

This is, in my view, one of the major travesties of American History. Except that I’m no longer just talking about 19th Century American History.

Through bold and subversive rhetoric, I’ve effectively transitioned it into an analogy for something else.

Man, I’m good.

Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part I – This Land