Racism’s roots

“Racism’s Roots” — Carmel Pine Cone, May 21, 2021

Carol McKibben’s “Reprehensible flag” letter is correct. Racism is still alive. But what Carol failed to mention was that those waving the Confederate flags were staunch Democrats. They were not only the ones who established the Confederate States of American, but earlier provided intellectual ammunition to enslave blacks.

By the 1830s, slavery was dying in the South. One of the biggest slave states, Virginia, almost abolished slavery in 1832. Pro-slavery defenders were in a panic.

Political theorists like pro-Democrat Sen. John C. Calhoun came to the rescue and painted slavery with a moral sheen of paternalism, proclaiming that “slaveholding” was “instead of an evil, a good — a positive good.” He asserted that not all people are “equally entitled to liberty.”

Some might call this ancient history, but what about Prop. 16, which Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrat legislators placed on the 2020 ballot? That proposition sought the legal right for California to discriminate on the “basis of race.” Fortunately, this blatantly racist measure lost, although Democrats had raised over $25 million in order to support it.

Yes, Carol, unfortunately the Confederate flag still flies, right in Sacramento.

— L.K. Samuels, Carmel