And that the rest of America subsidized the slave-owning states and continues to subsidize them to this day. Hawley, of course, is the guy who greeted the armed traitors of the White Supremacists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th to assassinate Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi. He hopes to ride into the White House with his white supremacy.
To double the GOP notion that America is a nation exclusively by, by, and for whites, Hawley has now proposed a law he calls “The Love America Act of 2021”. The bill is only 3 ½ pages long. It takes a bit of legal jargon to get it into legislation to define what “school” means and such, but here it is:
“Restriction of federal funds for teaching that certain documents are products of white supremacy or racism – …[N]o Federal funding is made available to an educational institution or school that teaches that the pledge of allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution of the United States is a product of white supremacy or racism. “
That’s it. That is the core of the whole calculation.
In other words, public schools that teach the actual history of our constitution are losing all of their federal funds – our tax dollars – and are essentially going out of business. It’s that simple really: White Supremacist Republicans like Hawley don’t want your children to know the real history of America.
Black children, they say, are old and tough enough to experience racism, but white children are just way too young and fragile to learn about it.
Despite Hawley’s protests, racism and white supremacy were an integral part of our founding documents. Consider the “Father of the Constitution” and the notes of the slave owner James Madison of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention in 1787.
It was the third week of August and the US taxation of “property” (a code word for slaves) was linked to the debate over how many representatives each state should have in the US House of Representatives.
The five slave states wanted all of their enslaved people to be credited for representation – even though they could not vote or enjoy any of the civil rights – but did not want to pay a “property tax” on them. The eight “free” states vehemently opposed the counting of enslaved people in order to increase the representation of the slave states in Congress, as well as their subsidization through tax law.
It produced one of the great speeches at the Constitutional Convention, which Madison dutifully transcribed.
Governor Morris (“Governor” was his first name, not his title) represented Pennsylvania and single-handedly wrote the preamble to the constitution. He was 35 years old, a lawyer and a graduate of Kings College (now Columbia University). And he was a passionate abolitionist.
“He would never agree to the maintenance of domestic slavery,” wrote Madison, summarizing Morris’ speech. “It was a disgraceful institution. It was heaven’s curse on the states in which he ruled. “
Morris warmed up to his subject and began an extensive rant about how destructive slavery was to the new nation that gave birth to it. It shows how wrong Hawley is when he says that racism and white supremacy have nothing to do with the writing of the constitution.
“Compare the [slave]-free regions of the middle states, where rich and noble cultivation marks the prosperity and happiness of the people, “said Morris,” with the misery and poverty that slaved the barren wastelands of Virginia, Maryland and the other states. Travel across the continent and you will see the view, which is constantly changing with the emergence and disappearance of slavery. “
Morris said the enslavement of people is a curse on America that is visible to anyone who just looks. The free north was prosperous; the south, where people were enslaved, was poor.
“The moment you leave the east [slave] States, “he said,” and entering New York, the effects of the institution become visible. In passing through the Jerseys and entering Pennsylvania, each criterion of superior improvement testifies to the change. Go south, and every step you take through the great slave regions represents a desert that grows with the increasing proportion of these wretched beings. “
But the White Supremacist slave-owners, who represent the slave states in the Convention, wanted more power in Congress and lower taxes in their own states, much like today’s Republicans. The key to this, they believed, was for some or all of their states’ enslaved blacks to be credited for representation in Congress even though they were in chains and unable to vote.
Based on that same argument last month, the White Supremacists of the Georgian Legislature passed and Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill in front of a painting of a slave plantation that would allow Republicans of Georgia to cast the excuse of people in predominantly black districts that they “suspect”, with or without evidence, that “fraud” has occurred.
Georgia has already begun cleaning up local voters in black districts and replacing them with safe white Republicans who will make sure the elections get the “right” result.
It is such a radical bill that the CEO of the Stacey Abrams-founded New Georgia Project, Nsé Ufot, Politico bluntly told Politico that unless the law is repealed by the termination of the filibuster and the passage of the For The People Act, “are we fucked. “
As if we were being torn in half by some strange time machine, Madison went on to transcribe Governor Morris’ speech.
“According to what principle should the slaves in the representation be calculated?” Morris demanded of his colleagues. “Are they men? Then make them citizens and let them vote. Are they property? Then why is there no other property included? [in determining representation}? The houses in this city (Philadelphia) are worth more than all the wretched slaves who cover the rice swamps of South Carolina.”
And then Morris nailed down precisely how and why racism and White supremacy were written into the Constitution with the so-called “3/5ths compromise” that gave southern states more members in the House of Representatives than their White population would justify.
“The admission of slaves into the representation, when fairly explained, comes to this,—that the [White] A resident of Georgia and South Carolina who goes to the coast of Africa and, despite the most sacred laws of mankind, tears his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and condemns them to the cruelest servitude, will have more votes … than the citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey, who looks at such a shameful practice with laudable horror. “
It was about using racism and white supremacy to bolster white power in the south and then force the rest of the country to subsidize it.
Remember, Senate Democrats now represent 41 million more people than Senate Republicans. And based on 1787, Georgia and 17 other Republican-controlled, mostly former slave states, have now enacted the right to refuse to vote blacks or simply refuse to count their votes.
But back to 1787: Morris paused to gather his thoughts and then, Madison noted, continued, this time the southern oligarchs showing off their slave labor-made fortunes while challenging the northern states for theirs Pay the defense and otherwise subsidize it with northern tax dollars.
“He would add,” Madison wrote, “that domestic slavery is the most prominent feature in the aristocratic face of the proposed constitution. The vassals of the poor have always been the most popular descendants of the aristocracy. “
Morris probably yelled at this point; such language is rarely found in our founding documents and can help explain why Madison kept his “notes” secret until his death nearly 50 years later. Morris pointed out that the south essentially requires the north to subsidize them financially, which continues to this day.
“And what is the proposed compensation for the Northern States,” demanded Morris, “for a victim of every legal principle, every human impulse? … The … tea that a free man from the north drinks will pay more taxes than the entire consumption of the wretched slave … “
Morris lost the argument and the southern slave states were given additional representation in Congress without their “property” being federally taxed. But the GOP certainly doesn’t want you or your children to know.
If Hawley’s bill were to become law, any public school teaching Morris’s anti-slavery speech would lose all federal funding. This is how white supremacy works today, and indeed has worked in this nation since we were founded.
Your strategy is simple: take control of history (from Martin Luther King’s Texan adaptation from his textbooks to generations of statues of Confederate generals), suppress black political power while subsidizing the red states, and do so everything with a thin patina from lawyers.
Northern states generally make it easy for all people to vote, while former slave states do everything they can to suppress the election of blacks (along with the votes of young people and older Social Security voters).
Former slave states like Hawley’s Missouri make up the overwhelming majority of states that have passed voter suppression laws. And they’re still pushing taxpayers’ money, just like Morris complained in 1787.
Northern states get back a fraction of every dollar they send to Washington DC, while former slave states get up to $ 2 for every tax dollar they send to the federal government.
As Stephen Оhlеmacher noted in 2017:
“According to the Rockefeller Study, Mississippi received $ 2.13 for every dollar tax the state sent to Washington in 2015. West Virginia received $ 2.07, Kentucky $ 1.90, and South Carolina $ 1.71.
“Meanwhile, for every dollar the state sent to Washington, New Jersey received 74 cents in federal tax expenses. New York got 81 cents, Connecticut got 82 cents, and Massachusetts got 83 cents. ”
White supremacy, racism, and subsidization of the Red States by the rest of America weren’t just a reality in 1787: They are alive and well today.
Hawley and his White Supremacist pals in the GOP want it to stay that way, and their hateful “Love America Act” is just the latest disgusting part of their strategy. We have tolerated and subsidized these losers since 1787 and it is time to stop.