Starting to Look Up

“A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” – Abraham Lincoln on the campaign trail in Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858

Our friend, Flo, graciously gave me a signed copy of Erik Larson’s latest book, “The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War,” as a Christmas gift, and I read it with great interest, especially at this particular moment in American history. The book chronicles the few short months between the unlikely election of President Abraham Lincoln in November of 1860 and the outbreak of the American Civil War at Fort Sumter in April of 1861 by venturing beneath the headlines and into the lives of some of the key players in the unfolding tragedy. The stories are captivating, to say the least.

I finished the hefty book amid the rapid-fire headlines currently firing from our nation’s capital, wondering if the combination provided anything for me to say. And I think that I do, have something to say that is.

For starters, to state the obvious, our current political polarization with its cyclical outrage is not new. The American Civil War was deep polarization by definition, in that case producing a macabre debate over exactly how many hundreds of thousands of deaths followed, but I began to wonder if today’s toxic political climate is an instance of history repeating itself—or, is it better understood as an ongoing history?  I suspect the latter.

I have had eleven special opportunities to teach a course built by a fantastic professor named Peter Robinson, titled, “Apology, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation,” and in so doing I stumbled across a December 2019 article in The Atlantic by Adam Serwer with the provocative title, “Civility Is Overrated.” The article’s premise is that the aftermath of the American Civil War—an era popularly called Reconstruction—was not, in fact, a time of healing and reconciliation, but a time that perpetuated the original division through its “false promise of civility” that then evolved into Jim Crow, and a century later, the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In the final paragraph, Serwer writes: “In the aftermath of a terrible war, Americans once purchased an illusion of reconciliation, peace, and civility through a restoration of white rule. They should never again make such a bargain.”

Well . . .

So I’m just thinking here: President Lincoln’s famous campaign speech in the important prelude to the American Civil War warned of what happens to divided houses, and a century later, Reverend King’s most famous speech continued to lament the maintenance of that divided house (read the first few paragraphs of his speech, at least) and dreamed an inspiring dream of a yet-to-be-realized undivided house. I think that today we’re on the next stanza of the same tragic song.

But if President Lincoln’s famous line (citing Jesus) from his famous speech is correct, the song does not have unlimited stanzas.

President Trump is a fascinating phenomenon. His now larger-than-life persona is venerated by many and reviled by many others—and his flurry of provocative executive actions during his first few weeks back in office naturally produces both reactions. But what I find disturbing is that even many of the Republicans that vehemently oppose President Trump—the RINO (“Republicans in name only” as he calls them)—although in opposition to most of his initial actions, seem to agree with his assault on one thing: DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). Instead of multiple nuanced perspectives on the general concept of DEI, there seem to be only two: Good. Or, Bad.

Let me be clear: While money/power always lurks behind the curtain, the American Civil War was fought specifically over DEI. Make no mistake. And the Civil Rights Movement was without question a DEI movement. And amid the sweeping number of issues on the table today, I believe that DEI as a cause or concern, broadly speaking, remains at the center of it all.

One telling example is to recall the home stretch anti-DEI emphasis of the 2024 Trump campaign commercials that helped secure his clear victory at the polls.^{1 2} And as another specific but dramatic example, you may have seen recently that new Secretary of State Marco Rubio hired an undersecretary for public diplomacy that wrote the following less than four months ago: “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”

My friend, Dr. Richard T. Hughes, published “Myths America Lives By” in 2018, and in discussing various foundational myths identifies white supremacy as “the primal American myth.” One of the blurbs for his book was written by theologian, Dr. James H. Cone, who himself authored one of the most devastating books I have ever read, titled, “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” For Dr. Hughes’s book, Dr. Cone wrote: “It takes a whole lot of courage for white theologians and scholars to speak the truth about race. If we had more white theologians and religion scholars like Hughes who would break their silence about white supremacy and face it for what it is, we–together–could make a better world.”

I, for one, wish to have more courage, for such a reason.

Now I should state my belief that our nation’s troubling supremacist foundations include more characteristics than simply white, although white is major, and that it is no coincidence that DEI work engages those very conversations. That a visceral response to such conversations comes from many otherwise thoughtful individuals simply reveals to me the depth of the foundations.

So did the Democrats lose the presidential election in large part because their diversity, equity, and inclusion arguments were unpopular? I think so. I know without a doubt that Reverend King and the Civil Rights Movement’s diversity, equity, and inclusion arguments were unpopular. And I know that President Lincoln and the Republicans of the 1860s’ diversity, equity, and inclusion arguments were unpopular, too.

I’m imagining a similar speech to that President Lincoln delivered long ago but in today’s divided land, not that our house/nation “cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free,”³ but that we cannot endure half engaging diversity, equity, and inclusion conversations and half silencing them.

I think there is something demonic in the political unrest today, and I do not think that it has much to do with the typical liberal and conservative approaches to domestic, economic, or foreign policy. Instead, I believe that there is a foundational aspect of American history that has always existed and continues to divide us today, a foundation that seeks to reserve power and privilege for certain “types” of people through misusing words like “meritocracy.” And while this divided house has persisted for a very long time now, I agree with Jesus and Reverend King and President Lincoln and many others who were quoted as saying that divided houses cannot survive forever. But if there truly is this fundamental design feature that continues to divide us, and if we truly “face it for what it is,” as Dr. Cone wrote, I share his hope that “we—together—could make a better world.”

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1. Poltico.com on Election Day: “The border and inflation have been GOP mainstays in advertising all year. But there was one other late entry into the Republican onslaught against Harris: More than a quarter of GOP spots that have aired in battleground states since Oct. 1 mentioned transgender issues in some way — most seeking to tie Harris to the concept of prison inmates, including immigrants, receiving gender-affirming surgery. It’s not a new playbook for Republicans, who leaned into transgender issues in key races in the 2022 midterms with little electoral success. It represented a shift in the presidential race: The first TV ad mentioning the issue did not air until mid-September. Still, it became one of the top issues in Republican presidential ads in the final stretch, though the economy and immigration still loomed larger. ↩︎
2. See also, The Democrats Show Why They Lost. ↩︎
3. https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/housedivided.htm ↩︎