and it may be foreseen that the freer the white population of the United States becomes, the more isolated will it remain….
If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States,—that is to say, they will owe their origin, not to the equality, but to the inequality, of conditions.
The prophetic astuteness of Tocqueville’s critique is sometimes attributed in part to his outsider status, and yet powerful voices from within the country, both the famous and the largely forgotten, expressed the same fears of the ultimate consequences of racism and imperialism earlier. Their words speak more powerfully than we can today about the menacing nature of these twin forces as thecountry wrestled with the paradoxes implicit in its founding. The free black man David Walker and the white abolitionist Lydia Maria Child—two public intellectuals in the grand democratic tradition—had already raised Tocqueville’s explosive question. In 1829 Walker published his excoriating
Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World
, a work banned in much of America and the cause of his murder in 1830. Highlighting Thomas Jefferson’s hypocrisy as the author of the Declaration who also, in his notorious
Notes on the State of Virginia
, put forth a degrading analysis of the inferiority of African Americans, Walker wrote:
Has Mr. Jefferson declared to the world, that we are inferior to whites, both in the endowments of our bodies and our minds? It is indeed surprising that a man of such great learning, combined with such excellent natural parts, should speak so of a set of men in chains….
Do you know that Mr. Jefferson was one of as great characters as ever lived among the whites? See his writings for the world, and public labours for the United States of America. Do you believe that the assertions of such a man, will pass away into oblivion unobserved by this people and the world? If you do you are much-mistaken. See how the American people treat us—have we souls in our bodies?…
See your Declaration Americans! ! ! Do you understand your own language? Hear your language, proclaimed to the world, July 4th, 1776—“We holdthese truths to be self evident—that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL!”
Child, a radical abolitionist, admonished the country about the evils of slavery in 1833 with her
An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans:
I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken; but though I
expect
ridicule and censure, I cannot
fear
them….
Should it be the means of advancing, even one single hour, the inevitable progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange the consciousness for all Roths-child’s wealth, or Sir Walter’s fame.
Who does not see that the American people are walking over a subterranean fire, the flames of which are fed by slavery?
The greatest novel ever written by an American,
Moby-Dick
(1851), is the thirty-two-year-old Herman Melville’s scathing exploration of the evils of nihilistic imperialist power, a power he recognized and abhorred at the heart of the American character. Melville was a staunch antiracist, anti-imperialist, and lover of democracy—ironically, his father-in-law was the judge who sustained the vicious Fugitive Slave Act that was a catalyst for the Civil War—and
Moby-Dick
can be read, in part, as a commentary on the ills of American democracy. The nihilist Ahab, drunk with power and the crazed embodiment of an absolute will to dominate andconquer—fueled largely by wounded ego and worldly pride—leads his multiracial crew into the abyss of history, with the fetish of whiteness dangling before him.
The greatness of Abraham Lincoln was his courage to confront publicly the nightside of American democracy through deep Socratic questioning, unfailing prophetic love of justice, and excruciating tragicomic hope for a “more perfect union,” even in the midst of the
If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States,—that is to say, they will owe their origin, not to the equality, but to the inequality, of conditions.
The prophetic astuteness of Tocqueville’s critique is sometimes attributed in part to his outsider status, and yet powerful voices from within the country, both the famous and the largely forgotten, expressed the same fears of the ultimate consequences of racism and imperialism earlier. Their words speak more powerfully than we can today about the menacing nature of these twin forces as thecountry wrestled with the paradoxes implicit in its founding. The free black man David Walker and the white abolitionist Lydia Maria Child—two public intellectuals in the grand democratic tradition—had already raised Tocqueville’s explosive question. In 1829 Walker published his excoriating
Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World
, a work banned in much of America and the cause of his murder in 1830. Highlighting Thomas Jefferson’s hypocrisy as the author of the Declaration who also, in his notorious
Notes on the State of Virginia
, put forth a degrading analysis of the inferiority of African Americans, Walker wrote:
Has Mr. Jefferson declared to the world, that we are inferior to whites, both in the endowments of our bodies and our minds? It is indeed surprising that a man of such great learning, combined with such excellent natural parts, should speak so of a set of men in chains….
Do you know that Mr. Jefferson was one of as great characters as ever lived among the whites? See his writings for the world, and public labours for the United States of America. Do you believe that the assertions of such a man, will pass away into oblivion unobserved by this people and the world? If you do you are much-mistaken. See how the American people treat us—have we souls in our bodies?…
See your Declaration Americans! ! ! Do you understand your own language? Hear your language, proclaimed to the world, July 4th, 1776—“We holdthese truths to be self evident—that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL!”
Child, a radical abolitionist, admonished the country about the evils of slavery in 1833 with her
An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans:
I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken; but though I
expect
ridicule and censure, I cannot
fear
them….
Should it be the means of advancing, even one single hour, the inevitable progress of truth and justice, I would not exchange the consciousness for all Roths-child’s wealth, or Sir Walter’s fame.
Who does not see that the American people are walking over a subterranean fire, the flames of which are fed by slavery?
The greatest novel ever written by an American,
Moby-Dick
(1851), is the thirty-two-year-old Herman Melville’s scathing exploration of the evils of nihilistic imperialist power, a power he recognized and abhorred at the heart of the American character. Melville was a staunch antiracist, anti-imperialist, and lover of democracy—ironically, his father-in-law was the judge who sustained the vicious Fugitive Slave Act that was a catalyst for the Civil War—and
Moby-Dick
can be read, in part, as a commentary on the ills of American democracy. The nihilist Ahab, drunk with power and the crazed embodiment of an absolute will to dominate andconquer—fueled largely by wounded ego and worldly pride—leads his multiracial crew into the abyss of history, with the fetish of whiteness dangling before him.
The greatness of Abraham Lincoln was his courage to confront publicly the nightside of American democracy through deep Socratic questioning, unfailing prophetic love of justice, and excruciating tragicomic hope for a “more perfect union,” even in the midst of the
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