Highly Sensitive to the Thought

Artist's DescriptionMohamed Ziauddin - Did the post-Civil War reconstruction efforts by the North cause great resentment among the southern whites and worsen the racial hatred of blacks?

Muhammad Rasheed - Yes. Even though the poor whites didn’t own slaves themselves, they covenanted with the wealthier whites to form a racist aristocracy. One of the terms of this agreement was that —in exchange for poor white loyalties—Black people would be permanently delegated to the bondsman class to save poor whites from chattel slavery themselves. So even though the poor whites had nothing else (literally) they at least had the artificial status of ‘whiteness’ to elevate them over Black people so they could pretend to be mini-lords strutting about in the land.

Naturally, the poor whites jealously guarded this special status and took it upon themselves to make sure slave uprisings and escapes wouldn’t ruin their good thing. But being on the losing side of the Civil War changed all of that. The Black people were now free… and worse! Under the reparatory program of Reconstruction they were becoming politically enfranchised, growing literate, and rising up the socio-economic ladder like a rocket! What was going to protect the whites from being at the bottom of society now if they didn’t have the permanent legal cushion of Black bodies to walk upon?!

This marked the birth of domestic terror, as the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups formed to sabotage the upward mobility of the newly-freed Black American. All their petty racism-based aristocratic dreams were directly tied to the subjugation and exploitation of Black people and they weren’t about to let them get away without a fight.

A lot has happened since those days, with the behavioral responses of white people towards Black people who express anti-racism messaging reflecting the same ole resentments of previous eras.


________________________________
MEDIUM : Scanned pen & ink cartoon drawing w/Adobe Photoshop color.

SUBSCRIBE and receive a FREE! Weapon of the People eBook by M. Rasheed!