We can divide history into decisive events and defining moments.
The decisive event is a rarity that resolves an issue. In fact, it’s hard to decipher whether humans ever “finally resolve” anything.
A defining moment happens more often. With the benefit of hindsight, it can predict the decisive events.
There is a significant cohort of current Americans, who like their 19th Century Confederate forebearers, are preparing for civil war.
While there are currently no Union or Confederate Armies forming battle lines, this doesn’t mean that America isn’t preparing for some sort of 21st Century equivalent of the Civil War. There is a significant cohort of current Americans, who like their 19th Century Confederate forebearers, are preparing for civil war.
It does not take a lot of imagination to see the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol as the metaphorical Confederate troops firing on Fort Sumter. That carnage filled day is not a decisive event, or a defining moment.
The Confederacy unconditionally surrendering to the Union army in Appomattox, Virginia, was decisive because it ended the Civil War.
The defining moment of the Civil War was probably the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Lee’s objective at Gettysburg was to invade a northern state, win a major battle, and force a negotiated peace acceptable to the Confederacy.
Lee’s loss at Gettysburg forced him to retreat back to Virginia; he never came North again. The Union Army didn’t win the Civil War at Gettysburg, but you can argue that’s where the Confederate loss became inevitable.
The American Civil War was a fight among members of the same tribe, an existential argument between white Americans about the future direction of the country. What was the United States and who was going to be an American? It pitted brother against brother, everyone had to pick a side. There was no middle ground. You can’t reconcile the differences between a feudal agrarian caste-based slave economy and an emerging industrial capitalist economy.
Something had to give, somebody had to go.
Keep this in mind as I attempt to contextualize the current American moment we are living in. I believe it is obvious that America is at war with itself. I’m going to focus on Black Americans and white Americans.
There are clearly more people in America than those identified as Black or White, but this is a column, not a sociology course. I’m focusing on Black and White America because this is the road we traveled to get to this moment. The America of 2023 is in the same place as the America of 1860. There is an existential argument among white people about what to do with Black people.
The reason Americans substitute creation myth for history is simple: Americans have difficulty with reality. Reality requires you to deal with fact-based truths. To paraphrase Col. Jessep (Jack Nicholson) in “A Few Good Men”, a lot of white Americans don’t do well with the truth. But don’t take my word for it, ask Rupert Murdock.
Among the realities of American society that Americans never confront is class and caste. Class is a socio/economic categorization that separates people primarily by economic status. These economic classifications, while a permanent feature of capitalism, are elastic in modern post- industrial societies. Classes never go away, but they are malleable.
It’s possible for people to move from one class to another. Caste, however, is something different.
A caste system is a rigid system of social stratification characterized by hereditary status that’s sanctioned by a society’s culture, laws, and religion. This means you are born into it. While you can financially or educationally change your class status, there’s nothing you can do about your caste status, unless you change the culture, laws and religion of the society.
When the United States ratified the Constitution in 1789 it did two things. It created a democratic republic with limited suffrage that expanded over time, and a racially-based caste system that hasn’t changed materially in 240 years.
Modern capitalism is a 19th Century phenomenon that’s particularly a function of the Second Industrial Revolution. There is no way Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton could have imagined the America of the future when they were designing the governing structure for the country in the late 18th century.
In order to sire a governing structure that was secular, eliminate the hereditary monarchy, and enshrine the political principles of The Enlightenment, as political necessity often requires, they did the deal with the devil. They codified slave labor predicated on a race-based hereditary caste system. As they felt, the slave economy wouldn’t last, but the race-based caste system has turned out to be a permanent feature of American life.
You cannot successfully understand contemporary or historical America unless you spend some time at the intersection of class and caste. Today’s brewing civil conflagration is an extension of the unresolved issues of America’s 19th Century Civil War.
The Civil War brought closure to the question of legalized slavery, but despite the attempt during Reconstruction, left totally unresolved the issues of caste. 160 years later, shifting demographics and the creative destruction of capitalism is calling the question.
The Congressional and Presidential elections of November 2024 won’t resolve this question, it will not be a decisive event.
But like the Battle of Gettysburg, it will represent a defining moment. There’s a question we should be actively considering though: How is this defining moment shaping up?
To be continued…