DNC Night IV — The Final Calling

A Gentle Cancelling of AP Black History

Can you spot the racist voters in this picture? [election results where in certain states only whites could vote because black Americans in those states were actively disenfranchised just decades before by state legislators]

It’s true I don’t look at just facts but look for historical continuance at such conventions. I don’t search the convention for great performances by P!nk though I recognize how Gus cried for his dad’s earthy achievement of VP nomination and how folksy he spoke. I saw those moments and felt them. Just to be clear: we need to push forward, correct forward, not just move to the future while ignoring the past. Great if Harris wins, but the past of the Democratic Party can’t be ignored.

I am more concerned for searching for what lies underneath this epic moment, for what transformation can be pushed to further enact Democracy and wipe away the strong and powerful tendencies that created Trump, that didn’t inhibit him but promoted and pushed him. That means dealing where those tendencies came from, and the complicity of the Democratic party.

As far black civil rights and slavery, the Democratic Party was the Party of slavery and anti-Black civil rights. If you look at it another way, like tariffs or healthcare, then those are your issues. But bending the arc of history against what it was by pretending that southern born statesmen like Andrew Jackson, John Calhoun, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, or Strom Thurmond were anything else but avid segregationists, blatant racists is ridiculous.