Arguing From A Class

 

Whenever Mad Dog hears an advocate of ICE round ups holding forth on the grave threat illegal immigrants pose to American society, there is almost always the same progression of establishing the case: 1/ First, the most horrible example of a Nicaraguan tattooed gang member having raped and dismembered a White woman 2/ Then, there is the statement that this is what Brown skinned illegal immigrants from South of the Border are and do, 3/ Therefore we have to get rid of the whole lot of them.

So, you start with the one indisputably bad guy, move to this guy as a representative of the essential nature of all members of his class, e.g., Nicaraguan men who have sneaked into the country all share these characteristics: prone to rape, murder and dismemberment. Never mind if this guy is a hard working tree pruner: He's from South of the Border, ergo he's a potential rapist wannabe.

Same thing was true for centuries in the South: A Negro male rapes a white woman: Well, that's what they do.

The same has been applied to Southerners, for that matter. Ku Klux Klan members are white males, therefore all Southern white males are Ku Klux Klan.

Ku Klux Klan members were Christian. Does that mean all Christians are Ku Klux Klan members?

General Ulysses S. Grant was the general Abraham Lincoln had long sought. After a succession of cautious, passive generals, he finally found an aggressive, decisive general with a sense of grand strategy.  

But then, one day, General Grant was told that Jewish merchants had been engaging in a black market for captured Southern cotton, and Grant issued General Order # 11, expelling all Jews from his military district of Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi. 

So here we have the progression. These black marketeers have engaged in bad behavior. At least some of these black marketeers are Jewish, therefore all Jews are black marketeers and have to be expelled, at least from this district.

The Union Army did not have ICE agents, but it did have soldiers in uniform and none of them wore masks to expel the Jewish merchants.

Much as Lincoln loved Grant, Lincoln immediately quashed that order, telling Grant, "You cannot apply such punishment to a class of people." Each individual has to be investigated and prosecuted for what he individually has done, not for the crimes of his group.

That, of course, is the essence of "due process."

In fact, seeing "the Jews" as a group was an obvious construct.  Are you talking about only male Jews? Are you talking about Jews from Spain or from Germany?  Are you talking about male Jews only, or also females and children? Are you talking about Jews born in the USA or Jews who have recently immigrated? Are you talking about citizen Jews or non citizen Jews? Are you talking about blue eyed/blond Jews or swarthy Jews?

One can only imagine Lincoln, the lawyer, talking to Grant about this later. "You're a great general. You're not a great lawyer. And you are certainly no Constitutional scholar."

Lincoln applied the same principle of individual responsibility as opposed to  group guilt when it came to the infamous Indian hangings in Minnesota. After a bloody rampage by Dakota Indians, nearly 400 captured Indians were scheduled to be hanged, and the governor of Minnesota wanted Lincoln to sign off on this. 

Lincoln insisted on a form of due process. He insisted the files on every accused Indian be sent to the White House. The governor assured Lincoln if he did not act then the governor would hang all 380 Indians. 

Lincoln selected out 38 Indians from the files which he thought provided enough evidence of guilt, and the rest were spared. It was the largest mass execution in American history.

This episode is often used by revisionist historians and Lost Cause advocates to suggest Lincoln was a racist, not the great Emancipator, but a typical White politician. But, of course, what it really was was Lincoln, the lawyer, insisting on individual trials for individual crimes. 

(Of course, on a personal level, Lincoln hated the idea of executions, whether for deserters or insurrectionist traitors. That underlying personality trait is often important in what moves a President to action. He had no need to demonstrate his capacity to dominate, never cried out, "It is not US who should be afraid; it is THEM who should be afraid." Lincoln was confident in his own courage and power--he felt no need for gorilla chest thumping.)

The impulse to indict a person because he is a member of a group you do not like, is, of course, at the heart of racism.

Seeing a Black person as a Black, rather than as an individual is fundamental to this world view.

Seeing Brown skinned immigrants, whether they are poor people from El Salvador, or blue collar workers from Mexico, or nuns from Honduras, is another feature of deep seated racial hatred.  When people begin to look not like individuals, but as simply a member of a vilified group, that is an America none of us should want to go back to.

 We had enough of that the first 300 years.