While black America continues to endure the impact of racism and violence, the fight against racial injustice and brutality is being fought both through the ballot box and in the streets. The upcoming vote has been framed as a referendum on whether institutional racism will be addressed. Meanwhile, activists are confronting one another publicly: some mobilized to oppose racist violence and oppression, others dedicated to preserving the status quo. A new battleground has emerged in the Midwest, where voters could swing the outcome for the whole country and where the violence of organized groups and lone vigilantes, many pouring in from other states, threatens to spiral out of control. Though these battles are ostensibly about the plight of black Americans, the conflict has largely devolved into fights between angry, disaffected white men.
In Kenosha, Wisconsin, outrage over the shooting of Jacob Blake by police has been overshadowed by violence between mainly white activists, culminating in vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse killing two white Black Lives Matter activists and injuring a third. In Portland and Seattle, groups ranging from Antifa to right-wingers like the Proud Boys have engaged in public street fights and authorities have been unable or unwilling to curtail the violence. Kenosha and other cities have become lightning rods for the political divisions in our country. And the current situation eerily echoes events that took place nearly 150 years ago in Kansas, then a federal territory preparing to gain statehood, in which the fight over slavery became so violent and chaotic that the conflict got its own graphic label: Bleeding Kansas.
As the United States expanded westward in the mid-nineteenth century, the issue of whether slavery would be permitted in the newly established states exacerbated the dispute over slavery that bitterly divided the country. In 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act placed the issue directly in the hands of voters—settlers in Kansas and Nebraska were given the power to decide whether these territories would become slave states or free states. In Kansas, residents spent the next seven years fighting one another over this issue, both politically and physically.
Then as now, it was overwhelmingly white people who violently clashed, and many of them had come from elsewhere to join the fight. Thousands of pro-slavery “ruffians” and anti-slavery partisans poured in from neighboring states, beating people in the streets, burning buildings and even murdering opponents. In one notorious sequence of events in 1856, ruffians looted and burned an anti-slavery stronghold in Lawrence; in retaliation, a band led by radical abolitionist John Brown kidnapped and murdered five pro-slavery settlers.
Both then and now, it was primarily white interests that motivated the violence. In 1850s Kansas, pro-slavery advocates sought to expand a system of extreme racial oppression that brought them enormous economic benefit. But many of the anti-slavery forces were also looking out for their own interests. Some free state advocates were committed abolitionists, but many were simply (white) small farmers and workers who did not want to be crowded out by large plantations and forced labor. Many of today’s white activists are also motivated by issues other than racial justice—such as restlessness from the shutdowns, anxiety over the ongoing economic crisis and the bitter partisan divides that have festered for years.
There is another disturbing parallel between Bleeding Kansas and the current situation in Kenosha and elsewhere—a president fanning the flames and both unwilling and incapable of containing the violence. During the 1850s, President Franklin Pierce’s role in the Kansas turmoil was a combination of ineptitude and divisive rhetoric. Pierce, already opposed to abolition, had been convinced to support the Kansas–Nebraska Act by pro-slavery and states’ rights advocates within his Democratic Party, including two future rivals of Abraham Lincoln: Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, who would defend his Senate seat against Lincoln, and Jefferson Davis, eventual president of the Confederacy who served as Pierce’s secretary of war.
Once Kansas became bitterly divided—pro and anti-slavery advocates even set up rival governments within the territory—Pierce exacerbated the divisions by recognizing only the pro-slavery faction as legitimate. The president also blamed the violence in Kansas on “Northern” (that is, anti-slavery) outside agitators and excused the violence of pro-slavery ruffians as a “counteraction” in response to Northern intervention. I doubt President Trump has studied the Pierce presidency, but his tactics have been similar: allowing the white St. Louis couple who waved guns at Black Lives Matter protestors to make a speech at the Republican National Congress, and perpetuating the idea that Kyle Rittenhouse was the victim of the people he killed and wounded.
President Pierce’s attempts to ally with white nationalists failed politically. The violence of 1856, an election year and by far the bloodiest year of the conflict, hurt Pierce so much that he became a one-term president. The Kansas affair also radically altered the general political landscape. The opposition Whig Party, which failed to adopt a cohesive strategy for dealing with Kansas or with slavery more generally, fell apart completely, and some of its members migrated to the new Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. Pierce’s successor, fellow Democrat James Buchanan, continued to support the pro-slavery factions of his party, a decision that contributed to his 1860 loss to Lincoln.
Tragically, Bleeding Kansas only exacerbated national divisions over slavery. By the time of the last Bleeding Kansas deaths in 1860, the country was on the verge of civil war. The current violence in Kenosha and other cities similarly threatens to overshadow the underlying aims of achieving racial equality and ending police brutality, and leave our country violently divided through the upcoming election and beyond.
7 comments
“…and perpetuating the idea that Kyle Rittenhouse was the victim of the people he killed and wounded.“
Uh, have you seen the video? It’s text book self defense. He was running away and only shot at the specific individuals who came in to attack him after he fell to the ground. One of those individuals was carrying a pistol and had it out as he came towards him. What was his alternative? Not shoot and get beaten beyond recognition, possibly killed? Get your facts straight.
“What was his alternative? Not shoot and get beaten beyond recognition, possibly killed?”
Yes, Chair, and that is the outcome so fervently to be desired by those pushing the narrative that it a citizen’s duty to submit to the will of the collective in every particular. If that collective is episodically represented by a mob of violent arsonists, no exception can be made, lest the remainder of collective be subject to an inappropriate example of reprehensible individualism. We’ve seen the right to self defense stripped away from the citizens residing in European and commonwealth countries, and there are a great many individuals here in the US that think such a duty to become a victim of violence as being no more than appropriate.
Including such rhetoric in the above article, however, appears to be little more than a conveniently deliberate misunderstanding of the situation, based on an a priori assumption that no average citizen may be trusted with arms, in service of a narrative pandering to those who wish to stoke the fires of racial hatred in America.
I find it immensely gratifying that, outside of certain urban cores, the majority of folks appear to understand these incitements to racial hatred as the hustle that they are. My black and brown friends still love me as I love them, and that fact consoles me as I ponder the vicious rhetorical attacks on brotherly affection and cooperation with which the race hustlers are flooding the media outlets.
The only thing more satisfying than watching young white Kyle escape the mayhem his felonious (white) attackers attempted on his person, would be to watch a young black man of similar temperament do the same. It would be the duty of every American to defend a black version of Kyle from the corrupt indictments laid down on this white youth under the same circumstances. The second amendment is there for ALL Americans and it’s highly gratifying to see black and brown folks exercising their right to keep and bear arms, defending themselves when a highly regrettable necessity arises.
We Americans know that it’s no walk in the park to deal with the aftermath of a self-defense incident, regardless of complexion, and it’s time to acknowledge that we must stand together as Americans, full stop, no racial qualifiers included. Just as the Rittenhouse defense funds have been cancelled by the “be a victim” crowd, we begin to see what’s been happening with white, black and brown folks all along, under similar circumstances, and now we face a choice; defend everyone’s rights equally or surrender to those who would strip all citizens of their dignity and right to self defense. The answer isn’t to create more white victims of criminal violence, it’s to enable black and brown people to defend themselves from physical violence and receive impartial justice afterward. We seem to have an epidemic of corrupt district attorneys in our country, willing to indict those defending themselves without even investigating the facts, while simultaneously releasing violent criminals without censure, purely on an ideological basis. This is a critical issue facing Americans, and one that crosses all racial boundaries.
The Colion Noir channel (youtube) posted a video on the 28th explaining the case with images, just people give a quick survey. Video title: “Kyle Rittenhouse – Let’s talk about facts about the shooting in Kenosha Wisconsin from a lawyer’s point of view”.
Note: 1- I don’t know if you need to update the case because I don’t follow the news, but seeing the video you can see that it was not a sniper or looking for a specific victim, it was a defense!
2- Strangely, youtube classified the video as inappropriate and offensive content, but you can still watch it. The question is, why? Why does he show the truth?
I had a lot of doubts about the case but this video in my view showed what the media ignored!
The “Kansas affair,” Dr. Rhodes notes, “also radically altered the general political landscape,” as “The opposition Whig Party, which failed to adopt a cohesive strategy for dealing with Kansas or with slavery more generally, fell apart completely, and some of its members migrated to the new Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln. Pierce’s successor, fellow Democrat James Buchanan, continued to support the pro-slavery factions of his party, a decision that contributed to his 1860 loss to Lincoln.” We may perhaps need a 21st century party realignment echoing that of 1860. The United States badly needs a responsible centre-right party to balance the Democrats (and I say this as a Democrat myself, who considers myself more or less centre-left), but the current Republican Party doesn’t exactly fill the bill any more, the way it used to back in the 1950’s and 1960’s–the GOP might have to go the way of the pre-1860 Whigs, to make way for 21st century heirs of Abe Lincoln–and of Dwight Eisenhower!
This article is so badly biased it’s cringeworthy. Come on, Areo is an Intellectual Dark Web platform, and we get articles like this? Where, exactly, is this kind of racially divisive rhetoric being suppressed? This understanding of the facts was typed up in a Soviet Politburo meeting in like 1952.
When you have to actively seek out things to be victimized by, you are not a victim. You are an opportunist. The most hazardous place for black people isn’t in front of a policeman – it’s in the womb. Planned Parenthood has removed 2 million black lives from America – lives that would have swung the last election to Hillary and reduced Trump to a historical footnote and laughingstock, like Sarah Palin.
Remember when Joe Biden was extremely racist when he led the 1994 Crime Bill to be passed? You can watch the videos on Youtube, which I would link here but this website started auto-deleting any comments with a URL in them.
Thanks for an interesting article and full marks for imagination! But slavery was a REAL and persistent problem, a vast and obvious tyranny with a strong geographical presence in the US. By comparison, for all their mayhem, the opposing rioters today are comparitively few in number, strongly opposed by the vast majority of Americans and lack defined geographical bases. Does anyone really fear California or New York might try to leave the Union? A non-geographical civil war would boil down to the US Military, which remains the most powerful on Earth and is utterly unlike its 1850s counterpart.
Yup, a civil war when the two sides are mixed together in much of the country will not be a war but rather an anarchy. Perhaps it’s time to drop Correctness and get back to telling the truth about the under performance of black Americans, namely that it is 90% their own failure. Notwithstanding that of the (so we are told) over 300,000,000 police/civilian interactions that occur every year, perhaps 0.001% of them will go badly, a black male is still more likely to be struck by lightning than he is to be killed, unarmed, by the cops. Mr. Floyd died of a drug overdose in fact. Had he not resisted arrest he’d not have been restrained. Mr. Blake should not have reached into his car for that knife. Mr. Brooks really should not have tried to shoot that cop with his own taser. And so on.