by Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.
(TriceEdneyWire.com)—Until this August, most students of history would say that the United States only lost one war. For those who remember, the airlift of Vietnamese refugees from the US Embassy to offshore ships, dumping millions of dollars of helicopters and other US materiel into the South China Sea to make room for refugees, and the plight of thousands of Vietnamese supporters of the US who were not evacuated and treated as collaborators are unpleasant memories of the end of the Vietnam War—an experience most now label wasteful. Few will describe that debacle as anything other than an embarrassing debacle of loss.
Other, more sophisticated, analysts of the full scope of war, including its economic consequences will assert that, although we won the combat of World War Two, we lost the economic consequences of the war. After all, we bombed Germany and Japan into oblivion, but they used the consequences of their ‘defeat’ and reconstruction to develop the entirely new horizontal manufacturing process that was far more efficient than the vertical manufacturing commonly used in the US post-WW2. The four-story Saint Louis, MO Corvette manufacturing plant, which operated until 1981, is symbolic of the length of time it took to modernize US manufacturing processes. Arguably, the US lost that element of the war.
While I’m more than willing to entertain a discussion around those two positions, I’m far more interested in exploring the nuances of the Civil War loss of the US to the Confederacy. Before you immediately reject that assertion, let me remind you of an admonition as old as 1865, “The South Shall Rise Again!” Objective observation provides clear evidence that, despite professed “best efforts,” we’re on the way to a resurgence and imposition of Confederate values upon the nation.
Reflecting on the past, during the period of enslavement, other than the tryst in the slave quarter, the primary interest Whites had in us was the control of our minds and bodies. Using fear, disinformation, ego and superstition against us, the White man largely controlled our minds. Using fear, superstition, brutality, a social structure that promoted and supported a superior/inferior relationship between the races and the willing participation of an infinite number of vigilantes eager to enforce the written and implied rules of that society, Whites were able to maintain the vestiges and status quo of a malignant social system.
Before and since the murders of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin to the recent deaths of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, we’ve seen scores of murders committed under the cover of law and extra-legally by White renegades. Although many would attempt to justify them with a nuance(s) of the law, too many of these murders are only truly explained by a White miscreant’s malicious need to control the time and space occupied by a person of color.
In the antebellum South, men controlled every aspect of a woman’s life. She was obligated to conform to every whim or wish made by his warped imagination. She had no voting rights, no right to her own thoughts and disposition. He would take care of her and she would bear his legal progeny. This was true, but not for all women.
For those who it was not true, there came the freedom of thought and self-expression. That woman would demand the right to vote and the right of control over her own body. Her demands were met, but…
The South has risen again. It has taken the lead in reversing the social gains of women by first attacking reproductive autonomy. It gives limited schedule to what she can do with her body.
The outcomes under which we now live begs the question, “Who really won that war?”
(Dr. E. Faye Williams is President of the National Congress of Black Women.)
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