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Est. April 5, 2002
 
           
January 24, 2019 - Issue 773

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The American Militia
and
White Supremacy:
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Loaded:
A Disarming History
of the
Second Amendment



"It was demanded of all white men to own firearms,
to carry firearms, to patrol the 'beat'. The 'beat,' a
night-time job, required men white men to apprehend
'any and all Negroes who were not in their proper places'.
If 'free' or runaway, the person is 'taken
before a justice of the peace.'"



Killing, looting, burning, raping, and terrorizing Indians...were traditions
in each of the colonies long before the Constitution Convention.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,
Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment (City Lights Open Media)


The Southerner’s reputation as a fighting man rested not only
on what others said about him, or even on what he said about
himself, but also on what he had done.

John Hope Franklin, The Militant South, 1800-1861


Three hundred and thirty-six million US citizens. Three hundred
and ninety-three million privately owned guns in the US.

The Washington Post, June 19,2018


I’m not sure when I first heard about Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s latest work, however, I recognized the author’s name since I read
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (ReVisioning American History) two years ago. The title has a familiar ring to it, that is, if you are familiar with the late peoples’ historian Howard Zinn’s work, A People's History of the United States. Neither in the titles of both works nor in their subject, that is, history, is there anything coincidental. When I attached the author, Dunbar-Ortiz, to the title, Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, I thought, here would be a discussion of the existence of the Second Amendment, beginning with the evolution of the militia, patrols of armed civilians, instigating terror in the lives of Indigenous and black people.

And Loaded doesn’t disappoint.

I’ve long been suspicious about the Second Amendment. Why the fiery insistence of Americans to “keep my guns.” Keep stockpiles of guns, as if for the ready… Ready for what?

I came across the late black historian John Hope Franklin’s The Militant South decades ago while researching slavery in the Americas. I hadn’t been told about the book, in fact, at the time, the relatively slim volume was out of print. I had to set up time to read Militant in the university library and eventually copy a few chapters from it for later use. But it has always been an unforgettable book because of the way it discusses what is often not discussed in public debates about gun control or the Second Amendment or the right to bear arms. Franklin writes about the formation of the civilian militias, gun-toting citizens, surrounding the borders of US plantations.

The Militant South begins with immigrants to occupied territory in the so-called New World, that is, new to the Indigenous populations throughout the landmass of the Americas. In the Colonies, the European immigrant that becomes the Virginian and Carolinian, writes Franklin, differs from his Puritan compatriots in that the latter seeks to build a society radically different from the Europe he fled. In contrast, the new arrivals to the Virginia and the Carolina plantation life wanted to recreate a familiar world, with “an agrarian social and economic system” where he, originally a member of the common folks, could now pursue an aristocratic lifestyle. In this world, the planter immigrant could see himself “the central figure” in a narrative. A dream.

There he was - a country gentleman, living in “noble splendor, receiving the services of his coterie of subordinates, and discharging the obligation that his ‘high position’ imposed upon him.” How best to transform this dream into a reality, where the old becomes the new, if not through the enslavement of other human beings?

He learns, this Europe immigrant, “the social and economic values of Negro slavery.” Over time, the best of the Southern planters, Franklin explains, the most successful, “emerge as aristocrats,” and few concern themselves with the rumblings of contempt from other white immigrants belong the station of the planter. As Franklin writes, “egalitarianism” was maybe important in American life but not in the Southern aristocrat’s life. Whereas freedom was another matter—so long as freedom meant freedom for the aristocrat planter.

The system of slavery became a “cornerstone” of Southern civilization, so long as the enslaved black remained in her place and, in that place, remained “docile.” Even the poor whites could dream of one day seeing themselves owning land and black slaves (rarely coming to fruition, but possible). But for the black enslaved for whom the enterprise of slavery for the colonies becomes “not only a central feature in commercial agriculture but also a major factor in the development of the South’s domineering spirit.” Soon children became witnesses to the systemic brutality directed toward black people, and thus it was common to see children, in turn, abuse their black guardians, Franklin writes.

The idea of white superiority is not only distributed across society but also passed down to subsequent generations as a way of being any white, planter or not. “That slavery tended to create tyranny in the South was not merely abolitionist prattle.” As Franklin explains, “the system provided the despot with extensive prerogatives and ample opportunities for their abuse.”

And the law? Well, the law was the slaveholder. And the slaveholder had the right to do as he pleased with his property. And as he breathe life into this right over property, including chattel slaves, the planter aristocrat developed the “swagger of the bully” who employed the “bludgeon” to solve disputes. Under the law of the planter aristocrat, the “assassination” is elevated to an art, and the “martial spirit” flourished in this milieu.

In the culture! Deep in the culture!

And so too is fear.

The Southern storytellers wrote of plantations populated with happy blacks. The poor whites, many unable to read these dream-like narrative, witnessed from afar black people neither not so happy nor complacent. Images of black faces, runaways, appear on posters near the homes occupied by the women and children of poorer whites living in town or rural areas. The planter aristocrat worried about the loss of property, that is, in terms of money, but occasionally he feared retaliation in the night, while he, wife, and children slept, by disgruntled blacks looking to execute revenge before escaping the plantation. For all his swagger, the slaveholder could never be sure the enslaved human being would remain docile. In place. Cruelty might put some blacks on the run or worse! What about uprisings?



Fear unifies so as to instigate a myriad of injustices against victims of systemic violence. Franklin explains, “the South’s greatest nightmare was the fear of slave uprisings; and one of the most vigorous agitations of her martial spirit was evidenced whenever this fear was activated by even the slightest rumor of revolt.”

And those posters viewed by the non-slaveholding whites gave voice to the narrative of fear. In plain language, citizens read aloud:

Let it never be forgotten, that our Negroes are freely the JACOBINS of the country; that they are the ANARCHISTS and the DOMESTIC ENEMY; the COMMON ENEMY OF CIVILIZED SOCIETY, and the BARBARIANS WHO WOULD, IF THEY COULD, BECOME THE DESTROYERS OF OUR RACE.

For the well being of the crucial economic and social system, the planter aristocrat turned to the community for “cooperation.”

Cooperation took the form of the patrol, which in time, “became an established institution in most areas of the South,” writes Franklin. It was demanded of all white men to own firearms, to carry firearms, to patrol the “beat.” The “beat,” a night-time job, required men white men to apprehend “any and all Negroes who were not in their proper places.” If “free” or runaway, the person is “taken before a justice of the peace.”

The citizen patrols were joined in time by the military. In South Carolina, the patrol system evolved into the militia, Franklin asserts, “making it a part of the military system.” Soon, the patrol wasn’t confined to plantations; the patrol came to be seen as a “preventative check” to keep “‘all thoughts of insurrection out of the heads of the slaves, and so gives confidence to those persons amongst us who may be timorous.’” A good number of the citizen militia were seafarers and thugs, armed with “muskets and bayonets” as they made the “rounds” of Negro quarters. Committees of safety flourished as did more and more “military patrols and guards.”

The unification of slaveholders and white non-slaveholders wasn’t always welcomed, according to Franklin, who discusses uncomfortable relations between kin—that is, those who owned plantations and those who didn’t. Class mattered, even among family! The owners insisted that race mattered: at least the poor white relations isn’t black! But the poorer relations recognized class, too. It wasn’t long before the establishment of organizations such as the Neck Rangers, the Light Infantry, and the Corps of Hussars. For large-scale plots, such as those of Gabriel, Vesey, and Turner, writes Franklin, “there was a strong show of military force” consisting of hundreds of militiamen.

“The citadels [Virginia Military Institute, Citadel Academy at Charleston], sentries, ‘Grapeshotted’ cannon” and minutemen became familiar and integral parts of the South’s landscape, writes Franklin, so that the evolution of the militia is the institutional safeguard for the preservation of the “cornerstone” of Southern civilization.

I challenge myself last weekend to view for the first time No Country for Old Men, the Coen brother’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s book by the same name. I read reviews from “notable” critics of the 2007 film, including A.O. Scott and the late Roger Ebert. I didn’t find myself “squeamish,” and I viewed the film on two consecutive nights, untroubled by the presence of an Anton Chigurh. But I wondered about the sheriff, Sheriff Bell, so “overwhelmed” by the cold-blooded violence of a “principled” serial killer.

The sheriff is sympathetic to a townsmen, Llewelyn Moss who just stumped upon two million in cash and dead Mexicans. A drug bust gone wrong. Moss needs to stay a step or more ahead of Chigurh and his killing contraptions and the poor sheriff is trailing them both. Not to mention, the accumulating dead humans and a couple of dogs.

Carson Wells, in his suit and cowboy hat, all swagger, tells Moss that Chigurh is pure evil. Terror. The latter is out of control. Someone needs to rein him in. That would be Wells, of course. Chigurh is too big for Moss. But Moss, acquiring swagger, thinks he can kill the killer off. Keep the money and kill him off. But Moss, in over his head, is killed by representatives of the drug cartel. Carson Wells is killed first, however. A direct blow of the contraption by Chigurh.

Times have changed, for the worse, Sheriff Bell grumbles. He can’t figure it out. All the violence is all about money and drugs. Yeah, and when did it all start?

Chigurh is a mere apparition on a screen, scary, for the innocent, for just about two hours.

But when the real thing appears at your door, he may smile that strange smile of his. But he’s not funny because he’s “principled,” remember. Nine times out of ten, you will be killed. It must happen: your death. It’s out of his hands. Your death, bloody death, is to be expected with his arrival at your door. Many a grandparents and great-grandparents remembered those days. As migrants know them now. No life form gets in the way of taking control of that money!

At the end of the film, Chigurh’s all bloodied, but he’ll just keep on.

That much is real.

I thought about all the kinds of “principled” folks who had a duty to fulfill, and showed up on the door steps of many Indigenous and black homes. Before the Declaration of Independence. And after the Emancipation Proclamation. Sheer terror visited upon peoples who had no recourse. Not even a Sheriff Bell on their side.

One hundred million Indigenous people, according to Dunbar-Ortiz. Dead from disease. Or deliberately starved to death. Many shot dead. A matter of principles. Quoting historian John Grenier, Dunbar-Ortiz reminds readers that the origins of military culture began with the spilling of Indigenous blood. Whole civilizations were wiped out, one family at a time. One resister at a time.

Lebensraum: Living space for white America. Long before fascism takes hold in Europe!

The Declaration of Independence (1776) symbolizes, writes Dunbar-Ortiz, the “beginnings of the “Indian Wars” and the ‘westward movement’ that continued across the continent for another century of unrelenting US wars of conquest.” No more playing it nice. No more trade in goods or friendship.

War!

In Loaded, Dunbar-Ortiz, citing Grenier’s analysis of US colonialism in which he argues that it’s not racism that leads to the hatred of Indigenous or black people, but violence, war, conquest with impunity that leads to the systemic practice of racism within US borders and on foreign lands, points to how deep-seated violence is in American culture. “Unlimited violence”! Dunbar-Ortiz recognizes in Grenier’s study of US warfare, the advancement of the US “way of war.” What else were those “special operations” and “low-intensity conflict” carried out in Afghanistan and then in Iraq after 911 if not the advancement of the US “way of war,” first applied “against Indigenous communities by colonial militias in the British colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts.”

How many thousands of blacks lynched? Burnt out of their homes and communities between the Indian Wars and the wars in the Middle East?

The object of these operations is to “destroy the collective will of enemy people, or their capacity to resist, employing any means necessary.” Attack civilians. Attack their support systems. Their essential resources.

Summarizing Grenier, Dunbar-Ortiz writes, “the out-of-control momentum of extreme violence of unlimited warfare fueled race hatred.” It is not that the US exercises an exceptional amount of violence. No. The British were equally genocidal in Canada, Australia, and in New Zealand. In terms of the US, however, the practice of conquest is accompanied by “historical narratives”--those stories that lie, contradict reality. Deliberately! We are engulfed within these narratives today. It’s these narratives, stories, that offer a distinction between “the civilization” of the US and the “savagery” of the enemy.

There are “enemies.” Anyone or any group opposed to US wars of conquest.

Once the wars against the Indigenous begins, the Second Amendment comes very handy “not just in terms of a right to bear arms,” writes Dunbar-Ortiz, but also as a requirement to bear arms.

And the firearms industry is “among the first successful modern corporation.”

Settler-militias is key to being white in America!

In 1836, Dunbar-Ortiz writes, “nearly forty thousand U.S. Americans, almost all of them Cotton Kingdom slavers, had moved to South Texas.” The year before, the ranger militia accompanying these slaveholders, “were institutionalized as the Texas Rangers.” As a state funded and sponsored militia tasked with eradicating Texas of the Comanche Nation, the Rangers played a role in the invasion of Mexico between 1846-48. This ethnic cleansing campaign involved the use of a new killing machine, writes Dunbar-Ortiz. The new killing machine: the “five-shot Colt Paterson revolver.”

The militias referenced in the Second Amendment, Dunbar-Ortiz argues, “were intended as a means for white people to eliminate Indigenous communities in order to take land, and for slave patrols to control Black people.”

These patrols didn’t end with the 13th Amendment but continued as a form of “organized terrorism, which was founded for that very purpose nineteen months after the Civil War ended.” Not long afterward private rifle clubs, consisting of “elite white Southerners,” that is, some 240 clubs, appeared to serve as “voluntary militias.”

No country for old white men to fantasize. In Loaded, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz unpacks commonplace mantras and outright hypocrisy. Americans don’t tolerate bigots. Bigotry. America is a land founded on the idea of inclusion.

America, principled.

After eight centuries of warfare between European Christians and Muslims, what begins with the Papal Bull, and the division of the new world between Spain and Portugal flourishes as unlimited violence in the Americas. Specifically in the US, the descendants of British settlers and Northern Europeans are currently members of a gun lobby devoted to the Second Amendment, Dunbar-Ortiz argues.

Land already cultivated for centuries with various crops were stolen from the stewards of the land who didn’t believe in private property. But, according to British settlers, particularly Calvinist settlers, the land and ts agriculture, were won from “alien” and “evil” forces. “Once in the hands of settlers, the land itself was no longer sacred, as it had been for the Indigenous. Rather, it was private property, a commodity from which to earn profit—capable of making a man a king, or at least wealthy.”

Land no longer nourishes the many but enriches only the few.

The on-going normalization of perpetual violence, put in words and song as land became country, flag, military, “‘the land of the free.’”

“This land is your land.”

James Madison drafted the Second Amendment and it was added to the Constitution, writes Dunbar-Ortiz, in 1781. Not until the 1960s did Americans recall the Second Amendment. And wouldn’t you know—the 1960s was the height of the Civil Rights Era in the US. The “political, social, and economic shifts,” she writes, opens “nearly everything to question in the 1960, particularly segregation and anti-Black racism.” So there is that US Constitution, writes Dunbar-Ortiz—that “sacred text of the civic religion.” What is it but “U.S. nationalism!” And it’s that nationalism that is “inexorably tied,” she argues, “to white supremacy.”

After over a hundred years of “freedom” from enslavement, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed racial discrimination, the National Rifle Association (NRA) saw an increase in membership in the following years. The Ronald Reagan Americans recall now in light of Trump’s presidency, isn’t Reagan, standing before cameras in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town where three civil rights, Schwerner, Goodman, Chaney, were brutally killed by white supremacists, announcing his candidacy for president. That Reagan, Dunbar-Ortiz recalls, indulged the John Birch Society. That Reagan winked at the NRA as membership continued to rise in the 1980s, giving the gun organization a substantial voice in shouting down any opposition calling for gun control legislation.

Trump addresses NRA in April 2017. It’s members at the convention cheered and cheered. Even 30-40 percent of Americans cheered as Trump reminded them that he was the only candidate who came to speak to them. And now as president, he wouldn’t forget the NRA. “‘I am going to come through for you.’” Trump—the self-proclaimed “nationalist,” the president who acknowledges “fine” people in the white nationalist movement, who still believes the Central Park Five guilty of rape, still believes Obama was born in Africa, and calls any one black who opposes his racist mentality “a low-IQ individual”--reminds some Americans of the good ol’ days when Ronald Reagan was president! (Last year, I heard late night talk show host Stephen Colbert hark back to Reagan).

What are Americans readying themselves for?

So many Americans have no idea who they are.

In Loaded, we revisit the legacy of the Black Panthers, discuss the frequency of mass shootings, police shootings of black citizens, as well as movements such as Black Lives Matter and Indigenous campaigns to saving life on Earth.

Change must consist of a radical rebuke of white supremacy, toxic masculinity, and capitalism. Climate devastation is happening now. It won’t wait!


BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Contact Dr. Daniels.
 
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