A Long Way From There to Here

BRIAN: We spent most of our show today focusing on how past generations of Americans have understood emancipation. So we’re going to take a moment right now to ask what emancipation means to us today.

ED: You know, in the former capital the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, universities and other public institutions are holding events to try to figure that out. One held recently at Virginia Commonwealth University was called “The Civil War and Emancipation in the Age of Obama.” [INAUDIBLE] Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor at The Atlantic, who for the past several years has been writing and blogging about the Civil War and its relevance to Americans today. One of our producers, Eric Mennel, caught up with Coates after the event.

TA-NEHISI COATES: The emancipation is really, really hard. Especially for African Americans, because the notion of having been freed by someone else, which is what the narrative of emancipation has been for so long, is just a hard one to swallow, given current African American identity.

ERIC MENNEL: Do you think there’s a better way to think about it?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah. And I can take no credit for this at all. I think the Academy has really caught up on this. And if you talk to historians, what’s in vogue, and I hope it stays in vogue, is emancipation is a very, very old idea in the African American mind and in African American politics. And Lincoln was pushed to it.

Not that Lincoln doesn’t deserve credit for doing it. But this is a manifestation of a fight. The African Americans have waited since we got here 1619. This is a long process of accepting all people in this country as full citizens, as full stakeholders. You can stretch it back, again, from 1619 all the way up to Barack Obama.

ERIC MENNEL: One interesting thing I think you brought up in the talk was that people don’t need to keep defending their grandfathers, and their decisions, and things that they’ve done. And so I’m wondering– and you’re speaking specifically about Confederate heritage, I think, if I’m not mistaken. Right? And so I’m wondering if there’s another side to that argument that says, is there a place for emancipation in American history for the African American community today?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah. The other side of that is that you don’t have to be ashamed that your great-great-great-grandfather was a slave. Your great-great-great-grandfather was doing the best he could. Great-great-great-grandmother was doing the best she could.

I went through this when I first started getting into the Civil War. There is an immense attraction to find people who emulate what you think, what you like to think you would do. So there’s an attraction to the USCT. There’s an attraction to Nat Turner. There’s as an attraction to people violently resisting. But there’s reason why people did and didn’t do certain things.

So, it ain’t a balance sheet. That’s the best way I can put it. You know what I mean? It ain’t about you in that sort of way, at least not that sort of small you. Oh, this blood is in my veins, so that means I did X, Y, and Z, or I could be X, Y. That’s not what it’s about.

ERIC MENNEL: What is it about?

TA-NEHISI COATES: Well, see, here’s the contradiction it is about you. Right? It’s about you as a human being, OK, and understanding how human beings react to certain processes, react under certain conditions in certain places, in certain times. Can I say under the condition that I would have freed all my slaves? I mean, that’s easy to say, right? It’s easy to look at Robert E. Lee and say, what a horrible, horrible person. But what would you have done? Who would you have done?

When you understand what slavery was in this country, you understand that manumitting all of your slaves, while you were alive, would’ve made you a pariah among your society. This is a means of social organization. Can you say you would have done anything better? And that’s like a profound insight to me. So it’s about you in that sense, where you are confronted with your own frailty and your own weakness.

So when I say it ain’t about you, it ain’t about you making like you was big, or you would have done better. What you have to say is, I would have been just like them. Because it’s probably true. The Frederick Douglasses are the exception. These are exceptions to the rule. These are not the rule. You are the rule, and you probably would have been the same way. So it’s about humility.

ED: Ta-nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic. You can find links to some of his articles on our website, backstoryradio.org.