In the last segment of the lecture on
imperialism, I talked a bit about
the war itself, how it played out around the globe and
in a sense how the United States becomes a world power.
After 1898,
the role the United States in the world
is changed in that
the United States becomes far more of a player than it had been before.
Since the Civil War, of course, the United States have been
gradually growing in importance both because its economy and
as of the 1880's because of it's increasing expenditures on the military.
But what's happening in the US
in the late 19th century in regard to imperialism
isn't just about the United States. It's a process that's involved most of what
we call the West. Those
areas of the globe which are sort of covered by the civilizations of Europe,
western civilization. Secretary of State John Hay
referred to the Spanish-American War as a "splendid
little war", that's a quote. Teddy Roosevelt
had said it wasn't much of a war but it was the only war we had.
I think what both of those imply,
they don't outright say, is that this war which lasted approximately three months,
little over three months in terms of actual combat
you might disregard perhaps it wasn't
all that important. But I think in another
perhaps even more fundamental way than just what happened in the military sense
the Spanish-American War is very important. I think
much like the White City that we began or I began this lecture with;
I think the Spanish-American War offers us a chance to assess
the United States at a particular time.
And through that assessment, gain,
and reflection a sense of what
motivations pushed Americans to do the things they did.
William McKinley, President of the United States during the war itself
said this. He said that the United States
had a duty quote, "to educate the Filipinos
and uplift and Christianize them".
I've often thought that's quite the quote
you think about it because it disregards
a whole idea that the Filipinos, the people the Philippines,
had been under Spanish rule and many of them
were Catholic because of their connections with Spain,
that history of Catholicism. In making the comment he did and tying
uplift to Christianization,
you know McKinley is suggesting what lies behind or at least the
rationalization he's using
to sort of cover over this military or militant expansionism
in which the United States is taking part. Remember out of the war come
Guam and Puerto Rico. Basic control over Cuba an actual territorial control of
the Philippines.
The argument
I'd like to make for this lecture broadly, this lecture on imperialism
and the point really that I wanna make in this last segment
is less about United States abroad. It's less about the actual war that will make
the United States into a world power. And indeed
it's more about how that war speaks to
what's happening here at home domestically
for many Americans. You see the attitudes expressed by
John Hay and by Theodore Roosevelt and
by William McKinley in regard to the people,
regard to the conquest that's taken place,
regard to imperialism generally;
the sentiments that lie behind those events and those actions
I would argue you can see here in the United States domestically. In
one of the ways you can see the imprints of the sentiments
is in terms of race and ethnicity.
You see.. part of the question
that was generated by what happens
with the taking and the control over the Philippines has to do with race.
There's a cartoon and I often use it in
in my lectures and it's a cartoon contemporary to the Spanish-American War.
And it shows Uncle Sam
and he's behind the garden gate and he's got the gate
open then he looks out, he's looking out into the street
and lo and behold here comes Lady Liberty and she has
a basket and in the basket is a babe, a newborn baby
and following her a gaggle of children
and they're all different races.
You have children clearly meant to be seen as
African descent, Asian descent,
Hispanic,
and Uncle Sam stands at the gate
sort of scratching is head with his hat, big stove pipe hat
pushed back. Uncle Sam there represents the United States
Lady Liberty bringing this gaggle children
represents the sort of unexpected family with which
Uncle Sam's confronted.
The question Uncle Sam faces is what to do.
How do we deal with this issue of race
with these new populations that will now be under
US control? When
McKinley speaks to the Filipinos as
a people in need of uplift and Christianization,
what's implied are those very sentiments expressed in that cartoon.
He was responding to questions; do we really want to pursue imperialism if
it's gonna bring
into the United States populations, people, races,
that are seem to be inferior?
And McKinley is saying yes we do.
Yes, we can we can afford the economic expansion, we can afford
the political expansion, we can afford the military expansion,
because ultimately our goal is to uplift
those inferior peoples who are in need of what we bring which is
civilization.
The ideals of America. That's what makes the cartoon so powerful that I'm,
the one that I mentioned, because Lady Liberty; think about the notion that you
you can couch, you can couch expansion
in terms of bringing freedom
to people who lack freedom.
If that's the case, if I'm right about that
and it, it's part of an argument I know and you don't have to buy it
wholeheartedly, you don't have to just take it hook line and sinker as we often say,
but I think it's worth thinking about.
Because if we turn our attention away from the Philippines and we look back
and we think long and hard about the United States during this same period of
the 1880's
and then into the 1890's when imperialism is sort of
on the move when America, the United States is becoming a world power.
What we're confronted with throughout the United States
is race.
What we're confronted with is the imposition
of government power on workers.
In terms of race, understand that an outgrowth
a southern society in the 1880's and then
especially in the 1890's will be the restriction a voting rights for
African-Americans. Why?
Because of race.
We refer to that as disfranchisement.
It's during this period, during the late 1880's in the 1890's that we see
the passage of laws
which are designed to keep certain individual, certain groups away from the
polls, away from
casting their ballot, as is their right under the Constitution
and specifically under the 15th amendment.
You may recall in an earlier lecture I talked about
how the Supreme Court had come to read the big three amendments 13, 14, and 15
that talked about and that lecture.
What begins to happen in the south in the southern United States
as we move into the 1880's and 1890's is that that narrow
reading of the Constitution and those amendments in particular
opens the door for southern state governments to pass these very laws that
will
this disfranchise large numbers of the population.
African-Americans, poor whites,
non-whites.
One of first means for keeping people away from the polls was actually
the so-called poll tax. You may be familiar with it.
It is simply a tax that one must pay before one can vote.
The first of these poll taxes was passed in Georgia in 1877
the very tail in the reconstruction. But if you think about the way this tax
works
what it insures that those least able to afford to pay the tax
will be those least likely to vote. If they have to choose between food or voting,
there's a far better chance that they'll choose food. In 1890,
1890 in the State of Mississippi
we get the Mississippi Plan. At the heart of this Mississippi Plan was
something called a literacy test.
The way literacy test worked and it was used in different forms around the South;
with the way this literacy test worked,
you could be asked, do I understand or do you
potential voted, do you understand sufficiently
when you read something to... for me to decide that you're capable
voting.
By me there, I mean a registrar,
somebody that registers you to vote. The problem with a law like a literacy test
is the way that it can be maneuvered,
the way that it can be manipulated. There's a story,
and it maybe an apocryphal story. That, that simply means a story that's got some
truth to it, but it may not be entirely true;
but it goes like this. And I've sort of heard it for years, but it goes like
this.
One day a young African-American male
walks into a registrar's office,
wants to register to vote. He walks up to the counter and he says,
"I'm here to register to vote." Registrar walks up and
he used the term that was often used, "boy".
It's, it's a, it's a term that was intended to keep
African-Americans in the South in their place which is beneath whites.
And
he says, the registrar says to the young man he says, "all right before I'm going to register you to
vote
I need you to read this passage of the United States Constitution and explain
it to my satisfaction."
Well the young man
looks at the passage and it turns out that he's recently graduated from college.
In fact more than graduated from college he is just obtained a
a Doctoral Degree, a Terminal Degree in Political Science.
He spent a career so far studying the Constitution and its various meanings
and interpretations
and so he explains in great depth and detail
how the constitution or that portion he is asked to read
how it becomes what it becomes. Should have been an explanation worthy of
anyone's, you know anyone's approval.
And yet this registrar
is really not interested in whether the young man is smart enough, whether he's
literate
anything else, just the color of his skin and so he says,
he says to this young man, "yeah that's pretty good boy
now read this."
He pulls the Constitution away and hands him a newspaper
written in, in, in Mandarin and Chinese.
He expects there's no way this young man can read this
the young man looks at it he says, "Yes sir, I can read that."
He can't really of course,
but he says he can and he says to the registrar,
"Says right here in this headline they'll be one more African-American not registering to
vote today."
Now the point here is simply this: the laws can be manipulated, but you might be
asking well
how is it that these laws to be passed anyway I thought the 15th amendment
protected the voting rights for African-Americans
and the answer is that narrow interpretation by the Supreme Court.
Remember that the 15th amendment specifically said,
that no individual,
Citizens United States will be denied the right to vote based on
race, color or previous condition of servitude.
Understand that a literacy test doesn't measure
any of those things technically.
You see how, how sort of
sneaky that is.
The laws says, the Constitution of the United States says I can't deny you the vote based on
race or whether or not you're a slave.
They don't say anything about whether or not you can read to my satisfaction.
And once that door is open there are a multitude of ways that I can keep
people from voting just because I don't think they should vote.
Similarly, we have in the South the so-called grandfather clause.
Remember the 15th amendment had said race, color
previous condition of servitude.
in other words I can't be denied the vote
because I was a slave once.
But with the court's tacit permission,
state governments are able to say,
we're not denying you devote because you are a slave;
instead we're gonna look at the status of you
ancestors.
We're gonna look at whether or not they voted.
And base opportunities to vote not upon whether you were in servitude,
but whether you could during or prior to the Civil War
actually vote.
In other words, we're limiting your ability to vote to whether
you earlier, during , during or before the war or your ancestors voted.
Thereby allowing us to get around
the restrictions.
And all because of the court's sort of narrow,
narrow reading of the 15th amendment.