Trivette:
I’m writing publicly to you here, because I think Medium is a better forum than many of the other places where your incredibly insightful and challenging piece has turned up (Twitter is bad for conversation and Facebook is a cesspool). That said, if you want me to take it down so that your piece can stay up and speak for itself, I’ll happily do that.
First off, I should say that I’m thankful for your bravery and also sorry for the clear pain and hurt you have suffered. I think it’s clear from your post (and from other things I’ve heard outside of it) that King’s is not living up to its ideals. I think the school should be thankful to you for courageously bringing these issues to light, and I hope that they begin to institute changes. For instance, I agree with you — and have a hard time seeing how a reasonable person could disagree with you — that there should be a Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther King, Jr., House namesake. However, I’m not sure if replacing Reagan with one of these Houses would be constructive.
I think part of the problem with any analysis of Reagan is that some of his policies were designed to address specific issues that the American economy was facing in 1980. Reagan got into office in the middle of a recession facing a stagflationary crisis, something we had rarely seen in American history up until that point and haven’t really seen since. Cutting taxes was the universally-agreed upon countermeasure to what was happening at that specific moment, but it became GOP orthodoxy due to its success (there is a reason it has never reproduced the same results though!). Reagan raised taxes about 9 times after he initially cut them, which is GOP heresy now, but it’s evidence that no “Reaganomic” policy is meant to be an answer in perpetuity.
Another part of the problem with any examination of Reagan’s policies is the tendency to overlook the fact that it wasn’t just him passing these laws, it was virtually all of Congress. Both of the terrible drug bills that he signed passed almost unanimously in the Senate and with huge margins in the House. Democrats — who controlled the House at that time and had for 30ish years — voted in favor of these bills too, both times in overwhelming numbers.
Reagan’s law and order policies were the standard answer every politician in the 1980s wanted to run with. Willie Horton — a major criticism of George Bush’s campaign for president — was first mentioned by Al Gore. The policies *America* put into place in the 1980s were mixed in with us fighting a decomposing Soviet Union and the aftermath of a failed war in Vietnam. It’s hard to pull specific policies out of history and look at them through a lens in 2019. For instance, Reagan was arguably the most pro-immigrant President in modern times. In fact, he was even more pro-immigrant than President Obama, who deported more undocumented immigrants than George W. Bush. It is hard for me (personally) to square that with his racism against minorities.
Overall, I think the focus on Reagan for his bad policies is a band-aid over a wound that needs actual surgery. The drug bills of 1984 and 1986 led to the abuse and over-incarceration of minorities; there is no contesting this. Reagan’s statement was racist and abhorrent, and is likely evidence that Reagan himself harbored prejudices (there is some evidence for this in his diaries too). I don’t think anyone disagrees with those points.
But the abuse of African-Americans in the United States isn’t something uniquely tied to Reagan. It is tied to America. I think the outright and overt racism of Trump has sort of jumpstarted this conversation, but it is long overdue. And I’m incredibly thankful to you for starting a conversation and encouraging some self-evaluation. But I don’t think changing the name of Reagan erases a huge chunk of American history. The truth of the matter is that American history as a whole is a story of white supremacy. Lincoln was a white supremacist up until the last throes of the War. Jefferson wrote in letters that he thought black people in America should be sent back to Africa because they’d never fit in with “normal” Americans. He was a monster to his slaves, but is still on currency that we use every day.
The District of Columbia is named (ultimately) after Christopher Columbus. Columbus was a cruel, evil governor in Hispaniola and was a proud racist and white supremacist. It’s almost a perfect metaphor for America and how we deal with our history and the original sin of slavery. We have to grapple with it, and erasing Reagan’s name from a House doesn’t even begin to address our problems. He is there — like other House namesakes — because of his place in history and how he addressed the problems he faced when he came into office. That legacy, like the legacy of any other president, is mixed. It is a combination of racism, charity, bigotry, optimism, patriotism, opportunity, disenfranchisement, love of country, and hatred of your neighbor. It is American.
I always go back to the unfinished pyramid on the back of the one dollar bill. We should always be striving to create a more perfect union, and the work will always be incomplete. But we are working off of the foundations that others have laid down for us. That foundation is filled with ugly and racist policies but we can’t change the fact that it is still there.
Again, I am deeply thankful for your letter. I think the first response from white Christians should be to sit down, and listen to your complaints and work towards a solution. I love Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In the very first chapter he says to them, some of you say you are following Apollos, some of you are saying you are following Paul, but the one you should be following is Christ; put aside your differences and make sure your church reflects your community. I am striving to live that out, in my words and in my deeds. I will keep repeating how thankful I am to you for writing your letter, because I think it needs to be conveyed how vitally important it is that Christians and Americans have this conversation.
