Let us consider the so-called “Negro Problem.” It is sometimes called the “Black Problem” concerning some of the same issues; however, the term “Negro Problem” lasted longer and was used more often. So, I will refer to the old term. This issue has many aspects, and few can be addressed in a short essay. Let’s deal with one aspect in general terms.
I will address a part of one strand of the Negro Problem: Black people as a problematic issue for American society. Blacks are a problem for America and have been so since before the beginning of the country.
At first, Blacks were not a significant problem as they were primarily enslaved. But at the founding of the country, the Negro became a problem, one that has persisted through time. In apportioning the federal legislature, Southerners wanted to count all the enslaved people in their states, and Northerners, who were shedding their slave systems, did not want to count any.
So, the compromise was to count each enslaved person as three-fifths of a person. The compromise gave the South extra representation in the House and extra votes in the Electoral College. Thus, these states were continually overrepresented in national politics.
The Negro Problem of slavery, of course, led to the Civil War. After the Civil War, the country moved toward a multi-racial democracy.
Reconstruction—between 1865 and 1877—was a time of significant Black political participation. Across the South, about 2,000 African Americans served as elected officials, including state legislators and members of Congress. Fourteen African Americans won election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Mississippi had two U.S. Senators.
Black participation in government was enabled by three Amendments to the Constitution—the 13th, 14th, and 15th–and the Civil Rights Bill of 1875. But all this turned Southern society and customs upside-down, presenting a new Negro Problem.
This Negro Problem was first attacked by terrorism, led by the Ku Klux Klan. The Hayes-Tilden Compromise aided this terrorism in 1877 when the South ceded the presidency to the Republicans in exchange for the Republican national government removing the federal troops from the South.
Relying on the constitutional foundation supplied by U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including the 1883 repeal of the 1975 Civil Rights law and the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision legalizing segregation, these ex-Confederate states instituted Jim Crow. In addition to passing and enforcing segregation laws, these states attacked voting rights to disenfranchise African Americans.
African Americans fought against Jim Crow for decades and finally broke through with the Supreme Court decision in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, declaring segregation unconstitutional. They continued with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, establishing at least a legal basis for a multi-racial democracy. But this festering Negro Problem burst open with the election of Barack Obama as president. Much of White America objected to this apparent multi-racial democracy as for many it meant losing their place in the country’s racial hierarchy. Starting with the Tea Party in 2009—immediately after Obama’s inauguration-White Nationalism came to the rescue.
The U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, which many believed brought about the election of Barack Obama, a travesty in the eyes of many White Americans. Then Republican-led state legislatures began to ramp up their gerrymandering, increasing the ability of this minority to rule in Congress.
In 2016 Donald Trump ran a racist campaign and tapped into this overwhelming concern for the modern Negro Problem-this status threat from African Americans and other nonwhites. The title of the report of a study of potential white voters published just before the November 2016 election says it all: “The threat of increasing diversity: Why Many White Americans support Trump in 2016.” When people in this study were told that nonwhite groups would outnumber White people in 2042, they became more likely to support Trump.
Thus, the MAGA movement and related efforts are against democracy in general and a multi-racial democracy in particular. And this undertaking continues.
On the ballots next year, there will be two choices: the potential for a multi-racial democracy versus authoritarianism and more movements toward the subjugation of African Americans and other nonwhite people.
