Ta-Nehisi Coates vs. Lincoln and MLK on "White Supremacy"

Coates' argument [appears to be] that an eradicable American wish to enslave underlies "white supremacy." - Vide infra

Martin Luther King ... rejected the suggestion of white group guilt implied by Coates' "white supremacy nation" meme. - Vide infra

The earliest Congress, under the constitution, took the same view of slavery. They hedged and hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity. - Lincoln, on the Founders' moves to achieve the end of slavery

In 1807, in apparent hot haste, they passed the law, nearly a year in advance to take effect the first day of 1808—the very first day the constitution would permit—prohibiting the African slave trade by heavy pecuniary and corporal penalties. - Lincoln, ibid.

In today's article The Case for Reparations: An Intellectual Autopsy, Ta-Nehisi Coates continues asserting that "white supremacy" is the true story of the United States' founding and history:

When I wrote opposing reparations I was about halfway through my deep-dive into the Civil War. I roughly understood then that the Civil War—the most lethal conflict in American history—boiled down to the right to raise an empire based on slaveholding and white supremacy. What had not yet clicked for me was precisely how essential enslavement was to America, that its foundational nature explained the Civil War's body count. ...
In fact there are people who don't "have to prep Sunday to Sunday, to get into a good high school." But they tend to live in neighborhoods that have historically excluded children with names like Dejanellie. Why is that? Housing policy. What are the roots of our housing policy? White supremacy. What are the roots of white supremacy in America? Justification for enslavement. ...
The final piece of this was the uptick in cultural pathology critiques extending from the White House on down. There is massive, overwhelming evidence for the proposition that white supremacy is the only thing wrong with black people. There is significantly less evidence for the proposition that culture is a major part of what's wrong with black people. But we don't really talk about white supremacy. We talk about inequality, vestigial racism, and culture.

Oddly enough, Abraham Lincoln's opponents as he sought the presidency had a similar argument. The Founders, they said, meant the United States to be a slaveholding nation in perpetuity. Lincoln wrote of the plantation owners' denial of the principle of equality in the Declaration:

The principles of Jefferson ["all men are created equal," etc.] are the definitions and axioms of free society.  And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success.  One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities." Another bluntly calls them "self-evident lies."  And others insidiously argue that they apply to "superior races."

As Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in earlier days:

On the eve of War, Alexander Stephens, vice-president of the Confederacy explicitly dismissed [the] Jeffersonian view of slavery: ...

The prevailing ideas entertained by [Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.

It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away.  ...

Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. …  Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

www.theatlantic.com/personal/archive/2011/05/in-defense-of-slavery/239719/

 
Coates seems not to have mentioned any of Lincoln's powerful arguments against the "white supremacy" position. In his Peoria Speech, Lincoln cited numerous instances in which the Founders, sometimes "in apparent hot haste," began the work of dismantling slavery:

The argument of "Necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in favor of slavery; and so far, and so far only as it carried them, did they ever go. They found the institution existing among us, which they could not help; and they cast blame upon the British King for having permitted its introduction. BEFORE the constitution, they prohibited its introduction into the north-western Territory---the only country we owned, then free from it. AT the framing and adoption of the constitution, they forbore to so much as mention the word "slave" or "slavery" in the whole instrument. In the provision for the recovery of fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a "PERSON HELD TO SERVICE OR LABOR." In that prohibiting the abolition of the African slave trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States NOW EXISTING, shall think proper to admit," &c. These are the only provisions alluding to slavery. Thus, the thing is hid away, in the constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time. Less than this our fathers COULD not do; and NOW [MORE?] they WOULD not do. Necessity drove them so far, and farther, they would not go. But this is not all. The earliest Congress, under the constitution, took the same view of slavery. They hedged and hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity.

In 1794, they prohibited an out-going slave-trade---that is, the taking of slaves FROM the United States to sell.

In 1798, they prohibited the bringing of slaves from Africa, INTO the Mississippi Territory---this territory then comprising what are now the States of Mississippi and Alabama. This was TEN YEARS before they had the authority to do the same thing as to the States existing at the adoption of the constitution.

In 1800 they prohibited AMERICAN CITIZENS from trading in slaves between foreign countries---as, for instance, from Africa to Brazil.

In 1803 they passed a law in aid of one or two State laws, in restraint of the internal slave trade.

In 1807, in apparent hot haste, they passed the law, nearly a year in advance to take effect the first day of 1808---the very first day the constitution would permit---prohibiting the African slave trade by heavy pecuniary and corporal penalties.

In 1820, finding these provisions ineffectual, they declared the trade piracy, and annexed to it, the extreme penalty of death. While all this was passing in the general government, five or six of the original slave States had adopted systems of gradual emancipation; and by which the institution was rapidly becoming extinct within these limits.

Thus we see, the plain unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the PRINCIPLE, and toleration, ONLY BY NECESSITY.

Remember that Coates' argument above was that an eradicable American wish to enslave underlies "white supremacy":

What are the roots of our housing policy? White supremacy. What are the roots of white supremacy in America? Justification for enslavement.

Lincoln utterly denied the position that a wish to degrade, debase, and enslave another people was the hidden essence of the Founding.

As John McCormack wrote:

In Lincoln's famous 1860 Cooper Union speech, he noted that of the 39 framers of the Constitution, 22 had voted on the question of banning slavery in the new territories. Twenty of the 22 voted to ban it, while another one of the Constitution's framers--George Washington--signed into law legislation enforcing the Northwest Ordinance that banned slavery in the Northwest Territories. At Cooper Union, Lincoln also quoted Thomas Jefferson, who had argued in favor of Virginia emancipation: "It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly...."

Turning to Martin Luther King, the great warrior against racial discrimination rejected the suggestion of white group guilt implied by Coates' "white supremacy nation" meme. From a post on this weblog last year:

One answer is suggested by the example of Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights leader said several things ... He said, "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust." He did not draw a distinction between one group of humans and another. "God is not merely interested in the freedom of brown men, yellow men, red men and black men," King said. "He is interested in the freedom of the whole human race." From such a perspective the problem with theories of group guilt is that it divides King's "human race" into two separate, unequal categories, one part burdened by accusation and shame, the other indignant, resentful, and inclined to feel justified in seeking retribution.

In seeking reparations.