Slavery-comment quarrel highlights racial divide

By Matt Hufman

Sunday, July 31, 2016 | 2 a.m.

In her powerful speech Monday night at the Democratic National Convention, first lady Michelle Obama said, as she has before, that she wakes up “in a house built by slaves.”

The line drew sneers from her critics, who argued that slaves didn’t exclusively build the White House. Her supporters said she never said they were the only ones who built the White House. And social media lit up in a fight over words.

The quibbling seemed to die down until Fox News star Bill O’Reilly jumped into the fray Tuesday night. While noting that, yes, slaves did help build the White House, he said they were “well-fed” and had “decent lodgings.” That set off another understandable firestorm on social media.

At this point, you’d be excused for wondering if this is what a discussion of politics, much less race, in America has come down to: an asinine quibbling over the parsing of words.

And, as right as you would be, this fight over words and history matters, no matter how frustrating it is that neither side seems to see any validity in anything but its own arguments. It matters because until we see it for what it is, we will miss what the squabble tells us about America.

To understand this, first consider the parsing of words. Some of Obama’s critics seem incensed that she would tie slave labor to the construction of the White House. Perhaps that was why O’Reilly seemingly tried to minimize the slave labor with his comments.

Nearly 225 years after construction started on the White House, can’t we admit that slaves were used in building the White House, the early government buildings and much of the foundation of this nation? Are we willfully ignorant of our history, or do we want to smooth it over?

Considering the history, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that slaves were used. Washington was built on land carved out of two slave states. Given that, it shouldn’t be a surprise that government contractors of the day brought on cheap slave labor. That doesn’t make it right, but that’s the uncomfortable reality.

Of course, slaves were not the exclusive labor, although Obama’s supporters have a hard time understanding how her rhetoric made it sound that way, which it did. European immigrants, whites and freed slaves also worked on building the White House, yet it would be laughable if someone said, “Scots built the White House,” even though they certainly helped.

The issue that apparently has people in knots is that of slavery and slave labor, as the fight over the exclusivity of slave labor showed. America’s past ties to slavery are uncomfortable and difficult, but history can be ugly. Eight of the first 10 presidents owned slaves, several of them while in office.

The question is: What do we do with that? Looking back through history, it’s easy to impose our own morals and values upon the past. It’s difficult to accept the sins of the past as those of the past and then try to move on, especially when there is little tolerance for nuance and understanding.

And that’s the second part of understanding this whole mess: context. While Obama’s supporters have a tough time understanding the rhetoric, and why a nation squeamish about racial issues might want to hear it, Obama’s critics miss the context.

This was a political speech, and she was making a point that shouldn’t be missed. When the White House was built, no one would have dreamed that a woman from Obama’s lineage would be the first lady, much less her husband the president. It was a first for the nation, and the parallel would be to her husband’s would-be successor, Hillary Clinton, the first woman to lead a major party ticket.

Instead of celebrating the moment that, despite the political divide, the nation has progressed to this point, the nation choked on the issue of race.

Unfortunately, America is still struggling to come to grips with race and its history of racial discrimination and slavery, and yelling about how words are parsed doesn’t seem to help.

That’s what O’Reilly missed: Whether there is any truth that the slaves who helped build the White House were well-fed or lodged doesn’t matter: They were still enslaved. And although slavery is gone, that doesn’t mean the nation has healed, and the reaction to Obama’s speech proves that.

The fact that Obama and her daughters are living in the White House shows how far the nation has come. The fact that people are squabbling over the facts and her use of words shows how far we have yet to go.

Matt Hufman is a minister and former editor of the Sun’s opinion pages.