Repayment

Three quotes:

It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.
Notes on the State of Virginia (Thomas Jefferson, 1785)

I don't want to sound racist, and I'm not racist. But I feel if we put Obama in the White House, there will be chaos. I feel a lot of black people are going to feel it's payback time. And I made the statement, I said, "You know, at one time the black man had to step off the sidewalk when a white person came down the sidewalk." And I feel it's going to be somewhat reversed. I really feel it's going to get somewhat nasty. Like I said, I feel it's going to be - they're going to feel it's payback time.
New York Voters Express Post-Election Hopes, Fears

But political science research has shown that African American candidates often try to deploy deracialization strategies like this to protect themselves from widespread stereotypes about Black political leadership — stereotypes that tend to paint African American politicians as radical extremists who govern exclusively for the benefit of Black interests at the expense of white people.
Raphael Warnock’s Dog Ads Cut Against White Voters’ Stereotypes Of Black People

The first two I've used before; the second more than once. The third is new. But they all drive to a central point, the idea, held by Whites, that Black people are, basically, vengeful.

When White supremacists chant in the streets that they will not be replaced, one wonders if one of the futures that they have in their minds' eyes is one in which the shoe, worn so long in American history by non-Whites, is on the other foot. It's worth remembering that a time in which is was considered appropriate for White politicians to govern exclusively for the benefit of White interests at the expense of Black people is still within living memory; that age was waning when Black Baby Boomers were coming up, but it had yet to fade away for good. The 1950s have yet to fade entirely into the historical record by virtue of everyone with firsthand experience of them having died.

But what's interesting about this for me is how it recalls Thomas Jefferson's prediction that there would never be harmony between Black and White Americans. If there are, as he maintained ten thousand recollections of the injuries sustained, why not engage in some sort of trust or confidence-building measures to blunt those recollections? It's not as if this would need to be some grand, national effort that required millions of people to act in concert; this is what politics and elections are for. Someone proposes some sort of remedy, and people vote that person and others into office on a platform of supporting it.

There is, as I see it, a part of the American psyche that is deeply invested in avoiding fault and blame. I wonder if part of the problem in offering to make amends is that it becomes an acknowledgement of past wrongs. Or maybe it's seen as admission of weakness. I don't know. But it becomes the trap that, if I remember correctly, Ta-Nahisi Coates evoked when he said that the danger of having a foot on someone's neck is the fear that you deserve to, but can't, safely remove it. Perhaps this is why so many Black people feel that they're always called upon to be forgiving of the new provocations that Jefferson predicted. Black anger becomes the justification for maintaining a broken status quo.

There is a saying in social justice circles to the effect that for someone accustomed to privileges, equality feels like oppression. But maybe it simply feels like vulnerability, and America history is full of lessons as to where that lands one.