Trumpian conspiracy theories come from unresolved issues of the Civil War: Matthew Dowd

Today, in America, one of the fundamental problems we face isn’t Donald Trump, or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or any other members of the GOP granola caucus of fruits, flakes and nuts. The former president and these other conspiracy touting officials are a symptom of a long festering issue that has remained unresolved since the failure of Reconstruction in the aftermath of the Civil War.

After President Abraham Lincoln was killed, and his vision for Reconstruction collapsed, it took 100 years for African Americans to get protection of their civil and voting rights. In that time thousands of people of color were lynched, Emmett Till was killed and a white jury found the perpetrators not guilty, the deaths of Medgar Evers, Jimmy Lee Jackson, the four young girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church, Martin Luther King, Jr, and so many others broke so many hearts. And one can draw a line all the way from the lack of truth and accountability in the aftermath of the 1860s to the tragic death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville.

Belief that not all are created equal

It is time to speak the unvarnished truth, and to do so as often and loudly as we can: there has been a long simmering segment of the American public that does not believe that all men and women are created equal.

The communication environment today, which includes social media, exacerbates this prejudice and gives a certain people comfort in their biases allowing dangerous conspiracy theories to spin out wildly. This is why having the trial in the Senate of former President Trump is so important — not for the punishment to possibly be meted out, but to examine the truth and apportion accountability.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan in the 1960s in a conservative white working class home at a time of growing racial strife and division. Both of my parents retained many of the prejudices of whites at the time which included irrational fears of African Americans, so we moved to the suburbs of Southfield a year before the Detroit riots. I remember so well, riding my bike in my neighborhood and stopping by the first black family to move on a street not far from our home. Having heard so many negative things in my home and from neighbors, I wanted to see what the deal was. I recall seeing this family in the front yard, playing with children, and thinking to myself, “they seem like regular folk to me”.

Later on I remember, as busing was debated in Michigan, we discussed having us go to school in Detroit, and African Americans coming to the suburbs. I recall the fear and prejudice that was expressed by so many. And the constant words of dislike for how white communities were changing, and objections to being told what to do in integrating society. In fact, I believe the only Democratic primary my father voted in, in his life, was for George Wallace for president. And Wallace won the Michigan Democratic primary in 1972.

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This sentiment still exists in a large segment of white America today, and it has for nearly two centuries. Latinos and Latinas still face discrimination today. Asian Americans face biases in 2021, as they did when the Chinese exclusion act was made law in 1882 or when Japanese Americans were interred during WW2. Muslims are the victims of abuse on a daily basis. And this is a regular truth among so many people who don’t fit what many the GOP describes as the “real America”.

This underlying sentiment of not believing all are created equal contributed to the election President Trump, it was behind the thousands of Trump supporters who showed up at the U.S. Capitol to try to nullify a valid election, it shows up in racial disparities in our justice system, and it is proved out in the vast inequalities of our economics.

How to confront injustice

How do we confront this virus of injustice? We must speak truth to power and hold accountable those who prey on people’s fears and biases with lies and conspiracies. And this burden of confronting injustice and racism must not fall exclusively on people of color who have borne the brunt of discriminatory practices and prejudice. Whites must stand up, especially those of us who have great privilege. We must speak out forcefully and act with conviction.

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We can only solve our long history of racism if white people like myself stand at the front of the effort, arm in arm with our brothers and sisters of color, and speak the truth. And sometimes that even might be speaking first in a message to our white sisters and brothers.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from a jail in Birmingham, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” Staying quiet, or quietly agreeing about racial injustice undermines all Americans and makes a farce out of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

While the Union won the actual Civil War, what we see today is that, the ideas and culture of the Confederacy didn’t get defeated. It merely took the fight from the battlefields into our politics. And we must finally have the courage to eradicate those vestiges today. The first step in the process towards reconciliation is not punishment of our fellow Americans but in understanding the truth of how we got to this moment.

Matthew Dowd is the former chief political analyst for ABC News and author of A New Way: Embracing the Paradox as We Lead and Serve.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Time to fight for true equality and reconciliation