Who Angus thinks is a hero
“We’re a nation of immigrants,” said Senator Angus King.
I’m standing in the audience when I hear him say this and I am so confused. Surely he knows that immigrants are people who choose to live in a foreign country. Does he know there were indigenous people living on this land roughly 5,000 years before the concept of a country existed anywhere in the world? Obviously their descendants living here cannot be immigrants. Black victims of chattel slavery didn’t choose to live in this country, so their descendants cannot be immigrants, either. Also, immigrants are not the same as migrants, which are not the same as asylum seekers, which are not the same as refugees. There are vast differences not only in the lived experiences of all of these groups, but also in their legal statuses. Sen. King must be aware of at least some of this.
Yes, I know this is just the normal kind of identity-erasing, all-lives-matter bullshit platitude politicians have been feeding white audiences since 1776. That didn’t confuse me. But all the shared glances bouncing around this mostly Black and brown crowd let me know I wasn’t the only one feeling this particular kind of confusion. Who was Angus talking to?
I thought of a story Angus likes to tell about desegregation coming to his school. He tells it a little differently each time, but it goes something like this:
It’s February 10, 1959, in Alexandria, Virginia, and Angus is a freshman at Francis C. Hammond High School. Hundreds of his classmates are crowded inside the school lobby, watching as federal marshals escort two Black children — 14-year-old Patsy Ragland and her little brother, 13-year-old James — into the building. Tension fills the air when, from the back of the crowd, pushes the white football quarterback/basketball team captain/senior class president. He extends a gracious hand to little James and says, “My name is Mike Vopatek. Can I help you find your class?”
Angus has called Mike’s actions that day “heroic” and “inspirational,” and because Mike “knew he was making, potentially, a sacrifice,” this was “one of the strongest examples of real leadership that I’ve ever seen.”
The Associated Press reported at the time, “There was a notable lack of attention from other students” toward their Black classmates. And classmate Kassy Benson told the Lewiston Sun Journal in 2017 that, “Mike did not intervene,” but, “helped Jim Ragland find his way when he came across him in a hallway looking lost.”
But even if it happened exactly how Angus claims, what the fuck is he talking about? This inspirational story of leadership, heroism and potential sacrifice is not about the Black children risking their literal lives to help move the entire country forward? Instead, they have no agency and the real star is some white-nonsense gesture from the most privileged kid in school?
Two years after the Little Rock Nine broke the color barrier at Central High School in Arkansas, nine children were selected to attempt the same strategy in the Alexandria school system. As journalist Jim McElhatton writes, “These were exceptional children, chosen for their intelligence and character, and they were important spokes in the large wheel of the civil rights movement that rolled forward bit by bit. What they endured in the winter of 1959 and beyond helped pave the way for Alexandria to later have black members on its school board and city council, a black mayor, for Virginia to elect a black governor and ultimately, for the United States to elect a black president. Those gains were hard won, and important steps in that journey were taken on Feb. 10, 1959. Alexandrians of every race and background owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude.”
Patsy and James Ragland were two of those nine children. It was reported that white students moved their desks away from James in class and stayed as far away as they could during lunch. They snatched reading materials from James’ hands as he read. They called James a tar baby at that goddamned place, too, but at least he got to shake hands with the varsity white savior!
The journal PLOS One recently published a study linking the wealth of political elites to their slaveholding ancestors. Angus was at the top of that list with $11.6 million. According to Open Secrets, Angus’ top five campaign funders include Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., a top-tier, 200-year-old financial firm established by underwriting the Atlantic Slave Trade. Other top funders include genocide enthusiasts General Dynamics, and at the very top, of course, is AIPAC.
I’m not calling Angus a racist. I’m not even saying don’t vote for him. What I am saying is, if anything can be learned from his confusing choices of stories, it’s that voting is never enough.
Samuel James also writes “Banned Histories of Race in America” on Substack.
