CSA and the Use of Race in America

 Race in America has been used as a justification for the economic system of slavery, and following this original sin of the United States of America, the conception of being black and being white has not fully recovered. The mockumentary “C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America” directed by Kevin Willmott helps draw the connection between slavery era arguments on race and society by extending the history of slavery into the modern day. In doing this a series of parallels are drawn, where I particularly noticed a commercial for a version of COPS instead focusing on catching runaway slaves without a noticeable change to the show format, and where heavily stereotyped images of black people were plastered on advertisements and products, some of which had remained past the mockumentary’s production. Through the portrayals that we see during these commercials, black people are portrayed as the guilty being hunted and then in stereotyped images of ignorant and childish. These portrayals have a political impact, which in the mockumentary targets the question of whether chattel slavery must end, where it is argued that black people are too immature, unprepared, and incapable to live freely with the rights and responsibilities afforded to white people. Arguments about the mental ability of black people as a collective have been visible in modern American politics following discussions on reparations. Instead of focusing on a justice argument, we have instead heard questions on the ability of black people to spend reparations wisely, including discussion on whether offering reparations in cash would fail through ignorance. The effectiveness of these anti-black messages has been bolstered by the institutional racism Black Americans face, such as how both our world’s or CSA’s version of COPS requires that Black Americans be targeted by law enforcement, then feeding into prejudice. Black Americans live under a “double threat” from institutionalized racism and from prejudices which both block solutions to systemic issues and lead to their own tragedies, respectively the medical system and the shooting described in “The Double Terror of Being Black in America” by Ibram X. Kendi. The problems of racism described by Kevin Willmott are not specific to states that experienced chattel slavery, making sure to reference racist promotion and stereotyping spanning the country. Race has been used in America to craft the understanding that there are acceptable losses of human life, and it does this by insisting that certain people are inferior to others and, in the most extreme case, that those lives were not part of the human family from the beginning.