At 22, Green Cottenham would often hang out at the local train station in Columbiana, Alabama. Times were hard and work could sometimes be found as freight cars came and went. Young black men played dice for tobacco or pennies, or just talked as they waited for the next opportunity to work.

One cool Thursday morning, Cottenham was noticed by Shelby County Deputy Sheriff, Newton Eddings. Law officers were always on the lookout for able young men. Green Cottenham was arrested and taken to the local jail. He was brought before Judge Longshore the next morning, and charged, absurdly, with riding a train without a ticket. The charge was obviously bogus and it was dropped. Instead, the judge found him guilty of vagrancy and sentenced him to 90 days hard labor. He was also assessed fines. He had no money, so the Judge added several months to his sentence.

He was then sold to the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. He was never heard from again by the outside world. He died of a combination of starvation and tuberculosis in Slope Number 12 at Pratt mines. The year was 1908.

A century later, Douglas Blackmon of the Wall Street Journal became interested in post-Civil War black people. The increase in crime among young black men was described by many historians as a result of being rushed by Radical Republicans into a freedom for which black people were unprepared. Blackmon dug into specific cases.

Instead of crime, he discovered endless repetitions of the experience of Green Cottenham. Black people were routinely picked up for caricatures of violations. One motive was undeniably race hatred, but the driving force was greed. People were kidnapped off the street by officers of the law and sold to companies and individuals willing to buy them.

Blackmon's book is aptly titled Slavery by Another Name. He told the story of the life, enslavement, and death of Green Cottenham, not because it was exceptionally harsh, but because it was so common as to be considered a normal part of daily life. It was not segregation or Jim Crow or Plessy v Ferguson hardship. It was a behind-the-scenes continuation of slavery, and it went on into the 1930s.

The original Constitution used euphemisms for slavery: like the "importation of Persons", or "other persons" in the 3/5 rule, or "person held to service or labor". Some hoped slavery would sort of fade into oblivion. It didn't.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is attacked for praising her late boss, Justice Thurgood Marshall. It seems he considered the original Constitution to be flawed in its embrace of slavery. Since he was never asked his opinion, it is unknown whether Green Cottenham would have agreed.

We should.

Does Kagan Still View Constitution "As Originally Drafted And Conceived" As "Defective"?

 - - Republican National Committee, May 10, 2010
     In a statement challenging Elena Kagan's patriotism

The death of Republican J. Arthur Younger in 1967 left open his seat in Congress. The special election was thought to be almost a waste. A dynamic newcomer was unbeatable. Shirley Temple Black was America's sweetheart. She was the sweet tap dancing little girl that had helped get America through the depression. She was married to a World War II naval hero. And she was politically experienced, active in the GOP. She was also a conservative Republican in a district that had kept returning Younger to Congress since Hector was a pup. It was less an election than a coronation.

Her main challenger was another Republican. Pete McCloskey was a war hero in his own right. He had won the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts in Korea. This was back in the days when even conservatives respected military heroes, before "swiftboat" was a word, much less a verb. But he was beginning to question the conflict in Vietnam.

Still, he turned out to be quite the political figure. In policy debates and public appearances, he slowly turned the tide. His record, his craggy looks, and his gravelly voice posed a contrast to the often shrill persona of his unfortunate opponent. She slowly lost the bright shiny luster of cute movie stardom and began to appear as an uncaring elitist. The Lollipop sank. McCloskey won.

During the campaign, in those days before most of us had heard the word "sexism" she was, in part, its victim. During question periods, irate matrons would angrily demand to know who was at home taking care of her family. It had an impact. Everyone knew a woman's place.

My dad, in later times, told me of his years as a pastor. After reading Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, he wept. He was haunted by the vision of a woman he had counseled. She was depressed at being a housewife. He helped her find psychiatric treatment for her unnatural resistance to a woman's role in life. Like many of us in those days, he had not considered until much later the individual destructiveness of predominant social expectations. He learned. We all began to learn.

Almost all. Earlier this year, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi reminded a military officer who had leaked some disagreement with US policy that the proper avenue was to go through channels, and take up such matters with the President. Republicans responded by urging him to put the Speaker "in her place." Instead, he seemed to take her advice to heart.

Last week, Ohio Republicans sent a mailing urging voters to put Democratic Congressional Representative Betty Sutton "out of the House and send her back to the kitchen," where they say she belongs.

Most folks no longer see kitchens as the purview of women. We can only hope that voters might relegate candidates with such views back to their own true calling. At the oven. Taking conservative joy in baking Hansel and Gretel.

I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America.

 - - Rich Lowry, conservative columnist, National Review, October 3, 2008
     on why conservatives support policies articulated by Sarah Palin

How are we to explore the racial divide that still plagues America? Statistical evidence documents the degree of ongoing racial hostility toward minorities. Informal experience backs it up. An atmosphere of seeming denial pervades much of the social landscape. "Playing the race card" is condemned much more readily than instances of racism.

The denial comes, not so much from ignorance as from impatience. Folks are simply tired of the issue and resentful when it arises again and again. The denial is mostly a white thing. The weariness is not. Ta-Nehesi Coates at Atlantic Monthly is eloquent in his bone-tired wisdom.

Nothing would please me more than for this cruel, long war to finally end. Nothing would please me more than to take off this armor, and get to the things which I love and are original to me--Carolingian Europe, early Islam, and home-made sushi. I want so bad to take up skiing, to drive across Montana and think nothing of being the only black person for miles. I want to not wince when I hear an Elvis Presley record. I want to believe in the police.

I think I can speak for my folks, when I say the vast majority of us long to be done with this business. I think, and so dearly hope, that we're headed that way.

Barack Obama won considerable support, and still does, with an appeal to the weariness of race. Americans want to be done with the controversy of racism. That is one reason the recent awkward, reluctant, backtracking by Virginia Governor Bob McDonald was greeted as hopeful, after a fashion. Coates sees McDonald's slow acknowledgment of slavery as an important part of the Civil War and its ongoing aftermath as more than a hopeful sign. It does take a maturity in the face of withering criticism to express a willingness to be wrong.

Weariness of the issue may signal a hope that racism will eventually fade. But that hope is far from current reality. The new force in Republican politics, the Tea Party movement, is jet propelled by its own volatile fuel. "Among whites who approved (of the movement), 35 percent said they believe blacks to be hardworking, 45 percent said they believe them intelligent and 41 percent said they believe them trustworthy." A belief that members of a race of people who have been historically oppressed are lazy, unintelligent, and unworthy of trust is pretty much an exact match with the dictionary definition of racism.

America's first black President does attempt to bridge the racial divide. His work and the labor of others in the quiet vineyards of American attitudes may eventually yield results that extend beyond the symbolism of his election. But we do have a ways to go.