Sejarah Indonesia

Sejarah Indonesia meliputi suatu rentang waktu yang sangat panjang yang dimulai sejak zaman prasejarah oleh "Manusia Jawa" pada masa sekitar 500.000 tahun yang lalu. Periode dalam sejarah Indonesia dapat dibagi menjadi lima era: era pra kolonial, munculnya kerajaan-kerajaan Hindu-Buddha serta Islam di Jawa dan Sumatera yang terutama mengandalkan perdagangan; era kolonial, masuknya orang-orang Eropa (terutama Belanda) yang menginginkan rempah-rempah mengakibatkan penjajahan oleh Belanda selama sekitar 3,5 abad antara awal abad ke-17 hingga pertengahan abad ke-20; era kemerdekaan, pasca Proklamasi Kemerdekaan Indonesia (1945) sampai jatuhnya Soekarno (1966); era Orde Baru, 32 tahun masa pemerintahan Soeharto (1966–1998); serta era reformasi yang berlangsung sampai sekarang.

Prasejarah

Artikel utama: Indonesia: Era prasejarah.

Secara geologi, wilayah Indonesia modern (untuk kemudahan, selanjutnya disebut Nusantara) merupakan pertemuan antara tiga lempeng benua utama: Lempeng Eurasia, Lempeng Indo-Australia, dan Lempeng Pasifik (lihat artikel Geologi Indonesia). Kepulauan Indonesia seperti yang ada saat ini terbentuk pada saat melelehnya es setelah berakhirnya Zaman Es, hanya 10.000 tahun yang lalu.

Pada masa Pleistosen, ketika masih terhubung dengan Asia Daratan, masuklah pemukim pertama. Bukti pertama yang menunjukkan penghuni pertama adalah fosil-fosil Homo erectus manusia Jawa dari masa 2 juta hingga 500.000 tahun lalu. Penemuan sisa-sisa "manusia Flores" (Homo floresiensis)^[1] di Liang Bua, Flores, membuka kemungkinan masih bertahannya H. erectus hingga masa Zaman Es terakhir.^[2]

Homo sapiens pertama diperkirakan masuk ke Nusantara sejak 100.000 tahun yang lalu melewati jalur pantai Asia dari Asia Barat, dan pada sekitar 50.000 tahun yang lalu telah mencapai Pulau Papua dan Australia.^[3] Mereka, yang berciri rasial berkulit gelap dan berambut ikal rapat (Negroid), menjadi nenek moyang penduduk asli Melanesia (termasuk Papua) sekarang dan membawa kultur kapak lonjong (Paleolitikum). Gelombang pendatang berbahasa Austronesia dengan kultur Neolitikum datang secara bergelombang sejak 3000 SM dari Cina Selatan melalui Formosa dan Filipina membawa kultur beliung persegi (kebudayaan Dongson). Proses migrasi ini merupakan bagian dari pendudukan Pasifik. Kedatangan gelombang penduduk berciri Mongoloid ini cenderung ke arah barat, mendesak penduduk awal ke arah timur atau berkawin campur dengan penduduk setempat dan menjadi ciri fisik penduduk Maluku serta Nusa Tenggara. Pendatang ini membawa serta teknik-teknik pertanian, termasuk bercocok tanam padi di sawah (bukti paling lambat sejak abad ke-8 SM), beternak kerbau, pengolahan perunggu dan besi, teknik tenun ikat, praktek-praktek megalitikum, serta pemujaan roh-roh (animisme) serta benda-benda keramat (dinamisme). Pada abad pertama SM sudah terbentuk pemukiman-pemukiman serta kerajaan-kerajaan kecil, dan sangat mungkin sudah masuk pengaruh kepercayaan dari India akibat hubungan perniagaan.

Era pra kolonial

Sejarah awal

Lihat pula: Sejarah Nusantara.

Para cendekiawan India telah menulis tentang Dwipantara atau kerajaan Hindu Jawa Dwipa di pulau Jawa dan Sumatra sekitar 200 SM. Bukti fisik awal yang menyebutkan tanggal adalah dari abad ke-5 mengenai dua kerajaan bercorak Hinduisme: Kerajaan Tarumanagara menguasai Jawa Barat dan Kerajaan Kutai di pesisir Sungai Mahakam, Kalimantan. Pada tahun 425 agama Buddha telah mencapai wilayah tersebut.

Di saat Eropa memasuki masa Renaisans, Nusantara telah mempunyai warisan peradaban berusia ribuan tahun dengan dua kerajaan besar yaitu Sriwijaya di Sumatra dan Majapahit di Jawa, ditambah dengan puluhan kerajaan kecil yang sering kali menjadi vazal tetangganya yang lebih kuat atau saling terhubung dalam semacam ikatan perdagangan (seperti di Maluku).

[sunting] Kerajaan Hindu-Buddha

Artikel utama untuk bagian ini adalah: Indonesia: Era kerajaan Hindu-Buddha

Prasasti Tugu peninggalan Raja Purnawarman dari Taruma

Pada abad ke-4 hingga abad ke-7 di wilayah Jawa Barat terdapat kerajaan bercorak Hindu-Budha yaitu kerajaan Tarumanagara yang dilanjutkan dengan Kerajaan Sunda sampai abad ke-16. Pada masa abad ke-7 hingga abad ke-14, kerajaan Buddha Sriwijaya berkembang pesat di Sumatra. Penjelajah Tiongkok I Ching mengunjungi ibukotanya Palembang sekitar tahun 670. Pada puncak kejayaannya, Sriwijaya menguasai daerah sejauh Jawa Barat dan Semenanjung Melayu. Abad ke-14 juga menjadi saksi bangkitnya sebuah kerajaan Hindu di Jawa Timur, Majapahit. Patih Majapahit antara tahun 1331 hingga 1364, Gajah Mada berhasil memperoleh kekuasaan atas wilayah yang kini sebagian besarnya adalah Indonesia beserta hampir seluruh Semenanjung Melayu. Warisan dari masa Gajah Mada termasuk kodifikasi hukum dan dalam kebudayaan Jawa, seperti yang terlihat dalam wiracarita Ramayana.

[sunting] Kerajaan Islam

Artikel utama untuk bagian ini adalah: Kerajaan Islam di Indonesia

Islam sebagai sebuah pemerintahan hadir di Indonesia sekitar abad ke-12, namun sebenarnya Islam sudah sudah masuk ke Indonesia pada abad 7 Masehi. Saat itu sudah ada jalur pelayaran yang ramai dan bersifat internasional melalui Selat Malaka yang menghubungkan Dinasti Tang di Cina, Sriwijaya di Asia Tenggara dan Bani umayyah di Asia Barat sejak abad 7.^[4]

Menurut sumber-sumber Cina menjelang akhir perempatan ketiga abad 7, seorang pedagang Arab menjadi pemimpin pemukiman Arab muslim di pesisir pantai Sumatera. Islam pun memberikan pengaruh kepada institusi politik yang ada. Hal ini nampak pada Tahun 100 H (718 M) Raja Sriwijaya Jambi yang bernama Srindravarman mengirim surat kepada Khalifah ‘Umar bin ‘Abdul ‘Aziz dari Khilafah Bani Umayah meminta dikirimkan da`i yang bisa menjelaskan Islam kepadanya. Surat itu berbunyi: “Dari Raja di Raja yang adalah keturunan seribu raja, yang isterinya juga cucu seribu raja, yang di dalam kandang binatangnya terdapat seribu gajah, yang di wilayahnya terdapat dua sungai yang mengairi pohon gaharu, bumbu-bumbu wewangian, pala dan kapur barus yang semerbak wanginya hingga menjangkau jarak 12 mil, kepada Raja Arab yang tidak menyekutukan tuhan-tuhan lain dengan Tuhan. Saya telah mengirimkan kepada anda hadiah, yang sebenarnya merupakan hadiah yang tak begitu banyak, tetapi sekedar tanda persahabatan. Saya ingin Anda mengirimkan kepada saya seseorang yang dapat mengajarkan Islam kepada saya dan menjelaskan kepada saya tentang hukum-hukumnya.” Dua tahun kemudian, yakni tahun 720 M, Raja Srindravarman, yang semula Hindu, masuk Islam. Sriwijaya Jambi pun dikenal dengan nama Sribuza Islam. Sayang, pada tahun 730 M Sriwijaya Jambi ditawan oleh Sriwijaya Palembang yang masih menganut Budha.^[5]

Islam terus mengokoh menjadi institusi politik yang mengemban Islam. Misalnya, sebuah kesultanan Islam bernama Kesultanan Peureulak didirikan pada 1 Muharram 225H atau 12 November tahun 839M. Contoh lain adalah Kerajaan Ternate. Islam masuk ke kerajaan di kepulauan Maluku ini tahun 1440. Rajanya seorang Muslim bernama Bayang Ullah.

Kesultanan Islam kemudian semikin menyebarkan ajaran-ajarannya ke penduduk dan melalui pembauran, menggantikan Hindu sebagai kepercayaan utama pada akhir abad ke-16 di Jawa dan Sumatra. Hanya Bali yang tetap mempertahankan mayoritas Hindu. Di kepulauan-kepulauan di timur, rohaniawan-rohaniawan Kristen dan Islam diketahui sudah aktif pada abad ke-16 dan 17, dan saat ini ada mayoritas yang besar dari kedua agama di kepulauan-kepulauan tersebut.

Penyebaran Islam dilakukan/didorong melalui hubungan perdagangan di luar Nusantara; hal ini, karena para penyebar dakwah atau mubaligh merupakan utusan dari pemerintahan islam yg datang dari luar Indonesia, maka untuk menghidupi diri dan keluarga mereka, para mubaligh ini bekerja melalui cara berdagang, para mubaligh inipun menyebarkan Islam kepada para pedagang dari penduduk asli, hingga para pedagang ini memeluk Islam dan meyebarkan pula ke penduduk lainnya, karena umumnya pedagang dan ahli kerajaan/kesultanan lah yang pertama mengadopsi agama baru tersebut. Kesultanan/Kerajaan penting termasuk Samudra Pasai, Kesultanan Banten yang menjalin hubungan diplomatik dengan negara-negara Eropa, Kerajaan Mataram di Yogja / Jawa Tengah, dan Kesultanan Ternate dan Kesultanan Tidore di Maluku di timur.

Era kolonial

Kolonisasi VOC

Artikel utama untuk bagian ini adalah: Indonesia: Era VOC

Mulai tahun 1602 Belanda secara perlahan-lahan menjadi penguasa wilayah yang kini adalah Indonesia, dengan memanfaatkan perpecahan di antara kerajaan-kerajaan kecil yang telah menggantikan Majapahit. Satu-satunya yang tidak terpengaruh adalah Timor Portugis, yang tetap dikuasai Portugal hingga 1975 ketika berintegrasi menjadi provinsi Indonesia bernama Timor Timur. Belanda menguasai Indonesia selama hampir 350 tahun, kecuali untuk suatu masa pendek di mana sebagian kecil dari Indonesia dikuasai Britania setelah Perang Jawa Britania-Belanda dan masa penjajahan Jepang pada masa Perang Dunia II. Sewaktu menjajah Indonesia, Belanda mengembangkan Hindia-Belanda menjadi salah satu kekuasaan kolonial terkaya di dunia. 350 tahun penjajahan Belanda bagi sebagian orang adalah mitos belaka karena wilayah Aceh baru ditaklukkan kemudian setelah Belanda mendekati kebangkrutannya.

Logo VOC

Pada abad ke-17 dan 18 Hindia-Belanda tidak dikuasai secara langsung oleh pemerintah Belanda namun oleh perusahaan dagang bernama Perusahaan Hindia Timur Belanda (bahasa Belanda: Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie atau VOC). VOC telah diberikan hak monopoli terhadap perdagangan dan aktivitas kolonial di wilayah tersebut oleh Parlemen Belanda pada tahun 1602. Markasnya berada di Batavia, yang kini bernama Jakarta.

Tujuan utama VOC adalah mempertahankan monopolinya terhadap perdagangan rempah-rempah di Nusantara. Hal ini dilakukan melalui penggunaan dan ancaman kekerasan terhadap penduduk di kepulauan-kepulauan penghasil rempah-rempah, dan terhadap orang-orang non-Belanda yang mencoba berdagang dengan para penduduk tersebut. Contohnya, ketika penduduk Kepulauan Banda terus menjual biji pala kepada pedagang Inggris, pasukan Belanda membunuh atau mendeportasi hampir seluruh populasi dan kemudian mempopulasikan pulau-pulau tersebut dengan pembantu-pembantu atau budak-budak yang bekerja di perkebunan pala.

VOC menjadi terlibat dalam politik internal Jawa pada masa ini, dan bertempur dalam beberapa peperangan yang melibatkan pemimpin Mataram dan Banten.

[sunting] Kolonisasi pemerintah Belanda

Artikel utama untuk bagian ini adalah: Indonesia: Era Belanda

Setelah VOC jatuh bangkrut pada akhir abad ke-18 dan setelah kekuasaan Britania yang pendek di bawah Thomas Stamford Raffles, pemerintah Belanda mengambil alih kepemilikan VOC pada tahun 1816. Sebuah pemberontakan di Jawa berhasil ditumpas dalam Perang Diponegoro pada tahun 1825-1830. Setelah tahun 1830 sistem tanam paksa yang dikenal sebagai cultuurstelsel dalam bahasa Belanda mulai diterapkan. Dalam sistem ini, para penduduk dipaksa menanam hasil-hasil perkebunan yang menjadi permintaan pasar dunia pada saat itu, seperti teh, kopi dll. Hasil tanaman itu kemudian diekspor ke mancanegara. Sistem ini membawa kekayaan yang besar kepada para pelaksananya - baik yang Belanda maupun yang Indonesia. Sistem tanam paksa ini adalah monopoli pemerintah dan dihapuskan pada masa yang lebih bebas setelah 1870.

Pada 1901 pihak Belanda mengadopsi apa yang mereka sebut Kebijakan Beretika (bahasa Belanda: Ethische Politiek), yang termasuk investasi yang lebih besar dalam pendidikan bagi orang-orang pribumi, dan sedikit perubahan politik. Di bawah gubernur-jendral J.B. van Heutsz pemerintah Hindia-Belanda memperpanjang kekuasaan kolonial secara langsung di sepanjang Hindia-Belanda, dan dengan itu mendirikan fondasi bagi negara Indonesia saat ini.

[sunting] Gerakan nasionalisme

Pada 1905 gerakan nasionalis yang pertama, Serikat Dagang Islam dibentuk dan kemudian diikuti pada tahun 1908 oleh gerakan nasionalis berikutnya, Budi Utomo. Belanda merespon hal tersebut setelah Perang Dunia I dengan langkah-langkah penindasan. Para pemimpin nasionalis berasal dari kelompok kecil yang terdiri dari profesional muda dan pelajar, yang beberapa di antaranya telah dididik di Belanda. Banyak dari mereka yang dipenjara karena kegiatan politis, termasuk Presiden Indonesia yang pertama, Soekarno.

[sunting] Perang Dunia II

Pada Mei 1940, awal Perang Dunia II, Belanda diduduki oleh Nazi Jerman. Hindia-Belanda mengumumkan keadaan siaga dan di Juli mengalihkan ekspor untuk Jepang ke Amerika Serikat dan Britania. Negosiasi dengan Jepang yang bertujuan untuk mengamankan persediaan bahan bakar pesawat gagal di Juni 1941, dan Jepang memulai penaklukan Asia Tenggara di bulan Desember tahun itu. Di bulan yang sama, faksi dari Sumatra menerima bantuan Jepang untuk mengadakan revolusi terhadap pemerintahan Belanda. Pasukan Belanda yang terakhir dikalahkan Jepang pada Maret 1942.

[sunting] Pendudukan Jepang

Artikel utama untuk bagian ini adalah: Indonesia: Era Jepang

Pada Juli 1942, Soekarno menerima tawaran Jepang untuk mengadakan kampanye publik dan membentuk pemerintahan yang juga dapat memberikan jawaban terhadap kebutuhan militer Jepang. Soekarno, Mohammad Hatta, dan para Kyai didekorasi oleh Kaisar Jepang pada tahun 1943. Tetapi, pengalaman dari penguasaan Jepang di Indonesia sangat bervariasi, tergantung di mana seseorang hidup dan status sosial orang tersebut. Bagi yang tinggal di daerah yang dianggap penting dalam peperangan, mereka mengalami siksaan, terlibat perbudakan seks, penahanan sembarang dan hukuman mati, dan kejahatan perang lainnya. Orang Belanda dan campuran Indonesia-Belanda merupakan target sasaran dalam penguasaan Jepang.

Pada Maret 1945 Jepang membentuk Badan Penyelidik Usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia (BPUPKI). Pada pertemuan pertamanya di bulan Mei, Soepomo membicarakan integrasi nasional dan melawan individualisme perorangan; sementara itu Muhammad Yamin mengusulkan bahwa negara baru tersebut juga sekaligus mengklaim Sarawak, Sabah, Malaya, Portugis Timur, dan seluruh wilayah Hindia-Belanda sebelum perang.

Pada 9 Agustus 1945 Soekarno, Hatta dan Radjiman Widjodiningrat diterbangkan ke Vietnam untuk bertemu Marsekal Terauchi. Mereka dikabarkan bahwa pasukan Jepang sedang menuju kehancuran tetapi Jepang menginginkan kemerdekaan Indonesia pada 24 Agustus.

Proklamasi Kemerdekaan Indonesia

Proklamasi Kemerdekaan Indonesia Jumat, 17 Agustus 1945 Tahun Masehi, atau 17 Agustus 1945 menurut tahun Jepang, atau 17 Ramadan 1365 Tahun Hijriah dibacakan oleh Ir. Soekarno yang didampingi oleh Drs. Mohammad Hatta di Jalan Pegangsaan Timur 56, Jakarta Pusat.
Pada tanggal 6 Agustus 1945 sebuah bom atom dijatuhkan di atas kota Hiroshima Jepang oleh Amerika Serikat yang mulai menurunkan moral semangat tentara Jepang di seluruh dunia. Sehari kemudian Badan Penyelidik Usaha Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia BPUPKI, atau "Dokuritsu Junbi Cosakai", berganti nama menjadi PPKI (Panitia Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia) atau disebut juga Dokuritu Junbi Inkai dalam bahasa Jepang, untuk lebih menegaskan keinginan dan tujuan mencapai kemerdekaan Indonesia. Pada tanggal 9 Agustus 1945, bom atom kedua dijatuhkan di atas Nagasaki sehingga menyebabkan Jepang menyerah kepada Amerika Serikat dan sekutunya. Momen ini pun dimanfaatkan oleh Indonesia untuk memproklamasikan kemerdekaannya[..]

Soekarno, Hatta selaku pimpinan PPKI dan Radjiman Wedyodiningrat sebagai mantan ketua BPUPKI diterbangkan ke Dalat, 250 km di sebelah timur laut Saigon, Vietnam untuk bertemu Marsekal Terauchi. Mereka dikabarkan bahwa pasukan Jepang sedang di ambang kekalahan dan akan memberikan kemerdekaan kepada Indonesia. Sementara itu di Indonesia, pada tanggal 14 Agustus 1945, Sutan Syahrir telah mendengar berita lewat radio bahwa Jepang telah menyerah kepada Sekutu. Para pejuang bawah tanah bersiap-siap memproklamasikan kemerdekaan RI, dan menolak bentuk kemerdekaan yang diberikan sebagai hadiah Jepang.

Pada tanggal 12 Agustus 1945, Jepang melalui Marsekal Terauchi di Dalat, Vietnam, mengatakan kepada Soekarno, Hatta dan Radjiman bahwa pemerintah Jepang akan segera memberikan kemerdekaan kepada Indonesia dan proklamasi kemerdekaan dapat dilaksanakan dalam beberapa hari, tergantung cara kerja PPKI.[1] Meskipun demikian Jepang menginginkan kemerdekaan Indonesia pada tanggal 24 Agustus.

Dua hari kemudian, saat Soekarno, Hatta dan Radjiman kembali ke tanah air dari Dalat, Sutan Syahrir mendesak agar Soekarno segera memproklamasikan kemerdekaan karena menganggap hasil pertemuan di Dalat sebagai tipu muslihat Jepang, karena Jepang setiap saat sudah harus menyerah kepada Sekutu dan demi menghindari perpecahan dalam kubu nasionalis, antara yang anti dan pro Jepang. Hatta menceritakan kepada Syahrir tentang hasil pertemuan di Dalat. Soekarno belum yakin bahwa Jepang memang telah menyerah, dan proklamasi kemerdekaan RI saat itu dapat menimbulkan pertumpahan darah yang besar, dan dapat berakibat sangat fatal jika para pejuang Indonesia belum siap. Soekarno mengingatkan Hatta bahwa Syahrir tidak berhak memproklamasikan kemerdekaan karena itu adalah hak Panitia Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia (PPKI). Sementara itu Syahrir menganggap PPKI adalah badan buatan Jepang dan proklamasi kemerdekaan oleh PPKI hanya merupakan 'hadiah' dari Jepang (sic).

Pada tanggal 14 Agustus 1945 Jepang menyerah kepada Sekutu. Tentara dan Angkatan Laut Jepang masih berkuasa di Indonesia karena Jepang telah berjanji akan mengembalikan kekuasaan di Indonesia ke tangan Sekutu. Sutan Sjahrir, Wikana, Darwis, dan Chaerul Saleh mendengar kabar ini melalui radio BBC. Setelah mendengar desas-desus Jepang bakal bertekuk lutut, golongan muda mendesak golongan tua untuk segera memproklamasikan kemerdekaan Indonesia. Namun golongan tua tidak ingin terburu-buru. Mereka tidak menginginkan terjadinya pertumpahan darah pada saat proklamasi. Konsultasi pun dilakukan dalam bentuk rapat PPKI. Golongan muda tidak menyetujui rapat itu, mengingat PPKI adalah sebuah badan yang dibentuk oleh Jepang. Mereka menginginkan kemerdekaan atas usaha bangsa kita sendiri, bukan pemberian Jepang.

Soekarno dan Hatta mendatangi penguasa militer Jepang (Gunsei) untuk memperoleh konfirmasi di kantornya di Koningsplein (Medan Merdeka). Tapi kantor tersebut kosong.

Soekarno dan Hatta bersama Soebardjo kemudian ke kantor Bukanfu, Laksamana Muda Maeda, di Jalan Medan Merdeka Utara (Rumah Maeda di Jl Imam Bonjol 1). Maeda menyambut kedatangan mereka dengan ucapan selamat atas keberhasilan mereka di Dalat. Sambil menjawab ia belum menerima konfirmasi serta masih menunggu instruksi dari Tokyo. Sepulang dari Maeda, Soekarno dan Hatta segera mempersiapkan pertemuan Panitia Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia (PPKI) pada pukul 10 pagi 16 Agustus keesokan harinya di kantor Jalan Pejambon No 2 guna membicarakan segala sesuatu yang berhubungan dengan persiapan Proklamasi Kemerdekaan.

Sehari kemudian, gejolak tekanan yang menghendaki pengambilalihan kekuasaan oleh Indonesia makin memuncak dilancarkan para pemuda dari beberapa golongan. Rapat PPKI pada 16 Agustus pukul 10 pagi tidak dilaksanakan karena Soekarno dan Hatta tidak muncul. Peserta rapat tidak tahu telah terjadi peristiwa Rengasdengklok.

Peristiwa Rengasdengklok

Para pemuda pejuang, termasuk Chaerul Saleh, Sukarni, dan Wikana --yang konon kabarnya terbakar gelora heroismenya setelah berdiskusi dengan Ibrahim gelar Datuk Tan Malaka --yang tergabung dalam gerakan bawah tanah kehilangan kesabaran, dan pada dini hari tanggal 16 Agustus 1945. Bersama Shodanco Singgih, salah seorang anggota PETA, dan pemuda lain, mereka membawa Soekarno (bersama Fatmawati dan Guntur yang baru berusia 9 bulan) dan Hatta, ke Rengasdengklok, yang kemudian terkenal sebagai peristiwa Rengasdengklok. Tujuannya adalah agar Ir. Soekarno dan Drs. Moh. Hatta tidak terpengaruh oleh Jepang. Di sini, mereka kembali meyakinkan Soekarno bahwa Jepang telah menyerah dan para pejuang telah siap untuk melawan Jepang, apa pun risikonya.

Di Jakarta, golongan muda, Wikana, dan golongan tua, yaitu Mr. Ahmad Soebardjo melakukan perundingan. Mr. Ahmad Soebardjo menyetujui untuk memproklamasikan kemerdekaan Indonesia di Jakarta. maka diutuslah Yusuf Kunto untuk mengantar Ahmad Soebardjo ke Rengasdengklok. Mereka menjemput Ir. Soekarno dan Drs. Moh. Hatta kembali ke Jakarta. Mr. Ahmad Soebardjo berhasil meyakinkan para pemuda untuk tidak terburu - buru memproklamasikan kemerdekaan. Setelah tiba di Jakarta, mereka pulang kerumah masing-masing. Mengingat bahwa hotel Des Indes (sekarang kompleks pertokoan di Harmoni) tidak dapat digunakan untuk pertemuan setelah pukul 10 malam, maka tawaran Laksamana Muda Maeda untuk menggunakan rumahnya (sekarang gedung museum perumusan teks proklamasi) sebagai tempat rapat PPKI diterima oleh para tokoh Indonesia.

[sunting] Pertemuan Soekarno/Hatta dengan Jenderal Mayor Nishimura dan Laksamana Muda Maeda

Malam harinya, Soekarno dan Hatta kembali ke Jakarta. Mayor Jenderal Moichiro Yamamoto, Kepala Staf Tentara ke XVI (Angkatan Darat) yang menjadi Kepala pemerintahan militer Jepang (Gunseikan) di Hindia Belanda tidak mau menerima Sukarno-Hatta yang diantar oleh Maeda Tadashi dan memerintahkan agar Mayor Jenderal Otoshi Nishimura, Kepala Departemen Urusan Umum pemerintahan militer Jepang, untuk menerima kedatangan rombongan tersebut. Nishimura mengemukakan bahwa sejak siang hari tanggal 16 Agustus 1945 telah diterima perintah dari Tokio bahwa Jepang harus menjaga status quo, tidak dapat memberi ijin untuk mempersiapkan proklamasi Kemerdekaan Indonesia sebagaimana telah dijanjikan oleh Marsekal Terauchi di Dalat, Vietnam. Soekarno dan Hatta menyesali keputusan itu dan menyindir Nishimura apakah itu sikap seorang perwira yang bersemangat Bushido, ingkar janji agar dikasihani oleh Sekutu. Akhirnya Sukarno-Hatta meminta agar Nishimura jangan menghalangi kerja PPKI, mungkin dengan cara pura-pura tidak tau. Melihat perdebatan yang panas itu Maeda dengan diam-diam meninggalkan ruangan karena diperingatkan oleh Nishimura agar Maeda mematuhi perintah Tokio dan dia mengetahui sebagai perwira penghubung Angkatan Laut (Kaigun) di daerah Angkatan Darat (Rikugun) dia tidak punya wewenang memutuskan.

Setelah dari rumah Nishimura, Sukarno-Hatta menuju rumah Laksamana Maeda (kini Jalan Imam Bonjol No.1) diiringi oleh Myoshi guna melakukan rapat untuk menyiapkan teks Proklamasi. Setelah menyapa Sukarno-Hatta yang ditinggalkan berdebat dengan Nishimura, Maeda mengundurkan diri menuju kamar tidurnya. Penyusunan teks Proklamasi dilakukan oleh Soekarno, M. Hatta, Achmad Soebardjo dan disaksikan oleh Soekarni, B.M. Diah, Sudiro (Mbah) dan Sayuti Melik. Myoshi yang setengah mabuk duduk di kursi belakang mendengarkan penyusunan teks tersebut tetapi kemudian ada kalimat dari Shigetada Nishijima seolah-olah dia ikut mencampuri penyusunan teks proklamasi dan menyarankan agar pemindahan kekuasaan itu hanya berarti kekuasaan administratif. Tentang hal ini Bung Karno menegaskan bahwa pemindahan kekuasaan itu berarti "transfer of power". Bung Hatta, Subardjo, B.M Diah, Sukarni, Sudiro dan Sajuti Malik tidak ada yang membenarkan klaim Nishijima tetapi di beberapa kalangan klaim Nishijima masih didengungkan.

Setelah konsep selesai disepakati, Sajuti menyalin dan mengetik naskah tersebut menggunakan mesin ketik yang diambil dari kantor perwakilan AL Jerman, milik Mayor (Laut) Dr. Hermann Kandeler.[2] Pada awalnya pembacaan proklamasi akan dilakukan di Lapangan Ikada, namun berhubung alasan keamanan dipindahkan ke kediaman Soekarno, Jalan Pegangsaan Timur 56[3] (sekarang Jl. Proklamasi no. 1).

Detik-detik Pembacaan Naskah Proklamasi

Perundingan antara golongan muda dan golongan tua dalam penyusunan teks Proklamasi Kemerdekaan Indonesia berlangsung pukul 02.00 - 04.00 dini hari. Teks proklamasi ditulis di ruang makan di kediaman Soekarno, Jl. Pegangsaan Timur 56 Jakarta. Para penyusun teks proklamasi itu adalah Ir. Soekarno, Drs. Moh. Hatta, dan Mr. Ahmad Soebarjo. Konsep teks proklamasi ditulis oleh Ir. Soekarno sendiri. Di ruang depan, hadir B.M Diah Sayuti Melik, Sukarni dan Soediro. Sukarni mengusulkan agar yang menandatangani teks proklamasi itu adalah Ir. Soekarno dan Drs. Moh. Hatta atas nama bangsa Indonesia. Teks Proklamasi Indonesia itu diketik oleh Sayuti melik. Pagi harinya, 17 Agustus 1945, di kediaman Soekarno, Jalan Pegangsaan Timur 56 telah hadir antara lain Soewirjo, Wilopo, Gafar Pringgodigdo, Tabrani dan Trimurti. Acara dimulai pada pukul 10:00 dengan pembacaan proklamasi oleh Soekarno dan disambung pidato singkat tanpa teks. Kemudian bendera Merah Putih, yang telah dijahit oleh bu Fatmawati, dikibarkan, disusul dengan sambutan oleh Soewirjo, wakil walikota Jakarta saat itu dan Moewardi, pimpinan Barisan Pelopor.

Pada awalnya Trimurti diminta untuk menaikkan bendera namun ia menolak dengan alasan pengerekan bendera sebaiknya dilakukan oleh seorang prajurit. Oleh sebab itu ditunjuklah Latief Hendraningrat, seorang prajurit PETA, dibantu oleh Soehoed untuk tugas tersebut. Seorang pemudi muncul dari belakang membawa nampan berisi bendera Merah Putih (Sang Saka Merah Putih), yang dijahit oleh Fatmawati beberapa hari sebelumnya. Setelah bendera berkibar, hadirin menyanyikan lagu Indonesia Raya.[4]. Sampai saat ini, bendera pusaka tersebut masih disimpan di Museum Tugu Monumen Nasional.

Setelah upacara selesai berlangsung, kurang lebih 100 orang anggota Barisan Pelopor yang dipimpin S.Brata datang terburu-buru karena mereka tidak mengetahui perubahan tempat mendadak dari Ikada ke Pegangsaan. Mereka menuntut Soekarno mengulang pembacaan Proklamasi, namun ditolak. Akhirnya Hatta memberikan amanat singkat kepada mereka.[5]


Pada tanggal 18 Agustus 1945, Panitia Persiapan Kemerdekaan Indonesia (PPKI) mengambil keputusan, mengesahkan dan menetapkan Undang-Undang Dasar (UUD) sebagai dasar negara Republik Indonesia, yang selanjutnya dikenal sebagai UUD 45. Dengan demikian terbentuklah Pemerintahan Negara Kesatuan Indonesia yang berbentuk Republik (NKRI) dengan kedaulatan di tangan rakyat yang dilakukan sepenuhnya oleh Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (MPR) yang akan dibentuk kemudian.

Setelah itu Soekarno dan M.Hatta terpilih atas usul dari Oto Iskandardinata dan persetujuan dari PPKI sebagai presiden dan wakil presiden Republik Indonesia yang pertama. Presiden dan wakil presiden akan dibantu oleh sebuah Komite Nasional.

== Isi Teks Proklamasi == Isi teks proklamasi kemerdekaan yang singkat ini adalah:


Kami bangsa Indonesia dengan ini menjatakan kemerdekaan Indonesia.

Hal-hal jang mengenai pemindahan kekoeasaan d.l.l., diselenggarakan
dengan tjara seksama dan dalam tempo jang sesingkat-singkatnja.

Djakarta, hari 17 boelan 8 tahoen 05
Atas nama bangsa Indonesia.
Soekarno/Hatta


Di sini ditulis tahun 05 karena ini sesuai dengan tahun Jepang yang kala itu adalah tahun 2605.

David Cook: written this Out

In the fall of 1968, six months after civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, Tim Wise was born to lower-middle-class white parents down the road in Nashville.

DAVID COOK lives with his wife and two small children in a cabin in Walden, Tennessee, and teaches high-school courses on democracy, justice, and American history in nearby Chattanooga. He is working on a biography of a Gregorian monk who lives and works among the urban homeless.

Wise, who would later commit himself to carrying on King’s fight for a racially just society, grew up in a nation struggling to redefine itself: sweeping reform legislation had been passed, ending legalized segregation, but black Americans remained largely shut out of decent jobs, housing, and education.

Wise went to Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he called for the university to divest its holdings in apartheid South Africa. In the early 1990s Wise fought fiercely to defeat political candidate David Duke, a white supremacist who ran for various state and national offices as a Republican. Soon after that, Wise began lecturing and writing about issues of racial justice.

When Wise introduces himself to an audience, he often starts with his ancestry. Like most of us, he has inherited a complex past. His maternal ancestors were early colonists who took ownership of land that had once belonged to the Powhatan and Shawnee Indians, and they farmed it with the help of slave labor. On his father’s side, Wise’s ancestors arrived from Russia in the early twentieth century, Jewish immigrants looking for a refuge from oppression. Though many of Wise’s ancestors embodied the values of hard work, honesty, and responsibility, they had one trait Wise believes made an even greater difference in their success in this society: their white skin.

As a white Southerner, Wise is somewhat unique among antiracism activists. African American scholar Michael Eric Dyson has proclaimed Wise “one of the most brilliant, articulate, and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation.” Over the last decade Wise has spoken at more than four hundred colleges and universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Columbia. He’s also appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows and has helped train law-enforcement officers, corporate executives, government officials, and journalists to spot racial bias in their work. Wise is the author of four books, including Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male and White like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (both Soft Skull Press). Earlier this year City Lights published his latest, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial, which debunks the idea that we live in a “postracial society.”

Wise believes race continues to be a defining quality for people in our nation, a trait that grants either advantage or disadvantage. I have heard him speak several times, and he reminds me of a James Baldwin quote: “The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it — at no matter what risk.”

Wise and I met over a pot of coffee in Nashville, where he lives with his wife and their two daughters. Barack Obama had recently become the nation’s first black president. It was Sunday morning, when many Americans go to church, the time of the week that Martin Luther King Jr. called “the most segregated hour” in America.



Cook: By your definition, what is racism, and what does it mean to be racist?

Wise: Racism is an ideology that says certain people, by virtue of their race, are either inferior or superior to others of a different race, with race usually being defined by skin color. Like any word that ends in “-ism” — capitalism, communism, socialism — racism is a system as well as an ideology. It’s a way of organizing society.

There are two different types of racists. First there are the overt racists: the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists. Then there are the ones we might consider “passive” racists. In a society like ours, where racism is so prevalent, the vast majority of us — maybe all of us — silently collaborate with systemic racism. We don’t consciously believe in racial superiority or inferiority, but we’ve become so used to the existing policies, practices, and procedures that we don’t question them. To the extent that we don’t challenge this system of racism, we are collaborating with it.

I think the second type of racist is actually more dangerous. The first type we can easily recognize, and it doesn’t take much courage to condemn them. The second type is like an invisible gas: you don’t know it’s there until you’ve been lulled unconscious by it.

Cook: You often write about “white privilege.” Can you give us some examples?

Wise: White privilege is any advantage, head start, or protection the system grants whites but not people of color. It’s the flip side of discrimination. If people of color are victims of housing discrimination 3 million times a year — and that’s a safe estimate — then that’s 3 million more opportunities for housing that whites have. If people of color are discriminated against in employment, then that’s more employment opportunities for whites. The flip side of disadvantage is advantage. You can’t have a down without an up.

Privilege also takes the form of less pressure to perform. If a white student in a classroom doesn’t answer a question correctly, no one will say, “Those white people don’t even deserve to be in this school. They obviously had standards lowered for them.” We whites are able to be as incompetent or mediocre as we want and never have our mediocrity ascribed to our race. George W. Bush mangled the English language with regularity and still became president. If Barack Obama had mispronounced words the way Bush did, would he have been given the same degree of slack?

Then there’s the privilege of not having to worry about being singled out for suspicion or mistreatment. I can go through the airport and not be viewed as a likely terrorist despite the fact that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the terrorists behind the Oklahoma City bombing, were white like me.

Cook: Some people dispute the notion that in 2009 white Americans have access to better lives simply because of the color of their skin.

Wise: Most people who say that will acknowledge that white privilege existed at some point. I always ask them: When did it stop?

Some think that racism ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Those were important steps, because they made it illegal to engage in discrimination. But just because you’ve made something illegal doesn’t mean it no longer happens. No enforcement mechanisms existed for the Fair Housing Act until 1988, and evidence suggests there are still millions of cases of race-based housing discrimination every year.

We also know that job applicants with “white-sounding” names are 50 percent more likely to get called back than those with “black-sounding” names, even if both have the same qualifications. That is privilege. Is it as blatant as a “No Blacks Need Apply” sign? Of course not. The privilege has become more subtle.

Justice Department data tells us that black and Latino males are two to three times more likely to be stopped by police and searched for drugs, even though white men are up to four times more likely to have drugs on them.

Many generations of privilege have left whites with a financial advantage too. Young black couples just out of college start out on average with one-fifth the net worth of similar white couples. Their ability to start their own business, to finance further education for themselves or their kids, and to put money down on a home will all be less than that of the white couple.

The mistake people make is to think that history stops and starts with each new generation. But what happens in one generation affects the next, and the next, until some social force pushes back. It’s not like a video game where you hit reset and we start over again with each generation.

Cook: Why do you think so many white Americans deny the existence of privilege?

Wise: One reason is that most people want to believe they are living in a just society. Another is that to acknowledge the truth would call upon us to make some tough changes, and people are afraid to give up their advantage. It can also be psychologically harmful to confront the fact that one is benefiting unfairly from the system. The first thing whites tend to do, when they open their eyes to their own privilege, is fall into guilt and self-flagellation, and that isn’t helpful. This becomes another reason not to confront the truth.

White denial isn’t new. It has always existed. In the early sixties, when we were an apartheid nation, polls found most whites didn’t think there was a problem. In 1963 two-thirds of whites thought blacks were treated equally. Every generation of white Americans, by and large, hasn’t believed the problem to be real.

What is so disturbing to me about white denial is that we are denying the reality of other people’s experiences. We are saying to people of color that what they think they experience is not what they actually experience. It’s true that not every allegation of racism is well-founded. People can make mistakes of interpretation, and none of us is a perfect chronicler of his or her life. But white deniers are saying that people of color are hypersensitive, that they overreact and “play the race card.”

Cook: Is racism a natural part of being human? Are we born with racist tendencies?

Wise: We are naturally predisposed to notice height, weight, eye color, skin color, facial features, hair texture. And there is probably a human tendency to favor those who are more like oneself. But there is a difference between that and having antipathy toward other groups. Also, the focus on skin color doesn’t make sense to me. We have elevated its importance because powerful elites decided to do so. Skin color hasn’t always been a primary concern. The Greeks viewed the African kingdoms as far superior to Europeans, whom they thought were slow and stupid, even though they were closer in skin color to the Greeks. In the colonies that would become the United States, white indentured servants and African slaves worked, lived, slept, and played together — and some in the Virginia colony even conspired together to overthrow their masters. The elites needed a way to divide them, so they extended the notion of supremacy to servants of European descent and passed laws to segregate the races.

In a way segregation laws themselves are proof that racism isn’t natural. If people naturally refused to associate with other races, there would be no need for laws to keep them apart.

Cook: What is your response to people who say race is a social construct, an illusion, and that they don’t “see” it?

Wise: It is a biological illusion, but it’s a social fact. There were no witches in Salem in 1692, but women died because people thought there were. There may not be separate races of humanity, but skin color has been given social meaning that affects people’s lives. It’s a sign of privilege for whites to say they are going to view people of color only as people. If I don’t see their race, I’m not going to see their lives as they really are. I’m seeing them as abstract “human beings,” not as people who’ve had certain experiences. I’m going to miss or misunderstand how their experiences have shaped them.
Original Posted

David Cook: written this Out

In the fall of 1968, six months after civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, Tim Wise was born to lower-middle-class white parents down the road in Nashville.

DAVID COOK lives with his wife and two small children in a cabin in Walden, Tennessee, and teaches high-school courses on democracy, justice, and American history in nearby Chattanooga. He is working on a biography of a Gregorian monk who lives and works among the urban homeless.

Wise, who would later commit himself to carrying on King’s fight for a racially just society, grew up in a nation struggling to redefine itself: sweeping reform legislation had been passed, ending legalized segregation, but black Americans remained largely shut out of decent jobs, housing, and education.

Wise went to Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he called for the university to divest its holdings in apartheid South Africa. In the early 1990s Wise fought fiercely to defeat political candidate David Duke, a white supremacist who ran for various state and national offices as a Republican. Soon after that, Wise began lecturing and writing about issues of racial justice.

When Wise introduces himself to an audience, he often starts with his ancestry. Like most of us, he has inherited a complex past. His maternal ancestors were early colonists who took ownership of land that had once belonged to the Powhatan and Shawnee Indians, and they farmed it with the help of slave labor. On his father’s side, Wise’s ancestors arrived from Russia in the early twentieth century, Jewish immigrants looking for a refuge from oppression. Though many of Wise’s ancestors embodied the values of hard work, honesty, and responsibility, they had one trait Wise believes made an even greater difference in their success in this society: their white skin.

As a white Southerner, Wise is somewhat unique among antiracism activists. African American scholar Michael Eric Dyson has proclaimed Wise “one of the most brilliant, articulate, and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation.” Over the last decade Wise has spoken at more than four hundred colleges and universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Columbia. He’s also appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows and has helped train law-enforcement officers, corporate executives, government officials, and journalists to spot racial bias in their work. Wise is the author of four books, including Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male and White like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (both Soft Skull Press). Earlier this year City Lights published his latest, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial, which debunks the idea that we live in a “postracial society.”

Wise believes race continues to be a defining quality for people in our nation, a trait that grants either advantage or disadvantage. I have heard him speak several times, and he reminds me of a James Baldwin quote: “The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it — at no matter what risk.”

Wise and I met over a pot of coffee in Nashville, where he lives with his wife and their two daughters. Barack Obama had recently become the nation’s first black president. It was Sunday morning, when many Americans go to church, the time of the week that Martin Luther King Jr. called “the most segregated hour” in America.



Cook: By your definition, what is racism, and what does it mean to be racist?

Wise: Racism is an ideology that says certain people, by virtue of their race, are either inferior or superior to others of a different race, with race usually being defined by skin color. Like any word that ends in “-ism” — capitalism, communism, socialism — racism is a system as well as an ideology. It’s a way of organizing society.

There are two different types of racists. First there are the overt racists: the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists. Then there are the ones we might consider “passive” racists. In a society like ours, where racism is so prevalent, the vast majority of us — maybe all of us — silently collaborate with systemic racism. We don’t consciously believe in racial superiority or inferiority, but we’ve become so used to the existing policies, practices, and procedures that we don’t question them. To the extent that we don’t challenge this system of racism, we are collaborating with it.

I think the second type of racist is actually more dangerous. The first type we can easily recognize, and it doesn’t take much courage to condemn them. The second type is like an invisible gas: you don’t know it’s there until you’ve been lulled unconscious by it.

Cook: You often write about “white privilege.” Can you give us some examples?

Wise: White privilege is any advantage, head start, or protection the system grants whites but not people of color. It’s the flip side of discrimination. If people of color are victims of housing discrimination 3 million times a year — and that’s a safe estimate — then that’s 3 million more opportunities for housing that whites have. If people of color are discriminated against in employment, then that’s more employment opportunities for whites. The flip side of disadvantage is advantage. You can’t have a down without an up.

Privilege also takes the form of less pressure to perform. If a white student in a classroom doesn’t answer a question correctly, no one will say, “Those white people don’t even deserve to be in this school. They obviously had standards lowered for them.” We whites are able to be as incompetent or mediocre as we want and never have our mediocrity ascribed to our race. George W. Bush mangled the English language with regularity and still became president. If Barack Obama had mispronounced words the way Bush did, would he have been given the same degree of slack?

Then there’s the privilege of not having to worry about being singled out for suspicion or mistreatment. I can go through the airport and not be viewed as a likely terrorist despite the fact that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the terrorists behind the Oklahoma City bombing, were white like me.

Cook: Some people dispute the notion that in 2009 white Americans have access to better lives simply because of the color of their skin.

Wise: Most people who say that will acknowledge that white privilege existed at some point. I always ask them: When did it stop?

Some think that racism ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Those were important steps, because they made it illegal to engage in discrimination. But just because you’ve made something illegal doesn’t mean it no longer happens. No enforcement mechanisms existed for the Fair Housing Act until 1988, and evidence suggests there are still millions of cases of race-based housing discrimination every year.

We also know that job applicants with “white-sounding” names are 50 percent more likely to get called back than those with “black-sounding” names, even if both have the same qualifications. That is privilege. Is it as blatant as a “No Blacks Need Apply” sign? Of course not. The privilege has become more subtle.

Justice Department data tells us that black and Latino males are two to three times more likely to be stopped by police and searched for drugs, even though white men are up to four times more likely to have drugs on them.

Many generations of privilege have left whites with a financial advantage too. Young black couples just out of college start out on average with one-fifth the net worth of similar white couples. Their ability to start their own business, to finance further education for themselves or their kids, and to put money down on a home will all be less than that of the white couple.

The mistake people make is to think that history stops and starts with each new generation. But what happens in one generation affects the next, and the next, until some social force pushes back. It’s not like a video game where you hit reset and we start over again with each generation.

Cook: Why do you think so many white Americans deny the existence of privilege?

Wise: One reason is that most people want to believe they are living in a just society. Another is that to acknowledge the truth would call upon us to make some tough changes, and people are afraid to give up their advantage. It can also be psychologically harmful to confront the fact that one is benefiting unfairly from the system. The first thing whites tend to do, when they open their eyes to their own privilege, is fall into guilt and self-flagellation, and that isn’t helpful. This becomes another reason not to confront the truth.

White denial isn’t new. It has always existed. In the early sixties, when we were an apartheid nation, polls found most whites didn’t think there was a problem. In 1963 two-thirds of whites thought blacks were treated equally. Every generation of white Americans, by and large, hasn’t believed the problem to be real.

What is so disturbing to me about white denial is that we are denying the reality of other people’s experiences. We are saying to people of color that what they think they experience is not what they actually experience. It’s true that not every allegation of racism is well-founded. People can make mistakes of interpretation, and none of us is a perfect chronicler of his or her life. But white deniers are saying that people of color are hypersensitive, that they overreact and “play the race card.”

Cook: Is racism a natural part of being human? Are we born with racist tendencies?

Wise: We are naturally predisposed to notice height, weight, eye color, skin color, facial features, hair texture. And there is probably a human tendency to favor those who are more like oneself. But there is a difference between that and having antipathy toward other groups. Also, the focus on skin color doesn’t make sense to me. We have elevated its importance because powerful elites decided to do so. Skin color hasn’t always been a primary concern. The Greeks viewed the African kingdoms as far superior to Europeans, whom they thought were slow and stupid, even though they were closer in skin color to the Greeks. In the colonies that would become the United States, white indentured servants and African slaves worked, lived, slept, and played together — and some in the Virginia colony even conspired together to overthrow their masters. The elites needed a way to divide them, so they extended the notion of supremacy to servants of European descent and passed laws to segregate the races.

In a way segregation laws themselves are proof that racism isn’t natural. If people naturally refused to associate with other races, there would be no need for laws to keep them apart.

Cook: What is your response to people who say race is a social construct, an illusion, and that they don’t “see” it?

Wise: It is a biological illusion, but it’s a social fact. There were no witches in Salem in 1692, but women died because people thought there were. There may not be separate races of humanity, but skin color has been given social meaning that affects people’s lives. It’s a sign of privilege for whites to say they are going to view people of color only as people. If I don’t see their race, I’m not going to see their lives as they really are. I’m seeing them as abstract “human beings,” not as people who’ve had certain experiences. I’m going to miss or misunderstand how their experiences have shaped them.
Original Posted

David Cook: written this Out

In the fall of 1968, six months after civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, Tim Wise was born to lower-middle-class white parents down the road in Nashville.

DAVID COOK lives with his wife and two small children in a cabin in Walden, Tennessee, and teaches high-school courses on democracy, justice, and American history in nearby Chattanooga. He is working on a biography of a Gregorian monk who lives and works among the urban homeless.

Wise, who would later commit himself to carrying on King’s fight for a racially just society, grew up in a nation struggling to redefine itself: sweeping reform legislation had been passed, ending legalized segregation, but black Americans remained largely shut out of decent jobs, housing, and education.

Wise went to Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he called for the university to divest its holdings in apartheid South Africa. In the early 1990s Wise fought fiercely to defeat political candidate David Duke, a white supremacist who ran for various state and national offices as a Republican. Soon after that, Wise began lecturing and writing about issues of racial justice.

When Wise introduces himself to an audience, he often starts with his ancestry. Like most of us, he has inherited a complex past. His maternal ancestors were early colonists who took ownership of land that had once belonged to the Powhatan and Shawnee Indians, and they farmed it with the help of slave labor. On his father’s side, Wise’s ancestors arrived from Russia in the early twentieth century, Jewish immigrants looking for a refuge from oppression. Though many of Wise’s ancestors embodied the values of hard work, honesty, and responsibility, they had one trait Wise believes made an even greater difference in their success in this society: their white skin.

As a white Southerner, Wise is somewhat unique among antiracism activists. African American scholar Michael Eric Dyson has proclaimed Wise “one of the most brilliant, articulate, and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation.” Over the last decade Wise has spoken at more than four hundred colleges and universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and Columbia. He’s also appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows and has helped train law-enforcement officers, corporate executives, government officials, and journalists to spot racial bias in their work. Wise is the author of four books, including Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male and White like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (both Soft Skull Press). Earlier this year City Lights published his latest, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial, which debunks the idea that we live in a “postracial society.”

Wise believes race continues to be a defining quality for people in our nation, a trait that grants either advantage or disadvantage. I have heard him speak several times, and he reminds me of a James Baldwin quote: “The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it — at no matter what risk.”

Wise and I met over a pot of coffee in Nashville, where he lives with his wife and their two daughters. Barack Obama had recently become the nation’s first black president. It was Sunday morning, when many Americans go to church, the time of the week that Martin Luther King Jr. called “the most segregated hour” in America.



Cook: By your definition, what is racism, and what does it mean to be racist?

Wise: Racism is an ideology that says certain people, by virtue of their race, are either inferior or superior to others of a different race, with race usually being defined by skin color. Like any word that ends in “-ism” — capitalism, communism, socialism — racism is a system as well as an ideology. It’s a way of organizing society.

There are two different types of racists. First there are the overt racists: the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists. Then there are the ones we might consider “passive” racists. In a society like ours, where racism is so prevalent, the vast majority of us — maybe all of us — silently collaborate with systemic racism. We don’t consciously believe in racial superiority or inferiority, but we’ve become so used to the existing policies, practices, and procedures that we don’t question them. To the extent that we don’t challenge this system of racism, we are collaborating with it.

I think the second type of racist is actually more dangerous. The first type we can easily recognize, and it doesn’t take much courage to condemn them. The second type is like an invisible gas: you don’t know it’s there until you’ve been lulled unconscious by it.

Cook: You often write about “white privilege.” Can you give us some examples?

Wise: White privilege is any advantage, head start, or protection the system grants whites but not people of color. It’s the flip side of discrimination. If people of color are victims of housing discrimination 3 million times a year — and that’s a safe estimate — then that’s 3 million more opportunities for housing that whites have. If people of color are discriminated against in employment, then that’s more employment opportunities for whites. The flip side of disadvantage is advantage. You can’t have a down without an up.

Privilege also takes the form of less pressure to perform. If a white student in a classroom doesn’t answer a question correctly, no one will say, “Those white people don’t even deserve to be in this school. They obviously had standards lowered for them.” We whites are able to be as incompetent or mediocre as we want and never have our mediocrity ascribed to our race. George W. Bush mangled the English language with regularity and still became president. If Barack Obama had mispronounced words the way Bush did, would he have been given the same degree of slack?

Then there’s the privilege of not having to worry about being singled out for suspicion or mistreatment. I can go through the airport and not be viewed as a likely terrorist despite the fact that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the terrorists behind the Oklahoma City bombing, were white like me.

Cook: Some people dispute the notion that in 2009 white Americans have access to better lives simply because of the color of their skin.

Wise: Most people who say that will acknowledge that white privilege existed at some point. I always ask them: When did it stop?

Some think that racism ended with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Those were important steps, because they made it illegal to engage in discrimination. But just because you’ve made something illegal doesn’t mean it no longer happens. No enforcement mechanisms existed for the Fair Housing Act until 1988, and evidence suggests there are still millions of cases of race-based housing discrimination every year.

We also know that job applicants with “white-sounding” names are 50 percent more likely to get called back than those with “black-sounding” names, even if both have the same qualifications. That is privilege. Is it as blatant as a “No Blacks Need Apply” sign? Of course not. The privilege has become more subtle.

Justice Department data tells us that black and Latino males are two to three times more likely to be stopped by police and searched for drugs, even though white men are up to four times more likely to have drugs on them.

Many generations of privilege have left whites with a financial advantage too. Young black couples just out of college start out on average with one-fifth the net worth of similar white couples. Their ability to start their own business, to finance further education for themselves or their kids, and to put money down on a home will all be less than that of the white couple.

The mistake people make is to think that history stops and starts with each new generation. But what happens in one generation affects the next, and the next, until some social force pushes back. It’s not like a video game where you hit reset and we start over again with each generation.

Cook: Why do you think so many white Americans deny the existence of privilege?

Wise: One reason is that most people want to believe they are living in a just society. Another is that to acknowledge the truth would call upon us to make some tough changes, and people are afraid to give up their advantage. It can also be psychologically harmful to confront the fact that one is benefiting unfairly from the system. The first thing whites tend to do, when they open their eyes to their own privilege, is fall into guilt and self-flagellation, and that isn’t helpful. This becomes another reason not to confront the truth.

White denial isn’t new. It has always existed. In the early sixties, when we were an apartheid nation, polls found most whites didn’t think there was a problem. In 1963 two-thirds of whites thought blacks were treated equally. Every generation of white Americans, by and large, hasn’t believed the problem to be real.

What is so disturbing to me about white denial is that we are denying the reality of other people’s experiences. We are saying to people of color that what they think they experience is not what they actually experience. It’s true that not every allegation of racism is well-founded. People can make mistakes of interpretation, and none of us is a perfect chronicler of his or her life. But white deniers are saying that people of color are hypersensitive, that they overreact and “play the race card.”

Cook: Is racism a natural part of being human? Are we born with racist tendencies?

Wise: We are naturally predisposed to notice height, weight, eye color, skin color, facial features, hair texture. And there is probably a human tendency to favor those who are more like oneself. But there is a difference between that and having antipathy toward other groups. Also, the focus on skin color doesn’t make sense to me. We have elevated its importance because powerful elites decided to do so. Skin color hasn’t always been a primary concern. The Greeks viewed the African kingdoms as far superior to Europeans, whom they thought were slow and stupid, even though they were closer in skin color to the Greeks. In the colonies that would become the United States, white indentured servants and African slaves worked, lived, slept, and played together — and some in the Virginia colony even conspired together to overthrow their masters. The elites needed a way to divide them, so they extended the notion of supremacy to servants of European descent and passed laws to segregate the races.

In a way segregation laws themselves are proof that racism isn’t natural. If people naturally refused to associate with other races, there would be no need for laws to keep them apart.

Cook: What is your response to people who say race is a social construct, an illusion, and that they don’t “see” it?

Wise: It is a biological illusion, but it’s a social fact. There were no witches in Salem in 1692, but women died because people thought there were. There may not be separate races of humanity, but skin color has been given social meaning that affects people’s lives. It’s a sign of privilege for whites to say they are going to view people of color only as people. If I don’t see their race, I’m not going to see their lives as they really are. I’m seeing them as abstract “human beings,” not as people who’ve had certain experiences. I’m going to miss or misunderstand how their experiences have shaped them.
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