An Explanation for the Removal of Monuments to Washington or...

You should read this piece by Charles Blow of the New York Times. He makes a good point. He makes it sound as if America would be taking a step to redemption. Although not Blow's intent, it's opportunity to bury and hide from our nation's past.

Should we remove monuments to all enslavers?

Should we remove the Jefferson Memorial in the nation's capital?

Should we destroy the Lincoln memorial for he wanted to ship all the people of African descent back to Africa and the Emancipation Proclamation was a failed attempt to keep slaves states in the Union?

Should we remove the Washington monument in the nation's capital?

Should we blow the faces of Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, and Roosevelt from Mount Rushmore? (If the answer to that is yes, should we nuke Stone Mountain?)

Should we change the name of the nation's capital?

Or should we build a memorial to all those millions who died as slaves for it's their blood and lives that fed the growth of this nation? Should we build a memorial to those who died as a result of systemic racism? Should we build a memorial larger in square footage than the Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson memorials for those killed by slavery and systemic racism? Shouldn't they be honored as the nation's first heroes. Shouldn't they be honored as our first martyrs for justice?

For me, the answer is obvious.

The removal of monuments will not repair past injustices, especially those committed with the complicity of a nation. We can follow the German example. After World War II, it admitted to its grave sin against Jews.

It's no longer time for anger, although it will linger. It's no longer time for guilt, although it will remain. It's no longer time for denial, although unfortunately some fools will continue.

It's time to admit to our sin. To ask for forgiveness without expecting to receive it. Most importantly, to honor those murdered, raped, and injured out of greed, ignorance, and hatred.

For decades we have covered up the nation's sin. We can destroy monuments to the past and forget about it again. Or we can bow our heads and recognize our sin.

It's about time we all take a knee for the millions from whom a nation took so much and returned so little.

Stop How-To-ing and Do

You can tell that white Americans are “into” the Black Lives Matter movement. Instead of examining their thoughts and feelings in their dealings with African Americans, they are how-to-ing the concept to death. How to be anti-racist? How to raise anti-racist children? How to whatever else their imaginations conjure? They turn to podcasts, books, New York Times articles, and YouTube videos to discover the 12 steps they need to complete their great awakening.

We can’t how-to ourselves out of this. The problem, which white Americans have complicity allowed to exist, is far too complicated for any 12-step program.

We must accept the fact that we will feel uncomfortable and embrace it. If you think you cannot do it, then remember how uncomfortable a portion of Americans and their institutions have made African Americans feel every day for the past four centuries.

Therefore, it will mean listening to an African American or group of African Americans blow off steam at you as if you were responsible for every problem in the country. It means not being defensive or at least try not to be. Accept the discomfort for the uncomfortable is part of every transition. And maybe it’s our penance for we will make mistakes, step on toes accidentally, or say something stupid. We need to go through the process, and unless the individual is pissed off at you or Donald Trump, most African Americans have far more patience with European Americans than the reverse. They will correct your mistakes, and they will accept your apology for stepping on a toe or saying something stupid—if, and only if, they perceive a genuine interest to learn or to improve the situation. And are there some African Americans who will verbally rip your head off? Sure. Africana Americans are no different from European Americans, which has more than its share of hotheads.

I should amend that a bit. They are different in one important matter of courtesy.

I have attended several gatherings where I was the only face white in the crowd. Without fail—each and every time, several members of the group (not the leaders of the group, the rank and file members) approached, shook my hand, introduced themselves, and welcomed me to their gathering. They socially embraced me. They dissolved any discomfort I may have felt as a stranger. My memory of those moments still make me feel warm. And sad. Each time, I thought of how many times I have been at a gathering of European Americans. An African American walks in. Does anyone greet him/her? Does anyone shake her hand? Does anyone introduce himself? Never. (That includes me.) In fact, a large minority of the group stare, but it’s more a glare. You want a how-to for that moment: Treat the individual as a human being or, to put it another way and a paraphrase of a two millennia old adage, do onto them as you would have them do onto you. (By the way, most European Americans learned that phrase as children.)

We have a lot to learn, and we will not find it in how-to. We have to do as we want others to do to us.

A State by Any Other Name Smells the Same

Excuse me Billy, I abuse the language or the notion of what language should convey. I follow in the podding of others.

The state of Rhode Island is not the correct name for the state. It's "The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation." It's changing its name to Rhode Island. I guess that makes sense. It's the name used on maps and every day conversation.

Yet, the reason for the change is stupid.

The word plantation supposedly offends some individuals because of its supposedly racist connotations. There are no racist connotations to the word, a 17th century word for settlement. It's not the idealized plantation seen in Panorama in Gone with the Wind, a place where an African slave had no more value than a pig in a pen.

Roger Williams, a minister and linguist, founded the New England settlement after being thrown out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Massachusetts). He purchased the land from the indigenous tribe of the region. He founded the settlement on the very principles upon which the country was founded with one exception--that colony made slavery illegal more than two centuries before the U.S. In his thinking, providence was Divine Providence and plantation was settlement. It's actually a wonderful notion.

Context matters, even though one Rhode Island politician thinks not, his reasoning for supporting the resolution to change the name. Using his logic, than using the N-word shouldn't matter. Its negative meaning comes from the context in which it was used. Otherwise it is just a two syllables.

And it's not context alone. Simple definitions should apply. The word plantation has meaning(s), a settlement, land under cultivation, a large farm tended to by resident workers. None have anything to do with slavery.

Take those definitions and put them in the South, and that context gives the word an additional meaning. Context does add meaning.

The word is not in the South but the North. A free state that was the first colony to abolish slavery, and that sent thousands of men to fight for the Union.

Words do not offend. Their context (definition and usage) offends. I, however, can do nothing about an individual's ignorance. With the ubiquity of smartphones and other devices, people should have no problem checking definitions. For example, they should discover that the word niggardly has nothing to do with the N-word. It's etymologically unrelated. Even with that information readily available in any dictionary, a student heard her professor say niggardly. She saw a classmate write the N-word in her notes. The first student brought charges against a professor for using it. Here's the kicker. The university, a place of learning, said the professor was insensitive.

I did not know the man. As a professor, I felt for him. He was lecturing. The word described his intention (miserly, in case you didn't look it up, derived an Old Norse word several centuries before the use of the N-word). An individual, especially a teacher, should be sensitive to offending another, but there was no offense intended or uttered. It was taken because two college students' vocabulary was limited. They were in college. They were there to learn. They choose not to.

And contrary to pop wisdom, euphony is not meaning. Cool does not mean lower than the expected mean temperature. Dynamite does not mean to blow up. Phat does not mean overweight. It depends on context. Hell, the word love depends on context. When your mom says it, it means one thing. When your partner whispers it in your ear, it means something entirely different.

Context is everything.

Let's move on from this bullshit.

We waste time talking about the euphony of the language and eats up the time we should be talking about the solutions to injustice and inequity--more complex issues we as states and as a nation must resolve.

The Opposite of Racist Isn't Anti-Racist

American English morphs naturally. It’s the reason for new editions of dictionaries. Americans though are impatient. We obsessively mutate our language. We utter new sounds, and the ring of those syllables asserts our societal mark, as if the ephemeral becomes ethereal with a new word. Etymologically, it’s okay. American English is flexible even though it probably didn’t feel that way in fourth grade. It changes rather quickly compared to most languages.

Regardless of how often that new sound is uttered, it can’t prolong the lifespan of the ephemeral. Their meanings are nebulous, twisting, twirling, and turning giving the sound expanded connotations with each utterance.

A time comes when we tire of their vagaries and we again listen.

New sounds resonate. The older ones sound tiny and fade in rhetorical atrophy.[1]

A new word of sorts has appeared. Anti-racist. The sound itself is not new. It’s a person who challenges racism and fights for racial tolerance. In other words, an activist. Think Martin Luther King, Jr.; Malcolm X; William DuBois; Shirley Chisholm; some may say John Brown; as well as dozens of others over the past 170 years.

The average person isn’t and never could be an activist. They don’t have the stuff. I don’t. An uncommon dedication and a moral focus drive these individuals. Activists plunge forward time and time again, struggling against persistent set-backs, over the course of a lifetime. These people are anti-racist. At least by definition.

I heard the word being used, and its meaning was twisted: Someone who is opposed to racism.

That’s silly.

A racist believes in the scientifically fraudulent concept of race, which was devised in the 19^th Century by English, German, and American “scientists.” They weren’t proving their theory of race but were establishing a hierarchy of humans to justify enslavement, prolonged indentured labor, and imperialism as their God-given­ obligations, as in “The White Man’s Burden.” A racist therefore believes there is such a thing as race and that one, the white one, is superior to the others.

The racist is wrong on two counts.

He denies humanity of all people.[2]

By denying humanity, he denies himself—the ultimate in idiocy.

The opposite of racist is not anti-racist. It’s human being.

 

[1] Say the following aloud and listen to the fading tin: groovy, copasetic, phat, and soon-to-vanish fake news.

[2] It’s a notion more common in the world than most Americans presume.

Will White America Accept the Needed Changes?

Last night I watched a comedy special featuring comedian Jimmy Yang. He's funny. You laugh at him, his parents, yourself. His humor exposes a truth about people.

He starts his monologue by describing how he must represent Asians, periodically, saying the one word: Represent.  It confused me. How can a man raised in Hong Kong and the United States represent all Asians? It is as if I claimed to represent white Americans, or more in tune with the Asian American tag, European Americans.

I recently moved from Connecticut to the coast of Delaware, a small town, not a resort town, of mostly blue-collar workers and fishermen. Half of the homes are mobile. There isn't even a stop light. Without fail, every person whom I met differs from me in their outlook and attitude towards living. Not better, not worse, only different. They're tan, I'm pale. They work with the hands and bodies, I work with my mind. Many wear rubber boots, I sandals. Many have facial hair, I've none. Most aren't Catholic and never-were Catholic, I'm ex-Catholic. Most have lived in the town their entire lives, I've lived in Brooklyn, Connecticut, and now Delaware. Most have never left the country except for military duty, I've traveled to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and throughout eastern Asia. They've lived near salt water for their entire lives, I've too have lived near salt water my entire life. In totality, we are different. Do I represent them? They would shout "No way." I'm an outsider.

I married into an Italian Irish-Hungarian family. My wife claims she had an intestinal flu one year and she lost all her Irish-Hungarian parts. Was her family different from my predominantly Irish (with a little German) family? Yes.

I flew to Florida to visit them. I was seeing her family only for the second time. I told her mother that I wanted to give my now wife an engagement ring, a family heirloom. When I entered the terminal, I was greeted with hugs from her mother and her cousin, whom I never met. At his house, we popped the tops of a couple of cool ones (an expression I never heard). He offered me a Bush beer, a brand not available in Brooklyn where I cam from. He had a pool, small but beautiful. I had puddles along the curb. We arrived at my wife’s home, and there were hugs and kisses from her mother, father, sister, and reluctantly her younger brother. I loved the enthusiasm, I hated the hugging. Over the course of a year, they hugged more than my family did in my lifetime. My family never hugged and kissed. Or rarely. They held hugging in reserve. It was intimate, a moment of shared vulnerability as each person broke through the personal barriers we erect. Definitely no kissing.

We celebrated the engagement. My future mother-in-law created a traditional Italian meal—antipasto, pasta, meat, vegetables, salad, and dessert of nuts and fruits. The antipasto, meat, vegetables, and salad were seasoned before they hit the table. There were no condiments. Almost forgot, wine. It lasted more than two hours.

My Irish celebratory meals paled in comparison: potatoes, string beans, meat, and maybe a salad. Bottles of French and Italian dressing, ketchup, salt, pepper, butter sat in attention. We would pour, shake, and lather the condiments on meals. If there was a great deal of conversation, the meal was over in 45 minutes.

Physically my future in-laws were different. They all had black hair. It was curly. Their skin, especially with their sun tans, was darker than mine. Her mother described my skin color as sickly. They spoke with the mouths and their hands. I also was told I was not emotional. Not once, but enough times that it pissed me off. Being new to the family and not wanting my future wife to feel uncomfortable, I swallowed my anger. I did think: I’m just an emotional as you are. I’m not as demonstrative as you.

Could I represent them? Not them or any Italian-American family.

In both cases, economics and culture determine the differences.

Jimmy claims to represent Asians. Who?

First, is Asia a continent or a construct of Western[1] civilization?

More than 26 centuries ago, the Greek philosopher Anaximander came up with the idea of Asia. The Romans picked up on the idea. “Experts” debated the boundaries, and they settled the argument. Asia comprised land east of the Ural Mountains and Ural River and north of the Suez isthmus.

Geologically, that ancient definition makes no sense. The place called Asia is part of the landmass or continent called Eurasia. That mass is connected to Africa. That creates a single landmass named Afro-Eurasia. Essentially, Asia along with Europe and Africa is a Western conceit, just as the concept of race is a Western conceit but more on that another time.

Presuming Asia exists, does Jimmy represent all Asians as implied in his routine? Israelis? Arabs? Palestinians? Iraqis? Afghanis? Kazakhs? Iranians? Indians? Pakistanis? Siberians? Armenians? Azerbaijanis? The Ainu peoples? The people of Altai and Tyva? As well as the Chinese, Mongols, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Thais, Cambodians, and Burmese?  Their cultures, religions, cuisines, languages, and economies differ. I have more in common with my new Delaware neighbors and my Italian-Hungarian in-laws than Jimmy Yang has with all these groups. I’m no different than Jimmy. Culturally I’m not the same as my friends raised in Polish, Greek, Spanish, Swedish, or French homes. Culturally, Jimmy is different from individuals raised in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, or Cambodian homes.

These regions have vilified, attacked, or conqueror other Asian regions. They believed that they were superior for one unsubstantiated reason or another. They were no different from their European brethren. They all quested for more land, more power, more wealth.

The construct of Asian American Is political in its nature. It was born from the European immigrants’ self-identity in the U.S. They would describe themselves as Irish-, Italian-, or Polish-Americans. As the terms negro and colored fell out of favor, African-American took hold. It made sense. For most people whose forebears were enslaved, there was no means to track the birthplace of the first people kidnapped from the continent.[2] The phrase had appeal. It put the heritage of blacks on parity, if you will, with that of European immigrants. More precisely, the phrase forced white society to finally see African Americans on par. With that, politicians had a new word for their lexicon. More than a century earlier, politicians and world leaders tossed around the term Latin America. It was used to unify those nations/regions south of the U.S. border as if it could be one nation. The term came from the three main languages of the region—Spanish, Portuguese, and French, all descendants of Latin. Times changed. Nationalists rebelled. Spain left the continent. The leaders of these new nations had no time for a confederation of Latin America. The term lingered. It is now used to describe immigrants who have come from Latin America.

The terms created voting blocks. It was no longer blacks from the North and blacks from the South. It was the African American voting block, and they made up slightly more than 12% of the U.S. population. The same was true for Hispanics. Instead of presenting themselves as Puerto Ricans, Cubans, or Mexicans, they created the Hispanic or Latinx block, which comprises 17% of the U.S. population. Combined, they transform into a formidable voting block.

The term Asian American accomplished the same goal. Lumped together, Asian Americans make up 5.6% of the U.S. population. Separately, their political clout crumbles. For example, Chinese, Filipinos, and Indians each make up about 1% of the U.S. population. Vietnamese, Koreans, and Japanese each have less than 0.5% of the U.S. population. It’s even lower for Pakistanis, Cambodians, Hmongs, Thais, Laotians, Bangladeshis, and Burmese.

The terms, European American, Asian American, Latino (Hispanic), and African American, present this notion of blocks of power and influence. They are rhetorical illusions. They simply do not exist, or not at least as people presume. It’s tribalism. Within the illusory tribe, we feel loyalty, camaraderie, shared values, and finally and maybe most importantly, a sense of power. Alone we are weak, together we are strong.

Each “block” fosters its own conflicts. People of northern European heritage look down on people with a southern heritage, and by look down, I’m referring to bigoted behavior. Similar views are held in Asia. I’ve even heard it expressed in China itself, the northerner thinking the southerners as lazy. I’ve heard similar bigotry shared by Hispanics about Hispanics not from their country, as in Puerto Ricans seem to be every other Hispanic’s punching bags. And African Americans are the ones who perpetuate the terms like blue and yellow to describe the skin of fellow African Americans, a stigma associated with the two shades.

There’s no immunity to bias. Individually maybe. There are those people who live what we may call saintly lives. That’s not most of us. When you cluster people together—whether by ethnicity, religion, region of birth, wealth, or political belief—bias appears. My ethnicity is superior to yours; I’ll find eternal salvation, you not so much; I live in a better place than you; I’m richer than you are, ha, ha; and finally, you’re wrong, I’m right. We’ve littered our language with these biases.

I, for example, am a Paddy papist born in middle-class Brooklyn and a socialist. Paddy is a derogatory term for the Irish, papist is defaming term for Catholics, Brooklyn of the 1950s and 1960s lacked the cache of the then suburbs and today’s Brooklyn, and I am a Democrat. By all standards of the day, it’s not all that bad when compared to the bias faced by African Americans, Jews, Muslims, and Hispanics, and Asians.

Think about the terms used to denigrate these five groups. They’re unpleasant, disgusting, vile. So what? There’s always that “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” argument. That doesn’t work. Names carry meanings that have implications. They drag down an individual or a group, making her or them less than human. They no longer are on parity with the people in power or who wish to be in power. Therefore, “the named” have fewer rights as citizens, they have less value, and therefore, the people of means can treat and pay them poorly, enabling the wealthy to get richer.

This was the reason for slavery. This was the reason for de facto and de jure Jim Crow laws. This was the reason why the powerful allowed hundreds of thousands of Irish onto the nation’s eastern shore. It was the reason why railroads and others imported Chinese workers in the 19^th century. It was not a matter of “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to be free.” It was “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, so we can make more money.” It’s no different today with the immigrants from Latin America. They take the jobs Americans won’t primarily because the pay is so poor. Why? So Americans, the wealthiest of people on the planet, can have cheaper produce, roofs, and landscaping.

Too often we, meaning all human beings, don’t examine the underlying presumptions to our beliefs. We have built some on strong foundations, but we stand others on timbers rotting with illogical, inconsequential, and irrelevant ideas and facts. We don’t want to examine them; we are frighten what they may portend—altering, changing, and dropping beliefs once held sacrosanct.

We need to strip away the bullshit. We all descended from ancestors who lived in Africa, not the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley.[3] We all evolved from a group of people living on the same landmass, with the exception of those who migrated in Oceania. We are the same with the exception of a few genetically and biologically insignificant physical characteristics. We all want to be love and to love. We all want our families to be safe. We all want our children to have a better life than we. We all fear death. And few of us can sustain prolonged violence, such as war.[4]

We are one and the same. We are one.

There’s one hitch—our biases. They obscure our outlook, our philosophies, our religions, our economies, and our languages. Each culture has woven those biases into the context of their existence, justifying them and, more importantly, elevating them, perpetuating the illusion that they are special, endowed with greatness.[5]

America is no different. We have woven bias into our history, culture, politics, and economics. (Our religions usually came with them set in place.) And it has always been in the name of wealth.  America’s ruling class, meaning European Americans, with intent and without have perpetuate those myths in the way we vote, the movies we watch, the books we read, the history we study, the museums and symphony halls we have built, and some of the wars we have fought.

Our systemic racism, as much a part of the U.S. as the red, white, and blue, will not vanish with a few protests peaceful or otherwise.[6] White Americans need to examine the fabric of their society, the presumptions that went into weaving that fabric, the false threads that bind it. We also need to make sacrifices, primarily economic, to compensate for the “sacrifices” inflicted on African Americans for four centuries.

Even though the protests for racial justice appears as a homogenization of America’s different groups, I have my doubts things will change much. Americans will change its methods of policing. Americans will listen more carefully for the dog-whistle phrases of bigots, especially coming from our leaders. We need to do more. Congress must build the moral muscle to create an economically more equitable country. It will need to raise taxes, especially for the top 20%. It will need to create parity in all educational systems across the country. It must create a reparation program for African Americans.

Will Congress do that? Not in what is left of my lifetime.

It’s too easy to blame Congress, too easy.

Congress is but us. We must call for change. We must demand change. We must accept change.

Will white Americans do that? Your call.

 

[1] West of what?

[2] The terms African American and black are used interchangeably, but the descriptor black has taken on a different significance with the publication of Debra Dickerson’s The End of Blackness. In it, she argues that only people whose forebears were enslaved and shipped to America should refer to themselves as being black as opposed to those people whose forebears immigrated to the U.S. from Africa.

[3] The oldest homo sapient remains were discovered in Morocco in 2017.

[4] War is a political and economic function of society, perpetuated by the ruling class of that society, most of whom rarely participate in combat.

[5] Doubt me? Study the myths and beliefs different groups have for their origin.

[6] The New York City Draft Riots occurred in 1863. The new Irish immigrants rebelled against the new draft laws, which allowed the rich to buy their way out. They looted, destroyed property, and killed. In fact, they turned their anger against the free slaves living in the city at the time, killing more than 100 (presuming the count of the day was accurate). Nothing was accomplished.

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Miles to Go Before We Sleep...

[caption id="attachment_335" align="alignleft" width="397"] Photo by Josh Hild on Pexels.com[/caption]

The death of George Floyd rekindled embers simmering for centuries. As Americans of all shapes and sizes flooded the streets of some 135 cities, demanding change, people around the world watched with horror and hope. The New York Times offered a glimpse of what people overseas see.

Here are the Cliff Notes. They see us out of context. They respond as if this is a first for America. They view us two dimensionally.*

America never has been as great as some people have assumed, nor is it disappointing as some have portrayed. We have flaws. We've screwed up. Our history, especially regarding race, is a toxic dump of our sins. We also have gotten things right. We are not finished. America is lovely, dark and deep. We have promises to keep. And we have miles to go before we rest. And we have miles to go before we rest. (Sorry, Robert.)

At the same time, people overseas don't look within. They see American bigotry as a contradiction to our constitution. It is. They don't see their own failings.

Yes, some white Americans hate African Americans, and some African Americans hate white Americans. But bigotry is not an American failure. It exists in every nation, on every continent. Some Turks hate the Kurds (and visa versa). Some English hate the Irish (and visa versa). Some Sunni hate Shi'a (and visa versa). Some Macedonians hate Greeks (and visa versa). Some Christians hate Jews (and visa versa). Some Jews hate Palestinians (and visa versa). Some Hindus hate Muslims (and visa versa). Some Buddhists hate Muslims (and visa versa.) Some men hate women (and visa versa). Some straights hate trans (and visa versa). I haven't even pealed the first layer of our collective bigotry.

Each bigot has his/her reasons for hating, distrusting, marginalizing another group. It has nothing to do with ethnicity, religion, or gender preference. Nothing. Those are excuses. Bigots hate for they are insecure in themselves and need someone else to blame. Bigots hate because they fear differences, which tamper with their insecurities. Bigots hate because they have been taught to hate and they never evaluated the reasons for the hate.

Bigots fire their hatred in a furnace fueled by ignorance and detached cruelty. In this Hellish fury, their fears and insecurities conjoin. It generalizes individual emotion, and they apply it to an entirety. They achieve in their minds a notion of universality, enabling them to create a one-dimensional enemy who threatens their "sacred" paradigm. Threatened and afraid, they dehumanize others and supersize themselves. And with the miracle of malice, they transform the inhumane into justice.

It's not an American problem.

It's a world problem.

It's a human problem.

*To be fair to our overseas observers, most Americans see events out of context. They view fellow Americans, especially those who are not neighbors, two dimensionally. Like the overseas observers, they end up with a distorted image of their own country.

Ain't No Hate in Georgia!

In the state of peaches and peanuts, there are no hate crimes. Imagine that. None. Georgia must be special. So, a black man can go out for a run, stop at a work site for a drink of water, and continue his run. He can be assured that the two men chasing in the pickup truck don't hate, distrust or suspect him because he is black. He can be certain that the man who shoots him and utters a slur as he dies doesn't hate, distrust, or suspect him of a crime because he is black.

Ahmaud Arbery must have died assured because the Georgia legislature claims there's no hate in Georgia's crimes.

Georgia must be a wonderful world. A racial utopia. Paradise found.

On paper anyway.

It's an illusion, a fantasy. Wrap up a crime in the nonsensical worlds of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny governerd by the Mad Hatter and you get Georgia.

Arbery never lived in that Wonderland. He assuredly would claim he was the victim of a hate crime. Chased by a pickup. Shot three times. For what? Nothing.

As his mother Wanda Cooper-Jones makes clear in a video posted in the New York Times, Georgia along with three other states have no legislative provisions for hate crime.

Theirs Is the Kingdom of Heaven

Margaret Renki wrote an open letter to her fellow white Christians in the New York Times. She starts: “Our sins are grievous, but we are not yet beyond redemption.” Give it a read. She concluded:

 Our sins are grievous, but these Christians remind us that we are not yet beyond redemption. It is time to act on what we say we believe. We need to remember the words of the prophet Isaiah: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.” We need to remember the words of Jesus — “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’s sake” — and join the righteous cause of the protesters. For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Will America Change?

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor wrote a column for the New Yorker entitled “How Do We Change America?” In the conclusion, the author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, penned the following:

The protests are building on the incredible groundwork of a previous iteration of the Black Lives Matter movement. Today, young white people are compelled to protest not only because of their anxieties about the instability of this country and their compromised futures in it but also because of a revulsion against white supremacy and the rot of racism. Their outlooks have been shaped during the past several years by the anti-racist politics of the B.L.M. movement, which move beyond seeing racism as interpersonal or attitudinal, to understanding that it is deeply rooted in the country’s institutions and organizations.

I wish I had that much faith in Americans. In ten years, many young protesters will have careers. They will marry, have children, and decide to buy a home. Where is the first question. Where the school districts are good, of course. Across America, most communities fund education with revenue from local real estate taxes. The greater the value of the real estate, the greater the revenue. Towns have zoned accordingly for the past 70 years. Large plots of land for each home. Only single-family dwellings. No apartments. No housing for low-income families. Therefore, the richest towns can afford the most competitive teachers' salaries and better facilities and teaching tools. Essentially, they usually have the best education programs for children of the nation’s wealthiest.

America will not change until individuals change how they view education. States—if not the nation—must spend similar amounts for the education of all individuals regardless of where they live. Some states are trying, but they are meeting tremendous resistance from local homeowners. Most people agree we need more low-income housing, and most people agree NIMB (not in my backyard), offering many excuses—traffic congestion, change to the neighborhood aesthetics, and environmental issues few ever realized were an issue until the building permit was issued for a low-income building.

Public universities and colleges must stop raising tuitions, making a college degree financially easier for the lower 60% of the nation’s families to send their children.

How is this accomplished? We must raise local and federal taxes—especially on those in the top 20%, who have watched as their effective tax rate decline over the past 40 years. How many protesters will back that initiative? Based on the experience with my generation, few.

Without parity in education for all communities, the distribution of opportunities and wealth will remain inequitable. The poor will carry the burden, a burden made heavier during the past 20 years when not only the top 1% but the top 20% have become richer and the bottom 40% have remained even or become poorer.

The Twitterer in Chief & His Circus of Fools

Professional football is weird. Teams pay large salaries to talented men. They build them up, suit them in armor, and send them onto a 100-yard field to hurt another group of talented men girded for battle. Many players retain a pride in their performance long after they retire, long after their bodies crumble from the beatings they took playing America's favorite past time.

I'm not a fan. Most Americans think I'm an idiot. Some 264 million people watch every week, creating a fanbase larger than most countries. Not only I am not a fan, I'm in the minority, a tiny-weeny minority.

Its popularity plays large in American culture even without my support. That means money for owners, players, and sponsors. Therefore, most players zig and zag around controversial issues. Reasons vary: team contracts, endorsement contracts, negative publicity hurting family and friends, and even the attitude of their own teammates.

In 2016, quarter Colin Kaepernick stop zagging. He took a knee when a stadium played the national anthem. As he repeatedly said, it was an act of solidary with the Black Lives Matter movement. He originally planned to sit through the anthem, but former Green Beret Nate Boyer suggested taking a knee, as soldiers do for fallen comrades.

It was a simple gesture. It didn't disrespect an individual or the game. It didn't show disregard for anything American. It created not a symbol of defiance but one of mourning. It expressed a desire to eliminate injustice against African Americans, and it had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the American flag or the national anthem, as I noted in my book to you both.

A small group of NFL players followed Kaepernick's lead.

Now W. and M., you would think that was good. Not so for the nation's future commander in chief, healer of the nation, and president Donald Trump. The man who turned filing for bankruptcy into an art form politicized the symbol. At a 2017 rally, he called on NFL owners to fire any athlete who took a knee and referred to Kaepernick with vulgarity. Eventually the controversy's flame died down, not without its victims, primarily Kaepernick.

The death of George Floyd re-ignited the symbol's vitality. Protestors took a knee. In solidarity with the aims of the marchers, some police officers, politicians, and soldiers took a knee.

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees threw gasoline on the fire, claiming that no player should take a knee during a preseason game. He raised the fool's argument that the act showed disrespect for the nation's flag. Players throughout the league jumped on the statement, and took it upon themselves to re-educate Brees. It was a miracle. Rather than retrenching, Brees listened, learned, and endorsed its practice.

It must be difficult. There are many old dogs, and most never learn new tricks. For example, our Twitterer in Chief offered this reaction to Brees's new position: “We should be standing up straight and tall, ideally with a salute, or a hand on heart. There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag — NO KNEELING!” He takes a patriotic act and places it in the sanctum sanctorum* of Americanism. Giving sanctity to that one act is ludicrous. Half the people in the stands are drunk. (Tailgating is hard.)

He, therefore, is the definition of missing the point (as well as sophomoric thinking, specious reasoning, and simple lying).

Guys, this is the reason I worry for your futures. Not because of one old dog. Alone, Trump is nothing. He's not alone. The fool has a circus of followers.

*I am referring to the sanctum sanctorum as a metaphor of the building in the Old Testament. It's not a reference to the residence of Marvel Comics Doctor Strange.

"I Am Not Your Negro"

W. and M., I have decided to "personalize" this blog.*  You both inspired, motivated, and even guilted me into writing on this topic, and even as I type, you are unaware of your affect on me.

It's in your wide smiles. The sparkle of your brown eyes. Your jokes. Your running. Your baseball games. Your bicycle rides. Your virtuous humility. The essential you. You. The luxuriance of your lives feeds me, enabling me to grow, to appreciate life and its value, giving it a renew luminence.

You have given so much in just a few years, with a few words, and not nearly enough hugs.

I have not reciprocated--at least in the way I could have, should have.

With understatement I write, America has been unkind to African Americans. It has already been unkind to you, not in ways that you have noticed but in the minds of too many non-African Americans. Not only whites, other ethnicities as well. Passing you on the street or in stores and maybe even in your mixed-race school, they have peg you differently from themselves, less than themseves, and maybe even a burden to themselves.

They are ignorant, self-absorbed, and probably self-loathing, looking for a scapegoat for their own inadequacies and, therefore, absorb and nourish the metastasizing ailment of bigotry. It eats at them, feeding on their ignorance, their lack of charity, and the absence of empathy.

I'm an old white guy saying this. What gives me the right? I'm your grandfatther. As some individuals may quickly point out, I, nor my forebears, have lived with the torment bestowed on your forebears. I have witnessed it. I have stumbled trying to make a difference.

A few days ago, I was shopping. The woman checking me out was African American. America's streets were alive with protest over the death of George Floyd and all the other indignities imposed on African Americans. I wanted to show empathy. There she was helping me during the COVID-19 pandemic while living in a country that still have not grasped the nature of its own injustices. I asked how she and her family were doing. She assumed I was referring to the pandemic. When she realized I was referring to the protests, an awkwardness emerged. It could have been my phrasing. It could have been uncomfortable experiences talking about racial matters with other whites. She politely shut the conversation down.

I realized Americans--white and black--lack a means of communicating honestly about white America's problem.

It should have been clear to me. In college, I read Native Son by Richard Wright. It moved me like no other book had. Wright made it clear that I didn't understand the American black experience.

I went to the college bookstore looking for another book by Wright. (This is the days long before the Internet.) I discovered Notes on Native Son by an author whom I never knew--James Baldwin. He is brilliant. Should say was brilliant. The man knew how to examine the issue of race, the issue of white oppression of African Americans, and it all seemed so simple and yet not for a young white college kid. Since, I have read most of his works. I taught them in college courses, and in each class, there was one African American student who gave me new understanding of what Baldwin was writing.

Recently, I Am Not Your Negro was produced. For months, I intended to watch it, but as with most movies, I forgot about it. Tonight, I found it on Amazon Prime. It's the story of Baldwin's last work, which he never completed. It's depressing, insightful, and celebratory of the African American culture and its history. If you have not watched it, do. If you have not read James Baldwin, do.

His exploration of himself and America will be the light in America's storm.

*Using your initials isn't personal. For that, I'm sorry. I worry, though. I worry that in this country, some individual may take their dislike of me or my words and penalize you. It may sound overly cautious. Then again, it doesn't.

The Killing of Americans by Their Police

Police in the United States are 50% more likely to kill a Latino and 300% more likely to take the life of an African American than a European American, according to this chart that a friend sent us from Reddit. At the same time, the overall American death rate at the hands of police is 100% that of Canada's, 4000% times higher than Great Britain's, and 10,000% times worse than Japan's. We researched the data. It's accurate based on the research used by the creators.

We Are His Voice?

Yesterday, the police released Lester Hall, the second passenger in George Floyd's car. Hall told investigators Floyd cooperated and didn't resist arrest. The New York Times quoted him as saying: "I walk with Floyd. I know that I’m going to be his voice."

We all should be his voice.

Yet Again: "I Can't Breathe." Death.

I have nothing to say but read the beginning of this article from the New York Times:

A black man who called out “I can’t breathe” before dying in police custody in Tacoma, Wash., was killed as a result of oxygen deprivation and the physical restraint that was used on him, according to details of a medical examiner’s report released on Wednesday.

The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office concluded that the death of the man, Manuel Ellis, 33, was a homicide. Investigators with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department were in the process of preparing a report about the March death, which occurred shortly after an arrest by officers from the Tacoma Police Department, said the sheriff’s spokesman, Ed Troyer.

Vacillating Between Hope and Fear

I vacillate between hope and fear. For example, I saw that hundreds of people in my former Connecticut home town were protesting the killing of George Floyd. That brought hope, but I remembered the fights over low-income housing in the town. It's a town who has zoning restrictions that keeps most people in the lower economic scale out of town. It's a town whose residents avoid coming to my side of town, the one closest to Bridgeport, the area where people of color shopped. It's a town where a neighbor called the police because four blacks kids were playing basketball in my backyard with my sons.

Protesting is easy. Change is hard.

Atlanta's Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said it better in a New York Times column today:

I frantically screamed into the phone to my teenage son: “Lance, WHERE ARE YOU?!”

Social media posts were swirling that protests were being planned in Atlanta in response to the death of George Floyd, a black Minnesotan, while a police officer knelt on his neck.

Although as mayor, the chief of police reports to me, in that moment, I knew what every other parent to a black child in America knows: I could not protect my son. To anyone who saw him, he was simply who he is, a black man-child in the promised land that we all know as America.

I know that as a mayor of one of the largest cities in our country, I should now be offering solutions. But the only comforting words I have to offer so far are those that I know to be most true: that we are better than this; that we as a country are better than the barbaric actions that we are forced to keep watching play out on our screens like a grotesque horror movie stuck on repeat. We are better than the hatred and anger that consumes so many of us. We are better than this deplorable disease called racism that remains so rampant.

I now share some of her feelings about her son for my grandsons are African American. Mayor Bottoms is correct. We are better than the hatred and anger. We are better than this deplorable disease called racism.  We also are a society that used Christianity and obtuse republican (reference to the political philosophy, not the party) notion of governance to justify slavery and later Jim Crow. With those justifications, horror rained down on African Americans while European Americans sat at home around the fireplace, radio, or television, oblivious to it all. European Americans are better than that. What will shake them from the complacency? What will force them to take political and economic action? The death of George Floyd? Maybe, maybe not. Trayvon Martin's demise did nothing as was the case with Ahmaud Arbery's and Breonna Taylor's deaths. (I mention only these three, because they happened between March 1 and May 15 2020.) Or maybe the death of James Shurlock. He died Monday night.

I am waiting for hope to return.

Which Group Is Worse?

The looters and miscreants who have infiltrated the protests for racial equity or the President and his inner circle, warm in the bunker, threatening protesters with dogs and awesome weapons?

In part, the miscreants of May have hijacked demonstrations against racial inequity. Under the guise of caring about their fellow men and women, they destroy property,  steal, shot people, and rammed police with SUV's. They want no justice, no peace. They want chaos in which they exploit people and places for their own gain--emotionally or financially.

They are reprihensible, but they appear like pure cherubs when compared to the supposedly President group.

Last night, the President and his aides staged an elaborate celebration of law and order. It started before his press conference. He called the nation's governors, ridiculing many for not using force to squash the demonstrations. On Monday evening, he spoke to the press. He offered limp empathy to those protesting. He spoke awkwardly about people color, especially "the" African Americans. The cherry on his sundae: He threatened violence against all protesters--in the nation's capital and any place else in the nation if governors and mayors didn't quell disturbances. Meanwhile, he put hundreds of police officers and protesters in damage when he order the officers to push back the protesters in Lafayette Square Park. Why? He needed another photo-op.

Katie Rogers reported in the New York Times:

"As police sirens blared in the background, Mr. Trump, his lips set in a thin line, stood with his back to the boarded-up, graffiti-laden facade of the buttermilk yellow church. He cradled a Bible, bouncing it in his hands as if testing its weight.

'"Is that your Bible?' a reporter yelled.

“'It’s a Bible,' Mr. Trump responded, and hoisted up the book so reporters could see.

"The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, who watched the scene unfold while away from the church visiting with her mother, said church officials were not told of the plan and expressed outrage at the White House’s use of riot-control tactics on a generally peaceful crowd to clear a path for the president."

President Blubberbutt was weighing that Bible. It's a big book with lots of big, really big, words, and he probably wonders why didn't Abraham, Moses, and Jesus do a Fox and Friends show in the desert.

President Sowide loves live television. So, his staff staged even more for their president ham. His staff not only put the going-bald President in harm's way, they put the church in the line of fire.

His aidess lucked out. God turned off the news after the press conference. If she had stayed tuned, the heavens would have rattled at the sight of the pussy-petting, bankruptcy mastermind holding a bible. She would have sent a lightning bolt up his ass, and it would have to be a large bolt considering the size of his rear. 

So, which group is worse? The Miscreants of May or the Blubbercrat of DC?

Miscreants are commonplace. Pick any group of people. You can disregard gender and ethnicity or can created groups based on gender and ethnicity. You will always find one common element: 15-25% of the group members are miscreants,, willing to cheat anyone for their personal gain.

Bubbler is harder to pin down. President Baldy supposedly has an Ivy League education (he does have the degree, but does he have the education?). He's rich. He has a powerful position in American society, albeit not as powerful as he thinks or wishes. (There's a reason he loves Vlad Putin.) He is a bully. He's also a chicken-shit. (Just ask Vlad.) Even though the White House itself is almost a bunker, on the first night of the protests, President Blubberbutt soiled his pants. There wasn't a Secret Service agent willing to put him in a diaper, so they rushed him to the bunker. (That's my theory.)

The Donald fears people of color, like most of the people in his support base. So, as a bully he strikes his enemies before they strike him. The call to the nation's governors, press conference, and standing with a Bible on a church steps salve his fears, placated his election base, and created the illusion he "found" Jesus. (If he had found Jesus, he probably would have him arrested as a member of antifa.) He did it all not in the name of national unity but in his bizarre effort to get re-elected.

Which group is worse? You pick.

 

"White Silence Is White Violence." Maybe Silent No Longer

With the videoed death of a man at the hands of police, anger, pain, fear, and frustration burst through the veneer of peace that has covered America's systemic racism. It's an old story, as Spike Lee noted on Don Lemon's show last night, "I Can't Breathe: Black Men Living & Dying," and as Trevor Noah reported two days ago.

There was a new dimension.

People--both white and black--took the streets of American cities.

African-Americans were exhausted by years of fearing for their own and their loved ones' lives at the hands of poorly trained, poorly disciplined, or simply racist police officers. There was rage about the inaction of Americans to solve the problem, a white problem.

George Floyd's death also awakened many white Americans. They joined the protests.

They were not alone. Public officers and officials joined the protestors. A sheriff in Michigan removed his helmet and joined in the protest march. Houston's police chief promised an escort for George Floyd and his family when he is returned to his birthplace to be buried. (See the New York Times article. You could also view the CNN report.)

More important, police officials have condemned the actions of the Minneapolis police officers responsible for the death of Floyd, including Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, as noted in a CNN interview:

"In an emotional response to George Floyd's family Sunday night, the Minneapolis police chief says in his mind, all four officers involved in the black man's killing bear the same responsibility. 'Mr. Floyd died in our hands and so I see that as being complicit,' Chief Medaria Arradondo told CNN's Sara Sidner. 'Silence and inaction, you're complicit. If there was one solitary voice that would have intervened ... that's what I would have hoped for.'...

"Arradondo's response Sunday came after Floyd's brother asked the chief if he would work to get justice for Floyd. As the chief answered, Floyd's brother wept. Arradondo called the killing a 'violation of humanity,' and said he didn't need any more time than what he had to remove the officers from their duties. 'There are absolute truths in life; we need air to breathe,' the chief said. 'The killing of Mr. Floyd was an absolute truth that it was wrong.'" 

In a moment of solidary, people around the world protested the events surrounding Floyd's death.

In the darkness of this moment, a light shined on our universal humanity, making me wonder for the first time in many years that there's hope for America yet.

I need that hope--not for me. I'm an old guy. There's less of my life in front of me than behind me. I need it for my grandsons who have much, much more ahead of them. I don't want them to be knelt on, "chokeholded", or shot. I want to imagine their lives running as smoothly as it did for my white sons. Same opportunities. Same justice. Same right to pursue their happiness.

At the same time, I feel guilty or ashamed. I have not identified the feeling.

I am "new" to this. The injustice against people of color in America no longer is an abstract, a two-dimensional world of recognizing unfairness and analyzing potential solutions. I lived in that two-dimensional world for decades. My grandsons infused it with a third dimension. It's now personal and, therefore, more frightening and frustrating as it has been for people of color for centuries.