The Stories We Tell Ourselves....

Now, it is entirely possible that we may all go under. But until that happens, I prefer to believe that since a society is created by men, it can be remade by men. The price for this transformation is high. White people will have to ask themselves precisely why they found it necessary to invent the nigger; for the nigger is a white invention, and white people invented him out of terrible necessities of their own. And every white citizen of this country will have to accept the fact that he is not innocent, because those dogs and those hoses are being turned on American children, on American soil, with the tacit consent of the American Republic; those crimes are being committed in your name.

- James Baldwin, “The White Problem” (1964)

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As we begin, let me address it straight on: yes, James Baldwin uses what we’ve euphemistically come to call the ‘N-word’ … so I’ve recorded it as he wrote it specifically to highlight how offensive it is to see (which, I believe, was his intent as well…). Perhaps in our discomfort we’ll be motivated to address what the creation of this concept and its use have really mean – and still mean – and, in so doing, to end it….

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As I’ve written previously, at times like these, when I’m dismayed by what I perceive in our society and/or world, I find myself returning to three spiritual-social justice pillars: post-Mecca Malcolm X, post-“I Have A Dream” speech MLK and post-Paris James Baldwin. Their words and wisdom comfort me, challenge me, give me hope and inspire me to keep pressing forward in my commitment to helping to make this world a better, more equitable and more inclusive place.

Last week, I turned to MLK, especially as captured in the brilliant tome To Shape A New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Professors Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry. This week it’s to Baldwin, especially as captured in the brilliant volume The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, edited by Randall Kenan.

With both of these explorations, I’m most struck by the reality that so much of what they share is still so relevant because so much of the work remains.…

In his 1964 essay “The White Problem,” Baldwin ruminates on the “invented reality” of identity – especially in the particularly virulent form in which it manifests itself in American society, that of race – and how this has negatively impacted our ability to realize the promise of our nation. As he notes:

The crucial element I wish to consider here is that element of the life which we consider to be an identity; the way in which one puts oneself together, what one imagines oneself to be; for one example, the invented reality standing before you now, who is arbitrarily known as Jimmy Baldwin. This invented reality contains a great number of elements, all of them extremely difficult, if not impossible, to name. The invented reality has struck a certain kind of bargain with the world: he has a name, we know he does, and we think, therefore, that we know who he is. But it is not that simple. The truth, forever, for everybody, is that one is a stranger to oneself, and that one must deal with the stranger day in and day out – that one, in fact, is forced to create, as distinct from invent, oneself.

In essence, Baldwin is saying that all of us individually and then collectively create personae that govern the way we interact with ourselves, each other and the world … but this choice* has consequences:

(O)ne begins to discover, with great pain, and very much against one’s will, that whatever it is you want, what you want, at bottom, must be to become yourself: there is nothing else to want. Whatever one’s journey is, one’s got to accept the fact that disaster is one of the conditions under which you will make it. … And you will learn a certain humility, because the terms that you have invented, which you think describe and define you, inevitably collide with the facts of life.

It would seem that in the “Land of the Free,” such identity creation would be virtually costless and that living into it would be almost frictionless, at least in theory, but, as Baldwin elucidates, reality is very different: as members of a larger group, including that of a society, we often have to deal with the consequences of identity characteristics that are thrust upon us by others. Isn’t this exactly what race – which has never been, nor was ever intended to be, a neutral concept in theory or in practice – really is? The “facts of life” for Americans are that race looms large and that it does so with impacts that can at best be politely described as disparate.

In other words, there are the stories that we create about ourselves and about each other, and it’s these latter stories that have a way of being used to include some and, most often, exclude others. Baldwin wisely cautions us to be careful of the stories that we construct, as we too often confuse them with reality to pernicious effect:

The beginnings of this country (it seems to me a banality to say it, but, alas, it has to be said) have nothing whatever to do with the myth we have created about it. The country did not come about because a handful of people in various parts of Europe said, “I want to be free….” (T)he people who settled the country, the people who came here, came here for one reason, no matter how disguised. They came here because they thought it would be better here than wherever they were. … Anybody who was making it in England did not get on the Mayflower. It is important that one begin to recognize this because part of the dilemma this country is that it has managed to believe the myth it has created about its past, which is another way of saying that it has entirely denied its past.

As I reflect on it now, I understand what he means so much more profoundly: much of what I was taught as a youth was the myths of our society and especially, in my ‘history’ and other social sciences classes, the myths of our country. While I can’t say that the particularly challenging aspects of our national history weren’t addressed, I think it would be a fair assessment to say that they were softened and, in some cases, glossed over entirely. Our horrific treatment of Native Americans and enslaved Africans come to mind here, as they do for Baldwin:

In this extraordinary endeavor to create the country called America, a great many crimes were committed. … I’m talking about denying what one does. This is a much more sinister matter. We did several things in order to conquer the country. There existed, at the time we reached the shores, a group of people who would never heard of machines, or, as far as I know, of money – which we had heard about. We promptly eliminated them; we killed them. I’m talking about the Indians.… I’m willing to bet anything you like that not many American children being taught American history have any real sense of what that collision was like, what we really did, how we really achieved the extermination of the Indians, or what that meant. … I suspect all those cowboy-Indian stories are designed to reassure us that no crime was committed. We’ve made a legend out of a massacre.

It’s in this context, I hope, that you can understand how for many People of Color the near-constant calls for “law and order” from our white fellow citizens can seem quizzical if not downright hypocritical: it’s easy to call for law and order when you’ve broken all moral (et. al.) laws to create a system in which you’re dominant and then demand that the rest of us respect this. So, too, with wealth inequality in this country: it’s easy to suggest that the vast differences in wealth among members of various racial communities is a reflection of individual initiative and the markets of our hallowed, well-functioning capitalist system when you choose not to acknowledge that much of this wealth was built on the backs of enslaved Africans and that for centuries our government’s policies have proactively privileged whites over the descendants of those Africans (whether it’s land grants after the Civil War or FHA redlining after World War II or…).

In fact, the denial of these realities is a defining characteristic of the society that we’ve built on top of this myth:

What is most terrible is that American white men are not prepared to believe my version of the story, to believe that it happened. In order to avoid believing that, they have set up in themselves a fantastic system of evasions, denials, justifications, which system is about to destroy their great grasp of reality, which is another way of saying their moral sense. 

What I am trying to say is that the crime is not the most important thing here. What makes our situation serious is that we have spent so many generations pretending that it did not happen.

In other words, the myth of our country has shielded us, by design, from addressing some of the structural elements that have led to the reality of it being so very different for a hundred million or more of our fellow citizens. But when the illusion of that myth is shattered as it was by the murder of George Floyd by unfeeling and inhumane agents of the state, captured on video for us all to see, it’s damn near impossible to deny that supremely important aspects of the myth like equal justice for all are anything but fantasies that reinforce our comfort and help us “deny what one does,” to use Mr. Baldwin’s phrase.

I can only hope that the peaceful demonstrations in our country and around the world – by people of all races, colors and creeds – in response to the tragedy of Mr. Floyd’s murder represent a turning point and signal a willingness to rewrite our social contract as well as the myth of it. It is perhaps sad that it takes being confronted so incontrovertibly with the brutality that we’ve allowed – that’s been done in our name, to use Mr. Baldwin’s phrase – to motivate us to do this, but so be it. Despite the unfortunate reason, let’s take this opportunity to create anew a truly equitable and inclusive society and thereby ensure that Mr. Floyd’s tragic death was not in vain.

I can further hope that one of the changes that we choose to make in creating our society anew is not to eliminate race but to expect and encourage its celebration: the former would be to deny the reality that there are some differences among us whereas the latter treats these as the opportunities for mutual learning and growth that they truly are. In this way, we’ll create a community in which it’s OK to be whoever you are and to be celebrated for this idiosyncrasy rather than denigrated for it. When this day comes, we’ll truly be living into our foundational creed that all of us can indeed experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as God-given endowments to be enjoyed individually and shared collectively.…

Thus spake Zarathustra to himself while ascending, comforting his heart with harsh maxims: for he was sore at heart as he had never been before. …

 

Before my highest mountain do I stand, and before my longest wandering: therefore must I first go deeper down than I ever ascended: – Deeper down into pain than I ever ascended, even into its darkest flood! So willeth my fate. Well! I am ready.

 - Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Wanderer,”
Thus Spake Tharathustra (1885)

*  I'm reminded here of the excellent work of Prof. Kenji Yoshino in exploring the consequences of identity constructs in the context of individuals navigating their affiliations with larger groups. Specifically, I recommend his book Covering highly: it thoughtfully and incisively lays bare the challenge of ‘fitting in’ and the costs, psychological and otherwise, associated with this fundamental human behavior driven by the desire and need to belong.

What Price Freedom?

Americans are the youngest country, the largest country, and the strongest country, we like to say, and yet the very notion of change, real change, throws Americans into a panic and they look for any label to get rid of any dissenter. A country which is supposed to be built on dissent, built on the value of the individual, now distrust dissent as least as much as any totalitarian government can and debases the individual in many ways because it places security and money above the individual; and when these things are cultivated and honored in the country, no matter what else it may have, it is in danger of perishing, because no country can survive, it cannot survive, without a patient, active responsibility for all its citizens. 

- James Baldwin, “What Price Freedom” (1964)

At times like these, when I’m dismayed by what I perceive in our society and/or world, I find myself returning to three spiritual-social justice pillars: post-Mecca Malcolm X, post-“I Have A Dream” speech MLK and post-Paris James Baldwin. Their words and wisdom comfort me, challenge me, give me hope and inspire me to keep pressing forward in my commitment to helping to make this world a better, more equitable and more inclusive place.

Last week, I turned to MLK, especially as captured in the brilliant tome To Shape A New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Professors Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry. This week it’s to Baldwin, especially as captured in the brilliant volume The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, edited by Randall Kenan.

With both of these explorations, I’m most struck by the reality that so much of what they share is still so relevant because so much of the work remains.…

For example, consider this from Mr. Baldwin’s essay “What Price Freedom?”:

I was trying to a suggest before that what the country has done to one-tenth of its citizens has had a disastrous effect on the country. It is obvious – or maybe it is not so obvious, as it seems to be a controversial point, but it seems to me obvious – that if you are intending to establish, to live in, to create a democracy, then you have a responsibility to all of your citizens. It would seem obvious to me that any son, any native son or daughter, has all the rights than any other native son or daughter has.

It’s bad enough for this not to be so; that’s bad enough. But what is really much worse is the system of lies, evasions, and naked oppression designed to pretend this isn’t so. … (T)he militancy and the vitality that I heard … today come from the kind of energy which allows you, which in fact forces you, to examine everything, taking nothing for granted. … It is a vitality, in short, which allows you to believe, to act on the belief, that it is your country, and your responsibility to your country is to free it, and to free it you have to change it.

Yes, fifty-six years after he wrote this, it’s none the less true as the unprecedented social unrest that we’re experiencing at present reminds us. There is not and never has been true equality in this country, as the disproportionate deaths of African-Americans have demonstrated since before its founding. Before the first half of the 20^th century, we were enslaved for hundreds of years and then subjected to a perfectly legal though morally indefensible apartheid for the better part of another hundred years during which millions of us died and untold thousands of us were lynched, either by private actors or the state. Since the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, the killing has continued, especially at the hands of those sworn to serve and protect us, as was the case with Jimmie Lee Jackson in 1965 or with Amadou Diallo at the end of the last millennium or with Eric Garner, Alton Sterling and Sandra Bland just a few years ago or with George Floyd last week.

That #DeathByPolice is really a thing in our society, especially for unarmed African-Americans, is both an indictment of us – or, to use Mr. Baldwin’s words, “part of the system of lies, evasions, and naked oppression designed to pretend this isn’t so” – as well as proof of the difficult, transformational work that each of us has left to do – or, again quoting him, that we must “act on the belief, that it is your country, and your responsibility to your country is to free it, and to free it you have to change it.” How profound the need for change remains.…

And doubtless many of us feel now like he did then:

I am going to take my freedom. That problem is resolved. The real problem is the price. Not the price I will pay, but the price the country will pay.

And why will this price likely be prohibitive?

People are as free as they wish to become. If one thinks of Americans in this way, “freedom” is used here as a synonym for “comfort.” People think they are free because they don’t have a military machine oppressing them.…

And, yet, as has been evident in our nation’s capital this week, in fact, we are beginning to experience this type of oppression in response to our primary need for comfort, in this case expressed as the growing outrage over the modest amount of rioting and property damage in many cities, which stands in contrast to the overwhelmingly peaceful protests and yet furnishes a convenient excuse for so many to look beyond the appalling structural causes of the present unrest.

Or, as Mr. Baldwin put it:

I still believe when our country has lost all human feeling you can do anything to anybody and justify it and we do know that in this country we have done just that.

How do we know that our country has “lost all human feeling”? One indication is certainly when its ostensible leader conflates a fake economic statistic with the supposed approval of a man just murdered by the police in one of our major cities. How craven and inhumane is it to suggest that a man who would undoubtedly prefer to be alive still would even care about an incorrect economic indicator that, when parsed, actually reveals that members of his community are experiencing heightened disadvantage?

And yet I choose to remain hopeful, including because so many of the so-called silent majority seem to have been awakened by this latest demonstration of the profound cruelty and inequality at the core of our society and, in addition to supporting the cause of protest philosophically, have actually joined us in the streets in peaceful solidarity with our demand that the nation live up to and into its constitutional creeds. Intriguingly, as with the Civil Rights Movement, young people of all hues and backgrounds and aspirations have rallied to this emanicipational cause, and yet they have also been joined by far more of their elders, many of them children of the 1960s, who feel compelled to finish the work left uncompleted since their own youth.

(Of course, this wouldn’t be modern America if there weren’t a lesser but nonetheless troubling ‘innovation’ amidst our civil unrest: the craven, immoral and anti-social behavior of groups of far-right agitators who’ve been identified as inciting the resulting rioting in order to promote Accelerationism, which is their desire to provoke a race war in our country [that they assume they’ll win and then be able to install and govern a white supremacist state thereafter]. That Accelerationism, too, is really a thing in our society is also an indictment of us as well as a dispiriting reminder of just how much work there is left to do.)

What I value most about James Baldwin is that he always kept it real, as we say today. This made many people – some of Color but a vast majority of those who were white – very uncomfortable in his time, as, no doubt, it would do today were they to examine and consider his perspectives and prescriptions. So, for some if not many, they can’t see Baldwin as a bridge to our better future. But I do: as he noted, not every challenge that is faced can be changed, but everything that is changed must first be faced. In this way, his clarion call to truth beckons me initially to greater clarity and then, most importantly, to action, firmly grounded in the world as it is and on our way to how we want it and, hopefully, will make it, to be….

(N)ow we have seen with our own eyes the danger we are in. We have seen with our own eyes what happens to a society when it allows itself to be ruled by the least able in the most abject among us. We have seen what happens when the word “democracy” is taken to be a synonym for mediocrity; is not taken to mean to raise all of its members to the highest possible level, but on the contrary to reduce such members as aspire to excellence down to the lowest common denominator.

- James Baldwin, “What Price Freedom” (1964)

Yes, he can go lower, but we must go higher ... to the polls!

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands

in moments of comfort and convenience,

but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige,

and even his life for the welfare of others.

- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Strength to Love (1963)

A new low … until the next one that is….

You think that we would have learned not to underestimate his inhumanity by now: what is this, like, the 7,842^nd new low? (Or is it the 29,712^th? I’ve lost count.) Yes, that was the President of the United States having peaceful demonstrators tear-gassed so that he could stage a photo-op by standing in front of a boarded-up church and holding the Bible so awkwardly that you know that he has no familiarity with it whatsoever. Two Corinthians, indeed.…

On one level, of course I’m outraged: what decent human being isn’t or can’t be by such a fundamentally disrespectful and craven act? But on another sadder, more resigned level, I’m just tired: tired of the inhumanity, tired of the immorality and tired of the immolation of the country that we hold dear.…

So how do you respond to such a sickening act of depravity and the abdication of leadership? Not in kind. As angry as any of us may be, let’s not give him the excuse to focus on anyone else’s lawless behavior. And I’m mindful that there are right-wing groups mixing in with the legitimate protesters, committing acts of vandalism and trying to incite even greater chaos: film them, call them out and then let them go.

Then get back to the business that should be our primary focus for the next five months and a day: getting as many fellow citizens registered to vote and then marching in massive protests on Tuesday, November 3^rd, to the place where we can truly be heard: the polls. Truth be told, it almost doesn’t matter what happens between now and then, as long as every single person in the streets now and every person of good conscience shows up on November 3^rd.

Don’t get me wrong, I realize that there will be plenty of new lows and deliberate provocations between now and then, but we have to ignore them: to engage with this depraved inhuman and his enablers is both a complete waste of time – as is painfully, lethally clear, they’re not going to change – and a distraction from our singular focus, which is to restore some modicum of decency to our executive and legislative branches on November 3^rd and to their judicial counterpart thereafter.

As with so many other things in modern American life, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was correct in observing that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” But, as usual, we’ve chosen to remember the phrase and not the full context in which it was uttered. Here’s what the Rev. Dr. King said in a September, 1966, interview with Mike Wallace of CBS News:

I will never change in my basic idea that nonviolence is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and justice. I think for the Negro to turn to violence would be both impractical and immoral.

And I contend that the cry of Black Power is at bottom a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro.

I think we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.

As I find myself doing so often in adult life when mystified and saddened by our world, I turn to Dr. King … so this current conflagration is no different: I can find solace only in his incision and guidance.

Yes, it’s sad – maddening, even – that what he expressed more than a half-century ago is still true: that violence is both impractical and immoral as a long-term strategy for social change, that the largely white power structure in our country has made too few of the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the vast majority of African-Americans and that, in light of record economic inequality, the plight of poor People of Color has worsened in recent years (on a relative basis for sure, and, by some measures, on an absolute one).

But we have to be smarter and better in our response to the injustice we experience and to that, more broadly, that all of the dispossessed experience, especially as nefarious groups whose agendas include provoking a race war have organized to incite disorder and violence that seem to flow so naturally when pent-up anger is released. In sum, as Dr. King advised so long ago – and so frustratingly to so many at the time – we have to respond forcefully and yet nonviolently to the continuing, unaddressed injustice and inequality in our society. And the best nonviolent protest is to vote.…

Let’s not get it twisted: we are indeed experiencing the most inept, corrupt and immoral administration in memory and likely in history, but the solution to this most vexing of short-term challenges has to be the ballot box. Peaceful protest is a great thing, both to summon and demonstrate humane solidarity, but it’s still secondary to the ballot box.

And violent protest? Let’s just not: in the end, it distracts from the real issue – the profound inequality and injustice in our society – and enables corrupt elites – and even those who think of themselves as reasonable – to focus on the wrong thing and thereby avoid responsibility for engaging to address its cause.

Especially in this moment, we cannot be provoked into providing a distraction and an excuse for this administration to expand its inhumanity. In fact, I would argue, that given its track record, we should pretty much disregard it for the next five months and focus solely on registering every eligible adult in this country and having them all turn out on November 3^rd. Nothing else will matter as much as this, now or in the future.…

I abhor our president and his enablers. Shame on us that we’ve given them the ultimate seat of governmental power. But we can learn from this mistake and change this unfortunate reality on November 3^rd. So, if you’re called to march in the streets peacefully today or any day, great: please do so. By contrast, if you’re called to be disruptive in a violent way, please don’t: each such action provides justification for the continued immorality of the current regime. So whether you feel compelled to express yourself peacefully or not, be aware that the most important time for you to express yourself is in five months and a day and that the most important place to do so is at the polls.

As long as we can keep it peaceful, I’ll see you in the streets. But for the love of each other and this country, we must see each other again – all of us – on November 3^rd. If every single one of us exercises his/her/our right of expression on that day, then it’ll be the greatest protest in American history and, more than this, the beginning of a new American Dream, one that includes us all.…

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate,

adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness;

only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate,

only love can do that.

- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Strength to Love (1963)