A Disturber of the Peace....

White people go around, it seems to me, with a very carefully suppressed terror of Black people - a tremendous uneasiness. They don't know what the Black face hides. They're sure it's hiding something. what it's hiding is American history. What it's hiding is what white people know they have done, what they like doing. White people know very well one thing; it's the only thing they have to know. They know this; everything else they'll say is a lie. They know that they would not like to be Black here.

In an interview originally taped in 1979 but never aired and then unearthed in the past year, the great James Baldwin did what a prophet is supposed to do: reflect and advise. Although it’s popular now to associate prophecy solely with the incision of its progenitor’s future vision, the truth is that the greatest prophecy is grounded in a context that is usually damning and demanding. Such is the case with Mr. Baldwin’s:

The American sense of reality is dictated by what Americans are trying to avoid. And if you’re trying to avoid reality, how can you face it?

It’s nearly impossible to believe, but could he have foreseen America four decades hence?

Likely so, as he suggested:

I was seven years old forty-seven years ago and nothing has changed since then.

Now more than forty years later still, at least before the elections last month, our country has been embroiled in a fight about our history. Millions of the largely uninformed showed up to school board and town council meetings or sat in their living rooms and railed against the evils of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Of course, few if any of them can explain what CRT really is, but, like one older gentleman who was interviewed (at approx. 9:15 of this video), they are convinced that they don’t like it … and, in so doing, have proven its truth.

So, too, with “The 1619 Project” and its subsequent best-selling book.

Yet, I suspect that they weren’t just ignorant. In fact, I believe that they were either consciously or unconsciously purposeful in their fierce and fiery objection: they rallied and railed against that which they feared, the exposure of American history in all of its glory … and gloriously distressing inhumanity. They don’t want transparency: the lies that we’ve been taught are not only incredibly durable but supremely useful. As when we begin to confront our history in earnest, we begin to realize just how blameless we are not.

As Mr. Baldwin explained it passionately to his white interlocutor in this most prescient interview:

Look, I don’t mean it to you personally. ... I have nothing against you. I don’t even know you personally … but I know you historically. You can’t have it both ways: you can’t swear to the freedom of all mankind and put me in chains.

White Supremacy is as American as apple pie. In fact, as the popular social media meme goes, when protesting it people assume that you’re protesting America itself. This would certainly explain the ferocity of the (continuing) effort to obscure our history.

As Mr. Baldwin noted in a piece published almost two decades before the unearthed interview, not everything can be changed but everything that is changed must be faced. What we Americans don’t want to face is the brutal reality of our history and how our foundational documents are a lie: when those words were written by enslavers, it was not true that, collectively, we believe all men (and women) to be equal and abundantly endowed … and our society reflects this to this day.

There is still “the price this republic exacts (from) any Black man or woman walking and that is a crime.” That price is the subjection of (the vast majority of) African-Americans – and all People of Color and the Otherwise Other (i.e., LGBTQ+ community members, non-Christians, etc.) – to a patently unfair and systemically racist/biased set of life options. Though many try to pretend that this isn’t so, as the great humorist and social observer Chris Rock has noted, its self-evident truth is proven by the reality that few if any whites would trade places with him (even though he’s rich) because, first and foremost, he’s Black in America.

And, sadly, I feel compelled to add, truth be told, this isn’t an exclusively a Black thing: though it is significantly so, America remains riddled with myriad -isms that systematically advantage a few while disenfranchising the many.

Hence, we are called, as Mr. Baldwin observed, like him, to live into “Mahalia’s song (that) says ‘Wake the children sleeping.’” At the precipice of losing American democracy after almost a quarter-millennium – the January 6^th Insurrection and the continuing and subsequently enhanced and immoral gerrymandering at scale by the GOP being but two of many such current indicators – it’s incumbent upon us to fight to reform and repair our society and country. If we are going to save America, we must acknowledge its full and true history and we must restructure our society so that all can live into our professed creeds (truthfully, for the first time).

James Baldwin did this brilliantly for more than thirty years before he died, so incisively, in fact, that his words have proven prophetic, his lessons have proven profound and his challenges to us have proven ever more urgent since.

In this spirit, then, will you, too, commit to being a force for positive change in our society/country/world? Will you, too, for the very best reasons and in response to Mr. Baldwin’s call, commit to being A Disturber of the Peace?

One's supposed to be a disturber of the peace....

On Politics and Religion and the Need to Separate the Two....

One of the great strengths of our political system always has been our tendency to keep religious issues in the background. By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars. …

And the religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy.

- Sen. Barry Goldwater, "Remarks Inserted into the Congressional Record" (1981) 

They say that there’re two things you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company: politics and religion … and then it hit me the other day that the vast majority of my writing – away from my professional publications – is about these two taboo topics.

Hmmm.

Which got me to trying to explain this: Am I just too stubborn that I won’t leave alone what I’m supposed to leave alone? Or am I so anti-social that I don’t respond appropriately to the cues which we’re supposed to adhere? In other words, is there something wrong with me that I seem to insist on dealing with the things that we're supposed to avoid?

Well, folks, I’ve given it a lot of consideration - objectively, of course! - and I’ve determined that the answer to the above queries is “no.” Well then, how can and do I answer for this tendency to plumb the uncomfortable and/or forbidden?

It’s very simple, actually: I deal with the topics that we’re supposed to avoid because our avoidance of them doesn’t make them go away but does make it harder for us to interact with them and each other in constructive and mutually beneficial ways. You don’t realize your full potential by avoiding challenges but by surmounting them.

So, here goes:

Let’s start with the political context: we are now six months past an actual insurrection and though a fair number of the perpetrators have been arrested, the most highly placed of its supporters have faced no consequences of any significance. That Senators and Representatives conspired to overthrow the duly expressed wishes of a significant majority of our electorate is itself abominable, but it’s to our manifest discredit that we’ve enabled them to continue to roam the hallowed halls of our Capitol with impunity. Simply put, shame on them but even greater shame on us.

So let’s get this out there and stop pretending that it can be disputed: our political parties are not the same. One is focused, however effectively, on addressing issues of import to the majority of our polity, while the other is clearly seeking either to become a class of permanent practitioners of minority rule or, failing this, to trade our democracy for fascism (and, though it may go without saying, their own fascism, not someone else’s). While I’m pretty sure everyone knows my political leanings, I don’t consider it partisan in the least to state the truth: the GOP is both an embarrassment and an abandonment of its erstwhile principles, having completely thrown over any kind of conservatism, compassionate or otherwise, in favor of an immoral and inhumane commitment to the maintenance of power.

That they are the very proof and embodiment of Lord Acton’s dictum is to their and our eternal discredit.

Add to this the reality that much of the support for this deleterious group comes from people who describe themselves as followers of a Jewish pacifist mystic and yet advocate for policies that are the very antithesis of His example and teachings and we have, in a word, a mess. An enervating, gargantuan and seemingly intractable mess in which the bonds of our society are made more tenuous every day.

Now that we’ve gotten this out of the way, let’s add a bit more fuel to this fire:

For me, two great things happened last week: first, one of my greatest spiritual influences and guides, the Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks, Jr., debuted his latest book, entitled Christians Against Christianity; and, second, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) released a groundbreaking report entitled “The 2020 Census of American Religion,” which is among the most comprehensive studies of our country’s religious affiliations, locations and influences ever.

Why are these two publications so wonderful and inspiring in my view? Because, for me, they represent a clarion call for us and our society, as they reveal us to ourselves and urge us to turn away from the ugliness and true evil that we’ve come to accept and that too many of us have come to practice consistently and proactively.

For those of you who don’t know the Rev. Dr. Hendricks’ work, let’s just say that it’s in the great and grand tradition of American prophetic exhortation, grounded as it is in the uniquely African-American experience of our country. Accordingly, I’ve been greatly influenced by his perspectives and theological constructs, which have been supremely helpful as I’ve developed my idiosyncratic spirituality over the years. Simply put, I consider myself and center my personal theology in his concept of being a Follower of Jesus, a distinction he makes to differentiate those for whom the greatest calling is the emulation of our Patron’s example and teachings from those who claim to be his followers but behave, in the main, in contrast to these.

For those of you who aren’t aware of PRRI’s work, let’s just say that it’s an organization that’s dedicated to illuminating our beliefs and how these affect our relations with each other. For example, a few years ago, it studied the demographics and psychographics of various communities of religious adherents as well as those without such an affiliation. As it parsed the data from various perspectives, one of its revelations was about the insular nature of our social circles, which, it turns out, are exceedingly narrow for the majority of our fellow citizens. Is it any wonder, then, that we have so much trouble getting along across various axes of Difference? Simply put, under the leadership of its founder and CEO Robert P Jones, it’s held the mirror to us and helped to give us a most revealing and granular sense of who we really are, often in contrast to who we profess to be.

Even though I’ve studied his work for decades and thought I knew what to expect, the Rev. Dr. Hendricks’ book is figurative fire: it’s a flat-out condemnation of the decidedly unChristian behavior that too many display, grounded both in the Good Book (and especially the Gospel) and in trenchant social and spiritual analysis. I knew it would be fierce, but it’s a whole lot more than that.

Further, he complemented the publication of his new book with an article in The Progressive magazine entitled “The Spirit of the Antichrist.” Suffice it to say that its subtitle – “How the evangelical right has come to turn against what Jesus stood for” – is an accurate foreshadowing of what’s to come not only in the article but in the new book as well.

For example, of the evangelical right, he notes that “today’s … raging Christian faction openly support(s) persons and policies that are essentially antithetical to the message of Jesus Christ.” Further, they espouse “ideologies and public pronouncements that cynically distort the teachings of Christ – in the name of Christ – to serve the interests of a particular individual or group.”

Despite this, Rev. Dr. Hendricks counsels hope, specifically that those who are perverting Christianity will “realize that they have lost their moral bearings” and therefore make “an effort to regain them.” But he doesn’t propose amnesty; in fact, he urges accountability:

But if one day they should seek to become fully worthy of the faith identity they claim, they would have to confront the insidious evil of their white supremacist roots and the destructive false assumptions of their Christian nationalism. They would have to admit to and repent for the political and moral carnage they have helped wreak upon American society.

Amen.

And then the PRRI study adds some head-scratching insights to this, among them that the group that the Rev. Dr. Hendricks challenges to reform has declined to less than 15% of our population. While appalling, it does highlight the group’s exceptionally outsized influence on our politics and society, while, for me, calling into question why we would allow this to continue. Simply put, if 5 out of 6 of us see our role in society/the world so differently, why on earth would we allow ourselves to be so constrained – and, in many cases, oppressed – by such a relatively small minority?

Put differently, black folks are less than 15% of our population, too, but can you imagine American society disproportionately influenced by and run according to this minority’s preferences that it would presume to inflict on everyone else? Of course you can’t, which is the point: why we continue to cower to the immorality, inhumanity and decidedly unChristian views and policy prescriptions of evangelical Christians is as mystifying as it is unnecessary.

As the late, great Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., exhorted of us prophetically more than half a century ago, truly, we need a “radical revolution of values” to make ours an ever more just, equitable and inclusive society, and, in so doing, for the first time, really, to live up and in to its professed creeds.

This being said, the PRRI study’s numbers evidence an important but arguably under-leveraged reality: the largest cohort of our society isn’t evangelical Christians or mainstream Protestant Christians or Catholics, but “Nones,” those who claim no institutional religious affiliation. In fact, 23% of us are in this category, while another 16% of us are affiliated with (white) mainline Protestant denominations, another 14% of us are affiliated with (white) evangelical Protestant institutions and 12% of us are whites affiliated with the Catholic Church.

If one-quarter of us are religiously unaffiliated – and, it turns out, decidedly younger than the average believer – how long do you think it will be before they tire of the tyrannical and hypocritical ‘leadership’ of their evangelical neighbors? Though perhaps challenged by the reality that they are not an organized group, my intuition – and hope – is that one day soon we’ll see the assertion of its areligious will: after all, if the religiously unaffiliated assert their right not to have others’ religion forced upon them, truth be told, we’ll be much closer to living into our professed belief in the separation of church and state.

This may sound strange coming from a lifelong Christian, an adult life-long Episcopalian and decades-long spiritual explorer with Buddhist and Taoist leanings, but I can hardly wait for the day when the Nones force us to move beyond our religious biases to interact more constructively in the public square. I value my religion and I respect and support others’ right to practice theirs, but I yearn for the day when our respective religious viewpoints are not the primary influence on the policies by which we govern our country. At least from the perspective of politics and governance, the less religion the better.

And let me be clear: it’s not just up to the Nones to restrain our religiosity in the public square, it’s up to each of us individually and all of us collectively. The Nones are just freer to remind us of this, but we – each of us with our unique religious experiences and biases – own making ours a more humanity- and collectively-focused society.

Who knows, one day we may even be inspired to take up the challenge in earnest to realize MLK’s vision of becoming the Beloved Community....

Until then, we all must engage and assert ourselves in ways that inure to the common good, and with as little overt religious influence as possible. Ours is a polyglot society, but our politics and governance don’t reflect this nearly as much or well as they need to.

Accordingly, it’s incumbent upon us to fight back and vanquish the inhumane and hypocritical ‘religious’ influences that would seek to constrain the many at the behest of a diminishing few. Further, as difficult as this may be – especially as evidenced by the exceedingly partisan and faux outrage over Critical Race Theory (CRT) on one side of the political aisle – if we really want for our country to become the place where the American Dream is both real and achievable for the majority of us, then we’ll have to lower the level of religiosity in our society.

Does this mean that any one of us who wants to be a believer can no longer be so? Of course not. But what it does mean is that none of us who chooses to be a believer has a right to inflict his or her beliefs on another. From a religious perspective, we’re all free to believe what we want and to live into this to the fullest extent possible (i.e., provided that it doesn’t constrain anyone else from living into their unique faith, of course). But our religious perspective can never nor should ever be or become the exclusive basis by which we either formulate policy or develop societal norms.

And as a person of deep faith, I truly believe that God wants this, too … though I’m cool if you disagree, so long as you don’t try to force me to see God (or no such being/reality) as you do.…

To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face, one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.

- Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography Or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927)

The Dumbing Down of America and the Celebration of Ignorance....

 

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

 

-         Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)

As the Google search notes for a 2017 article via OpenCulture.com observes, “We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” Welcome to sooner….

Perhaps the last administration was the pinnacle of this lethal combination, but there’s no question that America is plagued by a virulent ignorance that’s been co-opted by power – or is it power that’s been co-opted by virulent ignorance? – and the results have been devastating. Forget our slipping educational attainment and well-being rankings in the world – the former has declined from 8^th to 15^th in the past decade and the latter from 14^th to 17^th in the past five years – and just witness what’s happening at this very moment in our country:

• As the latest manifestation of its sustained and quite successful campaign to distract from difficult and damning realities, the GOP is waging war against an idea – that of Critical Race Theory – taught virtually exclusively in law schools, despite it being patently obvious that virtually none of those who rail against it actually understand what it is. Further, it’s attempting to pass laws in at least half of the states (with a handful having enacted such statutes already) that either restrict or prohibit the teaching of alternative perspectives on our country’s history.
• As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman noted in a recent New York Times Opinion piece, “(W)illful ignorance has become a litmus test for anyone hoping to succeed in Republican politics.” He concludes that “Right-wingers have gone all in on ignorance, so they were bound to come into conflict with every institution – including the U.S. military – that is trying to cultivate knowledge.
• The former president’s company and its CFO are under indictment for myriad felonious evasionary tax pursuits.
• Egged on by the former president’s Big Lie, there’s an historic voter suppression campaign underway, with almost 400 bills proposed (and some passed) in 48 states.
• On January 6^th, the former president’s speech is seen by many if not most as an incitement to a veritable insurrection and an unprecedented invasion of our congressional halls on that day (and was a key factor in his being impeached a second time).
• Despite literally being in danger for their lives on January 6^th, Congressional Republicans have blocked an official inquiry into the insurrection.
• It’s almost superfluous given the preceding, but let’s not forget that in the waning months of his administration, the former president raised almost $200 million from supporters, much if not most of which has been diverted to his own personal control (and will likely be used for his own enrichment and/or personal legal defense).

Each of these is both a travesty and tragedy in its own right, but let’s just focus on one and how meaningfully yet completely it exhibits the collusion of ignorance and power: the assault on Critical Race Theory (CRT).

In a recent story for the PBS News Hour entitled “Why Americans are so divided over teaching critical race theory,” correspondent Amna Nawaz observes the meeting of the Loudon County, Virginia, school board during which “dozens of parents” flooded the meeting to protest CRT. As she notes dryly, “The thing is, critical race theory isn’t being taught here.”

So why would so many parents attend to protest it? In a word, ignorance. Or, in two words, racist ignorance.

As one attendee declared virulently, “I will do everything I possibly can to fight to the bitter end until you prove to me that you are not teaching my children that they are racist just because they’re white.” Another alleges that “The critical race theory has its roots in cultural Marxism. It should have no place in our school.” Another observes that, “I don’t see critical theory, race theory in our Declaration of Independence.”

To review: CRT is taught virtually exclusively in law schools, not in local ones, so this entire ‘movement’ against it is at best ignorance personified and weaponized or, more likely, to be blunt, racism in yet a different guise. In fact, observes Ms. Nawaz, “Critical race theory is now being leveraged as a catch-all phrase by opponents of equity and inclusion efforts in public education.”

In other words, these modern-day culture warriors are the slightly less overt version of their parents and grandparents who demonstrated their racism openly and proudly and protested vehemently against the integration of public schools more than a half-century ago.

Of course, there are more sophisticated but no less craven efforts, such as the one run by “a former Trump administration Justice Department spokesman now leading a group called Fight for Schools, a political action committee pushing back on equity and inclusion measures.” In its leader’s words, the group is “not about teaching history. We are about teaching history in an objective way that is not represented as America is systemically racist.”

Except, of course, that it is and always has been systemically racist (by design):

• What is the Electoral College but a now two-and-a-half centuries old relic of the racist designation of the enslaved as three-fifths of a person to determine the apportionment of electoral votes?
• What is the abominable 1857 Dred Scott decision but a statement by the supreme court of our country that even “free” African-Americans could not enjoy the privileges of citizenship and “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect”?
• Why was Juneteenth necessary, or, put differently, why did Gen. Granger have to journey to Galveston, more than two months after Gen. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, to read General Orders No. 3 to announce that “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free”?
• Why did SCOTUS endorse the racist “separate but equal” lie/Jim Crow policy in its 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson decision?
• Why were African-Americans systematically excluded from many US Government and especially New Deal benefits and, even worse, purposely harmed by racist government policies like redlining and the use of restrictive covenants (even after the Supreme Court outlawed the latter in its 1948 Shelley vs. Kraemer decision)?
• Why did it take the greatest victory of the 20^th century Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to codify what is supposed to be an inalienable right for American citizens of Color?
• Why has the GOP lead a sustained assault on the voting rights of African-Americans and other traditional Democratic constituencies since the passage of the original Act more than half a century ago, resulting in its effective overturning in the 2013 Shelby County vs. Holder decision, aligned with the historic and re-energized voter suppression campaign since (and as evidenced in and reinforced by SCOTUS’ abominable ruling in the Brnovich vs. Democratic National Committee case earlier this week)?

I could go on … and on … and on … and on … and on … and on, but you get the picture: the truth is and always will be that the United States is now and has been since before its founding a systemically racist country by design.

So, of course, to avoid this reality, too many of our fellow citizens are falling for the ruse that Critical Race Theory in some way indoctrinates their children to think that they’re inherently racist because they’re white.

No, they may have racist – or at least deeply, perhaps willfully ignorant – parents and benefit disproportionately and undeservedly from the systemic racism that’s still very much a part of our society, but CRT does no such thing, other than to examine the perspectives of the historically disenfranchised, especially in an effort to encourage us to eradicate and never duplicate such historic and sustained state-sponsored dispossession again. Or, to use commentator Judy Woodruff’s assessment to introduce the aforementioned PBS piece, “Critical race theory is a way of thinking about America’s past and present by looking at the role of systemic racism….”

More importantly, it’s also a way to avoid making these same, dehumanizing mistakes again in our future, which is why the folks protesting against the figment of CRT are both on the wrong side of history and verify the continuing prescience of the great James Baldwin, especially as he observed in his 1972 book No Name in the Street:

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

Can You Say “Squirrel!”? Critical Race Theory as the New Shiny Object….

Why is my freedom, my citizenship, in question now? What one begs American people to do, for all sakes, is simply to accept our history.

- James Baldwin, “The American Dream and the American Negro” (1965)

It’s all Kimberle Crenshaw’s fault: if she – and others like Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, Richard Delgado and Patricia J Williams, to name but a few – hadn’t had the temerity to suggest that the way we Americans (and, in truth, the dominant in all cultures) choose to remember our history is often, ahem, inaccurate in identifiably patterned ways, we wouldn’t be in this mess, right? I mean, if we’d just stick to the versions of history taught in our middle and high school textbooks, we’d be fine. There is no need to go messin’ around with this truth.

Except that there is: as James W Loewen has pointed out so powerfully in his classic Lies My Teacher Told Me, much of what we were taught of our history is either flat-out wrong or so heavily sanitized that it bears little resemblance to the reality of those times. Think of the irony – or is it hypocrisy? – of the millions upon millions of Americans who proclaim the importance of the rule of law in a country built on land stolen from Native Americans and with labor stolen from African-Americans.

Which brings us to that scandalous late 20^th century creation, Critical Race Theory (CRT): I mean, in a country as free of racism, classism and other -isms as ours, there’s no need to suggest that America isn’t the fairest and best of all societies ever.

Except that it isn’t: one doesn’t have to be a scholar to realize that the history of Native Americans in our country is distinctly less free and happy than that of the whites who're in an ever-dwindling majority at present. And, unless you’ve been living under a rock all of your life, it would be hard to suggest that African-Americans have gotten a full and fair shake in this country … unless, of course, you’re in that majority of whites who feel that discrimination against them exceeds that against Blacks (read = unless you’re totally delusional).

So, now, in their latest gambit in the seemingly never-ending game of political Shiny New Object, conservatives (read = GOP operatives and those sympathetic to their [racist] views) have latched onto the sad and ridiculous notion that we must be protected from the very idea of Critical Race Theory, even though few of them seem to understand what it really is. (Hint = It doesn’t encourage pro-Black/anti-white racism as some have alleged, etc.)

What they do know is that using this lens to examine American history means that the Privilege enjoyed by whites since before our country’s founding is exposed in even greater detail, which means that they – and those in power who represent them – become accountable for this dispossessing legacy. I mean, wouldn’t it just be easier for us to move forward while acknowledging things may not have been perfect but that this country is so much better than any other that what’s wrong with it is minor and fixable with a little effort?

Except that it’s not: perhaps for some – or even many – whites American Exceptionalism has a positive connotation, but for too many of The Other it registers as the exact opposite. One doesn’t have to be well-versed in our political history to understand that the GOP’s sustained assault on and effective repeal of the crowning achievement of our country’s Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, in the past half-century has led to the unconscionably unprecedented and ubiquitous voter suppression efforts that’ve sprung up since the 2020 election. Not sure how you could characterize the almost 400 proposed bills in 48 states seeking to limit access to the franchise in ways that just coincidentally negatively impact groups (like African-Americans) who were critical to the direction-changing electoral outcomes of last November.

And voting rights are just one aspect of a holistic reality of structural disenfranchisement that CRT examines and exposes. Our historic and ever-widening economic inequality is another example of an area where this evaluative framework will unmask the purposeful inequities of our status quo (as well as explain the powerful backlash that’s underway). So, too, with respect to the history of policing in our society, to whose lethality we are ever more indelibly exposed each day. Etc.

If the current order of things is working well for you, you probably don’t want anyone shining a light on the inequities upon which your Privilege is built, hence the GOP demonization of Critical Race Theory. As Adam Harris points out earlier this month in The Atlantic:

The larger purpose, it seems, is to rally the Republican base—to push back against the recent reexaminations of the role that slavery and segregation have played in American history and the attempts to redress those historical offenses. The shorthand for the Republicans’ bogeyman is an idea that has until now mostly lived in academia: critical race theory.

So when millions of Americans of all races take to the streets to protest the murder of George Floyd among other recent and avoidable tragedies in our society, rather than seek to understand why this movement for Social Justice has coalesced and is gaining momentum (or, God forbid, try to address what you find), it’s much more expedient politically to demonize it. In this effort to discredit both the movement and a tool to help us understand how to evolve our society in ever more just and equitable ways, the obfuscation and even claims of reverse racism have been fantastic and laughable in the most unfunny of ways.

So, avoiding the purposely distracting and false hype, let’s examine what CRT is and how it can help us to fashion a new, more equitable, inclusive and achievable American Dream.

In reality, you have to look no further than Wikipedia to learn that:

Critical race theory is loosely unified by two common themes: first, that white supremacy, with it societal or structural racism, exists and maintains power through the law; and second, that transforming the relationship between law and racial power, and also achieving racial emancipation and anti-subordination more broadly, is possible.

Though we could debate the details, let’s accept this premise and explore it: Simply put, CRT could only be a bad thing if you don’t want to talk about the objective realities of White Supremacy and structural racism and/or you don’t want the Dispossessed to believe that by evolving our societal norms and laws a better life can result for all.

Why on earth would you be against acknowledging these dual realities, that America is flawed and yet that it is also, thankfully and in fact, fixable? Because you see such societal evolution as a zero-sum proposition, as Heather C McGhee explores so incisively in her new book The Sum of Us. Among other aspects this challenge that she elucidates compellingly are that many lower and middle class whites see any attempts to change the status quo as being zero-sum propositions – that is, that in order for others to be included more, they will be disadvantaged proportionately, so they resist changes that would actually be good for them, too – and that White Supremacy and its correlate structural racism cost everyone – including the vast majority of working and middle-class white who ostensibly benefit from them.

In other words, because of their zero-sum perspective, a large swath of American whites vote against their own economic (et. al.) interests consistently. So, if you’re in power, you want to avoid things like CRT that might provide a more accurate assessment of their life circumstances and reasons therefor among your (white) base. Because then they may come to understand that the meager Privilege that they enjoy is really just a pittance and tool to help the elite continue to win the class war by keeping them from uniting with People of Color who are similarly economically situated and disenfranchised. If you study modern American social history carefully, it’s not a stretch to note that the late, great Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, was assassinated just as he began to mobilize a multi-racial coalition of the Dispossessed and therefore that these two realities may, in fact, be related.

Further, as CNN observed in a recent story entitled “Critical race theory is a lens. Here are 11 ways looking through it might refine your understanding of history”, using this tool to examine several aspects of our history like those it highlighted can change one’s perspective:

1. Land was taken
2. Slavery was the law
3. Interracial marriage was banned
4. Voting was restricted
5. Jim Crow was accepted
6. Lynching was tolerated
7. Immigration was biased
8. Education was curtailed
9. Good jobs were elusive
10. Housing was exclusionary
11. Health care was inferior

Not only are each of the above undeniably true, but we tend to ignore and/or gloss over them both in the history that we’re taught in school as well as that we deploy as a basis for the structural (et. al.) choices we make in fashioning our society.

To engage with a few:

We pretend that the land upon which our entire country was built wasn’t stolen from the millions of Native Americans who lived here before this continent was “discovered” (read = claimed and then stolen with murderous force by covetous Europeans). We pretend that the US Government didn’t engage in Affirmative Action that enriched white families and created the American middle class (via land grants to white western settlers in the 19^th century, mandating whites-only lending policies in the 20th century, etc.) while simultaneously disenfranchising Black and Brown ones. We pretend that in the wealthiest country on the planet, we can’t afford public health care system that works quite well for every other major developed nation. Etc.

To make it plain, Critical Race Theory is under attack precisely because it’ll help us better understand these realities and make different choices about how we structure our society, to which defenders of the status quo are objecting forcefully. So, is CRT really a clear and present danger? Only if you don’t want ours to become a more equitable, inclusive and just society.

But, hey, don’t take my word for it, check out one of the definitive canons of the genre, Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, and draw your own conclusions. But be forewarned: there are dangerous things therein that just might blow (read = open) your mind….

For example, in his powerful and piercing Foreword to the book, the Rev. Dr. Cornel West observes that:

This comprehensive movement in thought and life – created primarily, though not exclusively, by progressive intellectuals of color – compels us to confront critically the most explosive issue in American civilization: the historical centrality and complicity of law in upholding white supremacy (and concomitant hierarchies of gender, class, and sexual orientation).

In other words, CRT critically examines the myths that we’ve proffered to absolve ourselves of guilt for the purposeful inequity that we’ve perpetrated in the ostensible “land of the free,” especially against The Other (to follow Prof. West, defined as those who differ from the ruling white majority in race, gender, class and sexual orientation, among other ways). Puncturing falsehoods, no matter how ‘nobly intended’ in propagation, would seem to be a good thing … unless, of course, in doing so, it undercuts the legitimacy of the status quo.

Yet, despite its clear-eyed approach, CRT remains constructive, focused as it is, according to Prof. West, on disclosing “the flagrant shortcomings of the treacherous present in the light of unrealized – though not unrealizable – possibilities for human freedom and equality.” The goal, then, is to be fully inclusive in our understanding of ourselves, not only celebrating our better angels but grappling with the darker realities of our shared experience as well.

In so doing, we craft a story and concept of ourselves that’s both grounded in reality and respectful of the truth of that reality (which is often quite uncomfortable both for its greatest beneficiaries and for those who seek to perpetuate this current, inequitable construct in perpetuity). America has been and will continue to be an exceptional country, but it’s not perfect and any attempt to sweep its imperfections under the metaphorical rug are, in fact, betrayals of the freedom to which we purport to subscribe.

Our history is more difficult than we’d like it to be. Yet, if we choose not to embrace this reality, we make it more challenging still, and in ways that erode rather than reinforce our ability to create a more perfect union over time.

In this spirit, then, the Rev. Dr. West concludes, “Critical Race Theory is a gasp of emancipatory hope that law can serve the liberation rather than domination.” Despite what the defenders of the status quo would have us believe, utilizing the tool of CRT enables us to discover our fuller history, especially by examining it from the perspectives of those who’ve traditionally been marginalized and/or excluded.

In so doing, we are forced but able to grapple with the more difficult realities of our shared history, which has two benefits that’re critical to our continued and harmonious association: first, this practice establishes a more truthful baseline from which to interpret our past and understand our present; and, second, it highlights areas of opportunity on which to focus in our future efforts to make ours an ever more equitable and inclusive union.

Why wouldn’t we want to have a better understanding of who we have been and really are? And why wouldn’t we want to have greater clarity about ways in which we can make ours an even more mutually beneficial collaboration in this grand experiment in representative Democracy?

The only answer that I can conceive is if you benefit disproportionately from the way things are and therefore don’t seek for ours to become continuously a more perfect union. Yet the world is changing, as is our society, which is Blackening and Browning every day. So, we can choose to use tools like CRT to help us address the realities of our fundamental and irreversible societal evolution or we can embrace delusion at scale and rage in an ultimately pyrrhic way against a new dawn that we can’t prevent.

As for me, I choose the former, braver route, including because it seems so much more authentically American: I believe to my core that we’re far more likely to achieve success in pursuing happiness, individually and collectively, when grounded in reality, an opportunity enabled and ennobled by Critical Race Theory.

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

- James Baldwin, “As Much Truth As One Can Bear” (1962)

Privilege and Inequality: To End the One, We Have to Address the Other….

Privilege is not knowing that you’re hurting people and not listening when they tell you.

- Dr. DaShanne Stokes

We’re tired of talking about (White) Privilege, aren’t we? Truth be told, this is especially the case because it’s so uncomfortable for its beneficiaries, but talk about it we must, because it’s still very much with us. So many of our societal problems at present have their roots in recent history, though, in the main, we’re unaware of this yoking reality. Which is why it’s so hard to envision let alone achieve true equity in our society.

When significant numbers (i.e., a majority) of our white fellow citizens aren’t claiming – falsely, of course – that racism is more prevalent and proscriptive against them, others heed calls for restorative justice with protestations that they haven’t participated in Privilege, actively or passively. Truth be told, for many in this latter camp, their perceptions are honest, if inaccurate. The problem is that, both as a nation as a whole and broadly as individuals, we’re so ignorant of our history – including the damning parts of it that’ve occurred in our own lifetimes – that it enables too many of us to exist in blissful (and, we believe, exculpatory) ignorance.

So, should our goal be to bring these folks down because their Privilege blinds them to its very existence? No, my goal is to bring awareness in such a way that it will prevent them from being indifferent to the plight of so many of their fellow citizens, especially those of Color.

One example is with respect to the stunning wealth gap across racial lines in our country: For example, some studies have found that, on average, whites have ten and to twenty times (10x-20x) the wealth of their African-American peers. If you’re a racist, this is simply proof of the massive economic superiority of the members of your tribe. By contrast, if you’re a realist, such a stunning differential has to lead you to raise questions about how such a yawning (and growing) inequity could come to be and persist for decades and decades.

(The short answer, of course, is institutional/structural racism, one of the greatest propellants of Privilege that, by its very nature, is often unacknowledged. In fact, we’ll see its pernicious presence momentarily.…)

In order to rectify this inequality, we have to educate ourselves and disabuse everyone of the ignorance that sustains Privilege. After all, when something benefits you but you don’t realize it, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem (for you personally and because you’re not aware of its impact on others), you’re less supportive of attempts to ameliorate inequality, and, in fact, may be motivated to fight to preserve the unjust status quo.

And don’t be fooled, we’re widely and wildly unaware of the scope of the inequality in our society, which is why this education is so imperative. As one recent study uncovered:

In “Americans misperceive racial economic equality,” Michael W. Kraus of Yale SOM; Jennifer A. Richeson, the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology at Yale; and Julian M. Rucker, a doctoral candidate at Yale, write, “Our results suggest a systematic tendency to perceive greater progress toward racial economic equality than has actually been achieved.” (Emphasis added)

For instance, one question in the study asked: “For every $100 earned by an average white family, how much do you think was earned by an average black family in 2013?” The average respondent guessed $85.59, meaning they thought black families make $14.41 less than average white families. The real answer, based on the Current Population Survey, was $57.30, a gap of $42.70. Study participants were off by almost 30 points.

The gap between estimate and reality was largest for a question about household wealth. Participants guessed that the difference between white and black households would be about $100 to $85, when in reality it’s $100 to $5. In other words, study participants were off by almost 80 points. Participants were also overly optimistic about differences in wages and health coverage.

Compounding the problem, when quizzed on whether the country has gotten more equal over recent decades, participants overestimated the degree of progress by more than 20 points.

Again, it’s not just that we’re ignorant of how fundamentally economically unequal our country is, it’s that we assume it’s so much better than it really is that we’re not inclined to address the issue or see the (pervasively inequitable) status quo change.

Another pernicious aspect of Privilege is that it’s assumed to be distantly historical, so its modern-day beneficiaries protest their innocence vociferously. For example, when the issue of economic reparations is raised, invariably protestations like “My family didn’t own any slaves,” etc., result. And while this may be true in most cases, those same folks are beneficiaries of other forms of Privilege that continue to this very day.

Are you aware of the virulently racist and century-long record of discrimination by our very own government against African-Americans? From the broken promises of the Reconstruction – no, we didn’t get our proverbial “40 acres and a mule,” but tens of thousands of white families did get federal land grants and other benefits that enabled them to begin to build wealth – to the racist legacy of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) – yes, redlining was real, so check out the infamous 1939 redlining map of my hometown of Detroit, and think about how being prevented from accessing capital impoverished Blacks while being provided that access enriched whites – to the “urban renewal” initiatives of the 1950s and 1960s that preyed upon the already dispossessed – enabling suburban white commuters easier access to their jobs in the downtown areas of American cities while decimating the poor and largely of Color communities through which they were built – to…. Well, you get the point.

Or maybe you don’t, so let’s make it plain: Our absolute and relative economic standing has been shaped by both public and private forces in recent history. The rampant housing discrimination perpetrated against People of Color especially in the decades after World War II that was accompanied by an elevating and expansive set of benefits simultaneously bestowed upon whites – which is one of the primary causes of today’s yawning wealth gap – occurred during our, our parents’ and our grandparents’ lifetimes. Not long ago in some faraway place, but right here in the very places where we were all born, raised and our lives’ trajectories determined in meaningful part.

Though I suspect that very few whites are actively celebrating this institutional racism and the advantage that it’s conferred upon them, the vast majority of them are benefiting from it, which is why it’s imperative that we bring these hidden barriers to light.

Again, as so thoroughly and compellingly detailed in Thomas J Sugrue’s award-winning book The Origins of the Urban Crisis, we’re not talking about just a little bit of discrimination against Blacks and a little bit of help for whites. We’re actually dealing with a holistic system of simultaneous enfranchisement and disenfranchisement that was sustained for decades and is the reason that so much of my hometown of Detroit lies decimated at this very moment, while it suburbs, on the whole, prosper.

Yes, the Spirit of Detroit is sparking a renaissance in the city now, but the metaphorical hole out of which it’s digging was intentional and reinforced by local and national government policy for decades. It’s no accident that there’s a segregated center city populated mostly by those of Color surrounded by wealthy white suburban enclaves. And though, in reality, none of today’s successful People of Color is precluded from living in any of the latter by law, having to overcome generations of one’s family being largely shut out of wealth-building opportunities has significantly reduced the number of those able to do so.

Which is why we must continue to talk about Privilege: its historical legacy is very much a part of our lives today.

Of course, I could go on to detail how People of Color were systematically disenfranchised in the labor markets, the political realm, etc., but since the story is the same as in the situations that I’ve already detailed, I’ll simply refer to them and ask that you consider the truly comprehensive nature of the structural barriers to equality that African-Americans and others have faced. It’s why, relatively speaking and on average, they’re so poor and whites are so wealthy (which, in reality, means that some whites are so fabulously wealthy).

And, at this point, if you’re still inclined to argue against the reality of institutional racism in our society and its causation of the Wealth Gap, in addition to Prof. Sugrue’s excellent book, read Richard Rothstein’s powerful and comprehensive The Color of Law, Heather C McGhee’s profound and encompassing The Sum of Us and Isabel Wilkerson’s exhaustively authoritative Caste, for starters. Then let’s reflect on what you’ve learned and begin to craft solutions that can enable the fortunate to continue to thrive while not thwarting The Other from doing so as well.

No, really, I don’t like talking about Privilege, either. But until we can talk about it and acknowledge its persisting, pervasive and profound impact on our society, not only will economic (et. al.) inequality continue to grow, but our very democracy will be imperiled, exacerbated in no small part by the transformative demographic changes that’ll reshape our country in just a generation’s time.

As Frederick Douglass reminded us, power is never given voluntarily by the privileged; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Or, we could be smarter about this, educate ourselves and, in partnership, make conscious choices that eliminate the disenfranchisement of the many that has enabled the incredible entitlement of the few.

For sure, it’ll be a rocky road, as reckoning with The Truth always is. Yet, naïve as this may sound, I believe in my core that, collectively, we are both more inclined to consider constructive alternatives and will benefit more from them than we are to witness the destruction of our democracy and the demise of the greatest – yet admittedly imperfect – experiment therein in history….

Privilege yields opportunity and opportunity confers responsibilities.

 - Noam Chomsky (1967)

 

'Justice' in the Narrowest Sense....

America has breathed a sigh of relief: a murder that we saw on video resulted in the conviction of the killer. The justice system worked. So why were we all so apprehensive?

Because it literally took the crime – both against a single man and against our collective humanity – to be filmed, go viral and be seen by hundreds of millions around the globe, spark a new chapter in the fight for Social Justice here in the United States with demonstrations by tens of millions in the streets of cities and towns around our nation and the conclusion of a three-week trial during which we heard far more about the victim’s alleged character deficits than the perpetrator’s more than decade-long record of cruelty and inhumanity supposedly in service to the state.

Or, to make it plain, let’s consider the following question: What does it say about our society and our ‘justice’ system that securing a conviction for a murder that we all saw take place wasn’t a foregone conclusion?

Relieved that the system worked – for once – many have been moved to proclaim this outcome to be “Justice” … and, technically speaking, it may be: the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines Justice as “the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments.” It further defines “Just” as “acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good : RIGHTEOUS” and “being what is merited : DESERVED.”

By securing a conviction and thereby subjecting the murderer to an as yet to be determined punishment, this outcome could be considered both morally upright and merited and thus just.

But only in the narrowest of senses because what occurred yesterday was the confirmation of accountability, as we have so much more work to do and so much farther to go to achieve true justice in our society.

Even though this case may have resulted in an appropriate outcome, the realities of life for People of Color – and especially African-Americans – continue to be challenging and, in fact, grim relative to their white fellow citizens. So before you go celebrating this rare but positive outcome and declaring it Justice in the fullest sense, consider the following:

•     African-Americans are still three to six times (3x-6x) more likely to be killed by police and 1 in 1,000 of us will be.
•     Virtually none of the officers who kill us will be held accountable.
•    The ‘Drug War’ has been a war on People of Color and Mass Incarceration continues – phenomena in which our society preys on People of Color and especially African-Americans – as despite the fact that the latter use drugs at about the same – or a lower – rate as whites, and in numerous studies have been found to be less likely to distribute them, African-Americans are five to seven times (5x-7x) more likely to be imprisoned.
•    But for Darnella Frazier’s bravery and presence of mind to film this tragedy, George Floyd would’ve been just another anonymous Black man who died at the hands of police, not the painfully symbolic reminder that our country values African-American life so little that a movement called Black Lives Matter is somehow controversial.
•     Seven-year-old Gianna Floyd will now forever be without a father.
•     George Floyd had to die for his life to matter to us.

This is but a foreshadowing of the work that we have left to do, so celebrate today, perhaps, but realize that ours is a long, long road ahead to make real the promises of our nation – and especially that of Justice – to far too many of our fellow citizens. And though, as the Rev. Dr. Cornel West has reminded us, Justice is what love looks like in public, remember that in order for a little girl’s father to “change the world,” he had to be murdered in front of our very eyes.…

‘This Isn’t Who We Are’ … But It Is….

Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

- James Baldwin, “As Much of the Truth as One Can Bear” (1962)

It’s really hard to read Heather C McGhee’s brilliant The Sum of Us. Not that it isn’t both authoritatively researched and well-written: it's most certainly both of these. But its content is tough sledding: her thorough, clear-eyed documentation of the structural racism-based inequality in our society is both exceedingly comprehensive and profoundly enervating. The America that we were taught in school growing up is and always has been a lie, especially for those of us Of Color, but, as Ms. McGhee illustrates so exhaustively, it’s also harmed others of the economically less fortunate as well.

Simply put, the racism at the root of the class war that the economic elite has been waging successfully since before the founding of our Republic is as American as apple pie, has hurt poor whites almost as much as People of Color and has been the most convenient and effective tool of the few to keep the many separate and dispossessed.

The Sum of Us is a great book, an important contribution and a cautionary tale all in one: in other words, we choose to ignore its incision at our own (continuing and growing) peril. So it joins the pantheon of several other provocative and evocative books – most recently, Isabel Wilkerson’s masterful Caste – that lay bare the real Big Lie at the heart of our non-democracy: America is not now nor ever has been a true representative democracy, and though it's made appreciable progress toward this signature societal aspiration, it’s not now nor ever has been close to achieving it.

In fact, democracy is under siege in America at this very moment. As we saw in the aftermath of last year’s election that resulted in a fundamentally anti-Democratic insurrection and as we see in the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder play out at the state level across the country in the present proposal of more than 250 laws aimed at restricting access to the franchise in 43 states – and especially the abominable 'Jim Crow' voter suppression law passed and signed into law in Georgia earlier this week – there’s literally a conspiracy to prevent our country from moving ever closer to our alleged aspiration of representative democracy.

Which, of course, is no accident. The elite is well aware of a confounding reality that threatens them but gives hope to the emerging majority of the masses: the Blackening and Browning of America – one of the most frequent frames applied to the massive demographic shift to a majority of minorities in our population in the next two decades or so – threatens not only the White Supremacy that’s held our country in its thrall since Europeans first set foot on this continent but also exposes the useful fiction that ours is a system of majority rule when in fact there's been a concerted and historically successful effort to thwart this for the entirety of American history.

Make no mistake about it: if our votes really don’t count, why’s there such a concerted effort to take them away?

The answer that we don’t want to admit is simple: when Black and Brown votes are in the majority, we’ll end up with a vastly different country than we have now. Is there anything more threatening to a ruling elite than this peaceful, lawful and inclusive revolution?

Yet denial remains such a powerful and useful tool: we’ve even gotten to the point where a disconcertingly large cohort of the (white) population proclaims that racism against the current majority is actually more significant than the centuries-old oppression of minorities in this caste-like country. To cover the Big Lie, this deluded group has gone completely the other way, declaring that the most punitive racism in America today is that against white people. Let that sink in for a moment. As farcical as this both sounds and is, we dismiss it at our peril … because, it, too, reveals who we truly are.

Another phenomenon that gives lie to the Big Lie is the most unfortunate and unwelcome return of mass shootings: as the country begins to re-open – prematurely, it would seem, in the continuing presence of a global pandemic – its citizenry has experienced the awful return of group gun violence. So now we add Boulder and Atlanta to the long list that reminds us of Orlando and Parkland and Sandy Hook and Las Vegas and Sacramento and Columbine and.…

This return has been accompanied by two additional and complementary lies: Republican thoughts and prayers for victim families (but no protective legislative action) and protestations from the president on down that this isn’t who we really are … and yet, when the list is so long that we recognize these tragedies by name, isn’t this conclusive proof to the contrary?

I no longer know how to change this attitude or if it can be changed by the recitation of facts. There is no new surprising bit of information that, once published, could change the parameters of this debate. The people resisting change know these facts as well as those pushing for change do. So, nothing changes. ...

This is not a condemnation of those who strive to make change and a better society. This is a condemnation of that part of America that stands in the way.

- Charles M Blow, “Mass Shootings and Our Depraved Political Stagnation” (2021)

I could go on, but, by now, I suspect that you get the point or, if you don’t, it’s because, as Mr. Blow astutely observes, you don’t want to. But this is exactly who we are: we are racist, we are violent and we are delusional, not totally but sufficiently such that our very democracy is threatened. And until we can recognize and admit the truth about ourselves to ourselves, we’ll continue the degradation of this potentially great union.

And lest you be tempted to brand me a pessimist and therefore dismiss my perspective, you should know that I’m not: I have great faith in our younger generations – especially Millennials as they move into positions of power and leadership in our society and Gen Z as it comes of age – whose formative years have shown their Boomer elders to be too often incapable of enlightened leadership. As is quite clear already, they know better and intend to do better, which is a very good thing for us all.

But we must acknowledge two realities that'll both temper our hope and ground it: first, even among the young, there are those more committed to division in unity because they've been raised to be so; and, second, that just because they are passionate, energized and mobilizing, this doesn’t mean that the responsibility to reform our country belongs solely to them. We old heads are still around in massive numbers, so we, too, are accountable for effecting the change that results in ours becoming an equitable, inclusive and just society.

As hard as it may be, it’s incumbent upon us to embrace the difficult reality of who we are: a country that’s given us the soaring beauty and brilliance of Amanda Gorman but also the twistedly celebrated murderous entitlement of Kyle Rittenhouse. A supposed democracy in which the franchise has had to be fought for and won by law yet has been under attack ever since and is now in force in name only. And a country whose founding documents proclaim equality for all that has, in fact, never, ever practiced it.

Gore Vidal once described his country as the United States of Amnesia. “We learn nothing because we remember nothing,” he wrote.

Vidal’s point is simple enough: America’s concept of itself is shaped by mythology, not by facts. And it’s harder to address mistakes if you’re unwilling to face them honestly.

 - Sean Illing, “The biggest lie we still teach in American history classes” (2018)

This is who we really are. We must accept this, as ignoring it imperils the continuation of our polity. The good news is that we can change and likely are. The moments of progress are still pockmarked with dispiriting incidences of regression, but, I maintain, as did MLK, that the arc of the universe is long and that it does indeed bend toward justice. What we must embrace is the difficult reality that we are not who we want or claim to be and that our evolution to become so will be challenging but worth it.

For far too many of our fellow citizens, our country is not now nor ever has been great, but, with clear-eyed acceptance and steely commitment to change, we can evolve to be a more beloved community. And when that day comes, we can truly say this is who we are and be proud of it.…

We are the generation that must throw everything into the endeavor to remake America into what we say we want it to be.

 - James Baldwin, “As Much of the Truth as One Can Bear” (1962)