‘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)