To be a Negro in this country
and to be relatively conscious
is to be in a rage almost all the time.
So that the first problem
is how to control that rage
so that it won't destroy you.
- James Baldwin, "The Negro in American Culture" (1961)
John - not his real name - is my friend, of whom I and his other family and friends are greatly proud, as should we all be. He's the very embodiment of how we'd like to see ourselves as a society and as a country: from modest middle class beginnings, he's fashioned a successful and accomplished life for himself and his family in his adulthood. He's played by the rules, kept his nose to the grindstone and worked hard as we were all taught to do. Accordingly, he is a man to be admired and cited as an inspiration to us all and especially to our children. And yet this is how he feels about his American Experience of the moment:
I spent much of yesterday in reflection, trying to put into words what I was feeling. While I could attribute a good portion of what I felt to the elevation of a man whom I've detested for much of my adult life - with good reason - there was something else. My antipathy towards that man masked another, deeper, set of feelings. It wasn't anger. Sure, the anger was there but I wanted to know what those other feelings were - the ones that I couldn't put my finger on.
Then it hit me. I remembered back to 5-6 years after I graduated from college. I was at a business event, for young Black professionals, where I heard a senior Black executive speak. Afterwards, I got a chance to chat with this man and we exchanged cards. I was thrilled, a few weeks later, when his office called and said that he'd like for me to join him for lunch. Over the span of 4-5 months, our relationship built as we had a number of discussions over the phone and in person. I grew to greatly admire and respect this man. As I had not had a business mentor who looked like me, this meant a lot. One day, he suggested that my fiancée (soon to be my wife) and I join him for dinner. On the way, we excitedly talked about the possibility that this man was going to make me a job offer. After all, my recent conversations with him were peppered with him telling me that "greater things were in store" for me, and that I wasn't "maximizing my talents" with my current employer.
It turns out that "dinner" was, actually, an MLM recruitment event. His "taking me under his wing" was an elaborate ploy to recruit me to sell soap and water purifiers and cosmetics. Later on, I heard that this was his M.O. He sized up "recruits" at networking events and developed a mentor relationship before asking them to join his team. It was the classic "long con". I was crushed and hurt to learn that someone whom I greatly admired, and respected, was someone dramatically different from what I thought he was. I never spoke with him again.
That was it. This was how I was feeling now. I'm hurt and disappointed to know that "my country" would elect a man, to the highest office in the land, who is vulgar and mean and racist and misogynistic and mendacious and ignorant and homophobic and insecure. And there is no question that he is these things - even those who voted for him would, mostly, agree. While I knew that the country was hardly "post racial", I thought we were better. I never in a million years thought that my country would actually elect someone like this man. A man who had been a NYC punchline for decades. A clown. A poor person's warped imagining of a rich person. Richie Rich wrapped up in Arthur wrapped up in the Monopoly Man.
So while I have hope for resistance, and while I believe that this resistance will usher in a new era of unity among those who will be oppressed under this "regime" (because that is, exactly, what it is), I am sad to have found out that the country I was so proud of for electing President Barack H. Obama, was actually setting me up for one of the the biggest disappointments of my life.
"Johnny," as he's called lovingly by his friends, has, by all measures, made it in modern America. So why is he so disaffected? My own view is that, in small part, this is due to his distress over the seemingly deep division in our commonweal. This being said, however, I would argue that a far larger spur for his disaffection is that he is - and always will be - Black in America. And to make it plain, as the old folks used to say, there's nothin' quite like - or as painful - as bein' Black in America....
I can empathize with Johnny's plight and with his feelings about our native land ... but I'm from Detroit, so despite my late but very proper southern mother's best efforts otherwise - sorry, Mom! - I am want to digress from eloquence into fierce frankness from time to time, so here goes....
What Johnny and I and many others, especially People of Color, are feeling is, simply put, betrayed. Betrayed because we were lied to as kids (though, I'm sure, with the best of intentions on the part of those adults who nurtured us). Betrayed because though we joined the mainstream and, by all accounts, played the game well, the outcomes and experience thereof has been meaningfully different - which is a really nice way of saying "lesser" - for us (despite the reality that many of us have done some amazing things and occupied lofty perches). One need only think of President Obama - that elegant, graceful and disciplined man/soul - and how he was treated to understand what I'm suggesting. Funny how you can become President of the United States - the ultimate accomplishment to which we were pointed as children - and still be disrespected largely due to immutable factors over which you have no control. But I digress too eloquently....
And in light of the most recent developments in which our fellow citizens have elected a man who is the very embodiment of the -isms that still hold our country back as well as the very antithesis of all we were raised to be, in addition to feeling betrayed, we also feel palpably, sometimes uncontrollably, angry.
To put a finer point on it (and personalize it), pillar of the community though I may appear to be, our national social and political retrenchment, the continuing problems of societal inhumanity that have occasioned the need for a movement to coalesce under the moniker Black Lives Matter and the realization that so much progress is likely to be undone by the stroke of a presidential pen and a flurry of legislative activity from a formerly moribund and morally blind Congress is converging to make me that which (white) America fears most: the proverbial Angry Black Man.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I still dress well and go to work and play nice in the mainstream sandbox, but when I return to my home, my sanctuary, my anger is safe to come out. And it does, virtually every day. Lately it seems as if not a day goes by in which we learn of some new and tragic injustice, typically related to the victim's skin color (or some other immutable factor) and not the content of his or her character.
But perhaps I should be more careful with my words so that my meaning and message can be clearer: I am first and foremost outraged, which is what leads to my anger. (Of course, the latter must be largely privately expressed, as public expressions thereof have consistently been met with brutal - and sometimes lethal - repression over the course of the history of our country.)
Outraged because a racist, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, homophobic, et. al., sexual predator has been elected the Leader of the Free World (as if other countries don't have enough reasons to be mad at us already). Outraged that the utterly fraudulent class warfare that's been going on for more than a generation has marked itself so powerfully as well as likely so impermeable to redress, which has been confounded by 'the people' who are most being disenfranchised voting for it out of ignorance, fear and, most sadly, supposed faith. Outraged that more than a half-century after the landmark Civil and Voting Rights Acts were passed, the consistent assault on and effective repeal of those rights proceeds apace, all while those who're doing the assaulting and repealing feign a lack of awareness with paternalistic unconcern. Outraged that, in their young adulthood, my children are inheriting a world that is in many ways, far more f@#ked up than the one that my/our generation inherited and that we were supposed to improve far more than we apparently have.
Also let me be clear about this: Yes, I am furiously angry because of my experience as a Black Man in America, my race and that of tens of millions of other People of Color continuing to have an outsized negative impact on our lives and especially those of our children ... but more than this, I am absolutely incensed because what's happening is an unconscionable affront to my and our humanity. In this modern era, never before have we been so materially wealthy and yet so morally bankrupt.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I, too, have read MLK's later works in which his optimism had faded and his expressions of disappointment and outraged anger had multiplied, so I know that this country has been this way for some time. But our assumption of progress - that uniquely naive American inheritance born of ignorance and arrogance - has proven misguided, at least in our lifetime. If Dr. King is correct that the arc of the moral universe is long and bends toward justice, either its timeframe is far more elongated than we think or the unspoken caveat to this wisdom/insight is that progress is not linear but happens in fits and starts necessitating constant vigilance and continual action and advocacy. But, again, I digress too eloquently....
What's most ironic to me in this new era of ours is that we're so deeply divided when, in actuality, I believe that we all agree on one thing: that our beloved America is on the wrong path. The challenge that we face is a disagreement over the direction in which we should proceed going forward. On the one side are those who hope to return to a bygone era (or, at least, a claimed one that has also been ascribed to history); on the other are those who believe, based on observation and experience, that history only moves forward and thus so should we. Suffice it to say that I find myself (far) more persuaded by the latter than the former.
Simply put, there's no society on Earth that's been able to return to a golden era of a previous incarnation, though a few have tried to replicate them, most often with uneven results (to be kind).
What's far more prevalent in the historical record is that history marches on, often in unexpected directions, and thus people individually and societies collectively have to re-imagine their path creatively. As numerous sages have pointed out over the years, the only certainty is that circumstances will change ... and our job is to be adaptable enough to roll with them and thrive in the successive new realities with which they present us.
So, too, I believe is the present case: not only because it's a fiction to which we can't return but also because of the forward historical imperative, Making American Great Again is not about going back to some mythical time but forward to a different and better reality than the one that we enjoy currently.
But change is hard, especially when power shifts accompany it. In this case, America is becoming less white, less Christian and less supportive of the myriad -isms that have plagued our society since its inception. But for many white, self-considered Christians prone to fear and thus to demonize The Other, a more diverse America in which they have to share power - or, God forbid, be in the minority - is not of interest.
In fact, it's to be resisted at virtually all costs. How else can one explain the support of white Christians for a president who's behavior demonstrates virtually no familiarity with Christian principles whatsoever and whose economic policies disenfranchise them in ways that are likely to be long-lasting if not permanent? How else can one explain the belief that "America first" trade policies will stem the decades-long tide of globalization and return high wage jobs to this country (even as that very same president's companies make all of their products sold in this country overseas because the wages in this country are [still/already] too high [or, more correctly, will reduce profit margins too much])? How else can one explain a mystifying belief that the problem with our society is immigrants, the vast majority of whom are law abiding - more so than those white Christians, in fact - and who do jobs that white Christians long ago eschewed doing? (If you doubt this last point, just google Alabama and North Carolina and their recent [disastrous] approaches to expulsion of immigrant agricultural workers to see just how far-fetched such a theory would have to be.) How else ... well, you get the picture....
Let's face it, like the Afrikaners before them, white Christian Americans are worried about what happens when they no longer dominate this society ... and, truth be told, for good reason. American history, whitewashed though it is, is replete with egregious examples of white Christian inhumanity, so the fear of payback is a most legitimate one ... except, again, for the reality of historical example, which shows, for instance, that there was no widespread retribution in the Republic of South Africa.
Again, I digress too eloquently....
So, to sum this up and keep it real/100, let's just put it this way: America has been great throughout much of its history - let's acknowledge this - but only for some and decidedly not for all. For far too many of us, we need to Make America Great for the First Time by holding it accountable to its professed creeds. In so doing, we must fashion a world in which all of God's children of whatever hue, gender identity, religion, etc., can drink from the deep Well of Opportunity that this country can represent. But until that day, we should all realize that the anger of the dispossessed exists on both sides of our ideological divide and that if this is not addressed deftly, the fabric of our society may tear irreparably.
So how do we keep this from happening, to prevent us from tearing ourselves apart forever? There are many ways, but I'll focus on just a few:
First, let's commit to living by the Platinum Rule. Beyond just treating each other as we ourselves would like to be treated - which is an egocentric, sub-optimal approach - let's commit to treating each other as these others want to be treated. Among other things, this imposes a duty upon us to get to know each other well so that we can predict how our fellows want to be treated. This may seem a huge leap - and it is - but it's solely in a forward direction.
Second, let's commit to respecting each other's religious beliefs and yet keeping them out of the public square. I really don't care which of the paths to God you favor - or if you don't favor one at all - but I would like not to have you claim God's mantle to disadvantage me, which is how institutional religion - and especially institutional conservative Christianity - plays out in American society currently. So, I'm glad your faith - or lack thereof - sustains you, but please stop trying to reflect your evangelism in the contours of the society in which I'm supposed to enjoy my freedom.
Third, let's commit to the commonweal, meaning that we'll be guided in our policy- and decision-making by the Greater Good. Adverse impacts are real and too well targeted in our history, so we must acknowledge and address them if we are to go forward differently and better in the future. And as we craft the ever evolving rules by which we interact and progress, let's be fair and equitable in our construction. To an appreciable extent, this is a commitment to multi-faceted diversity and inclusion in that we want all of God's children to have a chance in life and to have access to opportunities that can enable individual and collective progress. And this does mean all of God's children....
And fourth and finally, let's commit to reality and truth over mendacity and b.s. Let's face it, the lies that we allow to be told in our society at present are fantastic and fantastically awful in that they limit our ability to make progress toward a more just and equitable society. As hard as it may be, let's admit and address all of the -isms that still plague us by opening the doors of opportunity more broadly and by being vigilant in holding our elected representatives to this 'truth and reality, no b.s.' standard. I realize that this is asking a lot of us - more, in fact, than we've ever asked of ourselves before - but our future depends on it. Simply put, you can't build a strong foundation for the future on a fantastical cornerstone. It, like our consciences, really must be able to bear the weight....
If we choose to disregard these suggestions - and many astutely developed ones that others have offered - then we do so at our increasing peril. This tailspin of societal devolution that we're experiencing will only get worse unless we correct course soon and significantly. The only remaining question is whether or not we have the will to do so, as the consequences of failure become clearer and more precipitous each day.
Bringing this meditation back to where it started, remember that Johnny is a winner in this game and yet largely disaffected. Just imagine what happens when others like him join forces with those who are losing increasingly in our current societal structure. History offers precedents for this, too: seems to me there was a revolution in this very country in the late eighteenth century when it was widely perceived that the structure of our society was oppressive.
To put it bluntly, unless we move in a different and better direction - one in which the Johnnys of our society are likely to go from angry to fiercely proud - then we will indeed experience the traumatic pain of failing to learn from history - our own, no less - and find to our horror that everything old indeed can be new again but not in a great way....
God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water the fire next time.
- Negro Spiritual "Mary Don't You Weep"
