'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)

To Be a Negro in This Country and to Be Relatively Conscious....

Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge.

I’m tryin’ not to lose my head.

It’s like a jungle sometimes.

It makes me wonder how I keep from goin’ under.

- Melle Mel, et. al. (1982)     

In a mood today: I’m supposed to be writing a business-focused piece, but I just can’t get into it (yet, I hope, ’cause somebody’s payin’ me to write it and tuition’s due soon…). Made the mistake of starting my day by reading Scott Kurashige’s The Fifty-Year Rebellion, about the realities of social, political and economic life in my hometown, Detroit, in the half-century after the ’67 riots, which, because I’m a glutton for punishment, I followed up with the first few pages of Ijeoma Oluo’s So you want to talk about race. Now I’m all pissed off about injustice and not as inclined as I need to be to help the owners of Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) firms realize that it’s in their economic interest to embrace the Diversity so lacking in our industry.

It didn’t help that I tuned in to the 8 o’clock service at my beloved St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and, on this first Sunday of Black History Month, initially the experience felt decidedly white, ‘honky’ even. While supposedly reading along with today’s Scripture, in my head, I was actually composing an email to my dear friend and spiritual advisor the rector to encourage a rethinking of the approach to this unique time and opportunity, both in our annual calendar specifically and in our society more broadly. Then our guest preacher, a man whom I respect greatly, began to tie the ancient wisdom to the realities of today and began to challenge us on our preference for light over dark in our spirituality as well as our society, which plays out as white over Black in the latter.

OK, thanks, Peter: you saved me from going deeper into my frustration and encouraged me to choose the path of reconsideration and potential reconciliation instead. So here goes.…

America, we have a problem: our country is virtually completely addicted to White Supremacy. So much so, in fact, that we accept what is white and Privileged as normal and force the rest of us to argue and persuade that it’s not. For example, the actual insurrection of a month ago is treated not as criminal but as a perhaps misguided expression of the deep frustration that so many of our (white) fellow citizens feel. Funny, but I remember a distinctly different framing and official reaction to the peaceful protests for inclusion just a few months before.…

Let’s be honest: do we know that we have a problem? Of course we do … it’s just that we’ve learned – or, actually, been taught – to avoid discussing it in the interest of civility (read = white comfort), so we generally don’t talk about it and then are really bad at doing so when we do. Some may consider this ironic as it reinforces the very hegemony deserving of address (and redress). Others of us see it as obstructive by design.

And this problem continues to get worse: yes, we’re justifiably proud that we’ve made some progress on the social front (though, of course, not nearly as much as we’d like to believe), but we’ve clearly regressed politically and economically. There’s no gainsaying that our politics is more broken and divisive than at any point in the past half-century and our economic inequality has reached historic levels. Should we be surprised, then, that, during a global pandemic that’s driven record unemployment for the masses, the markets – disproportionately owned by the already especially fortunate – are at all-time highs? Again, we want to believe that this is an accident or coincidental or even a fluke, but if we think more deeply and self-critically, we’ll realize that this, too, is by design.

And yet there is reason to hope: Perhaps it’s funny-sad that we were so abused during the last four years that having a functional, constructive and thoughtful Administration going about its business deliberately and with far less fanfare than we’ve experienced of late feels so weird. Further, I take it as a measure of our continuing wounds that as hopeful a sign as this may be, we’re still too afraid to embrace it fully and exhale. After all, it was just a month ago that we were reminded how precarious our centuries-old representative democracy truly is.…

But at the local level in the hometown of my youth, that abuse has lasted far longer and been of even greater negative impact: sure, Detroit’s suffering because of structural macroeconomic changes like globalization, deindustrialization, etc., but, truth be told, as Mr. Kurashige points out, much of its forced misery reflects the insidiously entrenched racism in our society, amplified by our  slavish and ultimately soul-crushing worship of and obeisance to superfluous wealth.

In other words, while a significant portion of the suffering that my friends and family who’re still there have experienced has been unavoidable, I would argue that the majority of it hasn’t been: it’s the sad and too often seemingly inevitable reflection of Race (and its distinctly American correlate formulation, White Supremacy) being used as a cudgel to oppress The Other on behalf of the (lily-white) Plutocracy.

How else can one explain the unfounded theories of education propagated by billionaires being tested virtually solely on the primarily African-American students of the Detroit Public School system and not on their (overwhelmingly white) suburban peers? How else can one explain the bought-and-paid-for, state-subsidized sweetheart deals to centimillionaires and billionaires to acquire massive swaths of re-developable inner-city Detroit land (while most often displacing the poor and elderly, who, of course, are disproportionately of Color)? How else can one explain the years-long and craven subjection of the majority-minority population of Flint to unsafe water in the interest of saving a few dollars? Etc.

By the way, taking the tragedy of Flint as an example, does anyone of us really doubt that whatever the supposed savings were will be geometrically outweighed by the healthcare costs that this egregious and criminal violation of environmental justice causes?

Further, to be blunt, show me the nice white folks on which the Michigan state government has been willing to experiment. And, because there are a (very) few, compare them as a percentage of the overall white population to that of the members of Communities of Color who were intentionally maimed to an exponentially greater extent.

Now tell me this wasn’t about race….

So then I probably shouldn’t have opened Ms. Oluo’s tome, especially given its title and the fact that I read its successor volume recently as well. Simply put, she so eloquently elucidates the realities of Race that we prefer – virtually always successfully – to avoid, at least in discussion. That Race is considered the problem of those who’re victimized by it daily rather than those who either leverage their positions of Privilege to sustain it or who remain however blissfully ignorant of its impacts speaks volumes about our true national character.

I wasn’t even ten pages in before I got all up in my feelings and had to put the book down for a minute. Yes, I’ve come to realize, the reason I value the sanctuary of home increasingly as I age is that it’s a haven away from the difficult realities of our society and especially of its addiction to White Supremacy by which even I have been affected greatly.

(’Cause, you know, even my white friends who consider themselves progressive have a tendency to remind me in most often subtle and, I would like to believe, unintentional ways that I’ve been more fortunate than the vast majority of Black folk, so, ostensibly, I have less claim to my anger.)

Rather than elucidate Ms. Oluo’s cogent and conclusive points, I’ll simply note that one of her greatest contributions is perhaps one of the most unassuming in the trove of revelation that her book truly is: the reality of Race as we African-Americans – and especially our mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and other women – live it in modern America is that it’s omnipresent and, though not typically omnipotent, defining.

Yes, it’s funny how life can be going along just great and then you’re reminded, sometimes subtly and others overtly and occasionally brutally, that you’re Black and therefore the rules are different for you (and designed to consign you to a lesser existence). It’s not that we forget so much that we’re Black; it’s that we’re too often reminded that the cost of being so hasn’t been reduced nearly as much as we – African-Americans, other People of Color and whites alike – would like to believe. So, just beneath the smile and, for the most fortunate of us, the hope and aspiration for better are the wounds – deep, lingering, covertly ubiquitous – that too often constrain if not define us.…

As I search for what I’m trying to say, in an attempt to appeal to the better angels in us all, I suppose that it boils down to these three things:

1. Affirm the humanity of all of God’s children and fight like hell against the forces that seek, too often successfully, to diminish it.
2. Acknowledge the imperfections in our communal relations, not as an intellectual exercise or as a vainglorious demonstration of one’s woke-ness, but as a responsibility to be ameliorative and collaboratively so.
3. As an aspect of our shared (read = your) responsibility to be a part of the solution, do your homework first to educate yourself and then ask me questions; don’t make it my job to explain to you how your ignorance – intentional or inadvertent – has contributed to my oppression.

There: I said it. Now I’m going to put down the concerns of the world for a while and just be, so that when I re-emerge I can be Black again and grateful both for its myriad burdens as well as for its limitless opportunities.…

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time – and in one’s work. And part of the rage is this: It isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance. Now, since this is so, it’s a great temptation to simplify the issues under the illusion that if you simplify them enough, people will recognize them. I think this illusion is very dangerous because, in fact, it isn’t the way it works. A complex thing can’t be made simple. You simply have to try to deal with it in all its complexity and hope to get that complexity across.

- James Baldwin (1961)    

Hoping against hope....

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

 - President-Elect Barack Obama (November 4^th, 2008)

This is likely another historic day in American history: not only the election of our 46^th president, but also of the first African-American female vice president. A day to be celebrated, for sure, especially after the abject regression of the past four years. And yet I’m not really that happy today, and maybe even a bit wistful, which I’ve been struggling to figure out for several hours now and think that I have.

One reason that I’m hesitant to be fully joyful, to celebrate this moment as deeply as it should be, is that I remember 2008 and what followed. I cried that night as Barack Hussein Obama took the stage in Grant Park with his beautiful, all-American African-American family and ushered in a new era not only in our politics but our civic life: I don’t know a single one of my friends, especially the African-American ones, who believed that we’d see a Black president in our lifetimes … and suddenly he was there, all hopey and changey and inspiring, straight out of central casting.

And then America, especially white America and the GOP-controlled Senate, made his and our life hell far too often over the last six of the next eight years. Yes, he rightfully inspired hope, and, yes, he did affect some meaningful change, but as the opposition to his every effort – and, truth be told, his very existence in that ultimate role – proved, he was still Black and America reminded him of it every chance it got.

It didn’t matter that he fought successfully to create the first national healthcare program in a half-century that dramatically reduced the number of our fellow citizens who were uninsured. It didn’t matter that he sang “Amazing Grace” beautifully and helped us heal after the tragedy at Emmanuel AME church. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t whiff or hint of scandal during his entire time in office – other than the manufactured outrage about his tan suit and proclivity to remove his suit jacket when working in the Oval Office – and that he was the very moral exemplar of who we hope our presidents to be.

It didn’t matter because he was Black.…

As I watched this spectacle play out and contested every supposedly well-meaning colleague or friend who dared to suggest that the country was showing itself to be “post-racial” somehow, my capacity for hope dimmed. Though he may have occupied the office, it was clear that, in reality, America really wasn’t ready for its first Black president.

And then, thanks to that pernicious gift of slavery at our country’s founding, the Electoral College enabled the installation of a singularly unqualified and unworthy individual as his successor, one whose popular vote count trailed his female opponent’s by over 3 million. So, not only did we end up with minority rule by the GOP, but we showed that the country wasn’t ready for its first female president, either.

Say what you want about Hillary and critique her ’til the cows come home, but you cannot, in any credible way, compare her qualifications for the office to her opponent’s. Seriously, other than being white, male and (supposedly) rich, what were/are 45’s bona fides? Beyond the myth that so many wanted to believe – in part, I believe, because it allowed them to look past his narcissistic, pathological inhumanity – the reality of his allegedly successful business career was actually a series of bankruptcies, burned banks and investors and stiffed small contractors. Now, shockingly, in just four years, he’s done much the same to our country. Who could’ve seen that coming? Oh, wait.…

And what’s been the nature of this administration? Simply put, narcissistic, pathological lying and unconscionable inhumanity at scale inflicted both domestically and internationally. Except, of course, if you’re in the 1% who garnered 83% of the benefit from his sole legislative triumph, the deficit-exploding tax cut of 2017. And please don’t get me started on the overt and abominable racism, sexism/misogyny, xenophobia, etc.

Sadly, it’s difficult to pick a nadir because there are so many embarrassments and transgressions from which to choose. This week, I think I’ll go with kids in cages at the border still, having been reminded of this in recent weeks by the revelation that our government has begun deporting ‘illegal’ immigrant children to Mexico even if this isn’t their country of origin. Don’t think on that too long or you’ll get completely enraged, especially because damn near half of the country just voted to perpetuate this and the myriad other forms of inhumanity that have been perpetrated by 45 and his sycophants and enablers.

This being said, I suppose we shouldn’t forget that he’s become one of only three presidents in our nation’s history to be impeached. It really says something that this historic reality is but one of many embarrassing and immoral aspects of his legacy.

And I haven’t even mentioned his unconscionable abdication of leadership of our country during a global pandemic that’s claimed the lives of nearly a quarter-million of our neighbors while afflicting more than 120,000 new ones each day….

As a Person of Color, I have watched in horror at how systematically he and his enablers have not only targeted and undone much of his predecessor’s beneficial contributions but also witnessed him demean, diminish and disenfranchise The Other and The Dispossessed with a consistency that is as contemptible as it is damning.

And his and his enablers’ broad, continual and too often successful efforts at voter suppression? Well, my proper southern mother raised me right and taught me not to say anything if I didn’t have anything nice to say, so Ima leave that right there.…

So now we stand again on the threshold of history: it appears that the Biden-Harris ticket will prevail. I am truly joyful about this, but I’d be lying if I didn’t also admit to a sense of foreboding. Not only did the eagerly anticipated Blue Wave not materialize, but this likely leaves the Senate in GOP hands – and especially those of several of the highest profile partisan hacks who were not tossed out of office as so many had hoped – which means that every attempt of the future Administration to remedy the sins of the current one will likely be thwarted (as well as even the successful attempts challenged in the newly stacked and ultra-conservative courts). In other words, we’re in for another period of stalemate in our national politics when we have so many serious issues to address in real time.

Seriously, America, WTF?!?

Perhaps the primary reason that my erstwhile excitement is virtually completely subdued is that we’ve learned something especially troubling this week: that virtually half of our fellow citizens support the pathology and inhumanity of the current administration and voted to continue it.

Again, America, WTF?!?

So pardon me if it’s hard to be especially hopeful despite the historic significance of this week’s developments. It’s truly a good thing that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be leading our country. It’s just sad that they’ll likely have to do so in the face of continuous, nihilistic and immoral obstruction.

And I really don’t want to be hurt again: as I read the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates a few years ago in a piece in which he essentially explained the inevitability of 45 as the backlash to 44, I realized that my faith in my country had been greatly shaken. That 45 has proven even worse than we expected has turned this from a painful bruise into a gaping, oozing wound that’s only partially healed by the likelihood of his being relegated to the dustbin of history soon. After all, the inhumans who’ve supported him are still very much here, as we’ve been reminded yet again this very week….

I’m hurting too much to hope now, but I have to: too many of the ancestors sacrificed so/too much, so I have to continue the fight to goad this country into living up to and into its professed creeds for the first time. America never has been the Land of the Free for so many of its citizens; now is the time to make this promise real.

It starts by acknowledging that…

Black Lives Matter,

Latinx Lives Matter,

Asian Lives Matter,

Indigenous Lives Matter,

Women’s Lives Matter,

LGBTQ+ Lives Matter,

Muslim Lives Matter,

Etc.

Then, and only then, when these move beyond being mere admirable sentiments and ambitions to becoming the experience of all of God’s children in this country, will we be able to say that, in alignment with our (aspirational but flawed) founding documents, truly, All Lives Matter.…

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

- President-Elect Barack Obama (November 4th, 2008)

‘Cultural Thinning’ and Other Costs of Progress: The Ebbing of Our Blackness….

 

The only thing we know about the future is that it is going to be different.

 - Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Practices, Responsibilities (1973)

 

 

Our future is greater than our past.

 - Ben Okri, “Turn on Your Light” (1999)

  

My kids are significantly less Black than me, as I was compared to my forebears. Such is the path of progress, and of its cost. Of course, we’d like to think of this progress as linear and complete, but history, despite our attempts to ignore or reframe it in convenient ways, suggests otherwise.…

I was reminded of this today as I read a fascinating and important book: Prof. James W Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me. As he deftly and definitively parses and pierces the myths of our history, the Professor also prompts reflection. I’m about to tackle Chapter 5, which he’s entitled “Gone With The Wind” to frame his exploration of “The Invisibility of Racism in American History Textbooks.” Pray for me.

I’m still recovering from its predecessor, “Red Eyes,” his fileting survey of our country’s shameful and genocidal treatment of Native Americans. Yes, despite its being glossed over, I knew that our country’s ‘real history’ with respect to ‘American Indians’ was horrific, but surveying it in detail is at once frightfully enlightening, completely enraging and powerfully dispiriting: truly, with respect to our history, we Americans are People of the Lie.

When, in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, you explore and embrace the truth of who we are and how we’ve come to be, it’s a wonder that People of Color aren’t more enraged than our country is finally realizing us to be.…

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time – and in one’s work. And part of the rage is this: it isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country. And their ignorance.

 - James Baldwin (1961)

Among Prof. Loewen’s themes in exploring this aspect of our history is that, as is typical, our texts do so from a particularly self-serving and Eurocentric perspective. But if we consider it through ‘Red Eyes,’ the experience of the Other – in this case, Native Americans – then we’ll see a decidedly different picture that forces us to reconsider the truth about our history and our society. As he observes:

Indian history is the antidote to the pious ethnocentrism of American exceptionalism, the notion that European Americans are God’s chosen people. Indian history reveals that the United States and its predecessor British colonies have wrought great harm in the world. We must not forget this – not to wallow in our wrongdoing, but to understand and to learn, that we might not reek harm again. We must temper our national pride with critical self-knowledge.… History through red eyes offers our children a deeper understanding than comes from encountering the past as a story of inevitable triumph by the good guys.

Further, he notes that in the past half-century “the United States is beginning to let Natives acculturate successfully, albeit on Anglo terms” and yet “this poses a new threat to Native coexistence,” which is that “it is much harder to maintain the intangible values that make up the core of Indian culture.” In other words, ‘progress,’ no matter how ultimately beneficial, still comes at an appreciable (cultural) cost.

So it is in my own family, and, I suspect in yours, too: as we move into the future and away from the past, we evolve, developing new experience-based cultural components and leaving behind those that no longer serve our purpose as well even if we treasure them.

My sister Maria can bake Aunt Bert’s roles very well … but nowhere near as perfectly as my late, great great aunt. I consider myself a grill master … but I can’t even approach much less touch Uncle Web’s gift for barbecue: no restaurant will ever pay me for the recipe for my secret sauce. Even more, in this modern era of too busy lives, who’s got the time to tend the meat all day as it cooks ‘low and slow,’ lovingly basting and turning it every five to ten minutes while listening to the Tigers game on the radio?

I can cook some hella collard greens and will argue that my fluffy mashed potatoes are better than my elders’ … but I’ll never be able to delight my grandchildren with the savory experience of Sweet Georgia peaches and cream for breakfast or of fresh, hot, sweet and delightfully sticky Krispy Kreme donuts and an ice cold glass of milk or the sheer delight a cold Coca-Cola on a hot southern day as my maternal grandmother did. I can only aspire to delight them in other ways.

Which is the point: of necessity, the experience of those who follow us will be different, no matter how important we believe the need to appreciate our history and that of our elders to be. No, I’m not as Black as my parents and grandparents, whose lives were shaped (if not largely defined) by Jim Crow America. Thanks to their sterling example and advocacy, I’m a child of the American mainstream, having benefited greatly from the opportunity to experience life beyond the cocoon of the African-American community solely.

But I’m still Black, as our fundamentally and structurally racist society reminds me virtually every day. So though I’m not Black in the way of my forebears, I'm still very much The Other. In other words, I’m doing Black differently … as will my children and grandchildren relative to me. This cultural evolution – which feels more like ‘cultural thinning,’ as it does reflect some appreciable amount of assimilation – is both natural and lamentable, but inevitable if one seeks a better life in this society or any other. We want to believe that we can stay the same and have the world appreciate and celebrate us for who we choose to be and are, but this isn’t the way it works: the world doesn’t meet us on our terms, we meet on its….

Among the impacts of this meeting is that we lose parts of our history as we live into a new one. Truth be told, despite our reflexive wistfulness, meaning has always been transitory: for example, what it meant to be Black in America in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries is very different from its meaning in the last third of the twentieth and more different still than what it means today. And, more accurately, we should always speak of the range of any such cultural association, because it’s just as if not more so true today that there’s no one way to be Black as, it was two hundred years ago when, though the vast majority of us were enslaved, a few of us lived free.

Being Black will be different for my children than it’s been for me, which is actually a good thing despite my now joining the unbroken line of ancestors bemoaning the loss of critical aspects of our unique racial culture and history. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve instructed them in the ways of the Black Experience throughout American history, and especially that of the last more than half-century of my lifetime, but, admittedly and of necessity, they carry this far more lightly than I do.

As much as I may want them to appreciate, value and revere the victories that’ve afforded them such relatively privileged lives, it’s the nature of this different and better experience not to be overly burdened by a decidedly less affirming past. As much as I may decry that they ‘just don’t get it’ with respect to how lucky they are to be living in this more enlightened (but by no means completely so) time … yet couldn’t – or didn’t – my parents say the same of me?

 

It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

 - Soren Kierkegaard, Journals IV A 164 (1843)

It’s funny, but perhaps this inevitably partially unfavorable perspective on our heirs is itself a reflection of the double-edged gift of history: on the one hand, we want to respect it and carry it with us, and yet, on the other, in order to live fully into the future, of necessity we must leave some or most of it behind. Such is the tension of generational progress….

So it’s incumbent upon me to accept that my kids are no less Black than me – and thus not lesser – but they’re Black differently, which is actually a good thing. It’s the privilege of the present to live fully in it and into it, guided by the past but not confined by it. So as I lament that my kids have lost so much cultural treasure – though I’ve gotten them to eat it, none of them can cook traditional African-American cuisine as I learned to do (partially) in my youth – I also have to accept that they’ll gain so much more. So I won’t be able to define what their version and experience of Blackness is – and therefore come to peace with it in the present – and will likely question its value in some appreciable part: who among us hasn’t turned into our parents and lamented this ‘music’ these kids listen to today?

This being said, perhaps my father’s example is instructive here: even though he preferred the old, ‘classic’ stuff, he did make the effort to stretch himself and understand the new sounds of the 70s, be they R&B or rock. Now it’s my turn to stretch … though, truth be told, clearly I’m not quite as open because I just can’t get to almost any of this rap music nowadays (says the former DJ).

So, too, with my mother’s example: she pushed me out of the protective womb of our comfortable Black middle class existence into the great unknown of elite white educational institutions and the virtually exclusively white business world while being well aware of the risks of this proposition but remaining convinced of the greater benefits to be garnered. Her faith in the future and in me have propelled me ever since while largely proving her right: it hasn’t by any means been a perfect life, but it’s been an objectively blessed one and appreciably better than those afforded to her or any of the elders who’ve come before me.

It’s this understanding, experience and perspective that now compel me to (re-)gift this to her grandchildren and other progeny. I can only hope that their experience of Life, and of Blackness, is ever better than mine, though it will most assuredly be different (and not lesser). Cultural thinning, it turns out, is an illusion: while our history is important, it doesn’t define our future, though it should inform it. So our Blackness, of necessity, will evolve, which is a very good thing indeed. Though it may appear to successive generations of elders as less essentially Black, it’ll nonetheless represent an effective adaptation to an ever-evolving world.

So while I may lament that my kids will never experience the gustatory delight of Aunt Bert’s rolls, I pray that their kids will develop a similarly sacred experience in their own time. And I’m also pretty sure that they’ll likewise join me in the unbroken ranks of ancestors who shake their heads at this music these kids listen to today.…

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

 - John F Kennedy, “Address in the Assembly Hall at Paulskirche” (1963)

  

The brutal truth of us and why we must confront it now.…

  

The only way to keep an entire group of sentient beings in an artificially fixed place, beneath all others and beneath their own talents, is with violence and terror, psychological and physical, to preempt resistance before it can be imagined. Evil asks little of the dominant caste other than to sit back and do nothing. All that it needs from bystanders is their silent complicity in the evil committed on their behalf, though a caste system will protect, and perhaps even reward, those who deigned to join in the terror.

Jews in Nazi -controlled Europe, African-Americans in the antebellum and Jim Crow South, and Dalits in India were all at the mercy of people who would been fed a diet of contempt and hate for them for them, and had incentive to try to prove their superiority by joining in or acquiescing to cruelties against their fellow humans.

- Isabel Wilkerson, “Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a Means of Control,” Caste (2020)  

In her powerful, prescient and disturbing new book, Caste, Isabel Wilkerson notes that “Human history is rife with examples of inconceivable violence, and as Americans we like to think of our country as being far beyond the guillotines of medieval Europe or the reign of the Huns.” Yet, for most of this country’s history, institutionalized, racially-driven violence has been the norm rather than the exception … and our failure to accept, embrace and address this fact of history that continues to this day is evidencing itself in the undoing of our polity. The question on so many of our minds is whether this commitment to White Supremacy is greater than to our very democracy.

Of course, this historical amnesia isn’t merely accidental; it’s very purposeful, as it enables the dominant caste to absolve itself of a responsibility older than our country itself: to deal with the reality that along with statements of soaring values that are the envy of the world we must acknowledge that our system, our supposedly enlightened structure of participative self-government, is actually built on institutionalized inhumanity that continues to this very day. Among many such present reflections, how else can one explain the Electoral College, a racist relic that’s thwarted the will of the people twice in this century already?

I understand: if I were the beneficiary of unearned Privilege, soaked as it is in the blood of millions, I, too, would want to avoid its acknowledgment and address … but I’m not that fortunate, as I’m descended from the recipients of this extended cruelty. My roots remind me that my ancestors were owned and abused both for the amusement of their captors and to maintain the system of their own degradation, dehumanization and involuntary servitude. My inheritance is having to overcome all of these barriers – both visible and not, though undifferentiated in provable and proven power to constrain – that such a system created and now our slightly different system perpetuates.

So, I have to call out the realities of our history, not only to ensure that we don’t forget, but also to ensure that we choose to address them now, decades and even centuries too late.

The crimes of homicide, of rape, and of assault and battery were felonies in the slavery era as they are today in any civil society. They were seen then as wrong, immoral, reprehensible, and worthy of the severest punishment. But the country allowed most any atrocity to be inflicted on the black body. Thus twelve generations of African-Americans faced the ever-present danger of assault and battery or worse, every day of their lives during the quarter millennium of enslavement.

This casual disregard for black life and the deputizing of any citizen to take that life would become a harbinger of the low value accorded African-Americans in the police and vigilante shootings of unarmed black citizens that continued into the early decades of the twenty-first century.

Although the vast majority of our fellow citizens would prefer not to acknowledge it, America’s legacy is just as much about institutionalized inhumanity as it is about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We choose to ignore this damning fact because it’s at once profoundly wounding and unavoidably obligating. So we pretend that, by perhaps different means, ours isn’t a society in which African-Americans – and others of The Different – aren’t reminded of their place and often brutally remanded to it every day.

One enslaver remarked “that he was no better pleased than when he could hear … the sound of the driver’s lash among the toiling slaves,” for then (the historian Edward) Baptist wrote, “he knew his system was working.”

If you don’t see the vestiges of caste continuing to suppress The Other every day in our society, you’re not paying attention … on purpose.

It’s fashionable today, even (or especially?) in elite circles, to be historically amnesiac. Though it creates a toll of appreciable cognitive dissonance, truth be told, choosing not to remember is far easier than embracing the reality of who we were and, in appreciable part, still are. You can do that when you have Privilege.

But I’m sure that some of you will object and say, but what of African-Americans and others of The Different, what responsibility do they bear for understanding this history and addressing it? To this conveniently diversionary response, I offer two rebuttals:

First, asking the victims to address their own dispossession is yet another craven demonstration of the inhumanity to which they’ve been subject since time immemorial. Racism, especially in the structural form that powerful whites have created and perpetuated throughout this country’s history, is a white problem and therefore the primary responsibility of whites to address and eliminate. Yes, we can and should assist you in this endeavor, but don’t ever get it twisted that it’s our problem, not yours.

Further, I realize that such an approach is ahistorical: as Frederick Douglass noted long ago, power concedes nothing without demand. Therefore, it’s imperative that you whites realize, our role is to demand this of you … so consider this one of my many individual contributions to this collective demand.

Second, I agree that we should be both more aware and actively engaged in our own liberation, but it’s one of the more ingenious and craven aspects of this racist system that the education that we’re afforded purposely obscures this reality of historical and present subjugation. As he details exhaustively in his profound and incisive book Lies My Teacher Told Me, Prof. James W Loewen observes that the history books from which we’re taught not only avoid or give short shrift to this unseemly but nonetheless real aspect of our history, but they purposely diminish the myriad contributions of The Other throughout it.

There’s a reason that we were never taught about Africans and Phoenicians who sailed the world’s oceans long before Columbus, or that the latter’s true contribution to world history was the legacy of brutality and enslavement that’s afflicted the West since his ‘discovery’ of it.

By the way, how does one discover a land already populated by millions of Indigenous people?

Or why do we celebrate the Pilgrims at Plymouth more than the Virginia settlers who predated them by a dozen years? Could it be that: 1) the history of Jamestown is so problematic – you know, cannibalism and genocide being so taboo ‘n’ all – that we prefer to make up lies about the Plymouth settlement; and 2) the story of the Plymouth Rock and all of the other tales of heroism and community – like, say, the First Thanksgiving – are completely fabricated myths of our own making to help establish the greatest of these animating fables, American Exceptionalism?

Funny, we remember the Pilgrims as heroic – and, in fairness, for their bravery in setting out to make their way in a ‘new world’ they were (despite personal profit being the primary motive of most of those who sailed on the Mayflower) – but how much credit were we taught to give the Indigenous who sustained them? As Prof. Loewen notes, “Like other Europeans in America, the Pilgrims had no idea what to eat or how to raise or find food until American Indians showed them.” And how was this life-saving kindness repaid? Well, that, too, is an aspect of our history that’s been purposely whitewashed and largely forgotten.…

---

 

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because

they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)

 ---

Because examples like this are so numerous and dispiriting, I’ll move on while noting that such indoctrination is itself designed not only to inculcate a false sense of our own moral superiority in history but also to absolve the dominant case of the myriad and ubiquitous sins attached to its ascent and perpetuation to this very day.

And yet, as the consequences of our historical amnesia become ever more evident and costly, should we continue to sustain it? What is it that we fear so much as to avoid it, as we have, literally, for centuries? That the truth of how inhumane so much of our history has been will further rile The Dispossessed? No doubt that, to an extent, this is true … but we never seem to ask whether the cost of continuing to lie to ourselves is even greater.

I think it is.…

Ultimately, I think that James Baldwin had it right when he noted that not everything that is faced can be changed but that everything that is changed must be faced. In this spirit, I urge us to confront our too often ugly history so that we can make amends and move beyond it to create an America that truly lives up to and into its professed creeds.

Of course, the dwindling white majority would prefer that we not do this because of its inherent indictment of their complicity … and yet what do we really think will happen when, in just a quarter century’s time, our nation becomes ‘minority’ in the majority?

Do we truly believe that as People of Color and others of The Different assume evermore of the leadership roles in our society to which they’re entitled by their talent and fortitude we won’t begin to dispel the cardinal falsehood of so much of our history? Why would we wait? Could it be that we’re kicking this metaphorical can down the road to our children and grandchildren because we don’t have the courage to address it, as generation after generation of our forebears did, too?

I can only think that the level of challenge and pain associated with this address increases with every moment of delay … and what makes us think that our children and grandchildren will have more fortitude and evidence more bravery than us, especially given that we’ve deliberately falsely instructed them just as we were dishonestly indoctrinated years before? No, it’s time to lance the wound so that it can heal, which means that we can recover from and move beyond our too often unfortunate history.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the avoidance driven by fear: there’s so much that the vast majority of us don’t know about the reality of our past that our sudden awareness could lead to deep and abiding outrage … but delaying the inevitable won’t change this. And, truth be told, we, The Different, have long lived with the realities of our racist, sexist, heterosexist, religiocentric, xenophobic, classist, etc., white-dominated society. So, yes, when we learn the truth even more of us will be even more pissed off … but I believe that the greatest damage will be experienced by the dominant caste members whose self-image will be revealed to the built disproportionately on a (voluminous) pack of lies.

I hope I’m wrong, but my suspicion is that our avoidance of The Reckoning is less about the fear of The Dispossessed revolting than it is about the Privileged descending. As the old saying goes, you should really be nice to everyone on your ascent, because you'll see them again on the way back down.…

Accordingly, I assert, now is as good a time as any to confront the brutal truth of us and then begin the long and hard work of dealing with it, healing from it and then coming together to create a new and better America in which all of us – and, in truth, many of us for the first time – can share in our uniquely animating and re-imagined Dream. I truly do believe that we’re at an inflection point in our society, a veritable crossroads of history, and that our choice of direction will have profound impacts for years – and, actually, decades (if not centuries) – to come.

I’m reminded that more than six decades ago a relatively small band of brave souls began a similar journey that, though torturous, resulted in profoundly positive change for us all. Did the members of the Civil Rights Movement understand that they were securing not only their own freedom but that of our nation as a whole? Perhaps. But I’m clear that this is the opportunity before us now and hope that we, too, will evidence the courage and fortitude to remake our world in a far more just, equitable and inclusive – and truthful – way.…

 

When you believe in things

That you don't understand

Then you suffer

Superstition ain't the way 

- Stevie Wonder, Superstition (1972)

 

Summer Fools

 

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.

 - Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (1843)

 

One of my favorite songs is an obscure classic from the funk-jazz saxophonist Ronnie Laws entitled “Summer Fool.” It wasn’t a big hit in its day, but it’s always been special to me. Can’t say I associate it with a specific, particularly meaningful memory, but I’ve always been entranced and uplifted by its pumpin’, contrapuntal beat, the soulful sax, synthesizer and other solos and its lyrics, which, in Mr. Laws’ interpretation, have always spoken to me in a way that I just can’t explain fully rationally but can feel to the depth of my soul:

 

Songbird sing, sweet melody

Reminds me of the way it should be

Sing the song I wanna hear

Lets me know summer’s here

Sun is bright, feels so nice

Let’s have some, everything is alright

 

All day long, love’s in the air

Nature’s mood, make it so clear

Got to go, can’t wait to cruise

Tells me I’m a summer fool

 

The song has always made me feel alive and free, in tune with the effervescence of life and the universe’s endless possibilities.

So, perhaps it’s a bit surprising and/or paradoxical that it’s so on my mind at this moment, as autumn dawns along with its chill for which I’m not yet quite ready and amidst the insanity of our lives at the moment, constrained in association and imperiled by a continually spreading global pandemic and dismayed by the steady flow of eruptions from the seeming underbelly of our society that’re serially on display of late.

Seriously, how did it come to this, a place that feels the antithesis of Summer Fool?

I take no joy in the announcement that 45 and so many members of his entourage have contracted the coronavirus. I can’t get past the 7 million of us who’ve been infected and the almost 210,000 who’re now former fellow citizens as a result. These people, who abdicated their leadership responsibility to – and to protect – the rest of us, perhaps due to Karma, are now ensnared in a trap of their own craven making. Which isn’t a good thing for them or us, especially given the mendacity of those afflicted but still maintaining their grip on the levers of governmental and societal power. It’s perfectly ironically reflective of our time that we even have to wonder if this latest announcement is itself true/real, as so little of what they’ve shared to this point has been….

But I’m also angry, because it’s all so unnecessary: truly, it didn’t have to be….

Perhaps that’s why Summer Fool is so on my mind of late: I need the funky-fantastic feeling of joy and uplift that it always brings, as well as the sense of possibility to help me overcome this largely dark time.

And perhaps I also need something more from it: the dual reminder that summer is figurative and that the world is always full of possibility whether or not we choose to perceive it at any given moment. We can make summer – literally will it into being – if we so choose. So let’s do so.

Thinking of our aching and pained polity, it’s clear that we need to redefine our life in the public square, which invariably reflects the collective outward projection of a reassessment and revision of our interior world. We need to go retro: I’m convinced that our salvation is directly related to our ability to return to that southern sensibility with which I was inculcated in my youth: we treat each other well – each and every one of us – because we’re all God’s children (even, if, truth be told, at that time I was steeped in it, it was largely practiced on an intragroup basis).

Among other things, this requires a certain civility and restraint on all of our parts, which reflects a willingness to dialogue and hear each other out even – and perhaps especially – on the hard topics, ones that we’ve mostly spoken around or even largely failed to acknowledge over the years.

For example, we must admit that structural racism exists and work together to eradicate it. And we must admit that its class complement is also all too real and remediate this as well. And we have to deal with the sexism in our society – truth be told, our behavior reveals that we only respect women to a point – and begin to treat the slightly more than half the population as the fully and artfully human beings they truly are. Same goes with eliminating the heterosexism in our society, especially that driven by religions that exclude hatefully rather than invite lovingly; love is love, even if yours is different than someone else’s and certainly can never be the cause of its antithesis, hate. Speaking of religion, we must insist that its adherents’ behavior match their godly pretense; this will eliminate one of the most tragically ironic of our current realities, that so much evil is perpetrated in the name of the Divine. And….

When we can all feel the universe as one of endless possibility, then our individual and collective vibes will be far more affirming than they are today in our grossly and unsustainably inequitable society. When we can be free to be who we truly are and experience being celebrated for this glorious idiosyncrasy, then ours will clearly be a better world than this one in which we’ve celebrated our lesser angels and found this to lead us ever deeper into darkness and despair. To see and feel the light, we’ll have to choose to be it … especially when it’s hardest (to want) to do so, like, say, at this very moment in our collective history.

For if we don’t choose to seize this potential inflection point in our shared journey, what’s likely to become of us?

Very few among us can look ahead, project where we are into the reasonably near future and see a better world. No, what lies ahead of us is more needless pain and disunity, just like the needless suffering and death that the failure of national leadership has produced from COVID-19.

By contrast, as difficult as it may be – likely requiring almost superhuman forbearance as we learn to Dialogue Across Difference – envisioning a future in which we accept and embrace each other’s humanity offers the possibility for affirmation and fulfillment for us all. No, it won’t be easy to achieve – we’re human (and quite consistently fallible) after all – but it will be worth it: imagine when everyone can feel a sense of endless possibility in life, secure in the knowledge that he/she/they can become and be a Summer Fool or whatever else they want in life….

  

I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood and sisterhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.

 

And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. [...] and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t moving wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who loves has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.

 - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?”