The ‘Lost Cause’ Isn’t Lost and It’s Still a Cause….

 

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

 

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

Strength to Love (1963)

At the heart of our tacit agreement to avoid the subject, we routinely engage in a significant amount of euphemism to avoid calling things what they are and thereby having to deal with uncomfortable (and often tragic) realities and their consequences. I’m reminded of this yet again because, while reflecting on the tragedy in Kenosha, Wisconsin, earlier this week, it struck me – wounded me, really – that there are many of our fellow citizens who invariably consider themselves ‘good Christians’ who’ve not only celebrated the young man’s commission of cold-blooded murder but are now rallying around him to support and fund his defense (and, they hope, his liberation).

I was moved to reflect on this even more deeply than usual because I’m reading a powerful, compelling and incisive book, Robert P. Jones’ White Too Long, about how White Supremacy has been woven into the fabric of (white) American Christianity over the centuries to become, for too many, inextricably intertwined. This history is at once profoundly dismaying and yet imperative to navigate, because it tells the truth about a lie that we’ve perpetuated to our collective detriment for far too long: White Christianity has sponsored White Supremacy, harbored and protected the racists who’ve created a system of both overt and systemic racism that excludes an ever higher proportion of our fellow citizens and is very much at work to this day perpetuating this inhumanity.

It ‘legitimated’ the settlers of our country in bringing enslaved Africans with them to the New World; as it did our Founding Fathers when they discounted our lives in the very documents that proclaimed Bowers to be a free country; as it did during the Civil War when it gave righteous cover and a supposedly divine sanction to an horrific conflict waged to protect the institution of slavery; as it did during the nearly nine-decade period of legal apartheid that was Jim Crow; as it did to the Christian Right that became so influential in our politics and policies after the Civil Rights Movement (especially within the Republican Party); and as it does now to lunatic fringe elements on the Alt-Right that seek, among other supposedly sanctified actions, a race war to result in the establishment of a new whites-only nation.

Which brings me back to the alleged murderer in Kenosha who, under the guise of joining a group of vigilantes in a self-appointed defense of (other people’s) property against peaceful protesters advocating for a just response to yet another unnecessary shooting of an innocent Black man by the local police, armed himself illegally with an automatic weapon, joked amicably with members of that very same police force who offered him refreshment, went out into the crowd and shot three people and then walked back by those very same officers who allowed him to escape and return to his home where he got a good night’s rest after his craven carnage. Apparently, some of you white folks like your property– or, actually, other people’s property – so much that you’re willing to kill innocents who pose it no threat.

And then it hit me: Just like the millions of southern white men a century and a half ago, this teenage killer had chosen to value other people’s property that was in no meaningful danger more than human life and to risk his own life in ‘defending’ it. What is he, really, but a 21st century version of a Confederate? Just like they sacrificed themselves to protect a system in which other whites could enslave Africans in ways that actually depressed the economic well-being of these misguided volunteers, members of today’s Alt Right are claiming commitment to protecting others’ property rights so that African-Americans remain disenfranchised, if now only meaningfully but not totally.

The ‘Lost Cause’ isn’t lost and it’s still very much a cause.…

No, it’s not news to anyone that racism is alive and well – thriving, actually – in our country today. We need only to look at our president to see that such inhumanity has its most proactive sponsor in the modern era in the Oval Office at present. Not surprisingly, then, we’ve seen a proliferation of racist incidents and unprecedented growth among hate groups intent upon bringing their darkness into our light.

But it is still shocking that such darkness can overtake someone so young, that a police chief under siege could make multiple statements that, in effect, blame the murdered and wounded victims for their fate and that it can all be caught on videotape as if it’s just another nightmare in our continuing national repose of unrest.

Seriously, America, who are we and what have we become?

As far as I can tell, for too many of our fellow citizens, the American Dream that they seek would still presume to dispossess others meaningfully or fully. Their vision of our collective future is one that doesn’t include me or you if you’re not a “White Christian,” a designation that I feel compelled to put in quotes because it appears, definitionally, to be the complete and utter antithesis of the example of its claimed Patron.

And yet I want to be hopeful: after all, if you look back a half-century, it was perfectly acceptable to be a racist in many white circles, which is far less true today (at least overtly so). Organized hate groups are far more on the fringe of white society today than they were then. But, ominously, still they thrive, enabled by technology to connect, coordinate and multiply mostly out of sight of the mainstream of our country (though they have been brought back closer to it thanks to the president and his minions who not only don’t repudiate but actually help spread this movement’s bigotry and hate).

That there are now self-proclaimed White Christian groups that have raised more than $100,000 for the Kenosha murderer’s defense is another indication of the twin realities of the perversity of White Christian Supremacist doctrine and how modern technology can enable its propagation in ways that both legitimate it and give it far greater reach than was possible in the past. It may be fringe still, but it’s getting awfully close to the mainstream.

Which means that it verges on becoming a modern version of the post-Civil War travesty that’s known in apologist circles as “The Redemption”: while the reality is that in the Compromise of 1877 the US Government turned its back on the newly formed and integrated state and local governments within the former Confederacy, which then allowed the resurgence of White Supremacy via a widespread and extended campaign of violence and terror, Lost Cause enthusiasts consider this a development worthy of great celebration because it represents a return to the proper order of things (i.e., Black subjugation).

Relating this to the present incident, as Andy Richter asked poignantly via tweet:

What stake does a white 17 year old from Illinois have in “protecting the streets of Kenosha,” other than the opportunity to fulfill the gun culture fantasy of hunting Black people? Law and order? The protection of property? Bullshit.

That any self-professed people of faith could see this cravenly but casually executed murderous rampage as a righteous cause is an indication of just how divorced from reality – and inextricably tied to White Supremacy – so/too many of our fellow citizens have become … which means that it’s incumbent upon us to address this head-on and draw this supposedly religious inhumanity out into the light and expose it for what it is.

Though this will be painful, we have to contest this ideology directly and listen carefully so that we can discern its root causes and then work to eradicate them … because if we choose to ignore this, not only won’t it go away but, thanks to the Internet, it’ll continue to grow like a cancer within our body politic.

Our choice is clear: either we must do the hard work of seeking to understand and then endeavoring to ameliorate this scourge of White Christian Supremacy, or the Lost Cause will continue to grow in ways that threaten the very communal life of our nation that we all treasure.

(W)hite Christian theology has evolved to play this role powerfully: to render black claims to justice invisible while protecting white economic and social interests, all the while assuring them of their own moral purity. …

This double standard exists despite evidence that white supremacists account for far greater numbers of domestic terrorism than any group and a growing proportion of extremist violence worldwide. 

- Robert P Jones, White Too Long (2020)

The way forward out of our present darkness.…

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

 - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (1963)

 

My soul is tired. The events of this year have exposed a reality that we African-Americans have long known and lived, but their ‘revelation’ in the mainstream of American media and life has both exposed ugly realities in and to our society as a whole (and especially to its white members) and traumatized us yet again: it’s one thing to live in a racist society, but quite another to live in it and be reminded of just how racist it is damn near every day….

And it’s not just us Black folks: yesterday, I got a plaintive message from a white friend of progressive bent (who also happens to be Jewish) and his laments struck a chord. Simply put, he is overwrought by the evidence of evil in our society so broadly and, now, boldly displayed and worries that his individual contributions simply aren’t enough to help turn the tide.

I thanked him for his positive example and encouraged him to keep leading in his local community … and then I advised him to “kiss it up to God” and let it go. His worrying himself into a (depressed) tizzy isn’t going to help him or anyone else, as understandable a response as it may be to our current travails.

You know it’s bad when the white folks are suffering, too….

Yet, despite this increasing sense of individual and collective enervation, I can’t relent in my personal commitment to the cause of equity and full inclusion in our polity. I’m reminded of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s reference to the “ungrammatical profundity” of Mother Pollard, whose response to his inquiry about her welfare during the waning days of the ultimately triumphant Montgomery Bus Boycott was “My feets is tired but my soul is rested.” As much as I really, really, want to at times of late, I really, really just cannot let my feets be rested ’cause my soul is tired….

And, yet, what to do?

As tired as I am, I believe that there are always three options at our disposal: we can always educate, advocate and celebrate.

The education is the preparatory hard part: we must engage fully in our world and embrace its realities, soul-wrenching as so many of them may be. There simply is no other way: as James Baldwin reminded us, not everything that is faced can be changed, but everything that is changed must be faced.

Among other things, we must peer into the realities of how we’ve structured our society and who wins and loses because of this (followed, of course, by our acting on this expanded knowledge by taking action in advocacy). There is most assuredly some ugly stuff: for example, just thinking about getting a clearer understanding of what drives so many to hate is already depressing me, but if we’re going to address the virulent racism that has always raged beneath the surface of our society – and that has erupted lately because of the immoral and repeated sanction of our political leaders – we’re going to have to get to its root causes, the factors that continue to lead to the embrace of White Supremacy.

Followed closely thereon, of course, by the examination of the root causes of all the other -isms that continue to plague our society (i.e., sexism, heterosexism, religiocentrism, xenophobia, classism etc.). In a word, this is going to suck, but it’s both necessary and required if we’re going to craft effective and sustainable solutions to problems that have both dogged and malevolently influenced our history. We can’t fix what we don’t know, so it’s incumbent upon us to learn all that we can, as painful as this may be.

In this regard, I think it bears noting that we should also fortify ourselves by exploring the good that so many do in our world, not just to heal our souls and steel our sense of commitment, but to identify models for practical change in societal evolution. In fact, I suspect that the only way that we can get through the challenging educational mission before us is to ensure that we balance it appropriately with the knowledge of positive realities that elevate and inspire. Let us champion the good as diligently and resolutely we seek to remediate the bad.

This must be followed, of course, my thoughtful, sustained and courageous advocacy, which is the active hard part of this mission. Simply put, if the world is going to change for the better, as Gandhi reminded us, we’re going to have to be that change. And even the briefest surveys of our broken world tells us that this is going to be one long and costly fight … but fight we must.

Strategically, our goal must be to seek a more equitable and inclusive society and world. Among the many things that this will inevitably entail is addressing yawning and ever widening economic inequality and a myriad of other self-imposed afflictions that bedevil the full flourishing of too many of our fellow citizens and human beings.

Tactically, in America at this moment, it means to continue our protests and especially to have them registered profoundly on November 3^rd. Simply put, all of the courageous marching in the street will come to naught if we don’t march on the polls as powerfully. As is abundantly clear, the very future of our democracy is at stake and the trend toward the dissolution of our society must absolutely be arrested, for, if we think it looks bleak at times now.…

I really don’t feel the need to dwell on the many solutions that we need to implement – from fairer tax policies and wiser government spending to repairing and reestablishing the protection of our right to vote to strengthening our educational system to addressing economic inequality and the fast-approaching retirement crisis to reducing our militarism, etc. – largely because they’re self-evident: it’s not that we don’t know what to do, but that we haven’t summoned the will to do it … and, this, too, is an issue that we must trace to its core and address. In sum, we need to engage in what the Rev. Dr. King described as a “radical revolution in values” that would lead to the establishment of a “Beloved Community.”

And we need to celebrate, a seemingly decidedly happy endeavor in contrast to the previous two … and yet it’s the necessary destination and state of grace that we must attain. By celebration I mean the full acceptance and embrace of our humanity, idiosyncratically expressed in each of us, that, in turn, should be recognized, appreciated and exalted by us all. In truth, this’ll necessitate a major paradigm shift from seeing Difference as something that separates and often repels us to viewing it as an invitation to exploration and mutual benefit and growth. Simply put, when we realize that our differences can provide opportunities for us to grow closer to each other while expanding our appreciation of our world and the beauty of its creation, we’ll truly begin to live into our humanity fully.

I could expand on what the celebration means at greater length – like, say, by relating it to Bishop John Shelby Spong’s encouragement for us to live fully, love wastefully and be all that we can be – but I trust that this, too, is self-evident: it’s not that we don’t know how to live peaceably with and love one another but that we just haven’t summoned the courage and commitment to do it. I genuinely believe that, if we do the admittedly hard work of educating ourselves fully and advocating forcefully, then this step of celebration will flow naturally and abundantly from such an effort.

Yet, truth be told, at this very moment my mind and soul are tired, so I’m going to rest them. And when I arise, I’ll keep going – educating, advocating and celebrating – because, then, my feet may be tired, but my soul will indeed be rested.…

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

 - (Perhaps erroneously) Attributed to Margaret Mead

The Stories We Tell Ourselves....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

What Price Freedom?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And why will this price likely be prohibitive?

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

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

Or, as Mr. Baldwin put it:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands

in moments of comfort and convenience,

but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige,

and even his life for the welfare of others.

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

Strength to Love (1963)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate,

adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness;

only light can do that.

Hate cannot drive out hate,

only love can do that.

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

Strength to Love (1963)

Why are we crying?

Good morn or evening friends

Here’s your friendly announcer

I have serious news to pass on to every-body

What I’m about to say

Could mean the world’s disaster

Could change your joy and laughter to tears and pain

It’s that

Love’s in need of love today

Don’t delay

Send yours in right away

Hate’s goin’ round

Breaking many hearts

Stop it please

Before it’s gone too far

The force of evil plans

To make you its possession

And it will if we let it

Destroy ev-er-y-body

We all must take

Precautionary measures

If love and peace you treasure

Then you’ll hear me when I say

- Stevie Wonder, “Love’s In Need Of Love Today”

As I sit here composing this piece and Stevie Wonder’s piercing and prescient tune plays softly and wistfully in the background, my tears are flowing involuntarily and steadily. Earlier today, having read the Sunday Times and consumed a fair amount of media updating us on the chaos in our country at present, my wife and I just sat in my study crying. So, too, with many of our fellow parishioners during our Zoom-based worship service even earlier today: tears flowed freely as the Rev. John Mennell related the spirit of Pentecost to the current morass in our society and called upon us to live into the challenge of spreading light in this dark time.

Why are we crying?

We’re crying because the country we love seems to be coming apart at the seams.

We’re crying because so much hateful behavior has assaulted us so indelibly yet again in such a short period of time.

We’re crying because George Floyd is just the latest in a long line that stretches back to our country’s founding … and we fear that he won’t be the last.

We’re crying because there’s so much pent up pain now showing itself in anger.

We’re crying because there’s been so much needless suffering dispensed by those who’re sworn to serve and protect us.

We’re crying because the latest evidence of our inhumanity is piled on top of tragically disparate impacts from a global pandemic.

We’re crying because we’re scared for our individual and collective futures.

And we’re crying because we’re actually among the fortunate but fear that we can't really help or protect those less so, or, truth be told, even ourselves....

As for my wife and I, we’re crying because Christian Cooper, who was recently threatened with potential #DeathByPolice for #BirdingWhileBlack, is a college classmate of mine, which reminds me and my friends and family that it could’ve been me or any one of us.

And we’re crying because we’re the parents of two young African-American males who’re especially at risk at this moment, and whom, we’re reminded, we can’t really protect when they’re living their lives out in this ever crazier, maddening and saddening world.

And….

This will be the first piece that I’ve ever written – of the almost 250 now – that I’ll publish in every medium that I use: via my blog, on LinkedIn, via Facebook and through both my personal and professional Twitter accounts. For those who interact with me via my blog or Facebook or my personal Twitter feed, it’ll feel familiar if, as it is, more pained. For those who interact with me via my LinkedIn or my professional Twitter accounts, it may feel uncomfortable largely because it’s more personal, which means more emotional (and you know how reluctant we are to share authentic emotion in professional contexts). But this is far too important a moment not to address it in all of its pain and yet hopeful possibility.…

In case you haven’t figured out by now, I’m an African-American male in my 50s, which is itself a real interesting experience in modern America generally and in the modern American business world in particular. I’ve been privileged to do meaningful work serving clients and colleagues, which has enabled me to tread the tony environs of executive suites and Persian carpet-covered marble floors. In other words, I’m one of the truly lucky – and grateful – few.

Which means, of course, that I’ve been reminded that I’m a Black man in America – usually in a negative way – regularly, far too often and, on a couple of occasions, potentially lethally.…

And throughout my corporate career – during which I’ve been for many of my majority executive colleagues one of the few if not the only African-American they’ve gotten to know at some depth – I’ve been careful to manage myself and my conduct because I’ve understood that though I’ve led a blessed life and enjoyed a privileged career, I don’t have the Privilege that virtually all of them enjoy. That’s right, race is very real in corporate America and there are different rules for different people, especially people like me who tend to be at best One of the Few and most often The Only.

And, of course, when I leave the office and venture out into the real world, despite the privileges of comfort that I’ve been able to enjoy, though I’m freer to be who I really am, I still have to be careful: one of the realities of race in this country is that in modern America you can never forget that you’re Black or, even more bluntly put, that you’re not one of ‘them,’ meaning the Privileged. (In fact, this is exactly the topic of “The Talk” that African-American parents have always been compelled to have with their children coming of age.)

So, because I manage myself carefully in virtually every environment in which I find myself, I’m able to observe the perspectives and behavior of the members of the dominant group while also being able to appreciate how the experience of being of Color lends itself to different perspectives and behavior.

To make it plain, let’s just say that I wasn’t nearly as surprised as some of my white colleagues by the racially divergent reactions to the OJ verdict.…

Now, mid-way through the third year of the most overtly racist (and misogynistic and heterosexist and nationalistically xenophobic and religiocentrist and…) presidency in my lifetime, as our country explodes in response to the latest revelations of the racism that continues to afflict us, this ‘gift’ of bifurcated vision weighs heavy on me yet again: yes, white America, the ugliness that you see now reflects the delayed expression of the pent up pain of continuous race- and class-based wounds.

And it reflects what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., observed years ago: that riots are the language of the unheard.

By contrast, if you’re Black, no matter how privileged a life you lead, you likely understand (though don’t condone) the vehemence on display, however mystifying it may be to the majority of Americans who’re fortunate to be blissfully unaware of the realities of race in contemporary society (or, at least, who claim to be).

To state it more plainly: as virtually every Person of Color understands, this is why Kaepernick knelt, which far too many and possibly most of our white colleagues, friends and family members still don’t seem to grasp.…

Yet these riots are a bit different in that there’s a new and even more disturbing trend associated with them: as the evidence is beginning to show, many far right (read = reactionary white) groups are stoking the furor by inciting and/or engaging in vandalism that will then most likely be attributed to the demonstrators and/or rioters, who are disproportionately of Color. Yes, Accelerationism is a thing in 21^st century America. And, no, you can’t make that up….

But should we really be surprised? After all, the president’s former senior advisor, Steve Bannon, often spoke about provoking societal confrontations. So, if those closest to the seat of power in our society speak glowingly of such conflagration, and then our chief executive engages in overtly racist (et. al.) behavior – c’mon, let’s not pretend that he didn’t understand the racist provenance of the phrase “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” that he tweeted recently (probably to distract us from his abject failure of leadership during this global pandemic) – why would we be surprised that members of the so-called alt-right see this as an invitation to provoke just such chaos? Clearly, they do. And, no, we People of Color aren’t really surprised.…

Which is the point: race is a reality in our society, though we choose most often to pretend that it’s not. And let me be clear, when I suggest that “we” choose to be oblivious to it, I mean those who enjoy the Privilege of not having to acknowledge or experience it. We People of Color don’t have this option.…

And class is a reality in our society, though we also choose most often to pretend that it’s not. How else can we explain our continuing belief in the American Dream in light of literally decades of data that suggest that educational and social mobility have all but ground to a halt in our country (long before the turn of the millennium) and that the appreciable progress in the past four decades has disproportionately accrued to a tiny percentage of our fellow citizens at the top of the economic pyramid? But here, too, People of Color don’t have the option to pretend, as so few of us have been among the fortunate few, economically speaking.…

And lest you be tempted to trot out that tired old argument that we’ve had a Black president so things clearly can’t be that bad, compare his behavior to that of his successor and just let it go before having to try and twist yourself – and reality – into a pretzel to explain how 44’s generally pristine example is somehow even the least bit comparable to 45’s consistently unconscionable conduct.…

But I digress.…

The main point is that there is great pain in our society today and we imperil the latter in direct proportion to how greatly we fail to acknowledge this reality. It’s the pain of the dispossessed: the tens of millions of People of Color who’re found largely in our urban areas and that of the tens of millions of whites who’re found largely in our suburbs and rural areas. (The fact that we aren’t typically found in the same place should tell you something if you’re paying attention….)

People of Color are hurting and unheard about a lack of educational and economic opportunity where they live, a phenomenon that hasn’t changed in a century since they began to migrate en masse to our cities.

And suburban and especially rural whites are hurting and unheard about a lack of educational and economic opportunity where they live, a phenomenon that’s been accelerating for decades. When you add to this that the benefits of their perceived Privilege are clearly eroding (especially since they’ve had to suffer a Black president and are becoming ever more aware of the ‘Browning of America’ in which they’ll become a statistical minority in a generation’s time), you can then begin to understand the fear expressed as vehemence that’s encouraged and has been on display at virtually all of the president’s rallies.

Or, to keep it real, you can see it in their threatening and anti-social responses to the mere inconvenience of being asked to shelter at home, socially distance and wear masks in public during a global pandemic. C’mon: let’s not pretend that there are any Black folks who’ve even entertained the possibility of arming themselves to the teeth with military-style weaponry and regalia and storming a state capitol to express their inconvenience; that’s not a privilege we’ve ever had.…

And, of course, there are a host of other challenges that both People of Color and their majority fellow citizens who’re members of the working and/or shrinking middle class confront every day that remind them, despite their dogged determination to continue to believe in the American Dream, that it’s slipping through their fingers and becoming more of a fantasy every day.

And yet our politicians and media largely ignore these appreciable challenges to the real world well-being of the vast majority of our fellow citizens every single day. Is it any wonder, then, that they feel unheard and thus angry, and then that this turns into outbursts of anti-social behavior?

Yes, seeing this is uncomfortable, which is why so many of us who’re fortunate enough to be able to look away most often do … except that, occasionally, as is the case now, these ugly realities (re)assert themselves. Realizing that pretending that they don’t exist not only won’t encourage them to go away but will actually tend to amplify them in both number and energy/power, why don’t we choose to begin to address them – and specifically their root causes – right now?

It can start by all of us acknowledging the realities of race in our society.

It can start by all of us acknowledging the realities of class in our society.

It can start by all of us acknowledging the realities of the other -isms in our society (like sexism, heterosexism, nationalistic xenophobia, religiocentrism, etc.).

It can start by us exhibiting more humane behavior, especially compassion and empathy, with our neighbors, and most especially with those who are different than us and live in different places.

It can start by all of us choosing to listen and truly hear our fellow citizens, especially those who are different than us and live in different places.

It can start by all of us advocating for the common good rather than our own narrowly defined interests.

It can start by us demanding more humane behavior, especially compassion and empathy, from our ostensible leaders.

It can start by us demanding more humane behavior, especially compassion and empathy, from those who’ve chosen to protect and serve us.

It can start by all of us acknowledging that we’re cloaked “in a single garment of destiny,” as the Rev. Dr. King observed more than a half-century ago, and that we need to learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we’ll surely perish together as fools.…

Don’t get me wrong, I realize that this will require massive change for each and every one of us, both individually and collectively. I realize that it requires what MLK described as “a radical revolution of values” that even he wasn’t fully convinced that we Americans could achieve. And I realize that if you’re reading this you’re likely one of the most fortunate for whom this country’s current structure largely works, except at times like this when civil unrest reminds us that the fruits of our collective endeavors aren’t particularly equitably allocated, and that making such a change will actually cost you something. So be it.

What’s the alternative?

I fear that if we choose not to change – to take this opportunity to engage in a fundamental reassessment of (the structure of) our society – then what we’re seeing now will happen more frequently and in more costly ways and our post-pandemic ‘new normal’ will contain increasing levels of societal discord and profoundly damaging eruption and disruption. Does any of us really want this?

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I realize that the easy answer is a “no” followed by a lack of action that reveals the real answer, but are we really willing to continue not to learn both from our history and from our lived experience?

God, I hope not … but, then again, if we don’t choose to change now, perhaps often and possibly always, we’ll all end up crying.…

The American nation is to be judged in light of unarmed truth and unconditional love. Because a condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak, the voices of the vulnerable must be heard and their hurt attended to. Because justice is what love looks like in public, the basic security of everyone from domination must be established.…

- The Rev. Dr. Cornel West

in “Hope and Despair,” Shelby and Terry, eds.,

To Shape A New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Listening to - and Truly Hearing - the Unheard....

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,

tied in a single garment of destiny.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly

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

"Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963)

I am a child of the riots: no, not the ones now erupting in major cities across our country, but of the ones that erupted more than a half-century ago, and, sadly, for much the same reasons. In my case, it was the Detroit riot of 1967 and my experience of it has gifted me (or saddled me, depending on your perspective) with some of the most vivid and poignant memories of my childhood.

I remember my father having to sit up all night in the library at the front of our house with a baseball bat in hand to protect us should the chaos spread to our own neighborhood from its genesis not too far away. I remember him taking me and my mother on a cautious drive up Linwood Avenue past Central High School to see the US Army tanks with live ammunition at the ready that were positioned on the lawn in a show of force to encourage the attenuation of the civil unrest of the time. And I remember my parents’ struggles as they tried to explain to a four-year-old just what the hell was going on and why.…

Should any child have these memories? No. And now a whole new generation of American children do, so it’s up to us to address this … and by “this” I mean not just the riots themselves but their entrenched, largely unconsidered and undiscussed (social-structural) causes.…

In Detroit in 1967 the spark was police brutality resulting from the raid of a “blind pig,” or unlicensed after hours joint. It was a difficult time in the city and potentially transformative economic opportunity was hard to come by. Abuse at the hands of the storm troopers of an unfeeling (white) power structure lit the match.…

In Minneapolis in 2020 the spark was police brutality resulting from the arrest of a man accused of passing a phony $20 bill. It was a difficult time in the city and potentially transformative economic opportunity was hard to come by, especially because of the disparate impacts of a global pandemic. Videotaped abuse at the hands of the storm troopers of an unfeeling (white) power structure lit the match.…

As MLK observed a half-century ago, a riot is the language of the unheard.

In 1967, we were unheard about a lack of economic opportunity, police brutality in Communities of Color and the perception that our government was actively involved in oppressing us as it clearly was with others halfway around the world in Vietnam.

In 2020, we are unheard about a lack of economic opportunity, police brutality in Communities of Color, especially in the form of the all too frequent killings of unarmed Black people, and the perception that our government is actively oppressing us, including because of our own president’s clear and consistent racism (and misogyny and xenophobia and religiocentrism and…).

See the pattern?

As a high school friend of mine observed via query on social media yesterday, what American riot hasn’t been sparked by police brutality? At first blush, this question may seem a tad snarky, but upon closer evaluation its truth emerges: at some point, typically for largely symbolic reasons, people who perceive themselves to be oppressed and marginalized decide that they’ve had enough and begin to revolt. Is rioting and its unfortunate cousin looting an appropriate response? Depends on who you ask, right?

(No, morally, it’s never right … but it is effective: even if for unfortunate reasons, we are paying attention now, aren’t we? Maybe if we didn’t ignore our fellow citizens and their problems, they wouldn’t have to resort to antisocial behavior to get us to notice them….)

Right now, we’re beginning to hear from the silent majority lamenting the civil unrest in our cities, but where were they when People of Color and others of goodwill rose up to protest the disproportionate murder of unarmed African-Americans by members of law enforcement, giving rise to the Black Lives Matter movement? Too many of them were offering the contrasting and demeaning observation that All Lives Matter as well as that of Blue Lives Matter, while the majority said nothing at all.

As MLK observed a half-century ago, what we will remember is not the hateful words of our enemies but the appalling silence of our supposed friends (that is, the self-considered ‘good people’ who remain unconcerned and disengaged unless something affects them personally).

America has always had a race problem.

It was founded on slavery, a major driver of its increasing though narrowly distributed affluence in its first two centuries, and had to fight a war to sustain itself because the proponents of human enslavement had decided that this “Lost Cause” was worth treasonous succession. In an impressive atonement after the Civil War, the Union-dominated federal government ushered in a Reconstruction period that provided meaningful support and far greater opportunity to the formally enslaved … but, true to form, this progressive and restorative period lasted less than two decades and was replaced by a de facto system of legal disenfranchisement that we came to call Jim Crow and lasted for the better part of a century. The fight for its eradication is what gave our nation the Civil Rights Movement and the great Rev. Dr. King (and others) to lead it.

The fruits of the Civil Rights Movement included both restorative and remediative support to the formerly disenfranchised, from the Civil Rights Act to the Voting Rights Act to the social programs of the Great Society and the War on Poverty. Again, this time for an even briefer period of about a half-decade, America did the right thing … and then, true to form, distracted by a costly and ill-considered Vietnam War, it moved on, leaving most of the root causes of the structural oppression of People of Color and the poor largely unaddressed.

And America has always had a class problem.

Oh, it’s been much better disguised than the race problem, but this country was founded by and for wealthy and powerful white men and has largely been ruled by them ever since. Don’t get me wrong, it is impressive that for one brief, shining moment less than a decade in duration, America elected an exceptional African-American to lead it … but then, true to form, his successor has been his antithesis and an abomination upon our nation. As Ta-Nehisi Coates has observed, as virtually perfect as President Obama had to be, his successor has proven to be, in complete contrast, as incompetent, immoral and unworthy, more so, in fact, than any of us could have imagined just a few years ago.

“Very fine people on both sides” of a neo-Nazi march after which a protester was murdered. Kids in cages because of an immoral war on brown people under the guise of an immigration effort. Travel bans against countries with largely Muslim populations because of an immoral war on brown people under the guise of a national security effort. (Also, I must note that the exemption of several countries that harbored and/or supported the perpetrators of the 9/11 attack and/or other terrorists but also happen to contain properties that license the president’s name for commercial purposes is purely coincidental, or so that b.s. party line continues to go.…) Tens of billions of dollars in federal bailouts given to the nation’s farmers as a result of the harm from a baseless trade war with the country with the world’s second-largest economy. (Also, I must note that mostly corporate farmers being given government money because of the harm they’ve been caused by its chief executive is appropriate and completely different than the welfare distributed to the undeserving poor, or so that b.s. party line continues to go.…) Etc.

I could go on – does any of us really want to think about the profound and profoundly negative consequences of his treasonous predication of international aid on support for his personal political purposes or of having a narcissistic sociopath for an executive leader executive leader who’s also a compulsive liar with a tally approaching 20,000 such fabrications in less than three and a half years or…? – but I’ll end with this one: 100,000 dead and climbing because of a complete failure and immoral and inhumane abdication of leadership resulting in a lethally mishandled response to a global pandemic complemented by a series of “press conferences” featuring guidance like the inappropriate recommendation of unproven medication as a cure as well as the suggestion of the bodily injection of disinfectants.

(OK, I’m sorry, but as I write this I just can’t hold my discipline: what the f@#k has happened to us that we would let this immoral, inhumane moron continue in the most consequential office on our planet?!?)

But, of course, the preceding is simply the context for the conflagration in which we find ourselves today: much of it can be traced back to two things, America’s history of race and class oppression that’s still very much alive and, in fact, thriving, and its president’s consistent and vehement inhumanity.

This is how we end up with Amy Cooper, a Privileged white woman, threatening Christian Cooper, an African-American male who had the unfortunate luck of #BirdingWhileBlack in a public space – Central Park in New York City, no less – and the timidity to ask her to leash her dog as local regulations require, with potentially lethal censure by the police. And then a day or two later, our horror is extended and our worst fears come to life again as we watch four Minneapolis officers of the law either kneel on an unarmed African-American man’s neck choking the life out of him over the course of almost nine minutes or stand idly by while this murder is being perpetrated.

How can you not see this as representing open season on African-Americans?

And lest you protest too much, I ask you to factor in that our president’s response to this tragedy and the ensuing civil unrest that it engendered was to quote the racist police chief of 1960s Miami to remind us that when the looting starts, the shooting starts (but, of course, as sociopathic pathological liars are wont to do, he claimed ignorance of the phrase’s racist provenance…).

Tell me again why African-Americans and others of good conscience shouldn’t be enraged?

Now, again, don’t get me wrong: rioting is not the answer. As the Rev. Dr. King showed us so long ago, nonviolent direct action is: we must organize, we must march peacefully on our statehouses and our Congress, not to take them over with guns but to confront them with the truth of our experience. And the most important way that we can speak our truth to power is to march en masse to the polls on November 3^rd.

It is only then that we will be heard.

But this, too, is just the beginning of a new/the next chapter: because after we vote out this inhuman stain of a president and his partisan sycophant enablers comes the real challenge, that of dismantling the structures of oppression in our society and its true reconstruction into one that is far more equitable and inclusive than has ever been. This is the long hard road ahead of us….

In other words, our goal is not to make America great again, because it never has been for far too many of its citizens. Our goal is to make America great for all for the first time, to live into our professed creeds in a way that makes them real and attainable for all of our fellow citizens.

The good news for those focused on the wrong thing is that this will put an end to riots because, successfully pursued and realized, it will put an end to their causes. The good news for those of us courageous enough to commit to doing the work of re-creating the American Dream – the one that Rev. Dr. King elucidated so indelibly in 1963 – is that this will be the true realization of our foundational ideals as well as the end to what one incisive observer termed the American Dilemma (which is a nice way of noting that our country’s allocation of opportunity was and has been inequitable and, in the truest sense of the term, un-American).

It is sadly ironic that despite so much progress in the past half-century, having enabled an unworthy chief executive whose claimed aim has been to make America great again, we find ourselves experientially back in the 1960s with our society being torn apart by the glaring inequality and inhumanity at its core. But just as his unfortunate election was a negative reaction to or the blowback from the positive breakthrough of a worthy and able African-American president, we could choose a positive reaction to this negativity in ways that create a far more humane, equitable and inclusive future, a veritable American Dream brought to life.

What this will require is that we channel and convert our righteous anger into disciplined righteous action, especially on November 3^rd. Let’s make this the day of a huge riot across the entire country, but one that’s an expression of hope and commitment to supported humanity, as signified by our vote for a fundamental change in direction in this country.

Let’s all march in the streets to our polling places in a few months and, in so doing, bring into being that “radical revolution of values” about which the Rev. Dr. King spoke in such an elevating way so long ago. And let’s not forget that his last effort of uplift, the very one that he was organizing when he was assassinated, was that of a multi-racial coalition of the dispossessed called the Poor People’s Campaign. Do you think that had he been successful then, we may have eradicated many of the structural causes of our current malaise?

I think so … but, more importantly, I’m willing to commit to this work now because I’m clear on two things: the cost of not changing – in terms of more Jimmie Lee Jacksons and Trayvon Martins and Ahmaud Arberys and George Floyds, etc. – is too high and the possibilities for a far more broadly distributed and abundant life are far too great not to try.…

And so the aftermath of violence is bitterness;

the aftermath of non-violence is the creation of the beloved community;

the aftermath of non-violence is redemption and reconciliation.

This is a method that seeks to transform and to redeem

... and make it possible for men

to live together as brothers in a community,

and not continually live with bitterness and friction.

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

"Justice Without Violence" (1957)

P.S. If you prefer, consider the prophetic words of the Rev. Dr. King directly: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/mlk-a-riot-is-the-language-of-the-unheard/#x