THE CASE AGAINST UNIFICATION

(Text of a talk given in February of 2021 to The Livingston Diversity Council)

With calls again for “going back to normal” I think it’s time for a repost. The very real concerns for public health aside, I’m making the case to move forward – away from “normal” – not back. In large due to fact that we really don’t have a true accounting of how we go here.

After 4 explosive years under our last chief executive, a very contentious election, and a full-blown insurrection on January 6th (2020), there is a strong call in the land for unification. In fact, it is a regular talking point of our recently elected president. We live in frightening times. Threatening inflammatory rhetoric has been turned up “well past eleven” for quite some time. And there is still a very real threat of fascism ascending to the federal seat of power under an authoritative strongman. Besides, our country is under the threat of economic collapse brought on by a world-wide pandemic. Wouldn’t now be the time to unify under the American banner?

Well, it depends. Unification for whom? Certainly not for black Americans. In fact, unification is a direct threat to the welfare of black citizens. We only have to look to history to understand why.

At the end of the Civil War a crowd gathered on the front lawn of the White House in celebration of the defeat of the Confederacy, clamoring for a speech from President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln respectfully declined and promised a speech for the following night. In consolation, he requested that the Marine band play “Dixie.” Lincoln declared, “I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard. Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it.” As the crowd cheered him on, he added, “It is good to show the rebels that with us they will be free to hear it again.” In choosing to welcome the Union’s “adversaries” back into the fold with that song, Lincoln helped set a pattern for the betrayal of the formerly enslaved for decades. Not only was “Dixie” enjoyed by the throng on the White House lawn that day, it became emblematic, along with the rebel battle flag, of the oppression and degradation of black Americans for decades to come. Oppression and degradation that began with the end of the Reconstruction era.

Contrary to what generations of children were taught in school, the Reconstruction Era immediately after the Civil War was very successful. For 11 years the formerly enslaved, aided by the protection of Union troops and with the sanction of the federal government, worked tirelessly to secure full citizenship in these United States. Ironically it was “radical abolitionist wing of the Republican Party” in opposition to the efforts of Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, who triggered the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867. Included in the law were the following measures:

• It divided the south into 5 districts governed by military governors until such a time that acceptable state constitutions could be written that eliminated all vestiges of slavery.

• All males, regardless of race, excluding former Confederate leaders, were allowed to participate in the constitutional conventions forming the new state governments.

• These new state constitutions were required to provide universal voting rights for all men regardless of race.

• States were required to ratify the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed black citizenship, in order to be readmitted to the Union.

Marinate on this a minute if you will. 1867, The Republican Party calling for full citizenship rights of black Americans at the exclusion of former Confederates from involvement in the process. Confederates who were legally barred from interfering in the lives of black citizens. Think of what could have happened if this had continued into the 20th century. Think of what highly motivated, industrious, and capable men and women could have done when granted the freedom afforded white Americans, afforded the often celebrated European immigrants, to pursue the full rights and benefits of American citizenship. Unfettered by Jim Crow, allowed to flourish as their imaginations and their industry dictated.

What did happen? As I said, for 11 years the United States actually began to live up to its promise. Congress passed the Freedman’s Bureau and the Civil Rights Bills, successfully overriding Andrew Johnson’s vetoes to pass them into law. They even moved to impeach Johnson.

Ulysses S. Grant, elected after Johnson, supported Reconstruction and enforced the protection of African Americans. He used another law, The Enforcement Act, to put down the Ku Klux Klan, essentially wiping them out by 1872. Grant integrated the federal ranks, extending job opportunities to black Americans. He championed equal rights. He supported a 2nd Civil Rights Act of 1875. During this era, black Americans enjoyed the highest representation in government ever. Across the south and in Missouri, there were 1517 black state officeholders, 6 of them lieutenant governors. At the federal level 16 congressmen, 185 federal officeholders in all.

Furthermore, across the south, local officials had great success in creating integrated governance. Accordingly, the formerly enslaved prospered in land and business ownership, in education, in all phases of life.

That is, until the cause of white unity became more important. The election of 1876 did not produce a clear electoral winner between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden. Neither had the 184 electoral votes required at the time to be declared the winner. The parties formed a bipartisan Electoral Commission to decide the race. To break the deadlock, the 2 parties came to an agreement to provide Hayes 20 disputed electoral votes to win the vote. To secure the support of southern Democrats, the terms of the agreement included that the federal government would remove all troops remaining in southern states and that southern democrats had the right to deal with black citizens without “northern interference.”

Unity achieved.

Southern whites immediately resurrected the Ku Klux Klan and began a campaign of violence and terror that by 1905 had removed any significant traces of black political power.

In 1898, unified in their opposition of integration, the white population of Wilmington, South Carolina staged an actual coup. A mob of 2000 white men overthrew the legitimately elected local Fusionist party consisting of black and white leadership of the city. They expelled city leadership who would comply, murdered those who wouldn’t. They destroyed private property and businesses, burned the only black newspaper to the ground and killed an estimated 300 people. By this point, Mississippi had passed a new Constitution which disenfranchised black voters. South Carolina and the rest of the south followed suit. In effect, “whiteness” nullified the 14th Amendment and overrode any claims of legal citizenship by black citizens. The Wilmington Coup appears to be the watershed moment that cemented this notion across the land. And it became the template for the unity of whites at the expense of black lives and livelihoods for the decades to come.

In a show of labor unity and solidarity a series of massacres the summer of 1917 in East St. Louis, Illinois left an estimated 250 black citizens dead and another 6000 homeless. The violence was triggered in reaction to the recruitment of black workers to replace white union employees striking the aluminum and meatpacking industries. The very same unions that had denied black workers membership. Reporting at the time indicated that East St. Louis’s white police force either ignored or participated in the violence. And the National Guard, called in by Illinois Governor, Frank Lowden, largely allowed the massacre to continue. Much of East St. Louis’s black population fled over the bridges spanning the Mississippi river, connecting their city to St. Louis, Missouri, never to return.

In the summer of 1919, Eugene Williams a black 17 year old living in Chicago was playing on raft in Lake Michigan with friends. The raft drifted into a white swimming area and angry white beach goers began throwing rocks at the raft. Williams fell in and drowned because, according to the official coroner’s report, the rocks that white bathers continued to throw at him prevented him from coming ashore. The white beach goers were unified under the need to keep recreation strictly segregated.

When black beach goers on the scene complained, they were attacked by a white mob that spread into the black community. The rioting continued for 5 days. As with East St. Louis, police arrested black participants but steadfastly refused to arrest whites. At the end of it 15 whites and 23 blacks were killed. 500 total were injured, over 60% of them black. Over 1000 black families were left homeless. Not one white rioter was convicted of a crime. That summer there were similar incidents in Washington, D.C., Knoxville, Tennessee, Longview, Texas, Phillips County, Arkansas, and Omaha, Nebraska.

In 1921 white rioters, unified by the mandate to protect a white woman’s virtue, destroyed over 35 blocks of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Greenwood community, also known as “Black Wall Street”. Greenwood had been organized in 1906 after Booker T. Washington toured the Arkansas Indian Territory and Oklahoma.

At the time, Greenwood was the wealthiest black community in the nation. It contained several grocers, 2 newspapers, 2 movie theaters, several nightclubs and churches. Estimates have ranged from 75 to 300 black citizens killed. The violence was precipitated by the claim that Dick Rowland, a 19 year old black shoe shiner, had assaulted Sarah Page, a 17 year old white elevator operator. Note that much of the violence was organized by the very same Klan that US Grant had eliminated in 1872.

Rowland was taken into custody and word quickly spread through the black community that a crowd of white men was gathering at the jail to likely lynch the young man. A group of 75 black men stationed themselves outside the jail to protect Rowland. Upon the assurance of the local sheriff that Rowland would be protected, the black citizens agreed to disperse. As they were leaving, a member of the white mob attempted to disarm a black man and the confrontation devolved into a firefight. 12 men were killed, 2 black, 10 white. White rioters gathered and rampaged through the black community that night and into the morning. At least one plane was reported to fire on the black community from the air. Reportedly, the first instance of the use of air power on American soil. When the dust settled, 10,000 black people were left homeless. Property damage estimates ran to more than $1.5 million. There are other examples that echo through our collective history; Detroit, 1943, St. Louis 1949, Charleston in 2015, Charlottesville in 2017. And while last 2 instances involved single actors, they were by no means “lone operatives” as they were radicalized by their exposure, in unity, with like-minded affiliates.

Black History is the story of the struggle for liberation. Starting effectively in 1619 on through to Ferguson (Mike Brown), Staten Island (Eric Garner) and Kenosha (Jacob Blake) to name just a few. We struggle to liberate ourselves from racism which, I take pains to emphasize, is not a defect of individuals, but a system and structure designed to serve white supremacy, to serve white people who often unify in its service. Often violently.

I recently heard the celebrated activist, Angela Davis, say that “unity is an abstract.” She had been asked about the concept of America unifying in this moment in history. Dr. Davis suggested that to be effective, people must unify around “something.” She suggested that unity in struggle makes sense. Otherwise, she implied, it’s just lip service. The struggle for black liberation goes beyond allyship, beyond just “listening” and lip service to commitment and “action.” Let our country unify around liberation of its black citizens. Too often it has unified against us.

Life Is Inconvenient (Fortunately, There Is Enough Grace)

Matthew 6:34 NIV
[34] Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Romans 15:1-2 NIV
[1] We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. [2] Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.

The last 3 years have been a constant litany of things that I did not expect and certainly did not want.

The death of someone that everyone (including me) knew would outlive me. A seizure for no apparent reason. A second seizure caused by a wholly unique and unlikely chain of events that apparently had nothing to do with the first.

Masked symptoms of another ailment whose treatment could likely have killed me had it been discovered before the seizures (it’s complicated).

Early retirement (which frankly, was a blessing).

Massive renovations on 2 separate properties caused by alternately  a fire and a tornado.

And last night we lost power. Which happens a lot. I live in an outer suburb of Detroit. We have a lot of trees, which is lovely on the face of it. But when the wind blows, they fall. The wind has been blowing a lot lately because of decisions made a long time ago and gross negligence and inaction in the face of those decisions.

But that’s a discussion for another day.

Fortunately, we have a generator that powers most of the house. Unfortunately, the portion of the generator’s auxiliary circuit that powers the heat and well pump (yes, I live that far out) failed. So, no heat and no water this morning.

But I have resources. I’m expecting an electrician to come by in the next couple of hours and hopefully we’ll be up and running soon and the power company promises restoration by 3 pm. Meantime, I’m holed up in a local cafe, safe and warm, as I type this.

I’ve taken to saying that life is lived in the gaps between disasters. There is always a death on the way, a storm, a fire, a circuit failure. So best not to worry about it and enjoy yourself when you can.

But then what of the disasters? Aren’t they “life” too? We don’t just get to accept the “good parts” as “ours.”

I could raise my hands to the heavens and thank God for grace. And I do. I live in constant grace. If my understanding is correct, we all do.

But remember those resources? They make recovery a lot smoother. But for a lot of people, the “gap” between disasters can be a lot narrower, the effects markedly more severe.

Which means I have a responsibility to share my blessings with others.

Why not? I have more than enough.

Which is really sad when you think about it. Nobody has to suffer. There is more than enough to go around.

Yet so many are still left without because there are still so many of us who believe that what we have been blessed with is solely for us.

Trust Is Earned

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice…” – MLK

So…

Black people cannot relax outside of our own spaces. We are on constant alert.

And when we are assaulted, whether physically or verbally, we’re expected to take “the moral high ground” no matter the intent, or the neurological make up, of the offender.

And we generally do, not out of some sense of “virtue” or “righteousness”, but for survival. Because it wasn’t that long ago when retaliation, a word spoken in haste, even a cross look, could bring rebuke, cost a livelihood, or incite a lynch mob.

Everyone knows this whether we acknowledge or not. It is why a confident Black woman is viewed as “arrogant” or better yet “angry”. It’s baked into the operating system of the majority of the Western World.

I think Black people will continue “go high” as the former First Lady famously said, or as another poster said earlier this morning, “vibrate higher.” To do otherwise poisons the soul, weighs us down.

Besides we got bills to pay, kids to raise, elders to care for.

But don’t expect us to accept the excuses that white folks give at the expense of our humanity. That’s a bridge too far.

I told a white politician once that I didn’t trust the motives of white people at face value. She allowed that it was a wholly rational response.

REV. JACKSON

My first recollection of Rev. Jackson is some version of this speech

Not so revolutionary now but a big deal to a child who really didn’t see himself reflected in the larger culture.

It taught me that my worth didn’t depend on where I was born or who I was born to but rather on the mere fact that I was alive. That I didn’t “earn” basic respect. That it was due me.

By the same token I had to give it to everyone, no matter their circumstances.

Bass Reeves

Both of my parents were incredible storytellers.

My mom spins parables, wringing insightful meaning from the most mundane circumstances.

My dad was a fantasist who never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I loved the tales he told but I took them with a grain of salt.

So when he asserted that “You know that the Lone Ranger was a Black man, right?” I rolled my eyes.

Even though I’ve known about Bass Reeves for a while now, if he were still alive I’m sure he’d jab me with, “You didn’t believe me but you believe the white lady” upon seeing this post:

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/17w7o2qdet

We’re All Villains

One of my favorite pieces of family lore revolves around my great-grandfather, Robert, called Shack, who purportedly was one of the most successful bootleggers in West Tennessee during Prohibition.

His son, my great uncle, also called Robert, loved to brag that Shack was never caught plying his trade. Shack often boasted that he never worked an honest day in his life, supporting his family in fine fashion by producing bootleg whiskey and shooting dice.

In one instance, the local sheriff assigned two deputies to follow Robert The Elder around for a week, knowing that the local juke joint was due for a resupply.

On Friday afternoon, the deputies trailed Shack in a police cruiser as he made the four mile walk into town. Even stopping to frisk him a couple of times to assure themselves that Shack carried no contraband.

Satisfied they’d done their job, they returned to headquarters to report on a successful completion to their assignment.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

The fully resupplied juke joint conducted Friday night business uninterrupted. One can only imagine the embarrassment at headquarters the next day. How did Shack accomplish this blatant act of subterfuge?

This is the part of the story that Uncle Robert took particular glee in telling.

Shack delivered his specific brand of moonshine in concentrated form – much like orange juice – small enough to fit into a coffee can which he wrapped in shipping paper. He blended the final product on site.

To sneak his package past his police tail he attached one end of a wire to the package and threw it into the drainage ditch alongside the road. The other end of the wire went into his pocket. He strolled into town walking his can of hootch like it was a pet dog. The wire was thin enough that the deputies could not see it from their vehicle and whenever Shack saw them approach, he merely dropped the wire, stood patiently while they frisked him, and then retrieved the wire once they’d left.

Tennessee of that day was an openly racist, segregated, hierarchy, though one could make the argument that little has changed in the material lives of Black Tennesseans since. Schools are now segregated by tax codes and vouchers rather than law, for instance. The legacy of slavery hung heavily over Black men like Shack in pre-World War II Tennessee. The odds were stacked against him from birth. He had little to no chance of learning to read, let alone getting an education and his life was in constant risk of racial violence. The Klan, which briefly became active at the end of the Civil War to stem the tide of black suffrage, experienced a resurgence in the early 20th Century after the release of D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of A Nation” which glorified the “knights” of the Klan as the protectors of white society. President Woodrow Wilson praised the film after a private screening at the White House.

Another piece of family lore involves the lynching of Joe Boxley, a farmhand of limited mental capacity, who worked for a white family in Crockett County, Tennessee, where Shack plied his trade. Like Potiphar’s wife of the Old Testament, the matriarch of the family was said to relentlessly pursue Joe in a clandestine attempt to seduce him. Joe had enough sense to never be caught alone with a white woman, but his family was broke enough that he couldn’t afford to quit the job. Eventually, the woman fell ill of a mysterious malady and spent several days in bed barely conscious. When she finally came out of her stupor her first words were, “Joe?”

Such was the backdrop of the times as Shack prepared, packaged, and distributed his wares. We, his descendants, have portrayed him as an anti-hero of sorts, taking the bad hand dealt him and running a successful enterprise in “the underground economy.” Accordingly, his family wanted for nothing. Yet there were repercussions.

In later years Uncle Robert often noted that while they were at Shack’s back door on Saturday night for a personal sample of “the recipe” (they couldn’t well be seen at the local juke), the upstanding members of Crockett County’s Black society vilified Shack on Sunday thru Friday. So much so that Uncle Robert, Shack’s only son, a star athlete, and standout student was shunned by polite society. Hardened by the hypocrisy of it all, Uncle Robert determined that “if they were going to brand me a ‘bad nigger’ I’d be the ‘bad-est nigger’ imaginable.”

Never to do anything half assed, Robert Glenn fully threw himself into his new chosen path.  He made his living running his father’s whiskey and illegal gambling. Mostly dice. Unlike Shack, he paid little heed to those he crossed on either side of the law. Reflecting back decades later he would wonder if he’d manifested a type of death wish. By his own admission, he took unimaginable, unnecessary risks, often escaping disaster by a hair’s breadth.

But, in his eyes at least, he was honest about who he was and what he was doing even if his path led ultimately to self-destruction.

Eventually though, after one close call too many, he’d had enough. With few options and nowhere to go (Shack believed in “every pot sitting on its own bottom”), he added a couple of years to his age and enlisted in the army around the time armed services cleared the way for Black soldiers to fight in World War II. Uncle Robert was shipped to the European theater where he served with distinction. But that’s a story for another day.

What I’m interested in is the justifications, lies really, Uncle Robert and Shack had for their behavior.

We’re all the heroes in our own stories, usually underdogs, regularly misunderstood, often tragic. We make our personal odysseys against inconceivable odds to get the girl/right the wrong/defeat the monster.

Or so we tell ourselves.

To be clear, the obstacles that Shack and his son faced were ready made for a hero’s journey: a rigged justice system, legal slavery in the form of Jim Crow segregation and sharecropping, the constant threat of white violence, and the further indignity of the hypocritical condemnation of “proper” Black society.

How did they choose to respond?

Shack made and sold illegal whiskey, an unregulated, often dangerous substance, largely to his own community. In his times, the main risks of consuming moonshine were from poisoning from contaminants like lead, methanol, and arsenic. The results were often blindness, kidney damage, and death. I have no way of knowing to what level Shack maintained his quality controls. But it is quite possible, Shack made a very comfortable living from the high likelihood of poisoning his own people. Now, let’s assume for a moment that no one got sick or died from his “brew.”

Put bluntly, given the racial disparities of the Depression Era, pre-war South, Shack made a living salving the misery of his neighbors with an addictive substance.

Likewise, Shack’s son, my Uncle Robert, profited from the sale of the same illegal (probably tainted) whiskey, and by his own admission, “raised as much hell” as he could. In fact, he delighted in it, particularly with respect to the “fairer sex.” He told me that he never hurt anyone physically other than in self-defense. Though short on details, he confessed that he left “a trail of misery” in his wake in those days.

They were both villains of the highest order; exploitive, manipulative, heartless. Shack plied his trade in the manner of the modern tech bro sociopath. Beholding only to the bottom line. What did he care for the lives his product damaged? They consumed it of their own free will.

Robert merely met the community standards set before him. He often said that he “gave ’em what they wanted” or expected at least.

Did either of them interpret their behavior as villainy?

Of course not.

Do you?

We all manufacture justifications for our wickedness. Justifications often built on the lies we tell ourselves so that we can stand ourselves. Ironically, we often think too highly of ourselves because we fear that we are worthless. We create heroic narratives for our behavior to distract our minds from the compromises we make to our integrity, the harm we cause, the manner in which we exploit others for gain. Rather than make amends we pursue delusion. Making amends would require us to abandon our carefully constructed fantasies that undergird our self-image.

We may not lynch or poison our neighbors or exploit our peers. But we are often curt and rude to elderly relatives because of questions asked one time too many (there’s even a limit to the allowance for senility). We will unduly punish a child over a minor infraction behind a particularly frustrating commute home. We will lash out a colleague in jealousy.

And then we expand on the assumed affrontery to avoid addressing the issues that drive our behavior. We construct a hero’s narrative to justify our transgressions. Because we’re all afraid of facing what we don’t like about ourselves. We’re all warping the concept of morality to fit the shape of our fantasies. We’re all taking shortcuts to our desired outcomes. We’re all constantly looking for excuses for our questionable behavior (and doing it loud and wrong).

We’re all villains.

Blackness Is A Curse

The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.” – James Baldwin

In November of 2021 10-year-old Isabella Faith Tichenor, a Black middle schooler enrolled in the Davis school district, in Salt Lake City, Utah, took her own life after repeated racial harassment by her classmates. Davis schools, have a history of documented discriminatory practice. The most recent being called out in a Justice Department report in October of the same year. Yet nothing was done. No effort was made to address the concerns of her family and other black families in the district.

Because too many white people still believe that blackness is a curse.

I remember being told this in grade school by a white teacher. He didn’t necessarily support it, but he offered that there was a theory that blackness was “The Mark of Cain”. All of this ignores what we knew even then from the fossil record about human origins, but let’s just stay with the theological/literary aspects of the discussion for the moment.

I don’t recall mentioning it to my parents, or if I did, what they said.

Frankly, I don’t remember much of a fuss. I’d internalized so much anti-black orthodoxy by that age, it was just another data point.

But I was also a kid that did the reading. Genesis 4:14-15 reads:
“But the Lord said to him, “Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him.”

I suggested later to this same teacher that blackness wasn’t a curse, but a warning against harm to Cain and his descendants. If this was true, what were we to make of slavery? To his credit, he allowed that America might be in trouble.

There have been some well-meaning white people who, through the years, have attempted to dispel my characterization of the “cursedness” of my skin tone. This is a mistake, because they are operating from the premise that I want to be like them or that I’m “just as good as them” or that my skin color is “equal” to theirs.

As if whiteness is the gold standard.

They are making the same mistake as my aforementioned schoolteacher. Whatever “curse” mentioned in the story of Cain had nothing to do with his appearance, rather it was on those that would do him harm. So it is with the curse of American Blackness. It has nothing to do with me or anyone who looks like me. Rather it is the sense of false superiority that white people hold over me and, most importantly, the way the embrace of white supremacy dehumanizes them to the point that white children could torment a Black child into committing suicide with the apparent tacit approval of all of the adults in their lives.

The curse of blackness does infinitely more harm to white people than it does to Black people.

Link to 2021 article:
Family mourns loss of 10-year-old Utah girl who died following reported bullying https://kutv.com/amp/news/local/family-mourns-loss-of-1

American “Gulags” Are Nothing New

The “fascism” that many are finally seeing first hand has been apparent to a lot of us for quite some time. My grandmother used to offer water to “road gang” convicts repairing the road in front of our family farm. I remember “helping” her deliver water (I carried the dipper) to those men (though she often cautioned me to “not get too close”). I remember the smell of the tar they laid on the road and the sweat pouring off them and the gratitude in their eyes.

For a long time, like a lot of people, I assumed that they “deserved” the punishment they were getting when oftentimes their only “offense” was “not having a job”.

We’ve had “gulags” for a minute, y’all.

“Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor that was practiced historically in the Southern United States before it was formally abolished during the 20th century. Under this system, private individuals and corporations could lease labor from the state in the form of prisoners, nearly all of whom were Black. Prisoners today produce products that have been bought by companies like McDonald’s, Walmart and Cargill.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States#:~:text=States%20leased%20out%20convicts%20to,labor%20with%20very%20little%20oversight.

Public

Nah, I’m Good

While I hear that generally he’s as popular as ever with the faithful, I’m relieved to hear that many of the people who voted for the current Chief Executive are “coming around” now that they are actually experiencing actual harm from his policies.

However, I find little motivation to “join with” or “welcome” them. Not out of spite or any desire for “revenge” (as I heard one progressive writer blithely put it).

Who am I to judge? I’ve got my own shortcomings to answer for.

Rather, I was never “in community” with these folks, especially the truly MAGA faithful, to begin with. Personally, I often find myself on the outside looking in no matter what space I find myself in. Beside the fact that I’m currently “living Black” in an overwhelmingly white, conservative community, I generally don’t trust the logic of crowds, I ask too many questions, and frankly, I live in my own head a lot. So I’m always a bit detached. Awkward really.

I have to be on guard against the temptation toward snobbery because of it. Awkwardness can often lead to elitism if left unattended.

Regardless, I feel no kinship with, or any desire for same, with any current or former supporters of the current Chief Executive. I certainly am willing to work in tandem with the like minded against a common threat and to support vulnerable communities (no matter the political bent).

But let’s leave it at that. Perhaps an unnecessary distinction but it’s one I require. And there is precedent: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/the-first-rainbow-coalition/

The Revolution Will Not Only Not Be Televised… It Will Never End

Black citizens know that American democracy is not a destination. Rather, it is a constant struggle. Point of fact, America has never been a democratic state. At our inception, women and non-landowning men could not vote and though slavery is never mentioned in the Constitution, it was provisioned for in the Three Fifth’s Compromise and the Second Amendment to name a couple of examples.

To paraphrase Sherrilyn Ifill, America only approached democracy in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act that finally provided government protection for the voting rights of Black citizens, less than 4 years after I was born. Unfortunately, the Roberts Court has all but unravelled it.

Wednesday night, my daughter and I watched a Livestream from the University of Michigan that featured Ta-Nehisi Coates and Dr. Angela Davis where Dr. Davis surprised everyone in attendance in stating that she was actually “optimistic” about America’s prospects. Sure we’re in grave danger. But historically speaking we are moving in the right direction. She likened it to the “3 steps forward, 2 back” analogy. We’re obviously in a “2 back” phase, but to her mind we are making progress, else the party in power would not be taking such extreme measures.

She also reminded everyone that we need to see ourselves from a historical perspective. That we are a part of history rather than living separate from it. I wrote down a quote without attribution and I cannot remember whether Coates or Dr. Davis actually said it but it struck me like a bolt of lightning:

“You are here because people who could not see you fought for you.”

I’m fond of saying that “I know where I am.” I cannot afford the delusions of traditional American propaganda or patriotism. But I also have to remember that the survival of my people is not an accident. That those who went before me had even less reason to believe that America would make a place for them, yet they fought for me.

I can do no less for those who I cannot see.