politics

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.

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.

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.

WELCOME!

While I get that the results of the last election lay bare the fascist, racist, oppressive tendencies and preferences of American society for a lot of people, (takes deep breath) this has been apparent to a LOT of us for a very long time. For generations to be precise.

So what many people see as “the end of American Democracy” is just “Tuesday” for us. Which is not to say that we are not collectively in dire straits, but “we been tryna tell y’all” for a minute now and have been largely ignored, or worse, we’ve been expected to “rescue America.”

And we have; as Sherrilyn Ifill so eloquently noted on 60 Minutes (Google it), America can only really lay claim to calling itself a democracy since the mid-60’s, largely due to the Civil Rights Movement only to lurch back into the welcoming arms of white supremacy once the dust settled.

Only to find that white supremacy does not even protect all white people.

To say it another way: Welcome To The Hood, Y’all.

Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.

*sigh*

So… are y’all watching this thing tonight? My daughter thinks we should and I know my wife would want me to watch and frankly, I know I should watch if for no other reason that it’s an historic event. This is the first time that a black woman has represented a major party for the office of the executive in my country (ignoring for a moment that other countries have had female leadership for decades).

But she’s forced to share a stage with a tragic joke of a human being and an existential threat to democracy who really has no place sharing the stage with her in a sane world.

But politics has been reduced to a pageant sport in our current timeline and he’s fed into the fears of a lot of people afraid of “being replaced” and they are so scared of losing their place in our caste system that he actually has a real chance of winning.

Even though I’ll likely watch, I’m tired of covering this same old ground where we (you know, “the blacks” and “the gays” and the “illegals” and such) try to convince a large segment our fellows that we really have no interest in doing to them what has been done to us. Rather, we’d just be satisfied with being left alone in spite of the fact that the party in opposition has convinced them that we’ve somehow “taken” something that is inherently “theirs”

And frankly, I’m just tired of hearing his voice.

It May Be Time to Shake Off the Dust

Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” That is why it was called Galeed. 49 It was also called Mizpah,[c] because he said, “May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other. – Genesis: 31:48-49

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. – Matthew 10:14

A bit of drama from the Michigan state senate gained the national spotlight recently. In a campaign mailing, Lana Theis, the state senator from Brighton, implied that state senator Mallory McMorrow, of Royal Oak, was involved in “sexually grooming” children for a supposed pedophile ring and that furthermore, Senator McMorrow is supporting something called the “raced based” education of our children.

The first accusation carries serious legal implications and should not be taken lightly. One would think that an accusation of this magnitude, with dire implications for our children’s safety, should be shared with local, federal, state authorities rather than be included in a fundraising email.

The second accusation, that of supporting “raced based education”, is overly broad and open to interpretation covering a potential spectrum between The Honorable Elijah Mohammed and The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. The major focus of the life’s work of both men had to do with race, yet from entirely different angles of approach.

Senator McMorrow did not take these accusations lying down. She stood in the Michigan chamber and delivered a powerful speech refuting Senator Theis’s lies and innuendo. Furthermore, McMorrow boldly stood up for the rights of citizens who are marginalized by Theis’s stance. The speech only lasted five minutes but it resounded around the globe as a long overdue response to the increasingly fascist, authoritarian, and racist public stance of the Republican party. Senator McMorrow has been rightly celebrated for the principles, passion and integrity exemplified in her comments. But her speech is not what I’d like to focus on today. It’s what she said after the speech. When asked if she would continue to work with Senator Theis in the senate, McMorrow stated that she had no interest in working with her further.

This would seem to run counter to the orthodoxy of a lot of politicians, including our current president, and many in the media, who urge Americans to find compromise with those with whom we disagree.

I’m here to suggest that it may be time to “shake the dust off our feet”.

When I was a teenager, we used to close our Baptist Youth Fellowship meetings at my home church in St. Louis with words taken from an Old Testament text: “May the Lord watch between me and thee, while we’re absent, one from another.” We discontinued the practice after someone reviewed the text leading up to that scripture and put it in proper context. In short, it’s the story of the dissolution of the relationship between Jacob, the Patriarch, and his cousin, Laban, for whom Jacob had worked for 20 years. Jacob felt that Laban had not dealt fairly with him. In fact, Jacob had been ordered by God to take his household, consisting of two of Laban’s daughters, and his share of Laban’s flock – that he’d worked for – and leave. Once he’d learned of Jacob’s surreptitious departure, Laban pursued him.

He eventually caught up with Jacob and after a lot of back and forth and rehashing of grievances, we come to what amounts to a covenant between the two men that signifies the dissolution of their relationship. However, I do not interpret this as an amicable parting. For in verse 52 and 53 Laban further states: 52 “This heap is a witness, and this pillar is a witness, that I will not go past this heap to your side to harm you and that you will not go past this heap and pillar to my side to harm me. 53 May the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us.”

These men will not be visiting each other for the holidays. They have irreconcilable differences. Jacob has taken a stand for himself and for what is right. To continue to associate with Laban would be foolhardy. Likewise, rightly, or wrongly Laban feels that he is the aggrieved party. For him to continue to ally with Jacob is pointless.

Turning to our New Testament scripture, we find Jesus instructing the disciples as he sends them out to preach and heal in his name. He has been very specific in his instructions, as one would think he’d be. These are his representatives. What strikes me is that Jesus makes the disciples completely reliant on the people they will be ministering to. He instructs them to take no coin with them, to not even take any extra clothes. “… for the worker is worth his keep,” he says.

This is vital because I believe it leads to the admonition to “shake off the dust.” If the people you are ministering to and working with don’t recognize your worth – and by extension, the worth of the God in you – move on. They aren’t worth the time. In similar fashion, Jacob, God’s anointed, had labored faithfully in Laban’s household. His worth was not reciprocated in kind, so God instructed Jacob to move on. When Laban caught up with Jacob after seven days, he chastised Jacob in bad faith for “abandoning” him. When it was obviously Jacob who had been mistreated.

All of this presumes that what one is trying to accomplish aligns with the will and purpose of God. But beloved, God does not want us to waste our efforts in alliance with those who would abuse us. We are to use discernment in our alliances. And while we are not to think too highly of ourselves, this is his mission after all, we are not allowed to waste God’s time. In verse sixteen Christ admonishes his disciples to be “shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves.”

So, I think Senator McMorrow was in order when she declared that she no longer intended to work with Senator Theis. There is an oft quoted epigram of Maya Angelou that says, “When people show you who they are the first time believe them.” Consider that the line is part of a larger quote that reads in part, “Live your life in truth. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. You will survive anything if you live your life from the point of view of truth.” Or again, again, as the Savior said, “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.”

Temptation

I cannot begin to explain how infuriating I find the current Senate spectacle.
No job is worth this.
To be publicly debased for a Senator’s political cred is beyond the pale.
But black citizens have it almost encoded in our DNA that this is “the price of the ticket.” That our qualifications and our behavior have to be absolutely immaculate to even be considered for anything that whites have historically dominated, and that this is somehow a good thing.
I’ve said elsewhere that “I don’t hate America but some says I’m tempted.”

Today is one of those days.

You’re Welcome, Senator

So rather than, the “black women save America again” narrative, how about “black women again voted in their own best interests, like everyone else does? ”

And don’t forget that black people are often left with the choice of voting for the candidate that will do them the least amount of harm.

While generally being ignored at best.

And at worst, scapegoated.

This has nothing to do with “love of country.” Love America, hate it, or likely, feel generally ambivalent about it, for black residents, voting is about self preservation.

Beyond his conviction of the Birmingham bombers – which was significant (but also his job) – I know little about Doug Jones. I supported his candidacy because he was not Roy Moore.

I have it on good authority that, among white progressives, Jones is considered the real deal, the diametric opposite of Moore. I hope that Jones works to bring black constituents around to the same enthusiastic view.

I hope that Jones truly understands that there is rarely any enthusiasm behind a black person’s ballot. But there is usually much at risk. Little promise and much to lose. ‎And usually, just the act of voting comes with difficulty, in the face of interference and even intimidation.

Black voters don’t get much from our votes, generally. Yet we keep showing up.

It’s past time we received something for it.