White Supremacy Robs Country of Moral Agency

This week I was listening again to an interview of author Adam Cohen by Terri Gross of NPR’s “Here and Now” and was reminded again of how white supremacy has robbed the world of the capacity it had to honor God’s command that we “love our neighbors as ourselves.” (https://www.npr.org/2017/03/24/521360544/the-supreme-court-ruling-that-led-to-70-000-forced-sterilizations)

Cohen is the author of Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. The book is a fascinating account of how this nation is white supremacist at its core – having a mindset that upholds that white people – more specifically white men – are superior to all people who do not meet their standards of excellence. The affected targets of white supremacist policies and practices are black and brown people, for sure, but also women, Muslims, and Jews, members of the LGBTQIA community, the disabled …the list is actually quite extensive.

We already know that wealthy, Protestant, white male superiority was written into the Constitution; we know that Thomas Jefferson never intended for people to believe that all people were created equal. Our founding document was meant to clear a way for wealthy, white, male landowners to make America white and to keep it white.

That statement is not hyperbole but is supported by America’s own documents and statements of and from American folk heroes. United States Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a key character in Cohen’s book, was a supporter of eugenics – the discipline which worked to create and maintain a “master race,” which, it decided, included only “Nordic” people. Holmes, says Cohen, “had suggested years earlier that the best route to societal reform lay in “taking in hand life and trying to build a race.’” (p. 9) In ruling for the constitutionality of the government’s practice of sterilizing people whose existence they thought threatened the goal of creating a master race, words of Holmes showed how the poison of white supremacy permeates even the institution charged with meting out justice when all else fails when he said, “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Belief in the supremacy of white people (who were white enough, not “swarthy, as Ben Franklin once complained about the German people) led people and continues to lead people to believe that some people, because they are “better” than others, are worthy of better treatment, better opportunity and better lives in general. In the 1920s, the eugenics movement was hugely popular. Eugenicists believed that “the unfit,” whom they defined, “threatened to bring down not only the nation but the whole human race.” (p. 2) John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Alexander Graham Bell were supporters of white supremacist thinking. Members of Congress relied on and celebrated their whiteness; Sen. Ellison DuRant Smith writes Cohen, said: “Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock.” (p. 5)

Books were written describing the peril of the existence of white people, including The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy, and The Passing of the Great Race. Those books are probably on the bookshelves of many of our politicians who still find it difficult to treat people of color with dignity and respect.

Seen in this light, it is not or should not be surprising that the president of this country is fixated on trying to “fix” America’s “browning” problem by building a wall on our southern border, spouting off all kinds of unkind descriptions of who these people are in his opinion – rapists, drug addicts and criminals in general. Those words gaslight the racist beliefs held by so many people who ascribe to white supremacist doctrine. This country has been fighting against allowing people in this nation who are not white almost since its existence. The Immigration Act of 1924 encouraged people from northern Europe to enter this country while closing or widely limiting the numbers of people allowed to enter who hailed from southern and eastern Europe (they were not “Nordic” enough.) States in this country made laws which allowed the sterilization of people judged to be inferior which resulted in untold numbers of women who they believed fit into the “inferior” category to be segregated – i.e., kept away from men for as long as they were of child-bearing age, or to be forcibly sterilized if they remained integrated into the general society.

The work involved in the American eugenics movement was so renown in establishing white supremacy as the will for the world that the Germans borrowed many of America’s findings, based on faulty science, for the establishment of Nazi policy which resulted in the extermination of at least 6 million Jews. In the language of eugenics, Jewish people were inferior. Their presence was not necessary for the good of the world.

The rampant and rancid expression of racism we see today, spawned and nurtured by the principles of white supremacy, is not new; they are part of the very legacy of America. This president and his cabinet apparently have deep roots in white supremacy. More and more we see brazen expressions of their arrogance based on their race, and we see other white people remaining silent.

This is America.

People keep saying that what we are seeing and hearing is “not who we are” as a country. Megan McCain, the daughter of the late Senator John McCain, said being called “racist” is the worst name anyone can be called. The fact is, however, is that the proponents of white supremacy are standing on the shoulders of people before them who pushed white supremacy as the will of God for this country. White supremacists have long overridden even the concept of the sovereignty of God by deciding that not all of whom God created were worthy of being created.

A friend of mine said recently, “My work is to wipe racism out of this world.” It’s a noble dream, but it appears that white supremacy is a tree with roots far too deep to ever be completely unrooted. White supremacy has robbed our country and this world of being moral when it comes to racism, sexism, and discrimination against others in general. We are bound to know its history and to create strategies which will expose it for what it is while establishing and creating justice for those who white supremacists believe are inferior.

This president and his friends in office are merely following the script put in place by those who came before them.

A candid observation …

Make America “Great” Again!

The battle cry for Donald Trump is that he will “make America great again.” He will get the jobs back, he will defeat ISIS, he will build that wall and keep all the illegal Mexican immigrants out, even as he deports literally millions of Muslims from this country.

He will take us back, back to the time when, he says, America was truly great.

When was that? What made America great and for whom was it great?

America may have been “great” when Founding Fathers crafted the concept of democracy, using and relying on the words “all men are created equal and are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights,” which included “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

But from the time of the crafting of the Constitution, it was clear that those words were woefully mythic in nature. The Founding Fathers never intended for some people to be free, to be considered equal, or in the case of African-Americans, to even be considered full human beings.

Nearly every endeavor engaged in by those who “made America great” involved the subjugation, oppression and discrimination against people who were not white and male. Indigenous Americans were killed off; that is called genocide. White women were considered second class citizens, prizes to be used for the sexual fulfillment of their men and to be used as an excuse to indiscriminately lynch black men.

Black people were, simply, the backbone upon which the local and global economy was built. They were objects to be used, traded, and ultimately discarded.

So, given that reality, when was America great? Or, maybe the better question is, “what” does “great” mean? What is the definition that Trump and his followers are using?

At one of his rallies, Trump ordered a protester out, saying, “remember how it used to be,” and going on to explain people who “caused trouble” were often handled. (http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-tells-crowd-to-knock-the-crap-out-of-protesters-offers-to-pay-legal-fees/ ) Wild West” mentality, a man was considered tough by the way he handled his enemies, real or perceived. If he had to take someone out, then so be it. “In the good old days,” Trump mused at one of his rallies, “this didn’t happen because they used to treat them very, very rough. (http://mashable.com/2016/03/12/trump-rally-incite-violence/#ytvHzFqipiqh)

He is right. In the “good old days,” black people could be and were lynched at worst, or at least badly beaten, for merely being accused of a “crime,” which could be something as petty as being out at the wrong time of night. In those “good old days,” African Americans returning from battle in World Wars I and II were treated like common criminals, often being beaten by whites while still in uniform. Brutal, barbaric lynchings of blacks were carried out by white people as a matter of course, increasing in the time period after Reconstruction, with white perpetrators never having to worry about being held accountable, and with white law enforcement officers often part of the lynch mobs.

In spite of the US Constitution saying that every American citizen had a right to a trial by a “jury of his peers,” black people were almost always tried by all-white juries – which almost always convicted them. After slavery was abolished (except for people who had been convicted of a crime, per the 13th Amendment), white people and white systems sought to criminalize as many black people as possible, via the Convict Leasing program, which kept blacks virtually enslaved for the duration of their lives.

And so I ask again, when was America so great, and for whom was it great?

Trump knows what he is thinking. His definition of a great America is a time when people did not have to care about, worry about, what black people and brown people and Muslims and Mexicans needed. The great America was a place where women were objectified and used at the discretion of sexually and physically abusive men. “Great America” is a time when white people could enjoy their whiteness basically undisturbed.

That America is long gone; the demographics of this nation have shifted too much. Women have gained too many rights. A way has been made for “the marginalized.” Jobs have been outsourced by business moguls like Trump so that they can realize the greatest profits possible with as little output of capital as possible. “Great America” is now, as Fareed Zakaria says, “post America.” That idea is scary to everyone, not just white people.

But Trump is seeking the triumph of white male supremacy in an era where the resistance against it is behemoth. Trump is calling the troops for a fight that has been in the losing lane for years. The question is, if Trump wins, and those who want “Great America” back as it was, and it doesn’t come – which it most probably will not – what will they do?

What will America do?

America the beautiful is now America the embattled. Not even Trump can change the course of history that has been in place for generations.

A candid observation …

Trump, Racism, and God’s Grace

“America, America, God shed his grace on thee!” Those are words from the song “America the Beautiful” that we all learned in elementary school.

Well, if America ever needed grace…and salvation…it is now.

Donald Trump won the Nevada primary. He will most likely be the Republican nominee for president. Though my politically astute friends try to calm my fear that he will win the White House, I am not so sure. America’s racists are on a roll, and they are not about to stop.

Donald Trump says that he will “make America great again.” That’s merely a euphemism for putting white supremacy back on top. It’s a euphemism for making it so that black and brown people are under the foot of the Empire, denied of justice in the courts, fair treatment in housing, education and employment. America’s white people are afraid of losing power, plain and simple. Some say they are angry because of the economy, but the biggest issue for them is that the numbers of black and brown people are steadily increasing. They are afraid that their base is getting smaller and smaller, and with that, their power, their capacity to oppress “the least of these.”

And Donald Trump says he will make it all better. He is giving them pablum and they are eating it like starving children in underdeveloped countries eat when they are finally given substantive food.

I read a troubling article this morning, about Trump and the so-called “Central Park 5” Trump was on the case, calling for the five black teens accused of raping a white woman, to be convicted and put to death. Actually, his statements seemed more to ask that they simply be killed. (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/17/central-park-five-donald-trump-jogger-rape-case-new-york?CMP=share_btn_fb#_=_)

What Trump said and did in that case was appalling and troubling …but not for people who still believe in vigilante violence when it comes to black people accused of doing something to a white woman. When it was proven that the teens did not rape the white woman, and the charges were dropped, Trump was furious, and was even more furious when the city of New York awarded the young men, collectively, $41 million in damages.

This is not a man who believes in justice for all people. He is clearly racist, and openly so. He is unabashed in what he says and believes, and he knows he has a large group of Americans, mostly white but not completely so, who are with him.

They want the America of the past, where black people stayed in their place. They don’t care much that America’s “exceptionalism” came mostly from this country’s boast that it was a democracy where everyone could come (pluralism) and make good on “the American dream.” (capitalism). Racists never ascribed to that claim. They were clear that America was to be the land of opportunity for white, property-owning men. Colored people were not worthy of having full citizenship. They were merely the tools which white men would use to make this country the powerful country it became.

They were to be used, not respected.

Trump is singing their song. He is sounding like George Wallace and Ross Barnett and Sam Bowers and other racist demagogues. His being in the White House, his followers believe, will provide a calm to the rising tide of multiculturalism in this country. They believe he will bring things into normalcy in the White House.

They celebrate, it feels like, that he will be like President Woodrow Wilson, a member of the Ku Klux Klan who had screenings of The Clansman and Birth of a Nation in the White House.

So many white people are not disturbed at all at what Trump says because he is speaking to the pain they have felt as white oppression has been steadily addressed. They would not think it bad that not only was Woodrow Wilson a member of the Klan, but so were four other presidents, including Warren G. Harding, who was actually sworn in a KKK ceremony that was held at the White House. Calvin Coolidge allowed cross burnings on the steps of the capital and also allowed KKK parades in the nation’s capital in 1925 and 1926. Trump’s followers are not disturbed at this history, nor, I would imagine, would they be rangled if Trump said he was a member of the KKK. (http://www.thetrentonline.com/revealed-5-us-presidents-members-racists-cult-ku-klux-klan-photos/)

They are just tired of “the coloreds.”

White people of the ilk I am describing have been mortified that a black man has been in the White House, his wife dancing on popular television shows, letting little black children inside those hallowed walls. Many white people believe that America was created to be a “white man’s country,” and all these people of color are messing up what is “supposed” to be.

The media must be in sympathy and in agreement with Trump and his ideology, because from the beginning, they allowed Trump so much free air time – this to the most wealthy man of the bunch running for president. They put his foot on the first rung of the ladder. If he couldn’t come into their studios, they interviewed him by phone. The American media has done much to usher in a racist, hate-filled man, showing that it is not objective at all. They let America hear this demagogue over and over ..and they hardly challenged him.

There is an important chink in this argument, however, that we have to consider. Trump is not only winning with racist white people. In Nevada, he got a big swath of the Hispanic vote as well. According to reports, 45 percent of Hispanics there are Trump supporters, that in spite of his stance on immigration. (http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/24/entrance-polls-trump-dominates-latino-vote-in-nevada/) Does that mean that they do not care about Trump’s open racism?

So, now, here we are. Trump most probably will get the Republican nomination. He will continue to be a bully and a political thug, much to the admiration of his followers. Evangelicals have shown that their love for God leans toward maintaining their view of God in a white-ruled country. They have shown that the words of Jesus, for Christians to be forgiving and to care for “the least of these” have little to do with their religion. And America’s “silent majority” is showing that what they believe in is America’s mandate to be white. If a bully will keep it that way, so be it.

What does God’s grace look like in a situation like this? It is clear that my understanding of grace, and that of whites and others who ascribe to racism, are two different things.

A candid observation …

Obama and the Issue of Race

I cringe every time I hear someone say that “racism is worse” or that “the country is more divided than ever” since Obama became president.
I cringe because it is not true. What is true is that Obama’s election brought the dormant racists out of hiding.
It seems that many white people think that racism is “gone” or is “ok” as long as we do not talk about it or deal with it. It is OK for there to be substandard living conditions for black people. It is OK for there to be excessive police violence wielded against black people. It is OK for the infant mortality rate among black people to be higher than any other ethnic group…It is OK.
America treats its big secret, its growing, metastasizing tumor, like anyone treats a secret. America, white America primarily but some blacks too, believe that talking about “it” is the big problem, not the “it” itself. Racism is like America’s ghetto, or like any poverty-ridden neighborhood in the midst of a posh vacation resort. If you cannot see it, you don’t have to talk about it or deal with it. It simply does not exist.
When Obama was elected, people said we were a “post racial” society. That was a foolhardy sentiment from the beginning. Just because some white people voted for a black man was not an indication that racial hatred and bigotry were gone. His being elected was supposed to be enough, evidence that racism was gone. He had to distance himself from his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, in order to prove that he was the president of all people. People were glad. Our dirty little secret was no more.
Except that it was. The reality of the secret, our deep-seeded racism, was there, agitated from hibernation because this black man was in the White House. How dare this happen in this land which was programmed, via the United States Constitution, to be a white man’s country? Some white people were glad and hopeful, but many were not. They were angry and insulted. There was a group of lawmakers who met the day of Obama’s first inauguration to strategize on how to make him a ‘one term president.” (http://www.boston.com/news/politics/gallery/073009_beer_summit_obama/). He might have gotten into office, but by God, they were going to make him suffer for it and if they had their way, they were going to make him so miserable that he would not even want to run for a second term. They would fight him and challenge him on every turn.
Post-racist, indeed.
Obama was dared, almost, to say anything about racism. When Trayvon Martin was murdered by George Zimmerman, and Obama stated a truth, that “if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon,” the “resenters” got busy, claiming his words were dividing the country. The fact that Zimmerman apparently profiled Martin, followed him in spite of being told not to, and then killed him didn’t matter. Obama had better not say anything that indicated that this tragedy happened largely because Zimmerman believed a black child was out of place.
When Harvard Professor Skip Gates was arrested at his own home by police and Obama made mention that the incident was …just wrong…he was again jumped on and accused of dividing the country. The president ended up calling for a “beer summit” where he, Gates and the officer sat down together and “talked.” It seemed like Obama was trying hard to show people who had no intention of accepting anything he said or did …that he was a regular guy …and had no animus against white people or police officers, no matter how wrong their actions might have been. (http://www.boston.com/news/politics/gallery/073009_beer_summit_obama/)
It seems that the only way some white people can survive within this racist system is to act like it doesn’t exist, to ignore it and not speak about it. Obama ended up backing away from most things racial …because he knew he would be skewered for it. In the meantime, too many white people, angry that he was in the White House as the President and not as the butler, angry that their attempts to destroy him politically had failed, seethed. They began to talk more about their resentment; they insulted and degraded Obama at every turn. Obama didn’t make them racist; this system did. The president could not change their hearts, though, hearts and spirits that had been nurtured for decades by a system which revered and protected white supremacy.
When Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Donald Trump say that the country is more divided (racially) than ever, it makes one wonder what they would do? None of the current GOP candidates, save one, have said anything about the injustice of the Tamir Rice case. None of the candidates are admitting that our justice system is seriously racist and has been for a long time. Nobody is jumping on Donald Trump for his outrageous racism and racist comments. America’s racism is front and center in the GOP candidates, and, frankly, it is sickening.
This country is divided not because of Obama. This country is a mess racially because this country has avoided the issue of its rabid racism for generations. This country is divided because it has created and implemented policies and procedures which are at their root devised to protect the control white people have had over black people since black people were brought here from Africa. This country is divided because our very Constitution, and our country’s institutions, indicated that black people were not human, and were not ever to be considered “equal” to white people. Staying quiet about “the secret” does not make the secret any less abhorrent, powerful or damaging.
The divide which is ours …will remain. There are too few people who are willing to look this Leviathan in the face and do the work needed to destroy it. Perhaps Obama was willing to try doing that, but his enemies would never have allowed it.
Our core is rotten because of our racism, and the core was planted long before Barack Hussein Obama was even thought about.

A candid observation …

What Tamir’s Denigration Means

What does a people say when a nation, its own nation, continually denigrates them and lets them know that their lives really do not matter?

There has been a grave travesty of justice – yet again – in the decision of the Grand Jury in Cuyahoga County to not indict the police officers who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice within two seconds of driving up on him as he played with a pellet gun.

How can any intelligent group of people not agree, not see, that those officers murdered a child?

People always want justice when they have been aggrieved; it is human to seek it. The parents and loved ones of the four people killed Ethan Couch, a wealthy teen who was driving drunk, were outraged when he was given probation instead of jail time. Any parent would be so outraged.

Think of how you would feel if such injustice, such a decision to not demand accountability for awful crimes, were your norm.

It is the norm for black people in this nation.

It is not the norm when black people kill other black people; those criminals go to jail. But the criminals wearing badges get a free pass. They are almost never held accountable.

It is the norm for black people in this nation.

How can a people, masses of white people, not be incensed at America’s continued violation of the human and civil rights of black people? How can a people who say they are pro-life not care about the families which are being devastated by a justice system which is anything but just?

How can parents not feel the anguish of parents of killed loved ones, their children, who will never see justice rendered against the murderers of their children, because the system …protects…their murderers?

How can a nation not be incensed that officers who have a history of using excessive force, especially against black people, are allowed to stay on the streets? Aren’t they at least as despicable as priests who molest young children and who are allowed to stay in their parishes?

How can any person calling him or herself Christian not be pained to the core of his or her spirit, because the Scriptures, which demand justice and righteousness, are being ignored?

Do not say that we, black people, should trust the system. The system has never protected us, never had our best interests at heart.

We cannot trust the prosecutors, the judges or the juries. They are bedfellows with a largely white police force which knows it can get away with murder. Prosecutors need the support of police unions, so they do what the unions say do. Prosecutors, elected officials, also need to satisfy their base, which is largely white and Conservative, and no friends to black people.

Judges need support from powerful union interests as well. They are too often not interested in justice, but, instead, with satisfying those who pay their salaries and help them stay in office.

The result is a justice system which still lynches black people.

What was done by the Grand Jury in Tamir Rice’s case …was immoral, unjust, but typical of how American justice works for black people.

He was a kid, 12-years old, and he was shot to death within seconds of being driven up on by rabid police officers with no self control.

He was allowed to lay on the ground for a number of minutes, dying, while the police officers wrestled and handcuffed his 14-year old sister.

How can so many (not all) white people not be enraged? What if it had been your son? What would you feel? What does a people say when their own nation continually denigrates them and lets them know that their lives really do not matter?

Has America’s racism, its white supremacy, eroded your very souls, your capacity to feel?

It would seem so.

A candid observation …