America, We Hardly Knew YE

It’s hard to comprehend, understand, and accept what is going on in this country.

I keep going back to the movie, “The Sound of Music,” where in the last scenes, Christopher Plummer, who played Captain von Trapp, sings “Edelweiss” as his family makes its last appearance before they flee Austria. He has decided not to give in to pressure being put on him to join the navy of Nazi Germany.

I had no idea about what Edelweiss was; I only knew that he looked very sad and was singing it as a tribute, to his beloved country, which was being taken over by the Nazis. The flower was and is known to be strong and able to survive in the harshest of Alpine weather. Perhaps he was stating that his beloved Austria would likewise survive.

As he chokes up toward the end of the song, his entire family comes out and joins in, and prompts the audience to join in as well. The song ends, the family leaves the stage, and then begins its trek out of Austria. Everything that they have known has changed; the Edelweiss will remain the same, and that brings some degree of comfort, even in the midst of von Trapp’s profound sadness.

America seems to be getting to a state where many Americans will fall back on memories of a country that changed right before their eyes. It seems that we are being led into an exile of sorts; it seems that we, like the Israelites in the Hebrew scriptures, will sit on the banks of our own River of Babylon and weep as we remember this country when there was a semblance of civility and a commitment to democracy, even though the promises made in our founding documents were never realized.

As much as I think of “Edelweiss,” I think of Psalm 137, where the psalmist writes:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we sept when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land” If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I don’t set Jerusalem above my highest joy,

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem’s fall, how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!” (Psalm 137:1-7, NRSV)

Those who despise democracy are working intentionally to tear this government down, and while they say that there exists a “deep state” (which is true) what they are proposing is not the end of the deep state but the creation of a new deep state, a state in which the freedoms that Americans have enjoyed will be stripped away. Already, we see the freedoms being attacked; we see state governments imposing rules and making laws that make it difficult if not impossible for teachers to teach what they want; we see politically irate parents bombarding school boards demanding that the history of some groups of people not be taught; we see people burning books like the Nazis did as they destroyed the German government as it had been. (https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/theyre-burning-books-in-tennessee/article_1f8c631e-850f-11ec-bc9f-dbd44d7e14d7.html) We hear the former president saying things like military generals who oppose him are treasonous and should be executed (https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/28/politics/milley-donald-trump-execution-comment/index.html) and we hear him say that if he is reelected, some news operations will not be allowed to be on the air.( https://thehill.com/homenews/4221310-trump-pledges-to-investigate-msnbc-parent-for-threatening-treason/#:~:text=Trump%20pledges%20to%20investigate%20MSNBC%20parent%20company%20for%20%27threatening%20treason%27,-by%20Rachel%20Scully&text=Former%20President%20Trump%20pledged%20to,%2C%20things%2C%20and%20events.”).

America was never all it claimed to be. It was built on a broken foundation, one that pushed capitalism by using and exploiting people brought to this country for that reason alone. The country was built on a broken obelisk, which meant from the beginning that as the country grew it would not be able to withstand the pressure and the weight that comes with growth. (Ancient Egyptians refused to continue to build the obelisk once they discovered it was cracked. It sits unfinished to this day. https://mymodernmet.com/unfinished-obelisk-aswan-egypt/)

America had chances to correct some of what was wrong and what would continually weaken it, but reneged. It forged ahead, giving in to greed and the raw desire for power, ignoring the creaking of a government that was not able to withstand the seedbeds of racism and sexism. While it touted its “democracy,” the whole world watched and knew that America was not all it claimed to be. Other democracies imitated America’s racist practices; the Nazis actually studied America’s race laws in the creation of their own.

What this country failed to embrace was the impossibility of a country built on a cracked foundation being able to withstand the winds of bigotry, enmity, and greed as time went on. When the former president was elected, I remember being shocked when one of my social media friends said “Democracy needs to end.” I was stunned.

But it is a fact that there are groups of people working to do just that – end democracy. Big business is running the country and the politicians are allowing it – and some appear to be actively participating in the process.

I keep seeing Christopher Plummer singing “Edelweiss,” and I keep referring to Psalm 137. It seems that we are on our way to the shores of a river in a country we once thought we knew – and I say “we” in a pejorative sense, because many Americans were never included in the benefits of being American. They were not even considered to be citizens…yet, they held onto hope that one day this country would be what it professed to be.

My thought is, though that none of us really knew the real America at all, and are about to be made to reckon with that. Maybe, in spite of all the warning signs and flashing lights that have been a part of our government for hundreds of years, we will learn the hard way that silence is complicity, and for that, we will be forced to sing an “American” song in a strange land.

A candid observation …

Pining for the Good Old Days That Never Were

I have been stuck since Nikki Haley, a Republican desiring to be president, uttered the most profoundly insulting words I have heard in a long time.

“Do you remember when you were growing up, do you remember how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country. We can have that again, but to do that, we must vote Joe Biden out,” she said. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/27/opinion/renee-graham-nikki-haley-2024-gop-trump/#:~:text=“Do%20you%20remember%20when%20you,must%20vote%20Joe%20Biden%20out.”)

I was stunned. The statement was so ignorant and insensitive that I just got stuck. What do you say to something like that? Her words took me back to the lyrics of the song, “The Way We Were” sung by Barbra Streisand in the movie of the same name:

Memories
Light the corners of my mind
Misty watercolor memories
Of the way we were

Scattered pictures
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were

Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time rewritten every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we?
Could we?

Memories
May be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply to choose to forget

So it’s the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were
The way we were

For whom was life so simple? Surely, if you were white and middle class or higher, it was a lot easier than it was for everyone else, including poor people – be they white and living in rural areas or Black and Brown, living in urban areas. For the white, middle, and upper classes, it was easy to remain in their silos and be able to tune out the difficult lives lived by so many people. Maybe they had lives where the mom dressed for a day’s work as a housewife in a shirtdress, accessorized with pearls and an apron like white television mothers were often portrayed.

But that wasn’t the life of the masses. The lives of people trying to make it did not allow a lapse into fantasy. Life was “no crystal stair” for those who had to work 2-3 jobs to make ends meet. Racism and sexism were issues that badly affected many people. Black soldiers were frequently killed when they returned from fighting in World Wars I and II, and veterans of the Vietnam War were treated like misfits because America was ashamed of losing a war that the country should never have entered.

Blacks, whites, and Jews were marching together and getting attacked and/or killed because they dared stand up to the racist American system. Leaders who were trying to make a difference – including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, President John Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy – were mercilessly assassinated. All over the world, there was an eruption of antisemitism, resulting in what has been labeled the “swastika epidemic.” (https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/the-swastika-epidemic-global-antisemitism-and-human-rights-activism-the-cold-war-1960s)

In the days of Haley’s youth, it was not only Black people and Jews who were hated. Roman Catholics were also hated. (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/when-america-hated-catholics-213177/)

Medgar Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his own home. Black and White kids were beaten and killed because they participated in the movement to end segregation. Three Civil Rights workers, one Black and two Jewish, were murdered because they, too, were working to dismantle the racist system of this country. Emmett Till was murdered by white guys who were acquitted and bragged that they had in fact killed the teenager.

The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An estimated 418,000 Americans died in World War II. An estimated of 2-3 million civilians on both sides are said to have been killed during 58 the Vietnam War. An estimated 200,000-250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died, and over 58,000 American soldiers either died or were/are listed as missing.

So, what “simple” and “easy life” was Nikki talking about? Was she completely shielded from what was going on? Was she so sheltered that she did not know what this country was going through? And did she get a message that if people were suffering, it was not because of racism or sexism or poverty or immoral policies being passed; it was because they deserved the way they lived because they were lazy?

I am still stunned by her words. I’m angry at Ron DeSantis saying that slavery was “beneficial” for Black people and that enslaved Africans actually benefitted from slavery because they were taught skills (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/22/desantis-slavery-curriculum/) and inferred that Africans wanted to come here and did so, willingly. That discussion is for another article.

But Nikki Haley’s words stung. The sheer ignorance and insensitivity were astounding. “Can it be that life was so simple then? Or has time rewritten every line…What’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget”

Out of respect for all for whom life was not so simple, I wish that Nikki Haley would just sit down and be quiet. Her voice is tainted with ignorance and insensitivity because of her blind ambition; it seems that she will say anything to pander to the group of people who are pushing racial, gender, religious, and ethnic discord.

We don’t need you, Nikki. This country just does not need you.

A candid observation…

On Affirmative Action: We’ll BE OK

Ever since the US Supreme Court issued its ruling on Affirmative Action, I’ve been stewing – not as much because of the ruling, but because I am sick and tired of the majority culture’s belief that without it, we, people of African descent, can do nothing.

Before Affirmative Action existed, Black people were getting to college in some way – including Harvard, Yale, and the other Ivy League schools. Our numbers were not great at those schools, but we were there, in spite of Jim Crow and all the other roadblocks the majority culture put up to keep us out of college -period.

Not only did we get into the elite schools, in spite of their restrictive numbers, but we built our own institutions – what we today call HBCUs – Historically Black Colleges and Universities. We were as determined to get an education as the majority culture was determined that we not get an education. And, it is important to note, that there were white people and white organizations that helped us including the American Missionary Association which, through what is now known as the United Church of Christ, helped establish six HBCUs – Fisk, Talladega, Lemoyne-Owens, Dillard, Huston-Tillotson, and Toogaloo.

The first Black student to get admitted to Harvard was Richard Theodore Greener, who graduated in 1870. Since him, other African Americans were admitted to Harvard College, including W.E.B. DuBois, Monroe Trotter, Alain Locke, and Martin Delany, who was admitted to the Harvard Medical School. Harvard would only admit 12 Black students per year, but that was enough for the movement leaders. Affirmative Action notwithstanding, the percentage of African American students is currently about 6.5 percent, compared to 43 percent of white students who are admitted on the basis of their family legacy of attending Harvard.

The 6.5 percent of Black students is what has the majority culture all up in arms, yelling “unfair!” and “racist?” That is categorically ridiculous, especially as “affirmative action” for legacy admissions was left untouched.

The decision has some up in arms because they want – and feel – that some intervention is needed to assure Black and Brown students a fair chance of being admitted at the so-called elite schools that may not happen due to this ruling – and that may be the case – but the fact is, African Americans were finding ways to get into colleges and universities long before Affirmative Action came to be, and the lack of acknowledgment of that fact is what has me up in arms.

Colleges and universities were connected to the slave trade (https://newrepublic.com/article/121382/forgotten-racist-past-american-universities), and many professors in white colleges opposed any Black person being admitted because they believed Black people were intellectually inferior to whites – therefore, should not be admitted. (https://newrepublic.com/article/121382/forgotten-racist-past-american-universities)

In spite of those types of actions on the part of white colleges, universities, and professional schools, Black people persisted. We learned at home and at church that education was vital in order for us to be able to compete in this country and in the world, and so we, with help from our communities and families, made a way. And while it may be the case that many qualified Black students did not choose to apply to the so-called elite white schools for many reasons, including cost, the fact is, Black students got into colleges and universities at about the same rate as white students, according to a study done by the Brookings Institute. (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/racial-and-ethnic-preference/)

This SCOTUS ruling is really about keeping race from being considered for admission to the so-called elite colleges and universities. Of the approximately 4000 colleges and universities in this country, only a small percentage – less than 10 percent – use a highly selective admissions process, of which race, in the case of Harvard and UNC, is one of the factors. Those who say this is a bad day for African Americans say that if the percentage of Black students is curtailed at these elite schools now that Affirmative Action, as it has been understood ceases, say so partly because it is at these schools where there exists the networks of students who can and very often do become the next leaders of the country.

That, to many, is the most salient reason to celebrate the SCOTUS ruling. Many in the majority culture still do not believe that Black people should be included in the pool of people who will make laws and policies that will define this nation and its ultimate form of government, or become leaders – especially the president. Barack Obama’s presidency was not supposed to happen, and in reality, it offended many.

But I think the majority culture – and others who likewise adhere to majority culture values and beliefs – forget that Black people have been trained by this oppressive system to scale the barriers that have always been put before us in order to keep us in “our” place. We learned to read though that was illegal. We became doctors and nurses and mathematicians. We became physicists and chemists scientists, attorneys, and judges – not because of the majority culture but in spite of it. We are resilient, tenacious, and faith-filled people who have had to jump hurdles and keep on pushing forward in spite of being denied our rights as American citizens. We have been lynched, lied to, lied about, dehumanized, criminalized, brutalized, looked over, and walked over – and yet, we have continued to push through it all and we are still standing.

The SCOTUS case might keep some Black and Brown people out of the elite schools, but that will not stop us from pushing against the blatant racism that this country has incubated and grown. America has not learned yet that racism doesn’t work. It cannot keep oppressed people down forever because the spirit that exists in all human beings including Black people will not rest as long as the discrimination continues.

African Americans have been in an abusive relationship with the majority culture since we were brought here from Africa to build this economy. We have endured the inequality and systemic racism that the majority culture says does not exist and we will continue to do so. You, America, taught us how to struggle, but, as Celie, one of the main characters in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple said when she was leaving her abusive husband/stepfather/rapist, “Until you do right by me, everything you do will fail.”

To those who are celebrating the SCOTUS decisions that are taking away the rights of so many, and specifically the rights of Black people, I repeat Celie’s words, “Until you do right by us, everything you do will crumble and ultimately fail.

A candid observation…

African Americans are still considered to be a problem

As a child coming to a realization of what it meant to be Black in this country, I was relieved to “study” President Abraham Lincoln, who, we were told “freed the slaves.”

What we were not told or taught was that while disliked slavery, he did not believe that Black people were equal to whites and that the best way to deal with the “problem” of their being in the United States was to get them to move – to go somewhere else so that whites could live in this country without the menace of their presence.

In 1862, he said to a group of Blacks he had invited to the White House to discuss resettling Blacks in Caribbean Islands or perhaps sending them “back” to Africa, he said, “Your race suffer from living among us while ours suffer from your presence…It is better, therefore, for us to be separated.” (https://www.history.com/news/abraham-lincoln-black-resettlement-haiti)

He had thoroughly looked into places to which Americans of African descent could be sent, and with a man named Bernard Kock, an entrepreneur and cotton planter who lived in Florida had settled upon a plan that would use federal funds to send 5,000 African Americans to Cow Island, located off the coast of Haiti, where they would work on a cotton plantation, receive access to housing, hospitals, and schools, and after working on the plantations for four years, would be given 16 acres and wages for the work they had done over those four years.

The agreement was made the night before Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

While federal funds were allocated to support the emigration (expulsion) of 5,000 formerly enslaved persons, only 453 made the maiden journey. Once on Cow Island, they lived horrific lives. There were no houses; they slept on the ground in huts made with foliage from the island. There were no hospitals; they suffered and many died from illnesses they contracted while there. Kock was with them during this disastrous project, and when the wretched, expelled American citizens rose up to rebel, he fled.

It is clear that African Americans are still considered to be a problem. We are not wanted here in spite of the fact that it was our labor that built this economy. Whiteness and an almost desperate effort to hold onto white power, privilege, and control still result in the lives of African Americans being made more miserable than white citizens.

The stress of being Black in this country cannot be overstated. Our white brothers and sisters to not want to believe it or hear it; they are adamant about claiming that they are not racist, nor is the system racist, but the facts cannot be ignored. African Americans are still the targets of state-sanctioned violence, discrimination in housing and health care, unfair economic policies, and criticism for speaking out about any of it. A recent PBS documentary exploring the maternal health and death rates of pregnant Black women includes accounts of Black women whose health issues during pregnancy were ignored, causing serious post-partum health issues, and in many cases, death of the mother. (https://www.pbs.org/video/surviving-pregnancy-as-a-black-woman-6o33so/), and the repeal of Roe v Wade unfortunately will probably mean that the horrid statistics for pregnant Black women will only get worse.

We are still a “problem.” The narrative was created a long time ago that we were the problem, not the system that created laws and policies that from the beginning worked against us. Former US Secretary of Education Betsy Vos recently, in talking about the low numbers of American students knowing American history cited CRT, learning about diversity and inclusion, and history included in the 1619 Project as the reason, instead of students learning about the US Constitution and Thomas Jefferson. (https://www.foxnews.com/video/6326762773112) The attack on American history including more about the history of African Americans is only getting stronger, as white parents, educators, and politicians continue to try to keep the history of white supremacy in this country where the narrative has placed it, effectively allowing the narratives that have been the substance of bigotry against Black students in place. To be “woke” to them is to seek a deeper truth about America’s history with Black people, which they absolutely do not want.

Many white Americans still want the “problem,” i.e., African Americans, to go away. They want an all-white America, which they believe was the intent of God in allowing or leading the Pilgrims to cross the Atlantic Ocean from England to get here. They clearly believe that “America” is supposed to be a white nation, and that an American citizen includes only white people. They want people of color deported, removed, and forgotten – unless and until, of course, they need their bodies for cheap labor in order to maintain the American economy.

Abraham Lincoln’s spirit lives on – not so much, for me, because he “freed” enslaved people, but because in the end, he was no less racist than the planters and citizens who wanted African Americans to be put out of the country whose economy was built by their unpaid labor.

Dealing with the Devastating Results of Dehumanizing Others

In spite of my best efforts, I frequently find myself going back to the story of Ruby Bridges, the little Black girl who integrated the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960.

She was six years old.

In her account of that day, she said she remembers the shouting and yelling as the federal marshals ushered her through the crowd. They were so noisy, she recounts, that she thought they were celebrating Mardi Gras because that was the only place she had heard such noise.

But it wasn’t Mardi Gras they were celebrating. They were protesting against integration and screaming hateful, racist epithets at this one little girl. (https://www.npr.org/2022/09/07/1121133099/school-segregation-ruby-bridges).

She was the only student in her class. She was also the only child in the entire school. On the day that was to be her first, she and her mother sat in the principal’s office for the entire day, waiting to be assigned to a class, but as they sat there, they saw parents coming into the school and leaving with their children. By the second day, there were no students in Frantz Elementary other than Ruby. All the white students had been removed.

For one entire year, Ruby was the only student in her classroom. Every day, she would go into that classroom, where she was taught by a white teacher who had come from the Northeast United States to be her teacher. It is said that the situation so depressed her that months into the school year, school janitors, wondering why roaches were being seen in that classroom and discovered that she had stuffed her lunches into file cabinets and other closed spaces.

She was so sad that she could not and would not eat her lunch.

Every time I think about this story, little Ruby Bridges and how she sat in that classroom by herself for a year, it brings tears to my eyes. And I ask myself, “How can anyone – especially anyone calling herself a mother or one who is “pro-life” be OK with what happened? How can anyone be OK with treating this little girl like this?”

And the answer comes back to me: They could do it, did do it, and many still do it – because they have dehumanized Black people. Black lives have never mattered in this country. Actually, a fair number of other individuals and groups have been dehumanized by people in power who are apparently so insecure with their own status that the only way they feel all right is to dehumanize others and treat them as objects.

In addition to Black people, Indigenous Americans, women, members of the LGBTQIA community, trans individuals, Jews, Muslims, the elderly, and the differently-abled – all have been reduced to a sub-human category; all have been objectified. People who have been objectified are in fact not considered human and therefore believed to be incapable of feeling pain or any other human emotions, nor are they believed to be worthy of American citizenship, rights, and humane treatment.

The dehumanization of Indigenous Americans, for example, prevented officials of this government, who were driving them off their own land to feel like they were doing anything wrong as they made them literally walk the Trail of Tears. They did so under the Indian Removal Act, passed during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. While white men rode horses and white women rode in carriages, the Native Americans walked. From Alabama, Georgia, and other Southern states to Oklahoma. Native Americans walked a distance of over 1,000 miles – through cold, snow, rain, and extreme heat – and those who made them walk apparently felt nothing was wrong with it. Many of them who made these souls walk, by the way, called themselves Christian. (https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/indian-removal-act-and-trail-tears/)

How can anyone, especially anyone who claims belief in God – think this was OK?

Dr. Koritha Mitchell, in her book From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture writes about the effect of dominant culture attacks on African Americans, and writes that “In slavery, white people categorically declared it impossible for a black woman to be raped because her body did not belong to her…These dehumanizing practices emerged because there was so much evidence that black captives were human. If their humanity had any chance of being denied, it had to be brutalized out of them.” (p. 9).

It seems hardly a stretch to conclude that the rash of laws being passed severely limiting a woman’s reproductive rights is evidence that the dominant power structure still regards the lives, health, and rights of and for women as unimportant; women are yet being treated as objects. And the dehumanization seems to be spreading to children, as in some states, laws are being made that make child labor legal. I am wondering if, in this plantation economy, children are being looked at not as precious gifts but rather as assets and/or tools to keep profits growing. If parents in this post-pandemic world are refusing to go to workplaces, children might be forced to do so. (https://www.axios.com/2023/03/14/child-labor-laws-labor-market)

How can anyone who professes to love children be OK with this?

There are other laws being passed that seem to be sanctioning sexual relations between old men with very young girls – with no “out” if the young girl becomes pregnant. A female Ohio lawmaker said that 13-year-old girls made pregnant as the result of rape – should consider it an “opportunity.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/04/29/ohio-rape-bill-opportunity/)

What?

Those who dehumanize others seem to have lost the capacity to be human themselves. How would they feel if they were made to walk 1000 miles – herded off their own land and displaced far from home? How would they feel if, in that walk, they were forced to watch friends and family members get sick and die and be thrown into mass graves like they didn’t matter? How would they feel if their 12-year-old daughter was raped and made to carry the baby to term, or how would they feel if their men were forced to stand aside and watch their wife or daughter be raped and not be able to do or say anything?

How would they feel if their child was forced to sit in a classroom by him/herself for a year because it had been determined that their child was less human than their own children and therefore unable to feel the pain their own children would feel if treated the same way?

Is anyone who has dehumanized another human being capable of feeling?

I go back to Ruby Bridges. She was a little girl. Six years old. Wearing a dress, anklets, and buckle-up Mary Jane shoes. She was a baby, unable to harm or hurt anyone, and yet, white people, including white mothers – screamed hate-filled words at her and might have attacked her had she not been accompanied by federal agents.

It seems that these hateful actions are carried out not because those doing them really think the objects of their hatred are inhuman, but rather because they are very human, and their humanness presents a threat to the power structure that many want to remain as is.

It is ludicrous to think, for instance, that white mothers, who historically let or demanded that Black enslaved women nurse their children, would have let that happen if they believed the one who was nursing was not a human being with the same capacity to care and love as did they. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/08/slavery-racism-drive-toxic-double-standard-about-breastfeeding/)

White domination has shown and continues to show that there is no such thing as white “supremacy.” One cannot be “supreme” and not care about other human beings. Neither can one be “supreme” and pass laws and policies that make life painfully dreadful for others. America, said Dr. William Barber, the voice of the Poor People’s Campaign,” said “America needs a heart transplant.” I agree. America’s vital organs, her heart, and her soul, are failing. To be “supreme” is to be the best, but the practice of dehumanization of other human beings has caused a poison to be released in the country that is not being filtered out. That poison will continue to erode America’s soul until people in power realize that their practices are not only harming masses of people but will eventually harm and compromise their bottom line. Unless and until people matter more than money, the dehumanizing will continue and all of us will suffer.