The Arrogance of Racism

As I think about racism, I think what bothers me most is the arrogance of it all, an arrogance spawned and nurtured by governments, both in this country and elsewhere, allowing or perhaps encouraging people to buy into one of the most specious types of human behavior imaginable.

What prompts this post is the story about how some people at the Republican National Convention allegedly threw peanuts at a CNN camerawoman, saying, “this is how we feed the animals.”

Then, I looked at the makeup of the crowd at the RNC, and saw very few non-white faces…but what bothers me, again, is that the Republican Party has not really done anything to draw different ethnic groups. Their arrogance allows them to pander to their base unashamedly, only thinking of other ethnicities as objects to be captured to win elections.

The voter suppression efforts are, again, so arrogant. Americans have the right to vote; because voting is a right, politicians and governments should do all they can to make sure the most people possible can exercise their right…and yet, the laws put in place feel like they were put there to shut certain groups out, in order to make sure the Republican and Tea Party candidates win.

It is so arrogant.

At least the Justice Department shot down the voter ID laws in Texas. (http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/30/politics/texas-voter-id-law/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1) The state attorney general said he will appeal the ruling to the United States Supreme Court, but again, how arrogant is it to think that it is OK to deliberately bar people from the polls?

The government and society-supported racism has historically been supported, in specific rulings, by the United States Supreme Court. The most noted case is the Dred Scott case, where the Chief Justice, writing for the majority, said there were “no rights of a black man that a white man is bound to respect.” Reading that still takes my breath away.

In Pennsylvania, Commonwealth Judge Robert Simpson refused to block a voter ID law (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0815/Why-judge-refused-to-block-Pennsylvania-voter-ID-law) Judge Simpson doesn’t see where the law will impede the ability of poor and minority people to vote. In the spirit of arrogance that this post is about, Pennsylvania GOP House Leader Mike Turzai said publicly that the new voter ID laws will help Romney win the state in the general election. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/mike-turzai-voter-id_n_1625646.html)

This racial arrogance has caused so much pain for others. It has fooled white people into thinking that no matter who they are, they are always better than black or brown people, and it knows that governments, churches and institutions will, or have, for the most part, supported them.

The arrogance makes those who allow racism and racist feelings to abide in them think they are more intelligent, more capable, and absolutely within their rights to spurn anyone who is not …white.

I don’t know how the budget will shake down if Mitt Romney wins the election. It is clear that Paul Ryan’s proposed budget doesn’t seem to care too much for black, brown and poor people. The arrogance of people makes them forget that there are still serious barriers in our society that prevent people from getting work; studies show that black and brown people are still discriminated against in hiring. And Romney, who has never had to worry about where the next meal will come from, or watch his parents worry about that, said in an ad that if kids want to go to college, they should “ask their parents” to help them, give them a loan.

Arrogance. He doesn’t know how many parents are struggling just to keep their heads above water, and that includes everyone, black, brown…and white.

In the wake of Hurricane Isaac, I thought back to Hurricane Katrina, where the arrogance of racism, which spawns fear and uncaring, accounted for the government to send National Guard soldiers into the city of New Orleans, when people, mostly black and poor, were drowning in their homes, or sitting on roofs, desperate to be rescued. I still think of the pictures of old people, sitting out in the hot sun for hours, waiting for someone …to care. Too many died waiting.

The killing thing is that many whites who are racist will not admit it; they will get immediately defensive if such is suggested to them. During the Republican primary, one of my Twitter friends was furious when I said that Newt Gingrich was playing to his base. I was referring to some of his comments on those who are poor and who are on welfare.

My friend…unfriended me.

Gee.

I am holding my breath as this election gets into final gear. I am sure that those who plan the campaign know how to speak to the racist underpinnings of this country’s citizens without saying things that will get them in trouble. But they will say them…and those who are supposed to understand, will. And though I am talking about Republicans today, be clear that there is no way I am saying that some Democrats are not just as racist, and I am not saying that ALL Republicans are racist. But racist or not, the arrogance that supports racism abounds in this world.

It’s sad, this arrogance, and it keeps America from being the greatest she can be.

A candid observation …

Akin Reveals Himself

No matter how much Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican Senate nominee from Missouri, tries to fix what he said on Sunday, it is not going to work.

He came out with one of the most outrageous, insensitive and, frankly, ignorant comments this writer has ever heard, saying that in cases of “legitimate rape,” pregnancy is rare – that “the female body has ways of shutting that whole thing down.”

My first thought, when I read it, was, “what is ‘legitimate’ rape? And my second question was, “the female body has a way of shutting what “whole thing” down? The movement of a sperm to an egg? What?

I was astounded; in fact, I still don’t know what to think, the comment was so outrageous. It was so sexist, so insanely sexist and ignorant, that words almost cannot suffice.

Now, the good Congressman from Missouri is trying to clean his statement up. He has said he “misspoke.”

OK. Another question. What does it mean to “misspeak?” The American Heritage Dictionary says that it’s to “pronounce or speak incorrectly.” The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says it’s to express oneself incorrectly or imperfectly. Akin would probably refer to the latter definition.

But it is doubtful that he “misspoke.” Akin, resting in the ignorance and arrogance that so often accompanies patriarchal thinking, most likely said what he has been thinking and saying in private along with his “good ol’ boys” for some time. Riding on a Tea Party security blanket, it feels like Akin got a little too comfortable, and let some really twisted beliefs out of the chicken coop.

What bothers me most in what he said is the “legitimate rape” comment. For the life of me, I cannot understand what he means. WHEN, exactly, is a rape legitimate? Was he referring to cases where rape can be proven? In legal history, isn’t one of the reasons so few rape accusations were brought to trial, or have been brought to trial, because rape could not be proven…that the victim was often blamed for her own rape?

And, even in cases where rape has not been “proven” in court, hasn’t it been the case, over and over, that a rape had occurred, but the legal system was ill-equipped, or maybe unwilling, to treat rape as a “legitimate” crime?

Hasn’t it been the case that women have been second class citizens for far too long, and have been viewed as objects for the pleasure of men? So, if that is the case, what, pray tell, is a legitimate rape?

And in terms of the female body being able to “shut that whole thing down,” I am beyond perplexed. Anatomically and physiologically, what knowledge does Akin have that I am missing? I was never taught that I should worry about getting pregnant if I were ever raped, because my body would somehow know the difference between a “legitimate” rape and a rape not so legitimate …or, for that matter, a night of consensual sex.

Is Akin’s line of thinking one of the underlying reasons rape has had such difficulty being considered a “legitimate” crime? Should we applaud Akin for bringing out some of the thought-patterns of people in positions of power who help make policy?

Whatever we are to think, this is one thing I do not think – and that is that Akin “misspoke.” That’s like making a racial slur and then saying it’s a joke. Nope, Mr. Akin. You have egg on your face and you just need to own it, disgusting as what you said was.

A candid observation …

A Nation in Denial Exceptional?

I keep thinking about the concept of “American exceptionalism” and the reality of the rampant bigotry, hatred and violence in this nation, and how a nation cannot be “exceptional” if such violence is part of the thumbprint of its existence.

Somewhere, in spite of this nation being “the most religious” of all nations ( I read that somewhere), something has been lost – and that is the Christian and indeed, religious concept that believing in God means that people love each other.

It is just amazing that so much violence is carried out by religious people. Pat Robertson made the claim that recent shooting in Wisconsin at the Sikh Temple there happened because “atheists hate God.” He was making an assumption that the accused shooter, Wade Michael Page, was atheist.

There was no evidence of Page being an atheist as of this writing. In fact, it’s been reported that he was part of a white supremacist group and had predicted a racial war. White supremacist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, have a history of being religious, Christian, to be exact. So Robertsons’s claim seems a bit off…

But here we are again, a white male gone mad, using a gun to express his anger and shooting people at random, in spite of God. Page used a 9 mm gun and was able to purchase ammunition, in spite of having been under observation by the Feds since 2000.

While the tragic shooting in Aurora did not seem to be based on hatred or bigotry, the Sikh Temple shooting seemed to be a part of the tradition of American violence based on bigotry. Page apparently did not like people of the Sikh community, so, he aimed to destroy at least some of them.

American exceptionalism, right?

Stephen Prothero, a professor of history and scholar, wrote an engaging piece on CNN.com about the American propensity for violence based on bigotry. (http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/07/an-american-tradition-of-bigotry/?hpt=hp_t2). The article says it all…

It says it all except my point that a nation cannot be exceptional, if exceptional means that that nation is better than others, if it has such a deep culture of bigotry, and a culture that stubbornly refuses to at least tighten up gun laws so that people who are prone to violence because of their bigotry cannot destroy scores of people at will.

We already imprison more people than any other civilized nation. In an article which appeared in The New Yorker in January of this year, author Adam Gopnik wrote: The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. Ours is, bottom to top, a “carceral state,” in the flat verdict of Conrad Black, the former conservative press lord and newly minted reformer, who right now finds himself imprisoned in Florida, thereby adding a new twist to an old joke: A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who’s been indicted; and a passionate prison reformer is a conservative who’s in one.” ( http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz22tcoTEO)

That our high incarceration rate is based largely on the “war on drugs” according to Michelle Alexander in her book, The New Jim Crow,’ and that many of those incarcerated are African-American men says something about the yet-to-be-healed bigotry against black people in America.

And that these mass murders keep happening, carried out too many times by angry white men, says something about our culture which has seen the problem over and over, but has refused to really deal with it in any meaningful way. We seem more interested in protecting the right of people to own guns than we are interested in finding out why “angry white men” is such a reality in America.

I am afraid that, though I love America, I cannot buy into the “American exceptionalism” mantra. We seem rather to be a culture of denial, and that reality is really eroding at the possibility of us being exceptional at all.

A candid observation …

Sometimes, Prayer is Not Enough

I am a pastor. I believe in God with all my heart. But sometimes, prayer is not enough.

It COULD be enough, I think, if people were fervent prayers as a matter of course. But we are not. We as a people are more “situational” prayers, or we pray in times of crisis. That kind of prayer is helpful, but not effective when a task of mammoth proportions, perhaps Biblical proportions, lurks before us.

This latest tragedy – the shooting and killing of innocent people who were at a movie – lifts up at least two issues that politicians will more likely fight over than treat as life-changing issues, which, ignored, are contributing angst and danger to our country.

Those two issues are gun control and mental health. With both issues, there is a Goliath which require prayers first, certainly, and then, action, and to most people, those two issues are too big, will take too much energy, to fight. Goliath is just too big.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg hit at Goliath yesterday when he said that politicians, first and foremost at this point, President Obama and the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, ought to speak out for gun control. Nearly everyone is enraged that the suspect in the Colorado theater incident, James Holmes, was able to buy so many guns and nearly 6000 rounds of ammunition legally.

I am reminded that not everything that legal is right. Everything the Nazis did to the Jews, including murdering them, was legal…but it was not right.

Certainly, our politicians cannot keep quiet on the fact that the obsession by some to protect Second Amendment rights at the expense of the lives of innocent American citizens. Opponents of gun control say that guns are not bad; people are. I counter that and say that of course, guns are not bad, but not everyone who buys guns, or does bad things with guns, are not bad. Many, many times, they are sick.

But to come out for gun control in this presidential election year would be like facing Goliath. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of the most powerful lobby groups in this country. If the NRA is not already pouring money into either camp, to speak out for tougher gun control would be like committing political suicide.

But sometimes, politicians ought to show America that they are more interested in pushing for the rights and protection of the American people than in being elected. Sometimes, we ought to see that they are willing to put politics down, pick up a stone, and confront a cowering, arrogant Goliath.

The second Goliath which this incident brings to the surface is mental illness. Nobody wants to talk about it or deal with it. I am convinced that the shooter in yesterday’s incident is not bad, but he is certainly sick – and I am sure he has been sick for a long time.

To lift up the fact that funds need to be spent on researching and treating mental illness will bring out cries of “no more spending!” I guess spending on mental health would be spending on yet another “entitlement,” and that is not something the President wants to get his opponents using against him. I don’t think Mitt Romney would dare bring the subject up.

And yet, in the masses of American people that both candidates are appealing to for votes, there are scores of people who are mentally ill. Much mental illness begins in childhood; in urban schools, I am convinced that many children labeled as “bad” are in fact mentally ill, and mentally ill children, whether they are from the ghetto or the suburbs, grow up to be mentally ill adults. There needs to be regular screening – and treatment – for mental illness. AND, we as a nation ought to stop being so ashamed of it. Mental illness is as prevalent as is diabetes or hypertension. Why are we so afraid of it?

What we have in the Aurora, Colorado incident, I think, a mentally ill or emotionally troubled young man who was free to buy all the guns and ammunition he wanted, legally. He knew what he was going to do, but that does not preclude that his connection to reality is off-balance.

What does all this say about evil? Well of course there is evil in the world, and prayers ought to name the evil or evils in earnest. But after the praying, those who prayed are really mandated to get off their knees and confront the Goliath, away from the comfort and security of a sanctuary or a private prayer space. We are called to pick up our stones, and walk toward the Goliath that laughs at the very thought of being confronted.

Sometimes, prayer is not enough, like now. Sometimes, prayer needs to be followed by a team of people moved to action by their prayers, including and led by politicians who are seeking election or re-election. Who will be the David in this situation, a little boy in the Bible who declared that God had protected him when a lion or bear came to carry off sheep he was tending. Little David said, “I went after it… Your servant went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine. (1 Sam. 21: 34-37)

If we pray, we have to confess our faith in God. We pray not only for comfort, but for the strength to confront the Goliaths all around us.

At least 12 people in Colorado who were alive on Thursday and who are now gone, need that from us.

A candid observation …

White Men and Mass Murder

In the aftermath of the horrible shooting in Aurora, Colorado, I find myself asking what it is that compels people to want to commit mass murder.

And…I wonder why so many of these mass murders are done by white men.

I know people don’t like to talk about race, and I know it’s easier to talk about black on black crime. While black on black crime raises hardly more than a whimper or cause for concern, when a black kills someone white, there is a fair amount of outrage.

But this mass murder thing: why is it that white men seem to be the primary perpetrators in crimes like these? Why is there still a sense of shock when it happens? How come there aren’t some studies being done to find out why this happens? Black on black crime has been said by some to be caused by the deep levels of self-hatred African-Americans have. Black on white crime is said to be caused by long-held anger on the part of blacks. White on black crime is credited to racism in many cases…but mass murder, perpetrated by white men on crowds of people, most of the time predominantly white, has no reason given, or at least I haven’t heard the reason. Have I missed something?

The latest alleged murderer, James Holmes, has murdered at least 12 people as of this writing, including a three-month old baby. He came into a crowded theater, released tear gas, and then opened fire. He apparently carried an arsenal of weapons, and he told police he had booby-trapped his apartment to explode. He came dressed all in black, and he apparently shot with abandon, aiming at nobody, yet aiming at everyone. This young man, 24, is, or was, a PhD candidate. I would assume he came from a fairly nice family, as “nice” is defined. So, what happened?

I think about the young men, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, who shot and killed and wounded students at Columbine High School; the young men, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who blew up the Murrah Federal Office building in Oklahoma City, the young man, , T.J. Lane, who is accused of shooting students at Chardon High School in Ohio earlier this year; and of course, there was the horrific shooting in Arizona where Jared Loughner shot Representative Gabby Giffords and 18 other people in 2011…all white men, and I don’t get it. Why does this keep happening, again and again?

Could it be that white men harbor some degree of self-hatred too? Or is it they carry a lot of anger about …well, about what? If white men are angry, and especially so angry that they feel compelled to shoot whomever is in their way, why are they that angry?

Isn’t it a topic or subject or situation that somebody ought to at least look into?

My heart is so heavy for the people who were shot in Colorado. All they were doing was watching a movie, and now, some are dead, some are wounded, and all who survived or who will survive are forever changed. It seems like a fair amount of Americans are suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, all due to domestic violence, and much of due to these mass killings.

It just seems that the tendency of white men to express their anger and rage through mass murder ought to be a subject for study. It’s proper to be horrified when these atrocities happen, but horror isn’t worth a dime if it cannot and does not lead to serious study so that the problem can be alleviated or reduced.

There are just way too many mass murders in America, too many white men who punish a slew of people for something they are upset about. It’s time for it to stop. Past time, actually.

A candid observation …