The President’s Moral Authority

I expected a slew of criticism about President Obama’s commencement address to the graduates of Morehouse College this weekend, but I was taken aback by Boyce Watkins‘ statement that President Obama had “no moral authority” to say some of the words he spoke.

Citing what he says is the president’s failure to enact effective policy to help black people, Boyce wrote, “Hence, this lopsided approach to racial inequality does not give Barack Obama the moral authority to come into a room full of black people and talk about what’s wrong with us. Chris Rock, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and Harry Belafonte could make these very same statements and have credibility because they are not afraid to speak the same way to whites.” (http://www.blackbluedog.com/2013/05/news/dr-boyce-president-obama-lacks-the-moral-authority-to-give-his-lopsided-speech-at-morehouse/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dr-boyce-president-obama-lacks-the-moral-authority-to-give-his-lopsided-speech-at-morehouse)

In his article, Dr. Boyce states that black people are “happy when the president berates us. We like being told that we don’t try hard enough and that the reason so many of us struggle is because we have come to embrace an inferior set of habits and cultural norms.” Boyce cites what he calls the president’s “significant, even embarrassing lack of action to help alleviate the clearly documented, undeniable, legislatively enforced poison of racial inequality that continues to impact our society.” He says that the president tends to be more conservative when he talks to black audiences than he is when he talks to white ones, and he is critical of that.

But as I read through the president’s address, I failed to see where he was talking in a way that was offensive to African-Americans. Yes, he spoke about the need for these African-American men not to make excuses: “I’m sure every one of you has a grandma, an uncle or a parent who’s told you at some point in life that, as an African-American, you have to work twice as hard as anyone else if you want to get by. I think President (Benjamin) Mays put it even better: “Whatever you do, strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead, and no man yet to be born can do it any better.” I promise you, what was needed in Dr. Mays’ time, that spirit of excellence and hard work and dedication, is needed now more than ever. If you think you can get over in this economy just because you have a Morehouse degree, you are in for a rude awakening. But if you stay hungry, keep hustling, keep on your grind and get other folks to do the same – nobody can stop you.” (http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/prepared-text-for-president-obamas-speech-at-moreh/nXwk2/)

The president cited “a common fraternity creed here at Morehouse: ‘excuses are tools of the incompetent, used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments to nothingness.'” What President Obama said is certainly what I heard in my house growing up; it had something to do with race, yes, but it had more to do with being an individual. Excuses, my mother would say, won’t work “out there. Nobody cares in the real world what your issues are. They just want to get things done.” She was right. She said to us all, yes, that as African-Americans, and, to me and my sisters, that as women, we would have to do better than our white sisters and brothers. It was a valuable lesson. Nobody caters to those who make excuses, she said. In fact, those who make excuses get passed by. S0, what the president said on that subject was not problematic to me.

What IS problematic, however, is that many, too many young African-Americans, both male and female, hear nothing about how important it is to forge ahead, to confront walls in front of them. Too many of them hear that the world owes them something because they are African-American, or poor, or female. Too many women still think men are supposed to do something FOR them. Too many African-Americans still want to blame the society for their ills.

Society for sure has been unfair and unkind to minorities; that is undeniable; it always has, and it still is. I think that the Congress has been largely responsible for President Obama not having been able to pass more policies that will make the playing field more even for the oppressed; it seems the Congress has been hell-bent on opposing almost everything the president has proposed.

But this message about not using this racist (and sexist and homophobic) society as an excuse is a viable and important lesson for these new graduates to hear. Just because they have a Morehouse degree does not mean they will have an easy time; Langston Hughes wrote that “life ain’t been no crystal stair.” It isn’t and it will not be. “Out there,” the ones who succeed are the ones who take the unfairness and the meanness on the chin, maybe get knocked down, but refuse to be knocked out. The president’s message to the graduates that they have a responsibility to teach that lesson to the young kids who are coming along …is vital. The president said, “Be a good role model and set a good example for that young brother coming up. If you know someone who isn’t on point, go back and bring that brother along. The brothers who have been left behind – and who haven’t had the same opportunities we have – they need to hear from us. We’ve got to be in the barber shops with them, at church with them, spending time and energy with them, spending time and energy and presence, helping pull them up, exposing them to new opportunities and supporting their dreams. We have to teach them what it means to be a man …” Quoting W.E.B. DuBois, he said they are called to be a “class of highly educated, socially conscious leaders in the black community.”

Yes, yes, and yes.

President Obama may not have come up with enough policies to help “the least of these,” but he probably has done as much as he can, given the political climate in Washington. The unemployment rate for black people is still too high; the rate of incarceration for black people is so disproportionately high that it is unconscionable, but he has begun to chip away at the thick walls of oppression that have for too long been characteristic of American democracy. His charge to the Morehouse grads to take up the baton and build on what he has begun was not ill-spoken; he knows the struggles of being African-American even though, as Dr. Boyce points out, he is “half white.” I don’t see where that matters all that much. In the eyes of the world, he is the “first African-American president.” Nobody cares about his white blood much; the color of his skin is the telling feature of who he is to the world, not the color of his mother.

That being said, he knows enough about being black in America to have the moral authority to say what he said. Even more, he has the responsibility to say what he said…and hopefully what he said will be taken to kids who never hear words of encouragement, and lessons on how not to use excuses as they live their lives. The more kids who hear it – black , white, Hispanic and any other color or ethnicity, the better equipped they will be to handle this disease called oppression which unfortunately in America is still too often connected to the color of one’s skin.

A candid observation …

Insensitivity or Ignorance?

photograph of the justices, cropped to show Ju... — photograph of the justices, cropped to show Justice Scalia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

People sometimes ask, irritably, why black people can’t stop being mad. They point to the progress that has been made in this country, where black people have been “granted” the civil rights they were due by virtue of being American citizens…and only slowly. When someone expresses anger, there is a definite sigh of exacerbation from those who think black people ought to just “get over themselves” and move on.

That is, actually, what black people have been doing since having been brought to America – gotten over themselves and this nation which actually passed laws to keep them in their place. They “got over themselves” even as they fought for dignity and a real chance to partake in the American Dream. There was no time to navel gaze.

But the reason the anger still sits within the souls and spirits of many African-Americans is because every now and then, someone from the “majority” population will say something that shows either insensitivity or ignorance, or both, letting those who have been held back and held up by this government cringe with a familiar pain.

Such was the cringe many felt when Justice Antonin Scalia said this week, in deliberations about whether or not to overturn Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, that the Court had to “rescue Congress from the trap of being afraid to vote against a “racial entitlement.”

Cringe. Sigh. This, from the highest court in the land.

Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, for those who do not know, requires preclearance from the Justice Department in certain states and jurisdictions make changes in voting procedures, things like changing the hours people can vote, or redrawing district lines, or changing the requirements for registering to vote. It happens that these preclearances have been required in Southern states because of their long history of denying the vote to African-Americans, by any means necessary. Some politicians are now complaining the preclearances are not fair, that there is no racism like there used to be in the South, and that states ought to be free to make their own rules vis-a-vis voting with no federal interference. States rights is what they seem to be calling upon.

The Court’s Conservative judges have been particularly hard on those wanting to keep Section Five. They have said that politicians are afraid to change this portion of the law because they don’t want to be seen as racists; therefore, it is the Court’s responsibility to “rescue” Congress from the task.

It’s about racism in this country, this tiff going on in the United States Supreme Court, that subject about which nobody wants to talk, and everybody wants to believe is long gone. It is far from gone; black and brown people can tell anyone who asks that it is not gone. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court justices, at least the Conservative ones, are being coy as they ask questions like Chief Justice John Roberts asked, “Is it the government’s submission that the citizens in the South are more racist than citizens in the North?” No, replied U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, but Roberts undoubtedly knew that when he asked the question. We by now know that the racism in the North was and is as virulent as it was and is in the South. The issue, however, is that states in the South practiced blatant racism , actively working to prevent African-Americans from voting, and had done it virtually without comment since the end of Reconstruction. It was only the intervention of the federal government, under the leadership of President Johnson, combined with persistent protests by Civil Rights workers, that forced a change in Southern states.

R0berts and Scalia and no doubt, all of the Conservative justices know that, and they also know the shenanigans that go on even now when it comes to voting. With the demography of this nation changing, Republicans are worried about the white vote being diluted and some have charged that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is reverse discrimination!

The passing of this act did not give African-Americans an “entitlement,” a word loaded with innuendo and suggestion of something someone does not earn. No, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave African-Americans the RIGHT to vote, as described in the United States Constitution.

For Scalia to say that the issue before the Court is “…attributable to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement…Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes,” smacks of insensitivity at best, and ignorance at worst. Statements like that are a slap in the face of African-Americans and indeed all Americans who have had to fight for their basic rights. How is it possible that in the 21st century, so-called intelligent barristers are making such ignorant and insensitive statements? This society should be way past even discussing how to best give all of its citizens the rights they are entitled to as citizens, and yet, we have Scalia’s statement staring us all in the face.

Racial discrimination is embedded in the fabric of American society. Remove certain protections and it is highly likely that, under the authority granted, “states’ rights” advocates will do what they want to wrangle and manipulate elections to go the way they want. That the justices cannot see that, or will not acknowledge that, is disingenuous and dishonest. We can all see how hot the embers of racial hatred are; we have seen it during the presidency of Barack Obama. There are plenty of people, white people, who still want to “take their country back,” and one of the best ways to do it is to control the vote.

The ignorance and insensitivity shown by the justices thus far has been disheartening. Some political activists have spoken out, but it seems that in this year that we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation that more than the activists would register a complaint about what the justices, the Conservative justices, are saying vis-a-vis this important protection for minority voters. We cannot go backwards. Change is hard, and our country is changing by leaps and bounds, but that is no excuse to allow protections for minorities as they seek to exercise their rights as Americans to be overturned or ignored.

There are a lot of people cringing after hearing Justice Scalia’s remarks. Those remarks showed just how deep are feelings of resentment toward groups of people who are still fighting for the RIGHTS of being American citizens.

A candid observation …

A Different Dream

As I have watched the festivities surrounding President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, concurrently being celebrated alongside the birthday of Rev. Martin Luther King, I find myself courting a different dream…and that is that the president’s presence, power and persistence in spite of tremendous odds, that more and more African-American boys will have someone in their lives whom they call “my dad,” aspiring to be like him.

When President Obama was first elected, he came to Columbus, Ohio. There was great excitement in seeing the president’s jet sitting in our airport; many people went to the airport and stood outside fences just to see him jaunt down the stairs of that big jet to go do … “president work.”

I was there, and I loved the jet and seeing the president, but what sticks in my mind are the images of young African-American men with little boys ( I assumed they were their sons) perched on their shoulders. I remember hearing so many of these young men saying to those little boys, “You can be president one day.” The little boys, some of them, clapped their hands and were clearly excited. I can still feel the energy those little boys and the men I assumed were their dads emitted that day. I suppose the presence of the president also ignited something inside their dads as well. Who knew that any of us would see an African-American be president of this country?

It was a powerful moment, on so many levels, but one of those levels struck me deeply. I know that little boys idolize their fathers, and I know that one of those little boys I saw that day internalized what their dads were saying to them. Those words for the little boys had power not just because the president of the greatest country in the world looked like them …but because their dads planted the seeds of hope into them that they could be anything they wanted to be.

Little African-American boys don’t often get that kind of encouragement. I have seen them labeled as behavior problems when they have just been being little boys. I have seen them ignored and tossed aside in schools, so that by third grade, many of them (African-American girls as well) have lost hope and excitement about life and learning. They are told they are bad and they can feel that not their teachers nor even their parents (mostly moms) believe in them.

I listened to Vice President Joe Biden‘s son today talking, saying, “my dad,” and I realized that not enough African-American children, and especially African-American boys, can say those two words. There have been plenty of sociological studies that try to explain to us why so many African-American men are not present in the lives of their children, and for sure, there are cultural, sociological and historical reasons for the plight and condition of African-American men in this country …but our little boys need their dads. They need dads who show them what strength and perseverance is. They need dads whom they can follow around and get advice from that only a dad can give a son. They need dads to show them how to stand up when the world knocks them down.

A lot has been said that America’s “War on Drugs” has resulted in more African-American men being incarcerated than whites; indeed, America has more people in prison than any other modern industrialized nation. Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow does an amazing job of showing how this “war,” initiated by Ronald Reagan, ended up being an instrument which made it legal to throw blacks in jail, not as much for violent crime as for minor drug offenses.

The “war” itself has resulted in “keeping blacks in their place,” some have argued. Once out of jail, these formerly jailed men cannot, oftentimes, get jobs, find housing, get food stamps, secure a driver’s license …they in effect have been shut out of life as it must be lived in America. They cannot survive, and many end up back in jail.

And who suffers? The society as a whole for sure, but especially the little boys who are left behind, with no fathers, and too often, overworked mothers who cannot give them what their dads need to give them. A recent movie called The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki, shows what the “war” has done in this country…It is sad and disturbing, but a fact of our American life.

And so on this Martin Luther King holiday, thinking about his “dream,” I am stuck on a different dream – a country where the unfair and unjust “justice” system that has put too many African-American fathers in jail will be addressed, modified, changed …so that more little boys can sit on the shoulders of their fathers, and be inspired as to what they can do.

A candid observation…

Black Men, Dying

Some time ago, the late playwright James Chapmyn wrote a play entitled, Our Young Black Men Are Dying and Nobody Seems to Care. The play highlights the struggles African-American men face in this country and shows how it affects their very psyches, their spirits, their will to go on …

I thought about that as I read about the latest incident of a black man being shot and killed in Chicago. The 30-year old father was sitting in his home when a shot rang out from a passing car. It went through a window of his home, hitting him in the head and instantly killing him.

Ironically, his mother was visiting a friend not too far away. The two of them were talking about another son of hers who in April of this year was killed by gunfire. He was 25 years old. When she heard the shots fired while she was visiting her friend, she immediately bolted out to see what had happened. To her horror, her second son lay dead.

The rate of black men dying by homicide is high and has always been high; the homicide rate in the city of Chicago for the month of November was 49 percent. Black men are dying, either on the streets or in prisons, and nobody seems to care.

There has been legitimate outrage over the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, allegedly by George Zimmerman earlier this year, and just a couple of weeks ago, a young, unarmed African-American teen, Jordan Davis, was shot after a white man, irritated because the music in the SUV in which a group of young black men were riding was too loud, allegedly fired eight shots into the vehicle, killing Davis. Again, there is outrage as the accused man, Michael Dunn, may try to use the same “stand your ground” law that Zimmerman is using as justification for his actions and that outrage is legitimate.

But where is the outrage over the fact that black people keep killing…black people? Is there outrage and the media simply does not cover it, or has the African-American community grown numb to the widespread violence in so many of its communities?

There are a few isolated souls who protest against the violence that rips through too many African-American communities. Fr. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Catholic Church. leads an annual march against violence in Chicago. Other pastors have been known to lead protests and hold conferences to address the issue.

But their efforts get little national attention. It is as though the country has fallen asleep on this issue, not caring about the young men, dying…

This issue is difficult to even write about. Dr. Robert Franklin, the outgoing president of Morehouse College, said in passing last week that our young black men need much help. Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children’s Defense Fund, has identified the so-called “cradle to prison” syndrome. Tony Harris, a former CNN anchor, recently did a documentary about the plight of young black men living in Baltimore. He, too, said that there is so much to be done.

Violence often comes, writes Dr. Joy Degruy Leary in Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America‘s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing, because of anger, and anger in African-Americans is directly linked to legacy of chattel slavery in this country. She asks, “Why is it that anger is such a large part of the experience of most African-Americans?” Her answer, quoting Dr. James Samuels, is that “anger is the normal response to a blocked goal. Often, if a person’s goal remains blocked over time, they will begin to consider the possibility of failure and so experience fear, and when we are fearful, we also lash out with anger.”

Young African-Americans are faced with feeling “less than” and “not worthy” early on in their lives. They are parented by parents who wrestle with feelings of failure, and then they go to school which are often in bad physical shape, with substandard teachers, huge classes, outdated books, and far too little of what they need to receive a quality education. Jonathon Kozol writes that he has seen little black children enter school excited about being there, but by third grade, their excitement is gone; they have internalized that they are “not so special.” They stop trying. They fall into a mindset that is ripe for the anger that produces violence.

Dr. Leary says that African-American parents continue to raise their children “in the face of a multitude to indignities, disrespect and blocked goals. Their frustration is passed on to their children…

And so, black men, black youth, black boys are dying, either on the streets, or they end up in prisons and die spiritually while they are caged up.

More of us need to care. The 49 percent homicide rate in Chicago for the month of November is scary, and Chicago is not the only major urban area experiencing this kind of violence. If we in the African-American community have fallen asleep in order to numb ourselves to the constant pain of our young men, dying, we need to wake up and look at the issue in a new way…and do something. White America needs to understand that much of the violence in our country is due to young people feeling hopeless and frustrated due to the shock waves of slavery and its child, racism; Michael Dunn, accused of shooting and killing Jordan Davis, is a victim of racism, too. Nobody, black or white, can afford to ignore or escape the problem.

Author James Baldwin said in an interview with Studs Terkel in 1961 that he was no longer angry with America. He said he is very worried about it…because the “country has no notion whatever of what it has done to itself.” The price of keeping blacks and whites separated, stepping on one race while lifting up the other, has had disastrous effects on both races. Both races are violent.

But the violence in urban communities comes too often from black people hurting black people. Too many African-American communities are sleeping and too many white communities are point accusatory fingers and shaking their heads about “those people.”

There is not “those people.” There is “us people,” and “us people” need to all be concerned and working against the epidemic of black men, dying.

A candid observation …

The Power of Language

This morning, a woman showed me a picture of her two grandchildren, two little girls. They were adorable, and I said as much, and immediately, she said, smiling, “they’re bad.”

I cringed. In the African-American community, I frequently hear parents and relatives refer to their little ones as “bad,” and when I’ve known the person saying it, I’ve asked them not to do it. Language is so important, and the word “bad” is not a feel-good word or a word that encourages empowerment and healthy self-esteem. If children are told they are bad, they will believe it and eventually, it act it out.

Saying kids are “bad” when they are, in fact, just kids being kids, is troubling. I almost never hear white parents say that about their kids, not even when they’re in stores and throwing a tantrum. Too often, I suspect that African-American parents label normal developmental behavior as “bad,” those times of discovery which help a child connect to his or her world, and to him or herself.

I interviewed, once, a man who was a brilliant artist. When he was little, he told me, he used to take markers or crayons, or something, and draw on the white tiles that were in his mother’s kitchen. (the kitchen had black and white tiles). He said his mother never scolded him, but allowed him to draw. Every night she would clean the tiles off, and the next day, he’d be at it again. His art work was phenomenal, and he said that he was so grateful that his mother had not yelled and screamed at him and called him “bad.”

I have never forgotten that story, and I firmly believe that we don’t pay enough attention to the language we use in general, but especially the language we use in addressing our children. I have noticed it in the African-American community, but I am sure it is not limited to our community. Whenever an adult, in the midst of a bad or tired moment, says something mean and disparaging to a child, it erodes that child’s sense of self and self-worth.

The language that has been used to describe African-Americans has been damaging. African-Americans have been described as “lazy,” and yet, so many African-Americans I know, and knew when I was growing up, worked two and three jobs to support their families. African-American students are called “low functioning,” and “slow,” and if they hear that, especially from teachers they love and respect, it damages their psyches.

When my children were in school, I was very careful to monitor how teachers talked to them. When my daughter was in an honor’s math class, the only African-American in her class, and was not doing so well at the beginning, her teacher called me in and expressed concern. From her remarks, I remember this one statement, “She is like a deer in the headlights.”

I fumed, and I told her that she might not want to ever say that to my daughter, that in my house, we practiced positive language and through that language, my children were encouraged to believe that they could do anything they put their minds to. I told the teacher that my daughter would be OK, because she had a mind to be OK, and she had the capability to be OK. I would talk with her as she cried through her math homework, and would tell her that she had the advantage over the little numbers on her paper; “after all,” I would say, “you have a brain. Those little numbers do not.” She got it. I mean, she got it that she should always believe in herself and not let anything convince her that she was less than who God had made her. She finished that math class with a B+. The teacher was astounded. I was not.

Parents have to understand the power of language. Our children love us; they want to be like us. If we call them stupid, they will believe it, and they will hate themselves. No person who does anything great does it by hating him or herself. African-Americans have grown up under a barrage of negative and damaging language. Our children have not liked their hair, their lips, the color of their skin …So much of what we are as African-Americans has been described as “bad,” and too many of us drank the kool-aid! We need to understand how toxic language affected us as individuals and as a people… we have got to understand that and do better.

We will find that if we use positive and empowering language with our children, we will begin to use it with ourselves as well. Many of us grew up with “old school” parents who called us names and put us down …but we don’t have to continue that cycle. We have a choice. We may not have the level of self-esteem we want, or have even needed thus far in order to squeeze all of life out of the lives we have …but we can certainly improve our lives and what we do while we are alive if we talk to ourselves and affirm ourselves, no matter what we have been told in the past.

We are, all of us, full of capabilities and possibilities. We are all rather like Watty Piper‘s The Little Engine that Could. We really are capable of much more than we give ourselves credit for, and so are our children. It is our job as adults to convince to the children that, “yes, they can!”

I hope those two little girls, so cute, don’t hear at home that they’re “bad.” I hope they are inquisitive and curious and lively and excited about life, and that they are encouraged to be so. That’s one of the most important things we can do to end cycles of low self-esteem and feelings of quiet desperation.

A candid observation…