Behold the Crime of silence

In 1970, James Baldwin was interviewed by David Frost and was asked if he was a Christian or a Muslim, and he said, laughing, “I was born a Baptist.”

Baldwin laughed, hard, prompting Frost to say, “It’s not that funny.”

Candid Observations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Baldwin responded, “It is to me…and he proceeded to answer Frost’s next question, “And what are you now? Do you feel as black (sic) now as when you were born?”

Baldwin responded, “I think you should ask that question of our president…Richard Nixon or the Attorney General. Ask the president how black I feel.” Frost asked, “Do you think the Civil Rights movement is dead?”

Baldwin replied that the Civil Rights movement had resulted in some changes, yes, but it had always been a “self-contained” endeavor and carried within it “something self-defeating.” He added, “Martin knew this, too.”

“In the beginning, we thought that there was a way of reaching the conscience of the people in this country. We hoped there was, and I must say that we did reach several blacks and several whites. We did everything in our power to make the American people realize that the myths they were living with were not so much destroying black people as whites.”

He described who he was and how he felt as a Black person in a country that worshipped whiteness. It had taken its toll, and he said, “I am not a young man, but I am a Black American and I know something about the crime of silence. I know what happens in San Francisco and in Chicago, and in New York when one of our representatives wants to protect the morale of the police. I know what a no-knock, stop-and-frisk law means. It means search and destroy. I know something about the history black people have endured and are still enduring in this place.” He concluded this part of the interview by saying, “We’re not on the edge of a racial war. We’re on the edge of a civil war.”

Still.

Baldwin could just as easily have been sharing those thoughts today.

We are seeing what the crime of silence produces: Chaos. Complacency. Fear. Spiritual and societal blindness, caused by our refusal to challenge injustice and those who support it. The silence helps many rest in a false sense of security; “this is America,” they think. “Nothing as heinous as what happened in Germany will ever happen here.” The belief that America is truly exceptional and immune to abject suffering and destruction by any other country or from within has warped the minds and the capacity of people to understand that evil has no boundaries. It has made Americans boast of being “the greatest country in the world,” even as it descends into the abyss of tyranny. And it has made people think that if anyone suffers, ‘it won’t be them; it will be those who “deserve” to suffer.

Only some people who have a platform speak out and speak up. Unfortunately, too many others are caught in a mythic belief that even if things are bad, the great America will be able to rebound, and, many think, America will do so with the people whom they believed were never worthy of American rights and citizenship eliminated. They believe that if there is a breakdown of America, it will be for the good of a country that had for too long been sullied by the presence of people who should never have been here. (They forget that it was their ancestors who brought the “undesirables” to this country and that it was the unpaid labor of those people that resulted in the economic growth and domination of this country.)

Silence in the face of evil and injustice makes some people or groups of people think they are or will be immune to the dark days ahead, but it always results in excruciating suffering for the masses. American political and law enforcement leaders have been silent from this nation’s inception, and many have been complicit. This country has operated with the understanding that some people have the right to perpetuate injustice because of their race and wealth. They have operated with a “wink and a nod” mindset, akin to that portrayed in the movie, “Gentleman’s Agreement.”

It was the silence (and fear of the president) by lawmakers in the halls of the United States Congress and Senate recently that resulted in the passage of a cruel budget that will hurt millions. Belief in the superiority of a rogue president has resulted in the US Supreme Court choosing to be silent at times when it should have been the leader of the “rule of law” and the pursuit of justice for everyone. Fear of so many, afraid of being punished by the powers that be, has resulted in silence about the complicity with and partnership of America with Zionists, as troops have ravaged the West Bank and specifically, Gaza using weapons that were supplied by the United States, and silence is the accepted way of ignoring the suffering that is going on in the Sudan.

The prayer is that none of us remain silent but take the risk of speaking out and acting to stop the march to the shores of 18th century injustice, echoing the voice of the God of the Christian Bible who desires mercy and not sacrifice and justice for all human beings, the God whose teachings clearly illustrate that He/She cannot be named as the commander-in-chief of those who are running over and destroying the lives of too many of the human beings She created.

If any of us are being silent, we need to think about why and decide if we are going to serve God or serve human beings and honor our desire to flourish in a capitalistic society. There indeed may not be a way to reach the consciences of those who practice injustice against others, but injustice will surely flourish if those who are writhing as they watch the destruction of liberty and justice for all God’s people remain silent.

That silence is perhaps the greatest crime that we are facing today.

A candid observation…

Pledging Allegiance to a Flag that Has Not Pledged Allegiance to You

In 1965, author James Baldwin debated Conservative writer and political commentator William F. Buckley at Cambridge University. The event took place not long after Baldwin, residing in France, had recuperated from an illness that had sapped him of his strength, but he was well enough in February of that year to make the trip to Cambridge University and face Buckley.

The subject that they were to debate was “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” Baldwin went first, and he spoke with a quiet fire, clarity, and passion in a way that seemed to hold the roomful of students spellbound. He had no notes. He merely spoke. His words were riveting and biting at the same time; he shared the raw truth about being Black in America and that experience, in all of its fullness, did not require notes or a script to make his points.

He said many things in that speech that hit hard but his description of what it was like to grow up Black in America was particularly powerful. He said that it was a unique experience to realize as a child “that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance… has not pledged allegiance to you,” to be shocked to discover that “although you are rooting for Gary Cooper “ as he kills Indians, the Indians are you.”

I found myself wishing that I could have seen Buckley’s face as Baldwin spoke. The truth he was sharing was as raw as it was painful. Baldwin continued. “I picked the cotton …under someone else’s whip for nothing. For nothing!’

We can all remember saying the pledge, putting our hands over our hearts and pledging fealty to this country and therefore to its flag. I realized that in my own mind we all pledge allegiance to a country and its government that has not pledged allegiance to us. The flag is a symbol of a country whose leaders have felt little compunction over the course of its life to create policies that respect the full humanity of all who live here.

I can remember, as a child who sang in a district choir in Detroit singing “pro-America” songs. I still remember the lyrics of one:

I love the United States of America!

I love the way we all live without fear!

I like to vote for my choice, speak my mind, raise my voice

Yes, L like it here!

I like the United States of America

I am thankful each day of the year!

For I can do as I please ‘cause I’m free as the breeze,

Yes, I like it here!

I like to climb to the top of a mountain so high

Lift my head to the sky

And say how grateful am I

For the the way that I’m working, and helping and giving

And doing the things I hold dear!

Yes, I like it! I like it!
I like it here!

All of us in that integrated choir sang our hearts out – with all of our songs – but there was a special and unique energy that I can remember when we sang the songs about “our country.” We sang the songs. We pledged allegiance to the flag. And we believed that this country was a safe place that afforded liberty and justice to everyone.

I didn’t know – nor did my choirmates know – that this was a country that denied rights and equality to many who love it. I had not witnessed the evidence of racial, ethnic, class, and religious bigotry. I did not know about buses that made Black people sit in the back, neighborhoods that were manipulated to be all white or all Black, and I did not know that Black people who had served in this country’s wars did not earn a place in the line for benefits for veterans once they returned home. I had no idea that Black soldiers were too often lynched – while still in uniform – when they returned from those wars. They were fighting for their country, but it was not enough to dissolve the curse of racism that was baked into the foundation of this country.

When Baldwin said that we pledge allegiance to a flag that has “not pledged allegiance to you,” I felt myself take a small gasp. I had never thought of the plight of so many people here for whom that sentence holds true. It is such a simple truth, but we don’t often think of it that way, with those words. It is a jarring truth.

When Baldwin finished his side of the debate, the roomful of students – a group that looked to be all male and all white – stood on their feet and applauded for what seemed like 3-5 minutes. When Buckley took the podium, he opened by commenting of Baldwin’s “British accent,” suggesting that it was probably fake – but nobody responded. He made his points, not nearly as eloquent as had Baldwin, concluding, of course, that the American Dream was not created on the backs of Black people. When the camera panned to Baldwin’s face to catch his reaction, it was clear that he understood that Buckley did not have a clue as to what he had presented. Buckley received a polite round of applause when he was done – and he lost the debate: 184 votes to Baldwin’s 544.

The people who are in this moment fighting to dismantle the government are those to whom the country pledged allegiance. I don’t understand how one can call oneself a patriot while working to take one’s country down, but I do know this: This country has never pledged allegiance to the masses of Americans who need policies that help them. It has pledged allegiance, however, to those who have money, who make money, and who will continue to make money for themselves. All who are ignored or passed over will still be expected to pledge allegiance to the country that has not and will not pledge allegiance to them. Those who have been pledged the least will be those who fight the hardest to save what rights they have; those who have never worried about having rights as American citizens will continue to bulldoze over them and not realize the truth of Fannie Lou Hamer’s words, “Until all of us are free, none of us are free.” Many people will find out the hard way that the American Dream has been created at the expense of the Negro, as Baldwin said, but at the expense of every person who has done back-breaking work of building this country.

An Uneasy Peace in America

Ever since President Barack Obama became president of the United States, there has been an uneasy spirit, an uneasy peace that is brazenly obvious.

Although in 2008 there were tears of joy and the cry of America being “post-racial,” many people, both black and white, knew differently. America has always refused to look her racism squarely in the eye; she has been content to live within comfortable walls of myth as opposed to agreeing to stand in the hot sun of reality.

America is a nation that was formed with a racial divide.

Author James Baldwin wrote, in Nobody Knows my Name,” that America “has spent a large part of its time and energy looking away from one of the principal facts of its life. This failure to look reality in the face diminishes a nation as it diminishes a person…” He says that we as a nation are obligated to look at ourselves as we are, not as we wish to be, and he said that “If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations.” (p. 116)

The peace between blacks and whites is …uneasy and inauthentic. We have not looked racism in the fact and challenged it. We have not done the work to become whole.

The most exasperating thing about our situation is that everybody knows it exists. Before this last presidential election, I was having a discussion with a white friend of mine about the political ads on television and radio that we both wished would go away, and, out of nowhere, she said, “…there is so much prejudice in white people. People are so prejudiced against Obama but nobody wants to say it out loud.”

It felt like she needed to say that, to do a “mea culpa” on behalf of people with whom she had close and frequent contact. What it made me feel was …uneasy, because the uneasy peace that exists between blacks and whites in this country feels very volatile and very threatening.

It is not as though the very most virulent racist feelings are confined to a particular region of the United States. Yes, the South has the history of being most blatantly racist, but there has been no love lost for black people in any part of this nation. John Hancock lived in Boston, and owned slaves. James Madison, a signer of the United States Constitution and a president of this nation, wrote that slaves were both property and human – but human only for the purpose of giving states more representation in elections. They were property in general, and did not, could not, receive the rights of being American citizens.

There has been resentment between the races, then, from the beginning of this nation’s life. Blacks have been under the heels of a race that has deigned itself as superior and blacks as inferior. Whites have enjoyed freedom by virtue of their race, and blacks, because of their race, have had to fight for every ounce of “freedom” they have gained. Blacks have resented whites for thwarting their efforts for freedom and whites have resented blacks for wanting more and more freedom, somehow nurturing the belief that blacks are “moochers” who feel like they are “entitled” to what whites freely enjoy.

There is no peace between the races. The issues have been pushed under the carpet and whites and blacks as well work very hard to keep the issues right there.

But truth always comes up and out. The resentment of blacks and whites periodically rises to the surface. There has been no real effort for reconciliation between the races because blacks and whites have been more interested in keeping the disease and its issues hidden. That’s why we have seen and heard so many unkind and racially tinged insults against President Obama. That’s why the Trayvon Martin case is so volatile. That’s why the incidence of hate crimes is on the rise. Though slavery as a formal entity does not exist, blacks are still disproportionately detained in prisons (read Michelle Alexander‘s The New Jim Crow and Douglas

‘s Slavery by Another Name) as a way of keeping them in their place. Blacks and whites are as far away as we ever were, made worse by the fact that we will not “look reality in the face.” It is as though we have strep throat but will not acknowledge it or get an antibiotic to kill the bacteria, and as a result, our nation is suffering from a system rheumatic heart disease.

An uneasy peace is no peace at all. Peace comes only after the work of peace is done…and we in America have not done that. It is scary and troubling, but our nation, while it is off trying to help other nations in the world embrace democracy and freedom, has not attended her own broken democracy. There is an uneasy peace, and it is truly scary.

A candid observation…