race – Candid Observations

One of the most gripping scenes in the movie “The Color Purple,– the original and the makeover – is when Celie faces her oppressor – her husband – angry and tired at the way she has been treated for much of her life, and, while holding a knife, says to him, “Until you do right by me, everything you even think about is going to fail.” (https://fb.watch/pAS7-C4Iza/)

A sentiment attributed to having first been expressed by Emma Lazarus in 1883 and repeated by others, including Maya Angelou and Fannie Lou Hamer: “Until all of us are free, none of us are free,” carries much of the weight and meaning of Celie’s statement

These powerful words are ignored by far too many people. People who oppress others, who lord power over others instead of treating them with love and respect, will eventually always be defeated. They will feel the defeat in themselves and/or will see the defeat in the world or atmosphere they tried to create.

Creating a toxic atmosphere is apparently not that difficult; we have seen cults form and grow under talented and bigoted leaders throughout history.

But they cannot last – because the human quest for dignity, freedom, equality, and equity is ultimately stronger than the faux strength projected and practiced by those who think more highly of themselves than they ought.

I keep listening to and reading people say that they want the former president to be re-elected because they like his policies. I don’t know all of the policies they’re talking about, but some sources break them down. (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/18/trump-presidency-administration-biggest-impact-policy-analysis-451479)

But the policies people like that seem to be resonating most strongly are those that denounce the idea that all people are created equal, endowed with “certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” People love that the former president vows to either deport or detain immigrants. (https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/11/politics/trump-stephen-miller-immigration-detention-deportation/index.html)

I am presuming that policies they love also include refusing federal funds that would be used to help feed poor children. (https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/summer-ebt-republicans-child-poverty-b2477996.html) (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/us/school-lunches-assistance-republicans.html)

The policies they like, again I’m presuming, include watching people drown at the border while at the same time refusing federal funds that would help give border policy the resources it needs. (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/3-migrants-drown-near-shelby-park-eagle-pass-texas-soldiers-denied-entry-federal-border-agents/)

They are overjoyed that Roe v Wade was overturned, and like policies that make it a crime for a woman to have an abortion – even if that abortion comes as the result of a naturally-occurring miscarriage. (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-increasing-risk-of-criminal-charges-for-women-who-experience-a-miscarriage), or because of being raped.

These culture-war policies that so many people like are abusive; America is in an abusive relationship with its own government. It is inconceivable to me how anyone who calls him or herself “Christian” can be okay with the rights of so many people being ignored and trampled upon.

I keep asking what happens to us – the people – if these people get more power. What will happen to old people if Medicare and Social Security end? What will happen to poor children who will not be able to eat without the funding allotted to states for them to have food over the summer? What will happen to immigrants if they are forced into internment camps? What will happen to the small amount of justice Black and Brown people, the poor, women, and other non-white, non-cis-gender individuals receive?

Those who are abused will take it for so long – and then they will rise up. Those who want this to be a Fascist country are not thinking about how a government like that will affect everyone – including them – and their lack of understanding and insight will be their loss. But people will only take abuse for so long before they rebel. The human spirit longs for and demands to be free. The ways of the past as concerns Black people are not something we will ever adhere to again. We will not be forced to look down when we pass by a white person. We will not be silent when we are being cheated of our economic earnings. We will not be silent when the justice system refuses to give us justice. We have “been there, done that,” and the people who want us to go back will learn that their desire is untenable and unrealistic.

On this Martin Luther King Day, we will hear over and over excerpts from his “I Have a Dream Speech.” The most rabid racists will quote the one line he said in that speech that fits into their white supremacist ideology – that he dreams of a day when his children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

They will lift those words as some sort of justification for their being against civil and human rights for all people, including Black people. They will nod their heads at his words as support of their belief that there is too much attention paid to racism – while they continue to exploit Black people based on the color of their skin. They will use those words to bypass the rancid racism that makes them say that some people are presidents of prestigious universities or justices/judges in America’s justice system, or some students are in colleges, only because of Affirmative Action and the color of their skin.

They will ignore the fact that many white people are in positions and are in colleges – because of the color of their skin.

In using those words, they will conveniently forget how they have tortured, beaten, and robbed Black people just because they could. They will forget how they destroyed Rosewood and got away with it, how they destroyed the Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. They will call you “woke” if you remind them of the coup that took place in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898 because white people decided that they would not allow Black people to “rule over them.” They will ignore the atrocities they have committed and continue to commit on and against Black people – just because they are Black and have been characterized by a narrative that can only be called “fake.”

Dr. Martin Luther King said a lot of things that most people do not know – and don’t want to know. Among the things he said was that white people “made God a partner in their exploitation of the Negro.” (Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community, p. 79) Many who call on the name of Jesus in their claim to be Christian believe that Jesus was a white man. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/06/25/how-an-iconic-painting-jesus-white-man-was-distributed-around-world/) (https://voices.uchicago.edu/religionculture/2017/06/26/the-klan-white-christianity-and-the-past-and-present-a-response-to-kelly-j-baker-by-randall-j-stephens/)

White smugness that their adherence to white supremacy cements and justifies their hatred, violence, and injustice for African Americans fuels their arrogance and power; like abusive husbands who use the precepts of male superiority to justify the beating and sometimes murdering of their wives, believers in white supremacy lord their power over people whom they think of as being less than human, and therefore, less deserving of being treated with fairness and dignity.

But they forget that the abused and oppressed will one day rise up. They will fight for their dignity, even if it means they might die in the process. Humans were made to be free.

And the words I think of, when I think of the state in which this country sits, are those uttered by a tired but empowered Celie, who tells her abuser that the abuse is over: “Until you do right by me, everything you even think about gonna (sic) fail.

A candid observation.

Sometimes, I need help to understand why some things are as they are…like this: why do some white people think it’s racist to acknowledge that racism exists and to talk about it?

I have been chewing on that ever since I had an online chat with a white friend who was furious with me for saying that, at the beginning of the GOP race for the presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich was “playing to his base.”

That base was in the South, and consisted primarily, as far as I could tell, of white people. Many of them resonated with Gingrich’s assertions that black people and their situation in America were surely to be considered; in a speech in New Hampshire he made in January he said “… the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/05/newt-gingrich-paychecks-food-stamps_n_1188193.html)

That comment, along with others, such as “President Obama is the food stamp president” are no less disparaging and inaccurate about the lives of African-Americans than was President Reagan’s creation of the “welfare queen” which fed into the belief by many whites that black people are eating up the economy; their access to entitlements are a big part of the blame for the shoddy economic condition of this country, many will say, and any attempt dissuade people of those beliefs usually meet with rabid and bitter opposition.

OK, so I get that …but why, if one talks about the reality of racism in this country is one branded a “racist?” Why is the worst thing to talk about in America race, when our sick racism is at the base of so many of our problems?

In a book entitled To Ask for an Equal Chance, author Cheryl Lynn Greenberg talks about the state of African-Americans during and leading up to the Great Depression. She cites United States Supreme Court decisions few of us know anything about, like Grovey v. Townsend (1935), which said that electoral parties are private groups and can exclude African-Americans from membership and participation, and Norris v. Alabama, (1935) which allowed for the routin exclusion of African-Americans from jury duty. She talks about the “Atlanta Six” who were arrested in 1930 under a slave statutes against inciting insurrection for organizing protest. In The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan, an amazing book which describes the dust bowl of the 1930s, there is a description of signs put out advertising scant employment opportunities, but signs which clearly said “colored need not apply.”

The foundation of America was sewn with racist and with sexist threads…so why can’t we talk about it without being called “racist?

I cringed when, after Trayvon Martin’s case garnered national and international attention, and President Barack Obama made the statement that if he had a son, he’d look like Trayvon, the accusations of him playing the race card flew as though the card game had been set upon by a great, unexpected wind. Those protesting said he was not only playing the race card, but that he was sowing division amongst or between the races, because this is an election year.

The truth of the matter is that racism has been brewing just under the surface of our American political scene since the president was elected. Congressman Joe Wilson’s rude “you lie!” outburst at the president’s first State of the Union speech was beyond comprehension; the tactics of the Tea Party, including some who reportedly spit on revered African-American leaders, was steeped in race.

The truth of the matter is, not talking about race has only made the situation worse. Everybody wants to pretend that “it” isn’t racism that is driving some of what we are seeing and hearing today, but it is…We can’t keep agreeing to be silent. We need to face it and shake out the blanket of American democracy. The wrinkles caused by racism need to go…but if we keep the blanket all balled up, the wrinkles will only become deeper.

A candid observation …