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.”

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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…

White Supremacy: America’s Incurable Virus

I learned early that having a virus was much more deadly than having a bacterial infection. The latter could be treated with antibiotics. On the other hand, There was no miracle drug for viral diseases. Viruses had to “work their way” out of our bodies.

I remember reading stories in Readers Digest about the predicaments of young children, many of them babies, falling ill and succumbing to viruses and I learned to fear them. Being sick was one thing; being sick but having no medicinal cure or treatment was quite another.

When my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, I remember watching in horror as she suffered. Her cancer was treated with radiation and chemotherapy, and yet she remained sick and got worse. In the end, the disease won. Cancer consumed and killed her – and I remember thinking that cancer must be a virus because medicines could not kill it. At that time, it seemed that there was nothing effective enough to kill the seed or abnormality that caused it, and it refused to “work its way out” of affected bodies. To me, it was like a cold, only far worse. The difference is that the virus that causes head and chest colds can be forced out by consuming liquids and resting.

But there is no liquid, no tonic, that this country can consume that will push this hatred and bigotry out of the American political and sociological ecosystem Our country has a sociocultural belief system that behaves like a virus, carved out of the need to find justification for the treatment of Black people in this country. While that belief system was always in place, it seems to have gotten worse for white evangelicals twice: once after the end of the Civil War and during Reconstruction, and once again after the US Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v Board of Education that determined that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional.

Necessary for white people in this country to feel comfortable was for non-white people and women to “know their place.” White people determined themselves to be dominant. Black people, Native Americans, and women fell into lower categories. As long as these people did not rise against white authority or challenge white men in power, things were said to be going well.

But when, after slavery and during Reconstruction Black men were given the right to vote and did so, tipping the scales of power toward a more equitable society, those who had been in power began to wretch with fear and anger, and they rebelled. They intensified efforts to keep Black people under their control, creating Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, designed to put and keep things “back” to where they were “supposed” to be. That included taking away their right to vote.

I have not researched how prevalent was the fear of miscegenation when Black people were enslaved and white men raped Black women at will and were never held accountable. But what did happen was the “race mixing” they feared would happen between Black and white children as they railed against the 1954 US Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v Board of Education that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional.

Though the race mixing had already been put in motion by the actions of white men free to rape whomever they wanted, now, with Black and white children attending the same school, the issue of “race mixing” gained a seat in the front row of the American drama of race relations. The government was going against the will of God, who, some said, was the “original segregationist,” using selected scriptures from the Hebrew Bible including the story of Ham and the story of the Tower of Babel, among others. The government was breaking divine law in pushing for racial equality and an end to segregation anywhere, but especially in public schools. So enraged with the ruling were the people of the South that they intensified their fight against racial equality using their conception of God and their interpretation of the Bible as proof. In 1954, Rev. Carey Daniel of Dallas, TX preached a sermon entitled, “God, the Original Segregationist.”(https://crdl.usg.edu/record/usm_hmp_mus-m393-0031) Daniel and others posited that God intended for all races to live separately, which was why the Bible said that God created separate continents and scattered the people who were in the Tower of Babel. Had God intended the races to live together, God would have created the world’s geography in such a way that supported full equality of all. The government, they said, was encouraging people to go against God’s will.

What they did not mention in their diatribes was that it was they who had apparently gone against the will of God, as they were the ones who explored and “discovered” lands that non-white people already inhabited, took residents of those lands out of their country, and brought them to the Americas. The miscegenation they so feared had been begun by them.

This virus of white supremacy has so badly infected this country that it has spread, like the virus that caused COVID-19, around the world. The United States has created its own strain of white supremacy that it has taught to everyone in the world who, in turn, recognizes and uses it as a point of attack, and pounces on at every opportunity to weaken the country that has boasted that it is better than others.

Our enemies are quite familiar with our peculiar virus and have no qualms about attacking us at times when the virus rises up.

We are an infected country. The question is, “How do we address it? How do we get rid of the virus that is still swirling around in our national digestive system? We cannot pass laws that will get rid of it, nor is there a quick sociological fix. The virus has settled into the American DNA and is multiplying.

Will the virus work its way out of our national constitutional framework? Or will it finally dehydrate us as a nation and cause us to become so weak that we will be ripe for the enemies that want to overtake us?

A candid observation …

Until All of us are free…

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.

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…