If People Knew Better Would They Do Better?

I keep wondering if people knew better, would they do better?

Racism is the scourge of this country, its toxicity created by its support and perpetuation of slavery. It was bad, really bad, though too many people in power – or just plain Americans -do not want to and will not admit the horror of slavery and how it has remained the elephant in this country.

Its establishment of the theory that white people are supreme and superior has not remained an isolated American mindset, but one of global proportions. People all over the world have engaged in what author Kris Manjapra called “global Jim Crow” in his book Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation. Though it was the Europeans who began the trading and selling of Black bodies, it feels like it has been the distinct honor of America to have spread the false narrative of the superiority of white people, and the innate inferiority of Black people, created, many posited, to be the doormats for white people even as they were worked literally to death in the quest of building the American economy.

But, people protest, slavery is over! Stop talking about it! But is it over? Is it a fact that, as Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, says, “Slavery never ended; it just evolved?” Does America still exist as a plantation-driven economy where not just Black people, but poor people are the new field hands, working to make big business even bigger?

There are so many things that have happened in this country that nobody knows about. How many people in Oklahoma, for example, specifically in Tulsa, never heard about the horror that took place in that city in 1921? It was called the Tulsa Race Riot, but in reality, it was the massacre of Black people and their businesses, churches, and homes by angry white people. (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/24/us/tulsa-race-massacre.html) If more people knew, would it matter

Or, how many people know that Black men who served in America’s wars were not granted the same post-war benefits as were their white soldier colleagues? How many people know that Black men could not get housing loans or student loans, and how many people know about the abominable number of Black men who were killed in this country after the wars, many while wearing their uniforms? (https://eji.org/news/remembering-black-veterans-and-racial-terror-lynchings/) Would it make a difference in how they regard Black people if they knew?

Everyone knows about the Emancipation Proclamation, but how many people know that formerly enslaved persons were made to pay for their freedom and that the United States government paid reparations to their former captors? (https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/compensated-emancipation-act/) How many people know that in spite of the Emancipation Proclamation, the people who ran this country found ways to make sure Black people remained chained to their former owners, presumably to pay off debt, but in reality a way for their owners to keep them enslaved? Would it make a difference if they knew?

The country’s most esteemed and respected leaders, including US Supreme Court justices, did little to help create a just world for Black people here. Would it matter to those who complain that Black people “have gotten too much” that judges of the highest court in this country have often made decisions that have kept Black people under the thumb of white supremacist ideas and policies? How many people know about the highest court’s “Insular Cases” (https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/the-most-racist-supreme-court-cases-youve-probably-never-heard-of)

Would it make a difference to people if they knew how Black women were systematically and regularly raped by the men who owned them? Would it make a difference if they knew that angry white people have been the most violent in this country since this slave-labor economy began? Would it make a difference if they knew that these angry white people dropped bombs on the homes of Black people when their anger exploded into violence and were never held accountable? (https://www.history.com/news/1921-tulsa-race-massacre-planes-aerial-attack)

I guess the question I have is “Has belief in white supremacy, and adherence to the privileges one has just because of skin color eroded the capacity of too many white people to see, hear, care, and learn about what this country has done to Black people, yes, but also to other groups whom they deemed as being “less than” in their quest to earn wealth?”

I hear, way too often in the workshops I do, people say, “I didn’t know that.” It is by design that you don’t – that none of us do, but I have to wonder: if people knew better, would they do better? Is there anything that can penetrate the hardened hearts and spirits of people who believe that treating Black people as property is not only correct but has been mandated by God?

The Entitlements Nobody Wants to Talk About

The word “entitlement” has become a bad word in the American political system because it suggests that certain groups of people get economic benefits that they do not deserve and because it costs the government too much money. The specific programs targeted include Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, food stamps, and disability. (https://www.vox.com/2014/5/12/18076886/entitlement-reform)

While I struggle with trying to understand what happens to “the least of these” without these programs in a society that rewards the wealthy and penalizes the poor and lower middle class, I am quite sure that not all “entitlements” are talked about. Though these other entitlements do not require an act of Congress to pass or to repeal, they carry an economic and social component that most people, it seems, are all right with.

I am talking about the entitlements afforded people because of their race and their gender. I have come to understand that white supremacy is both racist and sexist, a reality that allows white people in general and white males in particular to have privileges that the rest of us do not have and should not expect; they are entitled to certain benefits that the rest of us will never have.

It is not just Black people who must live with the inequity of American citizenship. It has been Native Americans, Asians, Muslims – anyone identifiable as being non-white, and it has been males of all races who feel entitled to certain privileges because society has told them they are entitled to them.

It is almost as if a great swath of people – again, primarily white people in general and white males in particular – are the spoiled brats of society. They have been used to getting their way and getting away with it. Watching the debacle of the former president’s apparently imminent indictment, for example, pulls the curtain back on how entitlement in this country works. Because he is white, wealthy, and male, he has been to manipulate the country and its institutions in ways no non-white, female politician would have been able to. He is still considered a front-runner to be the Republican nominee for president in 2024 in spite of a fair amount of evidence that he stoked the January 6 insurrection, that he has committed campaign finance crimes, that he has obstructed justice and allegedly stolen classified documents and has lied about it. Yet, he still gets non-stop coverage by the media which continues to push him as the likely 2024 presidential candidate. While an innocent young woman, Breonna Taylor, was killed while sleeping in her own bed due to the legality of no-knock warrants, this man has gotten a full and fair warning that he is perhaps about to be indicted. He knows his entitlement and has lived and functioned within it for his whole life and while it is troubling to watch, it is not surprising that he is continuing to do what he has always done – disregard the system and do whatever he has wanted.

It seems to me that much of the entitled community walks around with a smirk. I am reminded of how offended I was when I saw the picture of Derek Chauvin with his knee on the neck of George Floyd as the life seeped out of Floyd’s body. He was being videoed, but he looked defiantly into the camera with that smirk that said to me, “Video all you want. I can do what I want and will not have to pay for it.”

That has been the history of the entitled of America. They have used non-white and non-male people to protect their privileges and help build their wealth and power from the inception of this country, and have committed heinous crimes for which they have never been held accountable and received tremendous benefits that others were denied.

For example, the “entitled class” received government loans to purchase homes and continue their education once they returned from fighting in America’s wars, while Black soldiers were denied the same. (https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits) (https://www.npr.org/2022/10/18/1129735948/black-vets-were-excluded-from-gi-bill-benefits-a-bill-in-congress-aims-to-fix-th) Black soldiers were killed after the war as they dared wear their uniforms, a sign of their service to this country, and those who killed them were seldom held accountable. (https://eji.org/news/remembering-black-veterans-and-racial-terror-lynchings/)

Asians were denied their rights as American citizens (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-long-history-of-racism-against-asian-americans-in-the-u-s) though they, like African Americans, were key to the building of this country’s economy. Native Americans were and are still denied their rights, and are still fighting for their liberty and dignity, suffering the indignity of being denied the right to speak their language or even mention their customs when their children were sent to schools operated by the Jesuits. (https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice/american-indian-rights) (https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/traumatic-legacy-indian-boarding-schools/584293/).

The truth about our society, its racism, sexism, and unpunished violence meted against those who are not in the privileged class is not pleasant. Most people know little about it and so they live with a manufactured sense of indignation that members of the nonprivileged class dare to complain about how they have been treated.

But the hard truth exists – in spite of efforts like those being taken by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to erase the lessons off of the chalkboard of American history. And the truth is, members of the privileged class have gotten used to their entitlements due to their race and gender and are not likely to give any of it up without a hard fight.

The members of the privileged class have been spoiled as they have been taught they are unique, different, and above everyone else. They have grown used to expecting the best of what this country has to offer – their attitudes are not unlike those of a spoiled child who has been used to having his or her way. They have become cocooned in their world, believing that they are better than everyone else and are therefore more deserving of any and everything they get – and have concurrently become pouters when they don’t get what they believe they deserve. They are resentful of those outside of their class who are able to acquire some of “their” privileges in spite of not being part of “the group. In their actions, they are much like members of some fraternities who bend and break the laws and rules of their organization, their colleges, and this society, because they live in their entitlement of being white, male, and, many, wealthy.

This social entitlement is deadly. It has eroded the capacity of so many to feel, to care, and to empathize with, say, those who live in poverty or with those who simply want basic American rights. They cannot see, and do not care, about the way so many in our society are forced to live. They carry the Chauvin smirk and know that whatever they want, they can pretty much get, and that attitude does a couple of things: it makes them angry when they don’t get their way and it encourages them to react violently in order to get what they feel they deserve, and nobody else.

I think I feel sorry for them. It is a bad thing to be human but be devoid of the human capacity to see and care for and about those who are in less comfortable situations than are they. What America has done is taught the privileged class and people all over the world to say, “At least I’m not black” including Black people who live in Africa and in the African diaspora. But this country has also taught others to proclaim their superiority over those who are of different religions, different ethnicities, different genders, and sexualities, and by virtue of their saying that they exert the spirit of the privileged class, which is one of snobbery, selfishness, and superiority.

And these exude these spirits in spite of saying they are Christian.

We should talk more about the entitlements that are helping to kill the soul of this country. They are far more damaging than the financial programs put in place that help those who will never be a part of the privileged class.

A candid observation …

Has Whiteness Eroded the souls of white people?

Has Whiteness Eroded the Souls of White People?

I have for some time wondered if white people lost their souls as they have historically held onto, embraced, and zealously guarded their whiteness and the privileges their whiteness has afforded them.

It will never make sense to me how any people – white or otherwise – could possibly believe that chattel slavery was compatible with Christianity, as Robert P. Jones notes in his book White Too Long.

Jones writes, “The Christian denomination in which I grew up was founded on the proposition that chattel slavery could flourish alongside the gospel of Jesus Christ. Its founders believed this arrangement was not just possible but divinely mandated.”

Divinely mandated? That teaching floors me. How in the world can anyone who has read the Gospels walk away thinking like that? It is totally irrational and indicative of ignorance – or perhaps rejection – of the words of Jesus the Christ, whose ministry became as powerful as it was because he paid attention to, cared about, and ministered to “the least of these.”

But being white seems to have moved the Gospels and the words of Jesus to the periphery, if not all the way out, of the faith that Jesus taught. So many white folks have believed in and cherished their whiteness more than they have believed in and cherished the lessons of the Christ. Too many believe that it was God who made them superior and working on that premise, they have not worried about how they treat non-white people. Black people, many believe, were made to be subservient to white people, and, they are not really human and definitely not really American. They are – we are – objects to be owned and controlled by those commissioned by God and with the money and power to do it.

I heard an interesting portion of an interview with John Henry Faulk, a white Southerner from Texas who fought McCarthyism and eventually fought against racism.. He says he told this enslaved man that he was a “different” kind of white man who believed in “giving” Black people the right to vote, and the right to go to school– the same rights enjoyed by white people.

Faulk says in the interview that the man looked at him kind of sadly, almost with pity, before speaking and saying, “You still got the disease, honey. I know you think you’re cured, but you’re not cured.”

“You can’t give me the right to be a human, being I was born with it. You can keep me from having it,” he continued, “if you’ve got the police and all the jobs on your side, but you can’t give it to me. I was born with it just like you was (sic).”

Faulk was deeply impacted by what this formerly enslaved man said – angry at first that his “goodness” was not fully appreciated, but said that the more he thought about it, the more he realized and understood the power and the truth of what had been told to him.. He said he had an epiphany in his understanding of race and racism.

If white people, though, do not have an epiphany, they are unable to see Black people as human beings, capable of feeling hurt and pain, and having needs that all humans have. They cannot understand how spewing racist epithets at little Black children hurts them, or how Black families want justice as do all other human beings. They cannot understand why Black people are angry or frustrated or hurt – or all of those emotions; they do not understand how being told to “wait” for justice is like hearing a fingernail being dragged across a blackboard. They are not willing to admit that Black people have a

right to demand rights afforded to all American citizens; they feel, as did United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney who ruled in the Dred Scott case that there are “no rights of a Black man that a white man is bound to respect.”

They cannot relate to or even believe that the mothers and fathers of Black people murdered by police ache with a pain that cannot be assuaged. They cannot understand why the Black community in Ferguson, Missouri was outraged when, after he was shot by police, Michael Brown was not taken away but instead lay on the asphalt in the middle of the street for four hours, police not allowing his body to be moved. They grow impatient hearing about the atrocities committed against Black people by a white power structure and society that has historically allowed white people to kill Black people and not be held responsible or accountable. They cannot conceive that little Black children notice how their schools are run down and poorly equipped, as compared to the schools their white friends so often attend.

They think Black people whine, are too angry, and are definitely impatient. The frustration of waiting for over 400 years for justice and full American citizenship escapes the understanding of many, too many, white people.

They do not believe that Black people feel pain the same way they do. (https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=201128359), and they don’t feel bad about providing lesser medical care to Black patients than they provide to white patients. (https://www.heart.org/en/news/2018/09/20/differences-remain-in-heart-attack-treatments-for-black-patients) They don’t have a clue as to how little Black children react to being called racially hateful names, even as some oppose race being talked about because they don’t want their children to feel bad. (https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-why-the-narrative-that-critical-race-theory-makes-white-kids-feel-guilty-is-a-lie/)

I remember wondering about the souls of white people when I saw a video of a little second-grade Black child being handcuffed and taken to a police car for some minor infraction at school. As she was taken to the car, she resisted, screaming, and begging not to be put in the police car. The police ignored her. I wept when I saw the video. How, I wondered, could any adult do that to a second grader? (https://www.gq.com/story/six-year-old-black-girl-arrested-for-a-tantrum)

Maybe that’s when I started wondering if whiteness had erased or eradicated the very souls of white people. I remember briefly thinking about it years ago when I saw pictures of white mothers screaming hate at little Ruby Bridges as she integrated a while elementary school, and I have thought about it a lot since. Back then I thought, “mothers are supposed to be that way with any child.” Today, I think that those who call themselves Christian are not supposed to be so filled with hatred – which they justify – toward people just because they have been filled with lies and painfully incorrect perceptions about who Black people are and what, therefore, they deserve, don’t deserve, feel, and are incapable of feeling.

Sadly, for those who live and think that way, the words and the life of Jesus seem not to matter. And equally as sad is the fact that many of them do not care if that statement is true.

A candid observation …

Neither Slavery nor Naziism Ended; they Both Evolved and Are Still Evolving

When the former president began his trek toward the American presidency, his violent and hateful rhetoric was troubling and when I shared with a Facebook friend, a white woman with whom I had had some conversations, I was afraid that what he was saying and doing would result in the end of our democracy, she said, without a pause, “Democracy needs to die.”

I was shocked and silent. I finally wrote her that I didn’t agree and got off Facebook for the day, and I never talked with her again.

The fact that there is a move on to end democracy as this country has known it is all the more troubling because there are so many people who adhere to that desire. They say they resent big government – i.e. government that has created policies and programs that help the masses of the people, but they don’t seem to understand that an authoritarian government represents the highest form of big government – where the government controls all aspects of the lives of individual citizens. For some reason, people who are pushing for authoritarianism do not seem to be concerned that some in the government are already stepping on the freedoms Americans have held dear – including being able to teach or read what we want, the right of women to make decisions about their bodies, and even going so far as to intrude on the privacy of young women by asking those who play sports about their menstrual cycles. Some of our most beloved books have been banned, and more will come. (https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/freedom-to-read-books-on-lgbtq-racism-banned-in-32-states/) (https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/freedom-to-read-books-on-lgbtq-racism-banned-in-32-states/) (https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-desantis-florida-sports-female-athletes-160560972802) (Florida has recently backed away from this plan.)

Adolph Hitler wanted complete control; he was able to inspire millions of Germans and other Europeans as he blamed Jews for everything that was “wrong,” even if “wrong” was tightly defined by the Germans. As German Jews faced mass murder and sought to come to the United States, this country, sadly, was not as open as we would have believed. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/us-government-turned-away-thousands-jewish-refugees-fearing-they-were-nazi-spies-180957324/)

From the way history was taught to me, the fact that Hitler did not win his war meant that Hitlerism and Naziism had died along with him. As a child and young student, I believed the Nazi threat was gone.

But it did not die; it has evolved. We see Swastikas appearing, and we hear angry white people shouting “Jews will not replace us.” They are serious. Naziism appeals to them and they make no secret that they want “white power,” meaning, they want this country to be inhabited and controlled by white people. Many are unafraid to flash the “white power” symbol, something most recently reported as having been done by George Santos as he took his oath of office to be a US Representative. ( https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/01/did-rep-george-santos-flash-the-white-power-symbol-in-the-house-chamber) (https://abcnews.go.com/US/symbols-hate-extremism-display-pro-trump-capitol-siege/story?id=75177671)

The anti-Semitism that is a core component of Naziism is still very much alive. The former president is said to have slept with a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf at his bedside. (https://abcnews.go.com/US/symbols-hate-extremism-display-pro-trump-capitol-siege/story?id=75177671) Modern-day believers in Naziism are not being subtle about their support of the ideology, much to the chagrin of many.

But this country decided what it would be at the outset. From our beginning, the primary value was capitalism; enslaving people of African descent had proven to be a cash cow, and the framers were unwilling to let it go. Even after the Emancipation, whites found ways to re-enslave Africans, primarily through the Convict Leasing program, but in later years, through putting Blacks in positions where they could make good money – but make even more money for those owners of football and basketball teams that operate much as plantations did before the Civil War.

Slavery is yet evolving, as is Naziism. Black and brown people are still working for wages that do not allow them to have quality lives and in essence, be free. We have wanted to believe – and we have touted the narrative that this is the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” but it is neither. The “free and the brave” tend to be a very small group of wealthy, white people who also call themselves “Christian” to give their ideology more validation. Still, nothing that Naziism or enslavement stands for has anything to do with what was taught in the Gospel.

Though it is troubling to see elected officials willing to stomp over and dismantle American freedoms, and in fact dismantle the government, it is not a new thing. Those who have adhered to racism and sexism and are anti-democracy have walked into this country and served in its government from our beginning. They, like my Facebook friend, do not want democracy. They don’t want the masses to have liberty and justice, they don’t want everyone to vote, including Black and Brown people, students, and women.

This country may never have been a democracy; it feels as though it never was in practice, but only in verbiage. Both slavery and Naziism are still evolving. Patriarchy and sexism are still evolving. Those in power are working to keep the evolution going. We are not “united,” nor were we meant to be.

That truth works to the detriment of far too many in these dis-United States of America.

A candid observation …

When We Stop Deceiving Ourselves

The trembling in my soul that began leading up to the observance of the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr has not yet stopped. I shuddered at the thought of hearing people who hated and still hate what Dr. King did to dismantle the capitalistic, white supremacist system that caused and still causes so many people to suffer offer flowery words of tribute. For what purpose? Only to bolster their objectives of continued racial oppression. by twisting and manipulating a few words that he said.

Were he alive today, they would be attacking him. As it is, though Dr. King was murdered in 1968 it wasn’t until 1983 that Congress approved a holiday in his honor and it took three more years for the holiday actually to be celebrated.

We live in a society that thrives on deception. The powers that be from the very beginning created a myth of American exceptionalism. They decided from the beginning that some people were more worthy than others, and they wrote those beliefs into the Constitution. This country was never meant to be the “land of the free and the home of the brave;” too many people were excluded from human and humane treatment from the beginning.

The deception with which this country was founded, and the deception that continues to be an identifiable element of our society can make one tremble with rage. Do the people in power know they are being deceptive? And if they do, do they care? Howard Thurman, though, makes an observation about deception – saying that it is “perhaps the oldest of all the techniques by which the weak have protected themselves against the strong.” The disinherited have survived by practicing deception, i.e. acting like everything is OK when that is far from the truth. The words of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask” comes to mind:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but O great Christ our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

If Thurman’s observation is accurate that deception is that which the weak use to survive, then we have to lift up the possibility that this country, which has touted and boasted about its strength, is actually very weak. It has created a narrative that has enabled it to survive against nations, principles, and ideas that are much stronger than anyone cares to admit.

But on an individual level, we deceive ourselves if we do not admit to ourselves that this entire debacle called Americanism grieves us to our souls. It causes us to tremble. Every time we have to swallow our pain and anger because of one more assault, we tremble. We dare not show it for fear of being castigated, fired, or worse, but it is inside of us. Thurman says that the “question of deception is not academic, but profoundly ethical and spiritual, going to the very heart of all human relations. For it raises the issue of honesty, integrity, and the consequences thereof over against duplicity and deception and the attendant consequences.”

We must admit and own the trembling within us. We must not fall prey to the narrative presented by the deceptive American society and government that criticizes the anger that the disinherited rightfully feel. This American government is not good for “the least of these,” and Thurman says we cannot continue to call a lie the truth.” He writes, “the penalty of deception is to become a deception.” That is not acceptable. We cannot be in true relationship with God – who is Truth – if we submit to a deceptive narrative that was created to steal our joy, our hope, and our faith. Thurman says, “sincerity in human relations is equal to sincerity to God.”

I got through the day by refusing to listen to any of the “tributes” to Dr. King that were offered by people who are actively trying to destroy everything he and other Civil Rights leaders did. They are not only trying to destroy what he and the Movement accomplished; they are also trying to dismantle and destroy the entire country.

It may be that it will not only be Black people will be wearing masks to hide their pain at what is going on in this country because the attack on liberty, constitutional rights, honesty, integrity, and principles will affect a lot of people. Were Dr. King alive, he would be mortified.

As well we should all be.

A candid observation …a