America Has the Flu

If one of the main problems of influenza is that it attacks the body’s respiratory system, leading to pneumonia and other pulmonary issues which ultimately cause death, it would seem that America, under this president, is on life support, unable to breathe. This president and his administration have shown us our disease and instead of leading us to ways to heal it, is ignoring everything that would “make America right again.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), pneumonia is one of the most common and serious complications of the flu. Pneumonia caused by the flu can be viral or bacterial, but both can be deadly and in fact, do cause many deaths. (https://www.cdc.gov/pneumonia/index.html)

America’s racism has been its chronic illness – its flu, if you will – since its inception; English people came here to escape British oppression, but also to make this “New World” a land created by white people for white people. They immediately began to oppress Native Americans and soon, black people. They declared Native Americans as being savages and brutes and justified their treatment of them on those beliefs about them. Racist ideology was included in nearly everything that these very religious people did from the 1600s on and was built into the United States Constitution.

Black and other oppressed people have fought the racism and sexism, anti-Semitism and many other “isms” for generations. Gains have historically been made and are then lost because angry white people have risen up and worked to undo the gains made by the oppressed groups, almost always violently.

Under this administration, the white backlash is serious and toxic; the venom of white nationalism is filling the lungs of America’s capacity to breathe in “liberty and justice for all,” while simultaneously breathing out racism, sexism, Xenophobia and all other forms of oppression.

Whenever blacks have made gains and fought racism, whites have done everything they could to undo those gains, furious that the federal government has at times supported the quest for freedom, justice, and dignity of people who are just as American as are whites.

America’s influenza – its racism – has not only been toxic but contagious. We are seeing white nationalists boldly declaring and boasting about their racism; Steve Bannon the other day said that whites should wear the badge of “racist” proudly. (https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-racist-label-is-a-badge-of-honor) while the GOP-controlled Congress and Senate sit idly by and let the president do and say what he wants, as well as his followers. There is no outrage about the violence being perpetrated by White Nationalists; there are no efforts to stem the tide.

America’s capacity to be a just nation – a place where there is true “liberty and justice for all” – is being hindered by her lungs filling up with the deadly bacteria which causes cultural pneumonia. The safeguards of liberty and justice, morality, and goodness do not apply in the minds of those who believe that this nation should be a nation of white people. Our very plurality – something which other nations have celebrated – is what the White Nationalists abhor, and neither the US Constitution nor the Holy Bible or the religion called Christianity protect those who are attacked and discriminated against simply because of who they are.

Historian Forrest G. Wood in his book The Arrogance of Faith notes that Christianity has been “fundamentally racist in its ideology, organization, and practice.” Christian idealism apparently means that the dominant ethnicity or race of this country must be homogeneous and puritanical, Wood says.

To hear and to watch this country backslide into a blatantly racist and sexist “norm” is disheartening, but worse, it is ominous because pneumonia damages the lungs and makes it impossible for a person – or in this case, a nation – to breathe. Empires fall. America, the Empire, is in the intensive care unit and its lungs, filled with the bacteria of hatred, are getting more and more weak.

A nation which despises, ignores, and casts aside “the least of these” is destined for death.

A candid observation …

Black Military Veterans, Racism, and Taking a Knee

Ever since former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first “took a knee” in 2016 during the playing of the National Anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality, there has been a group of people, led by and including the President of the United States, to denigrate the act and to complain that “taking a knee” is a sign of disrespect of the American flag and the military.

The president has been bold in his criticism of players acting on their First Amendment right to protest, saying at one of his rallies that he wished NFL owners would take a stand against anyone “disrespecting our flag,” saying, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when someone disrespects our flag, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field now.’” ( https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/sep/22/donald-trump-nfl-national-anthem-protests)

The narrative supporting the belief that the protest is somehow unpatriotic has only grown among those who support the president’s views, but the fact of the matter is that this country has a history of disrespecting black men (and women) who have fought in America’s wars. The history is not pretty.

The story of Isaac Woodard, who in February 1946 was attacked by white people while still in uniform, is just one of the many cases of black military veterans being beaten by whites. In Woodard’s case, he had just been honorably discharged and was on a bus headed to South Carolina from Georgia. When he asked if the bus driver would allow him time to use the bathroom during a stop, the bus driver got angry and cussed at the still-in-uniform Woodard – and Woodard said later that he cussed back. The bus driver called someone while the bus was stopped, and further along in the trip, the bus made another stop. It was met by police, to whom the bus driver told the story of Woodard wanting the bus to wait for him to go to the bathroom and about Woodard cussing back at the bus driver. Police began beating Woodard right there. They arrested him and took him to jail, where they continued to beat him until he was unconscious. When he awakened, his uniform now bloody from the beating he had endured, he could not see. The police chief reportedly had used his nightstick to pound Woodard in his eyes. He was charged with disorderly conduct and was made to pay a fine. Someone drove him to a hospital where doctors told him he would be permanently blind.

The truth is, in spite of African Americans being willing to fight for this country, this country has not been willing to treat them with dignity and afford them the full rights of American citizenship. According to a report prepared by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), “Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans, between 1877 and 1950, “no one was more at risk of experiencing violence and targeted racial terror than black veterans. White America, notably in the South but elsewhere as well, had no respect for the men and women who had joined the military but were instead afraid of them, and they were unwilling to abandon their belief in white superiority over black people. The report quotes Mississippi Senator James K. Vardaman said that black veterans returning to the Shout would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Whites in America, who wanted to preserve the white supremacy way of life and of thinking, were worried that while in Europe, the soldiers might have gotten confused, thinking they were due human and civil rights. Whites were determined that no such new thinking on the part of blacks would be legitimized. (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-tragic-forgotten-history-of-black-military-veterans)

The EJI report said that often “the only provocation” for a black in uniform to be attacked was just that – the wearing of the uniform, but the violence meted out against them did not stop blacks from enlisting in the American military. The report says that 1.2 million black men enlisted during World War II. When they returned home, they were subjected not only to violence but were denied benefits offered to white veterans. The GI bill was written in such a way that most of its benefits, including money to purchase homes and/or to get an education, were denied to black soldiers.

While all of the stories of black soldiers being abused, discriminated and ultimately lynched, some stories stand out more than others. Johnson C. Whittaker, the first black to receive an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point was found unconscious in his dorm in 1880. While he was sleep, he was attacked by three white cadets, who beat him in his head, choked him and cut his earlobes doublev_hc_cat . West Point administrators blamed Whittaker, saying he had staged the attack, and they court-martialed him. He was convicted and expelled from West Point. (https://eji.org/reports/online/lynching-in-america-targeting-black-veterans)

The disrespect of blacks who served in the military has not stopped. On Veterans Day in 2016, Ernest Walker, wearing his Army uniform, went to a Chili’s restaurant in Texas where veterans were being offered free meals. Walker says t an elderly white man, wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap, approached him at his table and said that he had served in Germany and that “blacks were allowed to serve there.” The man told the manager that Walker was not a real soldier “because he was wearing his hat inside.” The manager approached Walker and in spite of Walker showing his military credentials, his leftover free food was taken away. (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chilis-apologizes-veterans-day_us_58297fe7e4b0c4b63b0d47d1)

The fact that in spite of being so badly treated in this country that African Americans have continued to enlist in the military to fight for this country says something about the perception of what “taking a knee” is about. Far from showing disrespect for the American flag and for America’s military, “taking a knee” is a protest against the system that allows, sanctions, ignores and perpetuates the discrimination against black people. If there is a “son of a bitch” in this scenario, it is not the players who kneel; it is the system which, because of its injustice, forces them to kneel. It is a legal way, an action in compliance with the tenets of the United States Constitution, to bring attention to the lack the rights of full American citizenship for people of color.

Now the president wants to have a huge, expensive military parade. Whatever his reasons are, I am sure he is ignorant of how the military has treated some in their ranks who have died or been permanently maimed while fighting for a country which does not fight for them. Wouldn’t it be nice if the president and his crew would read the history of what African Americans have contributed to America’s military efforts …and themselves, “take a knee” to show solidarity, support, and understanding – and a willingness to change what is wrong?

That would be just, I think.

A candid observation…

The Ongoing Lynching of African Americans

It is interesting that, while the federal government is casting doubt on the integrity of the FBI and the Justice Department, that it still finds a way to sanction everything that local law enforcement officers do to people of color on a daily basis.

It would seem that if there is no justice and no integrity in law enforcement at the very top of the ladder, there certainly could be no justice on the lower rungs.

And it seems that if the top level of law enforcement is so corrupt that it needs to be publicly excoriated, presumably threatening the very security of this nation, then the same excoriation of law enforcement agencies on the state and local levels must happen as well.

It has been interesting to hear this president and his crew put down the FBI and the Justice Department – not because they are any more corrupt than perhaps they have always been. Certainly, there were questions about the FBI’s penchant for unchecked authoritarian tactics when J. Edgar Hoover was its director. Under Hoover’s FBI, crimes against black people were too often ignored.

In a 2014 article which appeared in The Nation, it is noted that “African Americans didn’t have to have radical ideas or engage in violence, to merit surveillance.” Hoover’s FBI was known to investigate any group which dissented. But when it came to African Americans, they didn’t have to have done anything. “Being black was enough,” the article said. (https://www.thenation.com/article/just-being-black-was-enough-get-yourself-spied-j-edgar-hoovers-fbi/)

Hoover’s FBI watched African Americans in every aspect of their lives – going to the store, to the library, to church. The Nation article said that for black people in Hoover’s era, a bill collector might be the FBI.

Hoover’s FBI represented nonviolent lynching, the taking of life in the form of government intrusion and governmental interference in the seeking of justice by African Americans. It is highly probable that the worldview of Hoover’s FBI trickled down to state and local law enforcement departments. African Americans were targeted. The FBI knew about violence meted out to African Americans by racist white American civilians and white American police officers and did little to quell the injustice.

Theologian James Cone, in his book The Cross and the Lynching Tree, wrote that while “spectacle lynching was on the decline in the 1950s, there were many lynchings as state and federal governments used the criminal justice system to intimidate, terrorize and murder blacks. Whites could kill blacks, knowing that a jury of their peers would set them free but convict and execute any black who dared to challenge the white way of life.” (p. 49)

There was real damage done to African Americans by law enforcement; bias against blacks was common, and there was nobody to challenge the wrong that was being done. White privilege had its way, with law enforcement either merely turning a blind eye to what was going on or by actively participating in biased, violent and unfair policing against blacks.

Nothing of the sort has happened to this president. This president has no morals and no ethics; he challenges top law enforcement that he feels is getting too close to information that would be damaging to him. He says nothing about the years of injustice that law enforcement has meted against blacks for generations. That kind of real injustice and corruption means nothing to him. The only thing that matters is that this president protects himself and his family.

Mark Twain once referred to the United States as “the United States of Lyncherdom.” He saw what was going on, as did others. Cone said that artists saw what black religious scholars and preachers “merely alluded to: that in the United States, the clearest image of the crucified Christ was the figure of an innocent black victim, dangling from a lynching tree.”

The lynching tree is still being overused, even while a wealthy, privileged white man manipulates the system and the emotions of people who believe in and buy into the rightness of racism and white supremacy. If this president is going to cast doubt on the highest level of law enforcement, then he really needs to cast the net over all law enforcement agencies and, in the name of “transparency,” clean the stench of violent injustice delivered by law enforcement officers out of the nostrils of Americans. If we’re going to talk corruption, let’s talk corruption. If the president’s goal is to expose corruption – then let’s really do it and perhaps give America a new narrative as pertains to law enforcement’s treatment of African Americans.

It is past time.

A candid observation …

The Cowardice of Racists

The unfortunate and tragic events of Charlottesville revealed again that white supremacists live in their hatred but are wont to expose themselves as such.

Charlottesville was different from white hate activities in the past where participants terrorized people of color usually at night, brandishing torches and covering themselves with white sheets so nobody could see who they were.

The participants on Friday night and Saturday were bold and let their faces be shown, partially because they feel empowered and emboldened by the current US president.

But the cowardice pushed through in the violence they committed. Being violent is an easy way out. Trying to kill what you do not understand is an act of cowardice because it keeps one from doing the work of being a human being. It is easy to proclaim hatred for something which one has objectified because it forms Buber’s classic I-it relationship. Such relationships are not “relationships” in the classic sense at all, but rather creates an environment where the object is considered to be non-human and therefore, not worth the time to getting to know and understand.

If I do not regard you as a human being, I cannot empathize with you…and I will not.

That is a cowardly way to live because it gives an excuse for not examining one’s own feelings, and why they are as they are. Racists almost never come face to face with themselves and are therefore capable of destroying the “objects” of their hatred with not a whisk of emotion. That’s why racists in our history were able to lynch black people on, say, a Saturday night and go to church and either take or distribute Holy Communion. In their minds, there is no disconnect. They cannot acknowledge that they are wrong because they do not believe they are wrong.

This was evident in the “statement” given by the president. There was absolutely no compassion, no passion, no anger, no rage – nothing – as he uttered his prepared statement. This from a man who has publicly flogged his attorney general and the former head of the FBI; this from a man who nearly blew his top when acts of terrorism were committed in other countries. But on this occasion, the president was bland and disconnected from the pain and the terror displayed by angry white men who say they are on the road to making America “great again.”

He could show no passion because he has no passion when it comes to racism. His actions to date have indicated that he believes in white supremacy, and the policies coming from his administration indicate that he wants to put it back into its rightful place.

He was being “politically correct” to the likes of David Duke in his statement. He does not want to lose the support of whites who, like him, believe in white supremacy.

And so he buckled under the pressure. He gave a perfunctory statement and seemed uncomfortable doing so. He showed that he is more afraid of the David Dukes of the world than he is of a man like Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin. He did not, could not dare to threaten his white supremacist supporters, keeping true to his tradition of threatening and bullying people with whom he disagrees or who disappoint him.

He agrees with what was done yesterday. And they did not disappoint him.

It is ironic that many of this president’s supporters say they like him because he “tells it like it is.” They say he is “strong,” I guess equating bullying with being strong.

But he doesn’t have the strength to “tell it like it is” when it comes to racism. Few racists do. The white nationalist culture is a tough one and will excommunicate those who fall out of line, if the stories I’ve heard about what happens to those who “defect” are true.

The president showed the cowardly underbelly of the sickness called white supremacy.

He is not strong at all, but as a leader, is about as weak as they come.

A candid observation …

Our Slip is Showing

In the “old days,” women would wear slips under their dresses and/or skirts; to not do so was considered a violation of proper modesty. The slip could be whole or what was called a “half slip,” which was, as the name indicates, a garment that hung from the waist down.

Half slips were notorious for not being cooperative. You would get what you thought was your size, and the slip would be fine for a while, but sooner or later the elastic around the waist would wear, and the slip would not stay in place.

In variably, the slip would hang below the hem of the skirt or dress, and some other sympathetic woman would whisper, “Your slip is showing.”

I thought about that as I have been watching what has been going on in our government. Our foundation is one which was built on racism and sexism. Though we were purported to be a democracy, the Founding Fathers seemed to have disdain for the idea of too much power coming from the people. This government was always about elevating and keeping some in power, and about keeping other people down. According to Howard Zinn in A People’s History of the United States, four groups of people were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women and men without property.” (p. 91) Even at the inception of this “great democracy” the value system was firmly in place: the rich were to run the country and to maintain their power and increase their wealth by exploiting the working poor. Writes Zinn: “the Declaration functioned to mobilize certain groups of Americans, ignoring others.” “The American people” was never the masses, but was really the small group of wealthy, white, male landowners…”We the people,” a phrase coined by Governor Gouverneur Morris did not mean Indians or blacks or women or white servants.”

Charles Beard, a 20^th century historian, wrote in his book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution that “the rich must, in their own interest, either control the government directly or control the laws by which government operates.”

If we read and study this history of America, we might not get quite as agitated as some of us are in the present day as we watch what is going on in our government. We are abiding by traditional American political history. That history is not a stellar one; it is fraught with discrimination and bias, with government allowing for and even sanctioning those who do what they think best in order to keep the moneyed class in power, to keep the oligarchy intact.

And while it has not gotten as much attention as the escapades that have been going on in and around the White House, the sexism that was written into our Constitution is rearing its ugle head as well. The House constructed a health care bill that is sure to have devastating effects on many, including women. In their work to craft this bill, a picture appeared having only white men in the White House, deciding whether or not maternity care and mammograms should be considered to be “essential” health issues to be covered under the Republican bill. (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/trump-health-care-summit-white-guys)

As this administration barrels through proposals that will hurt so many people, it seems that her slip is showing – a slip which includes her racism, sexism, and paternalism at the least. With these people in power, poverty will increase, as will mass incarceration; voting rights are in danger of being seriously compromised, and anyone who challenges the policies stands the possibility of being sanctioned. These people in power are not unlike, it seems, the Founding Fathers, who envisioned a country run by a small group of wealthy white men who controlled everyone and everything.

The slip which is America’s undergarment has been soiled by the dust that comes from such injustice, but it is America’s legacy. Those in power do not worry or care about if the slip is showing, but, rather, only that it stay in place in order to maintain – or in this case, regain – the status quo.

It’s called “making America great again.”

A candid observation.