When the Women Rise Up

In light of the tragedy of the past week, one thing is standing out.

It’s the women. Women, aching, crying, concerned and committed, are standing up and speaking up and speaking out.

Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of Philando Castile, had the presence of mind to record the interaction between herself and a gun-holding police officer, doing a “live” recording that people could see immediately. It was phenomenal to watch. That she had the presence of mind to do that spoke volumes about her strength. As her boyfriend lay dying, as her four-year-old daughter sat in the back seat of the car, terrified, at times crying, and finally trying to comfort her mother, Diamond forged ahead, through her pain and terror, to tell a story she knew needed to be told.

Then there is the African American female cop who lives in Warrensville, Ohio who watched the video of Alton Sterling, a video in which she saw Sterling shot multiple times at point blank range, and this woman, a police officer, a woman, a mother …and an African American, spoke out. (http://www.ajc.com/news/news/national/how-dare-you-ohio-police-officer-nakia-jones-voice/nrtMG/)

Watching them, my mind went back to when Emmet Till was murdered – lynched – in Money, Mississippi after he allegedly flirted with a white woman. He was visiting relatives and didn’t know …and was young and arrogant enough to disregard …the “Southern” way of life, which included the prohibition of a black man to pay attention or to “disrespect” a white woman. What that “disrespect” was was left entirely up to the white people, primarily white men, who made the call.

Emmett, only 14 years old at the time, was dragged from his uncle’s house in the middle of the night by relatives of the white woman who made the accusation against Till. His murderers beat him nearly to death; they gouged out one of his eyes, shot him in the head, and then used barb wire to tie his body to a cotton gin fan and threw his body into a river.

It was a horrific death, but those kinds of murders of black people were common in the South, and hardly anyone ever went to jail or prison – or even got charged, for that matter. It was the intent of the good ol’ boys that the narrative be that Emmet had just disappeared. But three days after his murder, his body washed up and was discovered. The authorities reportedly just wanted to hurriedly bury Emmet, but his mother, Mamie Till, who by now had been contacted about the disappearance and now the death of her son, refused to let them bury him. She headed from Chicago to Money, Mississippi, Emmet’s body lying in a funeral home waiting to be identified. He had decomposed so much that it was difficult to identify him, and the stench from his decaying body was so bad that Mamie could smell him when she got off of the train. But she went to that funeral home and demanded to see her son. She was able to positively identify him by a ring he had on his finger. She decided she would take her boy home, as expected, but what people didn’t expect was for her to insist that his coffin remain open so that the “world could see what they had done to her boy.”

Her decision was bold. It was courageous …and it was an action that stirred the complacency of people – white especially, but black as well – to sit up and notice an evil that was so much a part of American life that it was nearly taken for granted. There was some personal risk, one might assume, for Mamie, but danger to her was not her concern. She was tired. She had had enough. She hated racism and white supremacy. She had raised a good boy in a difficult time …and now, racists had killed her boy and wanted to cover it up and act like it was no big thing.

It wasn’t going to happen.

Her spirit was one of fire. Her spirit, like the spirits of Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Coleman and Mary McLeod Bethune, and Rosa Parks …and so many women we usually mention but don’t give enough credit to, became a driving force in the continuing effort to take the covers off the shenanigans practiced by racist people who took stock and had confidence in their ability to mess over black people and get away with it. In these last few years of horrific police violence against black people, it has been women who have stood up and spoken up, saying, in essence, “no!” Sabrina Fulton, mother of Trayon Martin, stood up. Lucia McBath, mother of Jordan Davis, stood up. The mother of Henry Green in Columbus, Ohio, Adrienne Hood, is standing up. There are more, and their impact cannot be underrated.

Mamie said, “no.” She said no, as did the women named here and so many others. Men in African American culture have done some amazing things, but it is the women who are standing out for me. And now, it is women, again, who are standing up. Nakia Jones, a police officer, could lose her job for standing up and saying that police who have race issues should not be cops. She said it and she said it with passion. She said that what she saw in the shooting of Alton Sterling was wrong, and she said it boldly. Diamond Reynolds said …no. If her boyfriend was going to die, she was determined that the world would know how it happened. They said no and because of their courage, the world is having to look at things they have tried to run and hide from for decades.

I think there should be an award, a “Mamie Till Award” given to women who stand up and speak up with little regard to the risk to their own comfort. While few people have any confidence at all that the police officers who killed Sterling and Castile, there is one thing most people have to admit: that because of the courage of women, this world is a little bit more aware today than it was at the beginning of the week.

A candid observation …

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till

Floating Like a Butterfly

“The Greatest” went home yesterday.

Muhammad Ali went to a spiritual space not dominated and controlled by one particular religion, sex, ethnicity, or cult, but to a space open to all people, a space which is not only a community but, as Dr. King said we must work to create globally, a neighborhood.

Ali, truly “The Greatest,” understood what so few people understand, and sadly, so few religious people understand, and that is, that all people count.

He made himself count to a world and to an American society which thought nothing of stashing people like him to the back rooms of second class-ness, to be pulled out when needed or wanted. He rejected and spit out what he called his “slave name,” Cassius Clay, and took a name he wanted. He rejected Christianity, which has done way too little to thwart the evil called white supremacy, and became a member of the Nation of Islam.

He let the world, and the powers that run this world, that at the end of the day, it wasn’t their world to decide who was worthy of respect and who was not. He shouted out loud that he was “The Greatest,” and he made the world deal with it.

He refused to go to the Vietnam War, pointing out the hypocrisy of a Christian nation that thought nothing of sending hundreds of thousands of men (only men at that time) to the front lines of a foreign country to kill innocent people. There was no need to be there on any level, and Ali knew that, but even if the United States decided that there was a reason, he was free to reject that reason and the nation’s desire to use him to further what he considered be immoral gain.

So, the black man who changed his name and rejected America’s dominant religion, planted his feet and said, in essence, “I ain’t going.” He said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong!” The power structure was aghast; how dare this black man defy them? They had a political and social temper tantrum; they convicted him of draft evasion, fined him $10,000, stripped him of his heavyweight title and banned him from boxing for three years.

He did not care. He was willing to go to prison for his principles, which were both moral and religious. His Muslim religion prohibited him from engaging in that war, he said, and was going to choose the will of God over the will of man. Period.

He was “the greatest.”

It is ironic that Ali died the week the remake of ROOTS was shown, the story of how one particular African American family came to be in this country…but the center of the story was one Kunta Kinte …who, like Ali, refused to be subsumed by a culture which wanted only to control him. Kunta Kinte was told by his father and the elders of his village that his name was his spirit and his shield. Kinte Kinte held onto his name in spite of being beaten nearly to death by an overseer who demanded that Kinte say the name, own the name, that white people had given him. He did not …and he never did. Even when those around him called him “Toby,” in his spirit, he was clear…and that clarity gave him strength. His name was Kunta Kinte, and nobody was ever going to take that away from him. Though he was brutally oppressed by the system of chattel slavery, he never descended to a pit of despair. Holding onto his name gave him the strength to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee,” as Muhammad Ali said, staying ahead and on top of white supremacy. He had chains around his wrists and feet at different times, but this mind and spirit here were never chained.

Muhammad Ali, the African American Muslim, rejected his slave name, took on a name that he wanted, and never looked back. He taught Muslim principles – the same principles by which he lived – to his children and to people who looked up to him. He continued to look for deeper meaning in his spiritual life. He never let go of his strong tie and relationship with Allah and he just kept boxing the racism that he hated so much.

Ali was deeply rooted in his faith, and it kept him grounded in spite of the storms of his life, including his diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease. When GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump announced his plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States, Ali, flying like a butterfly, said, ““Speaking as someone who has never been accused of political correctness, I believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really is.”

He said, in that same statement, ““I am a Muslim and there is nothing Islamic about killing innocent people in Paris, San Bernardino, or anywhere else in the world… True Muslims know that the ruthless violence of so called Islamic jihadists goes against the very tenets of our religion.” (https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/dec/09/muhammad-ali-responds-to-trumps-muslim-ban-plan)

Now the world, so much of which has denigrated and castigated Muslims, wants to give homage to this man, which he richly deserves, but the homage is tainted by a veil of religious bigotry which has caused so many to suffer unnecessarily.

Would that Ali’s life and death, and his words and actions, would be used to wipe out the racism and bigotry that is swallowing this nation and this world.

Only those who have the courage to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” will be able transcend the spiritual illnesses of this world, which Ali refused to let knock him out.

A candid observation.

Water

The water situation in Flint, Michigan, where residents have been receiving lead-filled water resulting in serious effects on people, especially children, has brought to light a troubling thought: that water, or the restriction or, as is the case here, the compromise of quality of water given to poor people, is too often used as a weapon against them.

Everyone knows that in order to live, humans must have water. We are told from a very young age that people can survive longer without food than they can without water. Dehydration can cause a person to die a painful death. Water is a necessary element in order for there to be life …and yet, governments, here and elsewhere, are using their power to restrict or compromise the supply of water to people whom they do not value.

In this country, it is no secret that black, brown and poor people are not highly valued. Some of the entitlement programs, which Republicans want to pare down, were put in place precisely because black and brown and poor people were suffering because of policies designed to limit their capacity to thrive in these United States.

But as this Flint water crisis has unfolded, it becomes clearer than ever how water is being used to compromise the lives of marginalized people here and elsewhere. In Palestine, the Israeli government, which is occupying Palestine, restricts the amount of water Palestinian people can receive. They do not supply water to Palestinian villages, while they readily supply water to Israeli settlers. Palestinians must buy their water on a scheduled basis, and their water is held in black tanks which one can see atop their houses. The Israeli government is in total control of whether or not they get the water they need in order to live.

Even if a Palestinian village is closer to a water treatment plant than is a newly formed Israeli settlement, the pipes supplying fresh water have been laid so that they bypass the village and go straight to the settlements.

It is appalling.

It is no less appalling that an emergency manager in Michigan, who had power over the local government to make decisions, decided to redirect the water supply for Flint residents from Detroit to the Flint River – to save money. It is highly troubling that no such diversions were ordered for people who live in wealthy suburbs. Flint is reportedly has a sizable black residency – over 50 percent. That, apparently, in addition to the fact that Flint was financially strapped, was enough to make the emergency manager decide that the residents of Flint could survive with water coming from a different source, which was cheaper than the water they had been using for years.

The lives of the people who would be affected by the water switch didn’t matter. It was all about the money.

In Israel, it is about the Israeli government, wanting its own homeland, compromising the lives of the Palestinians.

In Flint, insult has been added to injury as the government has continued to charge residents for water they cannot use or drink, and which has already irreparably damaged their children.

The city of Flint, and other cities in this nation, are violating the basic human rights of people by sending them poisoned water and making them pay for it. The Israeli government is as well compromising the human rights of the Palestinian people, making them pay for water in their own land while freely supplying Israeli settlers as they move into Palestine to start a new life. The restriction of water is basically being used as a weapon against poor people. http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/26/us/flint-michigan-water-crisis-race-poverty/)

The situation is so sad, so wrong and so indicative of the depth of racism that pervades not only this country but this world, that it is hard to write about.

But we need to look at what is going on, and, in the case or Flint, get water to the people and filters even as we press for justice, making the local government back away from its insistence on charging people for poisoned water.

It is the least we can do.

A candid observation …

Trump and Farrakhan

A friend of mine said something to me last week which has kept me thinking. He said, “Why do you think the media lets Donald Trump say anything he wants, but has basically censored Minister Louis Farrakhan? Why do you think it’s OK for Trump to say hateful, racist, sexist things, and it’s not OK for Farrakhan?”

I didn’t know. I had honestly never thought about it.

Both Trump and Farrakhan “tell it like it is” according to their followers. Both men have a penchant for speaking to the hearts and spirits of people who are mostly ignored, groups of people who feel marginalized and forgotten, and who are angry about it.
Both men are angry, and make no bones about it.

But Trump gets a pass; the media pretty much looks the other way and refuses to call him to accountability for what he says, while Farrakhan has been vilified and marginalized.

Nothing Trump has said has made the media act like responsible journalists. Most of those who interview him seldom really challenge him and when they do, they allow him to talk over them. They cannot get a word in edgewise.

There have been exceptions. Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, who dared challenge Trump on the statements he has made about women has not backed down. Her challenge caused him to go ballistic, and to attack her in a most disturbing way. As a public figure, seeking the presidency, he had no right to say, in response to her questioning of him, that she had blood “coming out of her whatever..” ((http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/10/megyn_kelly_blood_coming_out_of_her_wherever_comment_in_cnn_don_lemon_interview.html) Trump is so bothered by Kelly that he now says she should not participate in an upcoming debate, saying she is biased. (http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/01/23/donald-trump-says-megyn-kelly-should-skip-debate-fox-says-shell-be-there/) What she seems to be is determined not to let him bully her.

George Stephanopoulos also challenged Trump (http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/12/20/george-stephanopoulos-calls-out-trump-for-makin/207619) and Trump was questioned when he said he saw Muslims dancing in the streets after 911 (http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/23/politics/donald-trump-new-jersey-cheering-september-11/)

But little stops this man and his rants. Not even his latest statement about being able to go in the middle of 5th Avenue in New York and shoot someone and still not lose supporters has garnered a full blown challenge. (http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/23/politics/donald-trump-shoot-somebody-support/) Anchors have been giggling and have been shaking their heads, but they have not been willing to really challenge him. It is troubling to watch and to listen to.

Trump has been disparaging against women, Mexicans in general and illegal Mexican immigrants in particular. He has put down John McCain as a war hero. He has proposed to ban all Muslims from this country. He talked disparagingly about fellow GOP presidential rival Carly Fiorina, saying, “look at that face!” He likened Dr. Ben Carson, also in the GOP race, to a child molester. When journalist Tavis Smiley challenged the media for not challenging Trump, Smiley got a dose of “Trumpitis” as well, as the presidential contender called Smiley a “hater and a racist” after Smiley said that Trump was a “racial and religious arsonist.”

None of what Trump has said, in person, in front of cameras or via Twitter has been enough for the media to turn away from him.

Farrakhan, on the other hand, has been soundly sanctioned by American media. The head of the Nation of Islam has been unabashed about his disgust with white supremacy and Jewish people. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Farrakhan “… is an anti-Semite who routinely accuses Jews of manipulating the U.S. government and controlling the levers of world power. Farrakhan blames Jews for the slave trade, plantation slavery, Jim Crow, sharecropping and general black oppression.” (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/louis-farrakhan)
In 1996 in Chicago, Farrakhan said, “”And you do with me as is written, but remember that I have warned you that Allah will punish you. You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell. But I warn you in the name of Allah, you would be wise to leave me alone. But if you choose to crucify me, know that Allah will crucify you.”)

Clearly, Farrakhan’s words and beliefs are anti-Semitic, and he clearly hates white supremacy, but are his words and beliefs any more or less toxic than Trump’s? Is Farrakhan’s dislike of racist white people and Jewish people any worse than Trump’s dislike of Mexicans and Muslims? Is Trump’s virtual silence on issues that affect black people in this nation any less an indication of racial hatred against black people than Farrakhan’s open dislike of Jewish and racist white people?

Aren’t both men Xenophobic? Is Xenophobia coming from a white man less toxic than Xenophobia coming from a black man?

What is up with America’s media? (another friend of mine pointed out that it is not just the white, mainstream media that ignores Farrakhan, but the black media does as well.) Is the fact that Trump is a wealthy white man, a celebrity, who brings ratings up for any media operation the reason he is basically given a free pass? Is the fact that he says what he wants and by and large gets away with it due to the fact he is running for president? Shouldn’t the fact that he is running for president hold him to a higher standard?

It is all very troubling. People have compared Trump to Hitler, and he doesn’t care, or he has said he doesn’t care. This man may very well win the presidency of this nation, and only God knows what will happen to the country should that happen. The support of Trump has shown the widening underbelly of America, an underbelly which is racist at its core. Evangelicals and fellow Conservatives have been largely silent as he has bellowed his racist and sexist rants; it’s only as he has attacked fellow candidate Ted Cruz that there has been a Conservative backlash against him.

But on letting there be free speech and giving vent to those who “speak their minds” when it comes to racism and sexism, there is a clear double standard between whites and blacks. Trump is free to say whatever and Farrakhan is not.

In the land of the free and home of the brave, what is up with that? America’s double standard for white and black people …is showing itself in living color.

A candid observation…

On Radicalism

What happened in Paris on November 13, 2015, was nothing short of horrendous. That any group of people can feel like it’s OK to take innocent people out, for whatever reason, brings anger. That kind of action must come from a deep sense of frustration, from feeling like concerns are not being heard or respected. It feels like a knee-jerk reaction to get someone to listen.

But this whole use of the word “radicalism,” and using it to describe what is going on and connecting it to people who are Muslim, is bothersome. It is setting the table for those who are inclined to look at Islam as “the bad religion” to justify their opinion of that religion and, worse, justify any actions of discrimination and hatred those so inclined to do so might take.

Human beings have a limited capacity to see broadly; we hone in on what we think we are supposed to see and we leave out parts of the entire landscape. Just the other day I participated in an exercise where I was supposed to count how many times people dressed in white passed a basketball. I was completely immersed in my “task.” I got the number of passes thrown correct, but what I missed was a huge gorilla that walked into the middle of the people throwing the basketball! When the video was played again, I was appalled to see that I had missed something so obviously present.

As the world hones in on “Islamic” terrorism, and mentions that those who are carrying out acts of terror are “radicalized” Muslims, I am afraid that we are missing important participants in the entire scenario. Worse, we are forgetting that “radicalized” sorts are part of every religion. Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the KKK, was a radicalized racist who believed that God told him to take out participants in the Civil Rights Movement and to exterminate those who helped work for civil rights. Thus, he felt no compunction in ordering the murders of the three Civil Rights workers, Schwerner, Goodman and Cheney, and felt nothing but a keen sense of having fulfilled his purpose when he murdered Vernon Dahmer, a black man who allowed black people to register to vote in his story. Bowers had people, lots of white people, who believed that God wanted America to remain white. They were radicalized, yes? Yet, we don’t hear that kind of language describing them, or even describing people who today are proponents of racism in this country.

I am sure that there are “radicalized” Zionists, both Christian and Jewish. Those are the ones who put human rights below what they consider to be the will of God to desecrate a group of people whom they do not like nor understand. We do not label them that way; in fact, when it comes to Zionism and what is going on in Palestine, we have heard language that consistently makes the Palestinians the “bad” people who, by the way, happen to be Muslim, while giving a pass to an Israeli government which allows Palestinian rights to be ignored and withheld, and to Jewish settlers who are on settlements in Palestine which have been deemed to be illegal according to international law. Is the Israeli government “radicalized?” Are Americans who support racism “radicalized?”

I am struggling to understand what is going on, but I am clear on the power of language. To continue to use the word “radicalized” without coming to terms with how “radicalized” religious people, in this country and all over the world, have been a reality of history from time immemorial.

I am sickened by what has gone on in Paris. Some radicalized Muslims, apparently, have carried out a heinous act, but all Muslims have not been radicalized; all Muslims are not radicalized, bad people, no more than all white Christians are bad and radicalized because of what radical groups like the KKK have done.

A candid observation …