The Unfathomable Has Happened Again

I was a protective mother in many ways, and even though my daughters are adults, I still worry about them. Though I believed in letting Cara and Mackenzie explore their creativity fully as children, I firmly believed in creating a structured, safe environment in which to do so. Some people thought Ronald and I were overprotective, but I had learned, from my own childhood experience of living in an alcoholic home and suffering emotional and physical neglect as a result of it, that a safe environment is the best environment to nurture children and their creativity and minds.

So it was with great trepidation that I finally let C&M walk the three blocks to their K-8 school alone for the first time when they turned 12. They had argued with me before then, and I had said, “I know you are ready, but can you respect that I am not?”

Then one day I was. Even so, I would arrive at work some days and suffer severe panic attacks, hyperventilating with a racing heart, wondering if they got to school safely and if their day would stay safe.

Every parent hopes and has to believe that when her child steps into school, he or she will be in a safe environment and cared for by people who value him or her. I know those parents in Newtown, CT believed it, but one day their children were not safe.

I am so sad for those parents, the professionals who taught and cared for the children and those who responded to the shooting, the children who experienced such a horrific tragedy, the community who has a long healing road to travel, and the children and adults who lost their lives.

We’d already been talking about gun control for years before this event, even though in this election such discussions were eclipsed by economic woes. We talked about gun control after the Columbine tragedy, the Aurora tragedy, and many, many others.  But there are other instances of violence, the everyday violence that children are exposed to in our underserved communities in America. But these regular, every day shootings never seem to elicit the response that these shootings occurring in white middle class environments seem to elicit. And that makes me sad, too.

I’ve been listening to the coverage, and I hear over and over that Newtown is a bucolic, affluent, close community – one of the safest areas in the country. People are stunned that an event of this horrific magnitude could occur in such an area. But I’m not.
Nor am I shocked that the very guns the killer's mother kept in her house for protection were used to kill her. It happens more than anyone would like to think, and it is often by a family member who turns the gun against the gun owner.

I hate that judgments are made about where violence is and is not an expected and acceptable occurrence. Violence is unacceptable and shocking in any community.

My husband Ronald and I were not bad parents because we chose to educate our children in urban schools. They weren’t bad schools. They were good schools. They had dedicated teachers, administrators, and staff. They had safety measures in place. I expected my children to be as safe as those parents in Newtown.

We have to stop the judgments about who deserves to have guns, who deserves to be safe, and whose rights should be more protected than others. We have to believe every life is important and has the same value as ever other life.

So what do we do?

Reenact the assault weapons ban, immediately. Collect all the assault weapons that are already out there and do not sell anymore. No citizen needs that kind of firepower. Only people who expect to shoot someone one day would have that kind of weapon. We have to agree that our country is not that kind of country.

Tighten gun control requirements in every state through a federal gun control law. What is the use of having good gun control in one state if someone can cross state lines and obtain a gun someplace else? Stop the NRA lobby efforts. Every gun dealer should be a licensed dealer. Before purchasing a gun, an individual should undergo a thorough background check. Everyone who purchases a gun should register every gun they own. Large purchases of arms or ammunitions should be investigated. A safety course should be mandatory before gun ownership is approved.

We need to remove the stigma associated with mental illness. Mental illness assessment should be an important aspect of preventative health care.  Access to treatment is a must for every person, without the threat of being labeled and ostracized. How else can those who need it, receive treatment?

We need to be more open to individuality and the differing perspectives each of us brings to our experiences. If we understand that, people who do not fit into a narrow definition of normality will not feel as if they are fringe citizens, isolated from their communities, and we will stop making assumptions about others and ourselves against an unrealistic standard. We are a diverse country in so many, many ways, and we have to stop defining diversity as that which is different from that that is the same, because sameness in that sense is just a social construct that doesn’t truly represent what and who we are.

Understand that religion and God do not have an impact on violence in our society. A mentally ill person is still mentally ill if he attends church. Maybe people who attend church have a higher moral guidance and maybe they don’t. People who don’t attend church and who may or may not be agnostic or atheist do not, by virtue of not being religious, have a substandard morality. There are bad people and good people everywhere, in churches, in businesses, in social venues and in their homes, and their badness and goodness is not one dimensional and unilateral. Prayer in the schools will not stop someone from violence, as Mike Huckabee contends.

What will have an impact is that we learn to care for everyone in our community as equals, and that we ensure all communities can make sure they are safe. We can’t fool ourselves with magical thinking that something deadly and horrific would not occur in our communities, that we live in good communities vs. bad communities, so we are safe from such occurrences. We will find psychotic people who will do horrific things to themselves or others all over, mentally ill people who are hurting and overwhelmed by our post-modern complexity and who may act out as a result, and there are other bad things like natural disasters and illness that we can only do our best to protect ourselves and our families from. We have to recognize that what we think, feel and do is not always enough to keep us safe.

Now we will go through the healing process again and maybe again after this.  I hope not, but I had hoped as much after Columbine, 911, Virginia Tech, Aurora and other mass tragedies.

Parents are feeling the emptiness of their homes and their hearts today, because they lost a child even though they thought they had done everything they could to keep him or her safe. Those who were fortunate to find their children waiting for them at the fire station must truly be wondering how they will continue on and pick up life where they left it when they dropped their children at school yesterday morning.

 Such painful images make me cry and ache in empathy, and it isn’t fair that those parents have to endure such devastation. All of our children – affluent, poor, black, brown or white, girl or boy – deserve to grow up safe, and we deserve to watch them grow up.  Now is the time to act.

Here are my precious children at age two

Playing with Weapons

I think about all the victims in Aurora, and I realize there are many more than originally counted. Think about all the people in the theater who were not physically injured but who are mentally and emotionally wounded. Think about families and friends of the victims – they are suffering, too.  The suffering is like the rings created in a body of water after an object has broken the surface, moving out wider and wider.

Sales of guns have risen in Colorado since the shooting.  My home state, with 10% unemployment, didn’t have a spike in sales but a spike in interest in purchasing guns. I say, smart thing, pay that mortgage or buy some food instead. That will help you survive better than buying a gun.

I asked Ronald what he thought would have happened if other people in the theater were armed. Remember, he is a certified pistol safety instructor. He said, “A lot more people would have died.”

Visibility was almost zero. People were running and diving in all directions. The noise must have been deafening. Holmes wore riot gear. In such a situation, who would have been able to pull off a shot that hit the one vulnerable area, the neck, of the assassin? No one but the best-trained sniper, a rarity, could have made such a shot. But someone else with a gun might have shot wildly into the crowd and killed even more people.

Another “joker” was arrested for threatening his boss and employees in Maryland. He was going to be terminated from his job. He made two threatening phone calls and the company contacted police. They found an arsenal in his home.

“If you asked me who the Joker is, I’d say a face card or a character in the Batman comics,” Ronald said as we were eating breakfast yesterday morning. “Why do people use something like that to hold up like a banner?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I really don’t. I watch all the superhero movies and the action/adventure movies, and I have never wanted to hurt a single person. I can’t understand why people need arsenals or why they want to shoot people. I see shooting as a sport, target shooting or hunting, though I am not a fan of hunting just for the sake of killing. My husband shoots at circles, not silhouettes, and he doesn't hunt. Today’s paper had a column about gun control and featured a photo from a local shooting range. The photo was of a shooter at the range aiming at a life-sized photo image of a man. Many people buy assault weapons, and they talk about shooting people.  See my post about my husband’s experience as a pistol safety instructor Profiling Fatality 3 and last week's post on the Aurora shooting: Tired World.

Gun violence is mainstream and accepted. People are afraid so they want to get guns, and they want to use them. What are we so afraid of?

A four-year-old was shot and killed in a park in the Bronx by a stray bullet. A person on Facebook wondered how a parent could have let a four-year-old out to play at 9:30 in the evening. 

I know why that child was out in the park. When we still lived in Syracuse, I remember driving through the poor sections of the city on warm nights, and everyone was out – the streets were teeming with people. The houses and apartments were not air-conditioned and were stiflingly hot.  That’s why fire and police personnel check on the elderly during heat waves. They can’t get out, and the inside temperature can be twenty or thirty degrees higher than outside. The inside temperature can be deadly.

That child was out because that was better than being in. That mother couldn’t have known that a group of teenagers who were playing basketball would be armed and willing to use their weapons.

Mental illness is stigmatized and access to mental health care is difficult even for those with health insurance. Even if an individual is seeing a psychiatrist, as Holmes supposedly was, it is difficult to predict when one might descend into thoughts of harming oneself or others. Already people are predicting that Holmes is mentally ill, but we don’t know for sure. Maybe that helps people make sense of the senseless violence. We have to be able to explain things, even the seemingly unexplainable.

Here’s my explanation: we live in an increasingly divisive society that tends to isolate individuals instead of creating community. The rich are getting richer while everyone else is getting poorer. Everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else. It is making us a fearful and violent society.  The push for personal freedoms has caused people to act on those feelings. Many people feel isolated and disenfranchised, not a part of mainstream society. I wonder, is anyone really part of the mainstream or are we all islands in the ocean?

There is so much we need to do to calm the situation. The first thing is to take assault weapons and riot gear off our streets, except in the hands of qualified and trained police and military personnel. Why is it easier to buy an assault weapon than it is to register to vote in some states?

The second thing is to stop this trend where most of America, the 99%, is plunging into poverty. We are a better country than this. Corporations have to be better stewards of the people who live where they do business. Our government needs to step in. It’s not socialism, it is the right thing to do, and it levels the playing field for everyone.

The third thing is to accept our diversity. It is our strength, not our weakness. We can come together, if we would just be more tolerant and more accepting of our differences.

Here’s the latest story from the golf range:

This week Ronald climbed the stairs to the front porch after hitting balls. He figured he’d spend a little time chatting with the white guys on the porch. He keeps trying to get along, because they are the people in his social sphere.

The golf club repair guy said, “You want that driver fixed, you better get it to me.”

“Not [Jacob],” Ronald responded.

“What? He thought you were [Jacob]?” I asked. I remembered that Ronald had told me [Jacob] had broken his driver the week before.

[Jacob] is a half-foot taller than Ronald, about ten years younger, very dark, and thin as a rail. The two men couldn’t look more different.

“Oh,” the golf club repair guy said, “I don’t see that well.”

“And he wants people to give him their golf clubs to repair?” I asked, laughing. I was still incredulous.  Let me remind you that Ronald’s been going there for five years. [Jacob] covers the shop for the owner sometimes, and he is there hitting balls almost as often as Ronald. How could the man not be able to tell them apart?

Then I remembered that back in Syracuse, Ronald and his friend Michael, who also played golf, were often mistaken for one another. Ronald had about three inches on Michael, and Michael had that small, long-muscled gymnastic body – he was a gymnast for Syracuse University back when we were students until an injury knocked him off the team. Michael’s eyes turned up at the outer corners and his nose was pointed. He wore glasses. This was in contrast to Ronald’s large, round eyes and broad nose. Yet people used their names interchangeably.  After it happened often enough, both men gave up and answered to either name.

Not only did they get mistaken for one another, but many times in the almost twenty years they were club members, they were reported at the pro shop for “sneaking onto the course.” One day a new white member marched into the pro shop and demanded someone get the black guy off the course. The club pro, who jokingly referred to Ronald as “Walter Hogan” because of his accurate drives, said, “Ron’s been a member for a lot longer than you have. He should have been in here asking about you.”

Change is very slow. But we need to try harder. We need to fight against social isolation. We need to see one another clearly. We need to stop being so fearful. We need to make people feel part of something greater than just the individual, and we need to include all Americans and celebrate our diversity.

Just Say No to Racism, Misogyny, Classism, and Stupidity

Sometimes I just want to ignore the news, but I can’t do it for long. Dad used to read one or two newspapers from front to back on a daily basis and finish his evening by doing the crossword puzzle. He brought home copies of Time Magazine and Atlantic Monthly from his job in the mailroom at Williams Press. I got hooked on news (and crossword puzzles) at an early age.

That doesn’t stop me from feeling disbelief and disappointment every time I read the daily paper or peruse ABCNews.com, CNN.com and the online version of the New York Times.

My last two posts dealt with emotions, truth and lies.  Here they are if you’d like to read them.

Reality Check (http://aboutracewriter.blogspot.com/2012/02/reality-check.html) and

Facebook Sedition 2:  I Gotta D’Agata (http://aboutracewriter.blogspot.com/2012/02/facebook-sedition-2-i-gotta-dagata.html)

My obsessive brain is still ruminating on those topics and the news is fueling my internal debate.

Tell me why people can claim ignorance on certain topics and think they can get away with it. How could federal judge Richard Cebull claim he is not a racist and that he did not see the below joke as racist when he shared it with several colleagues?

"Normally I don't send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine.

"A little boy said to his mother, 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?'  His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"

Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/richard-cebull-says-he-sent-racist-obama-email/article_63df0eef-dd3a-549c-ba11-4729413d044a.html#ixzz1nu2LUr7L

I say remove him from the bench. He is in a position to ruin people’s lives, particularly if he lets his personal lens inform him about the people standing before him in his courtroom. We are all guilty of viewing the world through our own unique perspective, it’s the only lens we have, but if we aren’t aware of how that perspective filters information, we’d better not be in positions of power.

If you have to announce that you aren’t racist, you probably are.  Stop trying to convince yourself and fool others. I admit that I am a racist, simply because I am white and I have directly benefitted from being white in ways my husband and daughters will never experience in our lifetime, in our society. White people, admit that privilege, power, and entitlement exists because of your whiteness and stop blaming ethnic minorities for the problems they encounter by living among us. Then stop spreading racist jokes and emails. You are smart enough to know what they are and how hurtful they are, not just for the people they make fun of but for all of us. Acknowledging and accepting your role in this racist society is the only way to change the awful course we are on.

Speaking of power, what of Rush Limbaugh’s charge that Sandra Fluke is a slut because she wants her insurance to cover contraception and not make moral judgments on her behalf because she is a student at a religiously affiliated law school? Rush is on wife number four and he is a recovering Oxycontin addict. Should he really be judging other people’s morals and actions? Powerful, rich, white men, stop trying to tell us how to act and worry about your own actions and intentions to gain power and wealth at the expense of others. Admit your own moral weaknesses and stop thinking your wealth and position make you better than others.

For all men, women are not sluts because they want to use birth control.  They are being responsible. They are not morally corrupt if they choose abortion. Even if you cannot imagine making that choice, sometimes it is the only option, and if you haven’t walked in that woman’s shoes, don’t suppose you know better than she. Your misogyny has trapped us in a corner. Instead be responsible partners who care about our health and welfare. Participate in such decisions as an equal partner, be truthful about other partners and sexual behaviors, be good fathers even when you are no longer our partners, and be accountable for your intentions. Treat us as equals, true partners and companions, and not as objects. Don’t turn our need for emotional intimacy and our desire to please you against us, as if it is a sign of weakness. It is our strength and it contributes to your strength. Let our differences complement and enrich one another. Men, admit your own imperfections and stop pretending you have all the answers or that you can answer for us.

For all people, there are no single truths on this earth. Our world is awash in ambiguity, bad and misdirected intent, and human imperfection. The continuum of human experience is long and extreme. How dare any person thinks he or she can impose belief or will on another person. Hasn’t history proven the fallacy of that over and over again?

But we can act in concert, as a community, by treating all people as equals, giving each person voice, even when that voice is different from our own, and by accepting that just because we are different doesn’t mean we cannot find common ground. That is true community, the acceptance of all that we are and the hard work of finding ways to live in harmony. Our diversity makes us stronger.

Question your intentions at all times. If they are driven by self-righteousness, personal gain, paternalism, racism, misogyny, classism, or egotism, they are probably bad, misdirected, or stupid. Just say no.

(Excerpt from Chapter 6: Being Black All by Myself, Shades of Tolerance: A Biracial Love Story  - any feedback on the title is appreciated)

In January 1978 Ronald handed me a small box. I slowly opened it, and there was a ring inside. It was sterling silver with a blue lapis stone.

“It’s so beautiful,” I said, “Does this mean we are engaged?”

“Let’s call it a pre-engagement ring,” he said, smiling at my forwardness. “I wanted something that wouldn’t overpower your hand. It’s perfect,” he continued, holding and admiring my hand, his strong aesthetic sense for color and shape molding his choice.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

I showed it to Ray and Brenda when I stopped by to drop new tapes off to them. They lived in a single room together against campus policy.  The room was a disaster: dirty clothes, tapes, textbooks, pizza boxes and empty soda cans strewn on every surface including the floor. I wondered how they navigated the room without hurting themselves, as I carefully stepped through the mess.

            Brenda, who lost her vision at age nine when she fell down a flight of concrete stairs, ran her fingers over the surface of the ring.

            “So pretty,” she said.

            “Let me see,” said Ray, and we laughed. I pushed the ring close to his “good” right eye through which he could see shadow and a bit of color. He had been a “premie” and spent time in an incubator. The oxygen levels had robbed him of sight.

            “Are you going to get married?” Brenda asked.

            “It’s a pre-engagement ring. I want to,” I said, thinking they would probably get married, too, one day. They were inseparable. But they broke up that summer, the pressure of their families’ displeasure over the interracial relationship finally taking the ultimate toll.

The summer Ma accused me of causing Dad’s heart attack, Sylvester Jr. and his wife had a baby boy. Ronald called me at my summer job to tell me baby Yancy had been born and weighed more than twelve pounds. I began to cry.

            “Why are you crying?” he asked.

            “I want that to be us,” I said.

            “We’re still in school,” he said, “We couldn’t live like that.”

            “I can get work,” I said, “I’m tired of school anyway.”

            “Nope, don’t do that,” he said.

            One day during the spring of 1978, Ronald and I had our first bad argument. I was on birth control pills and concerned about the long-term side effects. There was a meeting in the lounge of the dorm floor on birth control methods, and I wanted us both to go so we could decide together what I might change to.

            “I don’t want to go,” he said.

            “Don’t you care about my health?” I asked.

            “If you end up getting pregnant, you’re gonna be an unwed mama,” he said.

            “Why would you say that?” I asked, my eyes stinging, remembering his ex-girlfriend had a baby that she had given up for adoption.

            “What you’re on is fine. It works, why change?”

            “You don’t care if I have a stroke or get breast cancer?”

            “That’s not what we are talking about.”

            “Just come to the meeting and see,” I said.

            “You go,” he said.

            I took my ring off and threw it at him.

            “You don’t care about me,” I said, “If you did, you would go with me and be part of the decision.”

            “Is that what you think?” he asked.

            But he walked down the hall with me to the lounge packed with students. I realized later that Ronald was embarrassed to sit in a room full of people and listen to a lecture about something he thought was personal.

The resident advisors passed around condoms, IUDs and diaphragms. They explained how each worked and how effective it was. They talked about preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases – no one had heard of AIDS in 1978.

Someone passed a diaphragm to me, and I turned it around in my hands. Then I handed it to Ronald and looked at the side of his face. He cradled it in one hand then passed it on.

I only got pregnant once, even though my diaphragm lay unused in the medicine cabinet for the twenty-eight years I needed birth control. Neither one of us liked its inconvenience. I always swore I got pregnant the day we got married. At three months we learned we were having twins. Ronald did not speak for several days as he digested the news.

I remember the first time I felt them move, soon after we learned we were having twins. I was sitting on the sofa and I felt a tickle deep inside. I called Ronald to come sit next to me, and he placed his hand over my tummy. He laughed and said, “I think it’s just indigestion.” But we both knew it was two little babies, growing, moving in rhythmic synchronicity.

For the next five months Ronald went to each appointment at the doctor’s office, oftentimes the only male sitting in a waiting room filled with pregnant women who stole glances at him because his presence must have made them wonder why their husbands were not seated beside them. The doctor, a petite, ageless, German-born woman who worked quickly and efficiently, teased Ronald, asking him if he questioned her competence. She often gave him instructions: “Buy her some ice cream. She isn’t gaining enough weight” or “Don’t let her walk to work anymore. Twin pregnancies are high risk and the babies’ well-being is more important than staying in shape” or “Take those pregnancy manuals away from her. She doesn’t need to be scaring herself” or “Sleep on the couch if she is too restless. And don’t you get angry, Dianne. He needs his rest, too.”

Ronald bought me a handmade black Cabbage Patch doll for Valentine’s Day. She wore a yellow baby’s dress and white leather shoes, and her hair was black yarn. I named her Amelia. Ronald shaved my legs on the weekend and pulled my support stockings on each morning, sitting behind me, his legs on either side. My tummy had gotten too big to reach my legs and feet. He patiently waited while I threw up each morning before he drove me to work. On a particularly icy day, he pulled his car up to the curb to pick me up from work. He jumped out and held up his hand, signaling me to wait for him. When he reached me, he picked me up; my arm slung around his neck, and he carried me from the library door to the car so I would not fall. I giggled the whole way, asking him, “So what does it feel like to carry a whale?” When the weight of my tummy made it difficult to climb the stairs to our apartment, he helped me, his arm around my waist, hoisting me up each stair. He ran out and bought Steak’ums with Cheese, something I had never eaten before or since, but for which I suddenly had a craving. He told me that pregnancy made me even more beautiful, my skin glowing.

At Bird Library many of my colleagues were excited about the prospect of twins. They remembered when Ronald and I met freshman year of college in Copy Services. They had watched our relationship mature over the years, held their breath waiting for us to marry, and now they were getting to experience our pregnancy. Technical Services staff good-naturedly placed bets on what day I would deliver, and many came to a baby shower thrown by one of the librarians. But one woman always looked dour when I walked by her desk to go to the restroom or the staff lounge. One day she stopped me and said she had something to say.

“You know I’m interracially married, too,” she said. She was a small black woman, maybe in her mid-thirties, quiet, not unfriendly, but not social. She just came to work and did her job. I had heard her husband was white, but I had never seen him.

“Yes, I know,” I said, wondering what she was getting at.

“We decided not to have children,” she said, looking down at my belly. “It’s irresponsible to bring interracial children into this world.”

I was stunned silent, my face feeling warm, but I shook off my surprise. I thought, what made her feel she could say this to me, when I am this far along in my pregnancy, unable to do a thing about it? What is her intent? Then I wondered if she felt she had sacrificed her right to have children for her right to love a man of a different race. “We don’t feel that way,” I said. “We think if you have loving parents it doesn’t matter what race you are.”

She looked at the floor and I turned and walked away.