[Amonmymous] Times

When a man who can’t pronounce “anonymous” claims the speech of one of our greatest orators put him to sleep, we have to wonder about his grasp of words. If Trump is the best that many Americans think our country has to offer, what criteria are they basing it on? 

Is it the unethical and opportunistic way he runs his businesses and the government? The way he disrespects and objectifies women?  Or maybe it is his inability to understand the responsibilities of the office of president. Or it is his penchant for defying the rule of law. Perhaps it is his insensitivity to people with disabilities or maybe the way he attacks people of color with statements pertaining to their IQs and threats of deporting or imprisoning them. Maybe it is the way he has cuddled up to violent dictators, while disavowing liberals of any ilk here in America. Or is it because he treats immigrants as criminals, rapists, and animals by denying them refuge and snatching away their children? Or is it God ordained that we suffer this fool as some fundamentalists, who believe in the divine bestowal of white supremacy, suggest? Or is it because he claimed there were many fine Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2017? Or, most importantly, was he the whitest white man in the bunch?

 If white supremacists think he is representative of supremacy, they are neither supreme nor intelligent. If the only way they can show supremacy is through bullying, taking away freedoms, carrying a gun, policing public spaces, and threatening the safety and wellbeing of others, we have to ask them, “What are you afraid of?” 

America, we all have a right to be who we are, whether that means being a Christian fundamentalist, an LGBTQ individual, a black American, a white American, a native American, Hispanic, Asian, Muslim, atheist, able-bodied, or an individual with disabilities, a man, a woman, a gender-free individual. And, guess what? We can co-exist. 

That doesn’t mean a great, big love fest. It means understanding basic freedoms and supporting those freedoms for all Americans. All Americans have a right to worship or not worship as they choose. They have a right to vote. They have a right to be represented by their elected officials. They have a right to be in public spaces. They have a right to feel safe in those spaces. They have a right to make choices about their bodies and healthcare. They have a right to healthcare.

The way to do that is through respect.  Not the kind of respect you earn. That takes knowing someone, and we don’t have to know every person in America to respect all Americans. I’m talking about the kind of respect that acknowledges every person has a right to be in public spaces and to work a living wage job and to live in a decent and safe neighborhood and attend decent schools that are safe zones from violence and that have the same resources as every other school and to have access to affordable healthcare. We’ve lost that respect. Maybe we never had it. I am leaning toward the latter. 

I’m not going to tell some white guy he can’t think he is superior to me, as a white woman, and to people of color. If that’s his personal narrative, so be it. I have my personal narrative, too. But if he is out there trying to oppress women and people of color by controlling or denying social and economic opportunities and advances, so he can gain some kind of advantage and privilege, I am going to speak up.  The collective needs to speak up. We need to support equality. 

White people, I am mostly speaking to you, whether you are conservative or liberal, because our society and governance is based on a system that gives us a leg up just for being white while it disadvantages everyone who isn’t. We have to disavow that system. And we have to stop feeling hurt when the topic is brought up. Nothing will ever change if we can’t talk about racism and white privilege as concepts that operate congruently. 

None of us is morally superior, intellectually superior, or physically superior because of our gender or race.

Who can deny that Serena Williams is the greatest athlete in the past twenty years? Just fifty years ago, we’d never have expected a woman, and a black woman at that, to be the greatest athlete. That's because women weren't expected to excel in sports. Furthermore, she just had a baby. She almost died during delivery.  She survived and became a wonderful mother, and, no, she didn’t make a comeback to the tennis world, she took up where she left off. 

I have to divert a bit from my main message in this post, although it is certainly related to the topic of race and gender. We just finished watching the 2018 US Open Women’s Finals. Serena's greatness as an athlete in no way guaranteed a win in this grand slam tournament or in any other tournament or grand slam championship. She didn’t win this time. Naomi Osaka, who just broke the top ten in rank at age 20, played powerfully and strategically against Serena and deserved the win. But I do have some questions about the severe treatment imposed by the chair umpire. I can’t help but think he has different expectations for women than for men players, and Serena expressed the same concern.  And what he did was impact the match at a critical time. His interference ruined the match for both players who should have felt the match was about the competition between their abilities, not the man in the chair who felt offended because a woman expressed her emotions and then called him on his call – I’ve watched many men over the years swear, break rackets and do other things that could be construed as abuse, and they weren’t penalized by a point and then the loss of a game. It left both women crying at the end, and I cried with them. I cried because Serena still had a chance to turn the tables had he not taken a game from her, and I cried for Naomi who should have been celebrating what great tennis she played instead of feeling she won on an umpire’s call. That’s what happens when genders are measured against different standards, including another female who was penalized during the US Open for changing her shirt on court (she had it on backwards and removed it to turn it the right way around.). Come on, how unfair is that?  

The moral is we have to stop elevating people and awarding them privilege based on gender and race. Any of us has the potential for greatness, and it has nothing to do with gender or race.

Getting back to the topic of governance, there are many white males who are more than capable of being the president of our country and the leader of the free world. Trump isn’t one of them. He never was. He never should have had a shot, because he isn't qualified. But here he is, and he has put our democracy and our national security at risk, all in the name of making America white again. But it never was all white, not from the beginning and not now. That is the important point our elected officials must make again and again to quell this awful tide of supremacy and hatred.

We also cannot forget that there are many women and people of color who are also more than capable of being the president and leader of the free world. Hillary Clinton was one of them – the most qualified candidate in modern times. She was more qualified than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – both great leaders of our country. And I can list many, many others including Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, and Elizabeth Warren. They should be judged by their qualifications and not their race or gender.

So when people talk about who is qualified and who isn’t, it is imperative that we leave race and gender out of the conversation. The past eleven years have proven conclusively why that is. 

When one former president is elegant, intelligent, humorous, unifying, and passionate and the present president is unintelligible, blustery, self-centered, divisive, thwarted by his own administration, and an inciter of violence, the only lesson learned is that race and gender have nothing to do with how they acted in the office of president. It is the individual. One was qualified and saved our country from a depression; the other was unqualified and has brought our country to the brink of destruction. 

Americans, we can be better. We can coexist. We need all of us to do it. First we have to stop thinking some Americans are more equal and more deserving than others due to their race and gender.  We have to believe our greatest ideal: We are all created equal. 

It has to start in November. Get out and vote. Vote like our life and democracy depend on it, because they do. Don’t vote based on race or gender or religion or class. Vote based on qualifications and who can rise to the challenge of best representing ALL of us and who knows how to guide and explain why it is the best route to do so.  Yes, we are diverse, and that means we have a hard time understanding one another at times, sometimes because we don’t have the right words, but more often because we’ve stopped listening.  Our diversity means we have a better chance at the kind of progress and change that can lift all Americans, regardless of race and gender.  We can fix this mess. Vote.

Pexel.com photo

I Am Tired of Talking about Race and Gender, Too

Whenever life got difficult for me as a child, and that was fairly often growing up with an alcoholic mother, I gave myself a pep talk. I do it in adulthood, too, when life seems overwhelming or seems to go against my grain. I remind myself that everything is temporary, and if it is temporary, I can get to the other side of it and come out fine.  It is usually a big enough push to motivate me through the worst life throws at me.

But on November 8, 2016, I started sinking fast. I fell down the rabbit hole, hard. Each announcement on election night pushed me farther down the hole. I could not believe what I was seeing. I started swearing at the TV and slapping the chair. Ronald was mostly silent.  At one point, he said, “It’s over.”

“No,” I said. “They haven’t called Florida yet. Surely she will take Pennsylvania.” But soon I, too, realized it was over, despondency oozing over me.

Although Secretary Clinton won the popular vote by over 1.5 million votes, she lost the Electoral College vote.  The last time that happened was in 2000, and, admittedly, some odd things occurred during the Bush/Gore election, including those mysterious hanging chads.

Over the next couple of weeks, I commiserated with other progressives, argued with those who take a more conventional and close-minded approach to life, shed a lot of tears, and expressed a lot of anger when talking to my immediate family.

I could point fingers: it is the fault of the third party voters and/or the fault of the 50% of the voting age populace who chose not to vote.  All in all, Trump won on less than 25% of all possible votes. But now that I find us here, how is blaming others any good? It won’t change the outcome.

As I watch the parade of possible appointments including Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions, both men who have demonstrated racial hatred and other extreme conservative views, I feel like I am being suffocated in the rabbit hole.  Then there are all the racially motivated attacks, graffiti, tweets, bullying, and other acts of white supremacy.

The rabbit hole exit is disappearing from sight.

I’ve talked and written about racism for over forty years now, but more so in the last eight years. We were on a steady downhill slide to the rabbit hole ever since President Obama was elected and the far right decided, when they could not find any real scandals to bring Obama down, to systematically attack his validity, credibility, and character. The birther conspiracy, supported and carried on by Trump, caused all kinds of racist responses.

But Americans got tired of being accused of being racist and they responded… with more racism. Nothing better than accusing the victims of being responsible for the hatred and oppression heaped on them. Then America voted in Trump, the candidate openly endorsed by the KKK. And almost all of the Trump supporters expressed anger at being called racists. However, they are not disavowing all the hate crimes popping up around the country, over 400 reported so far, and a good number of the people perpetrating these crimes are avowed Trump supporters.

People are saying they are tired of hearing about racism. Quite a few contend racism didn’t exist until President Obama started talking about it. They have short memories and a poor understanding of our history. 

Every time we made racial strides in our history, there has been an equal or stronger backlash.  President Obama’s election eight years ago, and his list of accomplishments, caused the rise of the Tea Party and the rise of Trump. Hatred is strong, even when it is only inside the hearts of a minority. Silence by others makes it even stronger. Silence is complicity.

In the past black towns, successful with black-American-owned businesses and commerce, and segregated from white towns, were burned to the ground and black Americans were lynched. So much for “separate but equal.”

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 (75 years ago next month), Japanese Americans were rounded up and placed in internment camps. They lost their freedom and everything else, because Americans believed their loyalty would lie with Japan, even when they had been Americans for generations. America offered restitution to the survivors of internment in 1988 under the Civil Liberties Act.

Black American descendants of slavery and Jim Crow have yet to receive restitution.

Today I argue discrimination and hate crimes are equal to those perpetrated in our history. But an awful lot of white Americans disagree.

I can tell them that I am tired of talking about racism, too, and misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, and religious intolerance.  But I have to talk about it because they are not going away, and at this time in our history, with the election of a racist, misogynist, religious intolerant president, it will only get worse. I am also tired of people supporting systemic racism and the other isms, but pretending denial, like when they voted for Trump.
We are losing our freedoms including freedom of the press, freedom to protest, and the freedom to be fully participating American citizens. This should scare the shit out of people, but many are celebrating how this will hurt the people they hate (they are confident they themselves are excluded from this loss of freedoms) and a bunch more are silently compliant.

Some of my extended family members are worried that my speaking out will result in imprisonment. I jokingly told my mother-in-law to visit me in prison and bring cookies (I have been bringing her home-baked cookies when we visit her up North), after I am arrested for political activism that includes this blog, my FB posts, and writing to my Congressmen.

But maybe prison for political activists is not such a distant reality, and maybe we are close to another McCarthy era when people’s lives were ruined and some lost their lives because the government didn’t like their politics. Senator Doug Ericksen, a Republican state senator in Washington, is trying to pass a bill that makes certain kinds of protests a felony (right now one can be arrested for blocking traffic or causing property damage, but both are misdemeanors) and supporting protests will be a felony, too, if the law gets through. Such a law would not only result in a possible prison sentence or probation, it could revoke the individual's right to vote. Think about that and the number of protesters who came out for Black Lives Matter and against a Trump presidency.

A professor at Rutgers University, Kevin Allred, who is white, was picked up by police at his Brooklyn home for tweeting, "Will the 2nd amendment be as cool when I buy a gun and start shooting at random white people or no...?" They delivered him to a psychiatric hospital. Although extreme racial bias is still not considered a mental illness, apparently political activism is. My extended family members may not be overreacting in their worry over my safety.

So here I am, a couple of email exchanges with Senator Thom Tillis on record, other emails penned to Senator Richard Burr, Representative Virginia Foxx, and Speaker Paul Ryan; a growing number of outraged and angry FaceBook posts logged; and now this post. Yet I am still reeling.

What if Trump’s cabinet were filled with racists, misogynists, homophobes, the religious intolerant, and xenophobes? Will Trump’s rant to “make America great again” or as many of us say, “white again,” become reality? Will we be living in a country where political activists are jailed, people of color and women are second class citizens, separate and unequal, dreamers will be deported to a country they never stepped foot in, LGBTQ individuals will be subjected to conversion therapy, women will have to ask their male partners permission to take birth control and perhaps will go to jail if they get an abortion, Muslims will have to register as such with the government for possible deportation or internment, all of us will be forced to worship under fundamentalist dogma, and citizens will be encouraged to demonstrate their hatred toward any group that is not compliant or white and heterosexual?

My panic just soared past the moon. Time for a pep talk, but I gave it already on FaceBook yesterday. Here it is:

This country needed HRC. The majority of voters realized that, even those who didn't think she was perfect. We lost, more than just the election, as we are seeing in these days of transition of power. But we cannot give up, not for one moment, because of all the people who came before us and refused to lie down and take oppression and violence and segregation and economic hardship and second-class citizenship. In their honor and for the future generations, we have to keep going forward while the white nationalists, white supremacists, misogynists, homophobes, reality TV stars, and powerbrokers try to force a vision of America on us that we know is shameful, hurtful, ignorant, and finished the moment we stand against it. Stronger together.

Yes, I will get through this, and you will, too, but it will take hard work, the ability to speak up loudly and often, and perseverance in the face of unprecedented obstruction. There is a way to climb out of this rabbit hole, and that is to keep talking about race and gender, no matter how tiring it gets, until we no longer have to. We got this.

Additional thoughts:
I just realized I am in mourning. Watching the Medals of Freedom ceremony gave me that understanding. The last eight years haven't been easy, but they were a promise. President Obama was a promise of a different America, led by a man who embodies grace, perseverance, intelligence, humor, and a view of what a truly egalitarian America would look like, an America in which my family is just another American family. I would have still missed President Obama terribly if Secretary Clinton had won the election, but I would have looked forward to her chance to lead us toward a truly progressive America, taking up the gauntlet we handed to President Obama in 2008. Instead we elected a horrid, self-centered, self-aggrandized, entitled reality star who doesn't respect women, minorities, people with disabilities, the free press, and anyone else who doesn't adore him. He is a monster who is fully taking advantage of hatred to promote nothing but himself. If he had a shred of ethical and compassionate thought, he would stand before America in a press conference devoted to just this topic, and tell America that white supremacy and white nationalism are treason and abhorrent. A statement during an interview is hardly taking a stand. I am in mourning for more than the term of Obama's presidency. I am in mourning for the loss of our country to haters and supremacists who are no better than Dylan Roof and the Confederate flag/Southern heritage bunch. When you have to debase others to feel better, you are lacking in character and quality, and you have no right to drag the rest of us down with you.

Fall of the Mighty Whities Part III: The 150-Year-Journey

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

~ Abraham Lincoln

My brain is churning this week, and my heart is fast in pursuit of understanding, so I warn you, dear readers, this post is lengthy. But I ask you, is it possible to write succinctly about a 150-year-journey?

This weekend we went to see Spielberg’s Lincoln. I highly recommend this film with its stunning, dark images, stellar cast, moving story, historical accuracy, and authentic dialog. I am so intrigued my mind keeps replaying scenes, and I can’t wait to see it again.

The film showed an intimate portrayal of Abraham Lincoln during the specific months that he pushed for passage of the 13^th Amendment. His complicated character is shown in his intelligence, his folksiness, his internal struggles, his offbeat humor, his moral sensibility, and his determination.

"Do we choose to be born? Or are we fitted to the times we're born into?" he asks two soldiers in the telegraph office as he is composing a telegram to hold the Confederate delegation hoping to negotiate peace on a riverboat because he fears ending the war too soon will close the window of opportunity to get the amendment bill passed in Congress.

Radical Republican Congressional Leader Thaddeus Stevens played a big role in helping to pass the 13^th Amendment. Wiki says this about him:

He defended and Native Americans, Seventh-Day Adventists, Mormons, Jews, Chinese, and women. However, the defense of runaway or fugitive slaves gradually began to consume the greatest amount of his time, until the abolition of slavery became his primary political and personal focus. He was actively involved in the Underground Railroad, assisting runaway slaves in getting to Canada. An Underground Railroad site has been discovered under his office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Though Stevens’ relationship with his Quadroon housekeeper, Lydia Hamilton, was revealed only at the end of the film, Wiki states their common law marriage was well known in Washington circles, where many people referred to Lydia as Mrs. Stevens.

In the film Stevens, who climbs into bed beside Lydia and hands her the original passed Amendment bill for her to see and read, suggests that she should come to the signing of the bill. She declines saying it would not be right to have his housekeeper attend such an event. It was a poignant moment in the film for me, a demonstration of the sacrifices we make out of our love for another, particularly when our relationships do not fit social convention.

I knew interracial relationships occurred back then as they always have since people of different races and ethnicities ran into each other (some consensual and some not, but I am speaking only of consensual couples in this case, not situations involving rape, violence, and oppression), and I find it interesting that Spielberg and scriptwriter John Logan chose to portray the relationship as secret. If it were truly known openly, it is proof of how complicated race is in our society, then as now. I imagine Spielberg and Logan viewed the relationship as the inspiration to Stevens’ thirty-year-long fight for the abolition of slavery and for race equality in America.

In one scene the congressmen debated whether passage of the 13^th Amendment would open the way to giving blacks the right to vote. One congressman warned the others that soon there would be blacks in congress if they were given the vote, and, worse, women would expect to follow!

The movie couldn’t have been released with better timing, given this past vitriolic election and the continued trashing the Republican conservatives are raining down on President Obama. Maybe Spielberg purposely held the film’s release until after the election.  Could he have been that prescient or was he just waiting for the holiday moviegoers?

Certainly all this talk of secession from the Union now that President Obama has been reelected seems to warrant a history lesson. The seven southern states that seceded from the Union prior to the Civil War were not exercising their rights; they were traitors to the country. Their reliance on states rights to uphold the inhumanity and brutality of slavery was an abomination brought about by greed, power, and privilege. We need to acknowledge our history and not glorify the ugly parts of it.

After the movie, back in the car, my husband Ronald, daughter Mackenzie, and I talked about what we had seen. I came away understanding how important it was to get the 13^th Amendment passed before the war ended, even without a plan for race integration (which truly did not occur until 100 years later with the Civil Rights Act of 1964). I also understood why the final argument in favor of passage was for legal equality and not race equality. At first I sided with Stevens who wanted to push forward the concept of race equality. But Lincoln counseled Stevens, in a private debate between the two, about the folly of using one’s moral compass to head true north, when the compass has no way of identifying the pitfalls and traps that lie in the path to stop one from completing the journey. He understood they needed to take one step at a time, and eliminating slavery was the first step. In real life Lincoln said of it, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”

I feel strongly that almost 150 years later, we are still taking steps toward race equality and our journey is not nearly over.

A couple of weeks ago one of the white guys at the golf range handed Ronald a photocopy of a column from his church newsletter. I’ve reprinted most of it below:

Prophetic Prospective

United States citizens, at least those who chose to exercise their franchise to vote this last presidential election, decided to return President Obama to the White House for four more years. This reelection of President Obama has received rave reviews from the European and Middle Eastern political leaders. European leaders who basically embrace the same political philosophy as President Obama see this reelection as an opportunity to advance their political agenda. Arab and Muslim leaders await the Obama administration’s acceptance of the Muslim agenda to move those nations touched by the Arab Spring into the establishment of an Islamic world more in line with Sharia, the Islamic law, as the law of each of their nations.

As Christians, many of us have questions as to how it happened. Mitt Romney lost and Barack Obama won. I am not going to analyze the results, but I do want to remind each of us of the biblical response that we must have as we look into the future…

God instituted human government 4,500 years ago as recorded in Genesis 9:6. God instructs Bible-believing Christians to be obedient to those elected and He reminds all of us that He, God is the One, who puts people in their political positions, Romans 13:1. The Lord reveals in Revelation 17:17 that He will use world leaders to have His will played out in the Last Days. God’s Word also calls for Christians to pray for all those who are in positions of authority – as is our president, Timothy 2:1 – 4.

Let me share several prophetic thoughts with you. Bible prophecy speaks of how the financial structure of this world will be controlled by a world leader, a one world leader, the Antichrist from his headquarters in Babylon, the modern-day state of Iraq…The conflict in the Middle East will also be center stage of the Last Days.

This whole scenario is like reading from prophetic passages of Bible prophecy. Europe and the EU are at least the infrastructure for the revived Roman Empire as foretold in Daniel 2 and 7 when it talks about the ten toes… and the ten horns. An Islamic based government in the 23 Arab states and the Muslim states of the Middle East prepare this region for the future described in Daniel 11, Ezekial 38, and Psalm 83.

God has used human government to fulfill Bible prophecy in the past and He will do so as well in the future. Political leaders will indeed help set the stage for prophetic passages in God’s Word to be fulfilled.

~ A minister from NC

The white guy asked Ronald for a response. Ronald, who knows the Bible better than most Evangelicals, immediately started to parse the column and Biblical references (most of which I left out to save on space and your time, dear readers). Finally the man got frustrated and said, “I didn’t ask you for a sermon!”

“No,” I said to Ronald from my hotel room up in the northeast, as we spoke on the phone, “he didn’t want a sermon. He wanted you to agree with what it said. Doesn’t he get that if he believes God chooses who wins, that God chose Obama?”

Now that I’ve reread it (instead of hearing it over the phone), I see the author is predicting that Obama’s reelection signals the End of Days. Hasn’t every generation thought that certain events were harbingers of the end? The Civil War (and every war) must have made people wonder if the end was near with the loss of over 620,000 soldiers and another 420,000 injured.

Here are a few more letters published this past week in my local paper the Winston-Salem Journal. They, like the article above, also predict the dire consequences of President Obama’s reelection.

Consequences

Congratulations! Elections certainly do have consequences. Witness the 950 jobs lost from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center – in my opinion, thanks to Obamacare.

Tighten your seatbelts, because our “tyrant and chief” is just getting started.

~ Peter Wilson

Not This Time

It’s over…but I don’t get it. More than 50 percent of the voters picked the candidate who has been the most divisive president in my lifetime, which has been for almost three quarters of a century.

I have always understood why people have picked one candidate over another, but not this time.  I always felt if my candidate lost, so be it. I could live with the opponent for another four years. But the past four years have been nothing but a failure. Of course, a lot of freebies were handed out.

As you can tell by now, my choice was former Gov. Mitt Romney. Here was an honest, decent, intelligent man who felt it was a privilege to help others, yet he was demonized by the opposition and the press, including this paper, with all sorts of falsehoods.

I’m not the smartest guy in town but would someone explain how this happened? Do we go through another four years of bickering and higher unemployment, dividing the country even more? I hope not. We cannot afford more of this and while I hope I am wrong, I see the middle class disappearing. And while I’m not an overly religious man, I wonder if this is a test from God to see if we as a nation can survive.

I love America and I hope the best years of my country are not in the rearview mirror.

~Art Frauenhofer

Suffering

How very fortunate America would have been to have Mitt Romney as our leader. His is so experienced, so competent and so honest. Instead, we have returned to the hopelessness, ineptness and deceit of the last four years.

My fellow Americans, it will not be all right. We will suffer; our children will suffer; our grandchildren will suffer. And, yea, the Journal will suffer. But, thank God, Sandra Fluke will get free contraceptives.

~Janice Dooley

The consequence they seem to predict is the end of the White reign in America, the day when a black president is accepted not just for the novelty of being the first black president but because the majority of Americans loves, trusts and respects him and his leadership.

Racism played a role in the election campaign but it did not change the outcome. Yet I can only think that there are people out there who are afraid of the demise of white privilege just as there were people 150 years ago who feared the consequences of freeing the slaves.

I see it quite differently, though. Maybe more like Thaddeus Stevens, I see what America can be after this hard fought election: inclusive, diverse, and celebratory of how this country was built by the contributions of many races, ethnicities, and cultures. I envision a new America that honors equality and fairness, in word and in action. No one is asking for “free gifts” as Romney accused Obama of rewarding to a majority of voters. We just want race and gender equality. That’s not a free gift; it is morally and ethically the right thing to do.

But I have the feeling that a good many white people don’t feel that way, and they are hoping and praying God will intervene and give them back the entitlement and privilege they don’t openly acknowledge. Yet they fight for it and accuse others of wanting it.

One of the white guys at the golf range told Ronald he doesn’t think everyone should be able to vote. He believes that an elite group, unnamed but probably white and wealthy, should be the only Americans eligible to elect our country’s leaders. Ronald wondered, as he related the story to me, if the white guy included himself in the elite group. No doubt.

Lincoln also said, "Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

Maybe Mitt Romney, Donald Trump, Rush Limbaugh, or the white guys at the golf range would be willing to walk in the shoes of the 47% for a week. I don’t think they would last an hour. So why are they trying to determine our destiny?

Another white guy at the golf range told Ronald a couple of months ago that, all things being equal, the wealthy would still be wealthy and the poor would still be poor. In other words, wealthy people are smarter, more able, and more motivated than poor people who, he said, are too lazy to change their circumstances.

I believe the days of elitism and race advantage are coming to an end.

I’m disappointed that people are using the Bible to spread hatred and bias and that they are unabashed about mixing church and state. It was true in Lincoln’s era, too.  The Bible was used to justify slavery and unequal, brutal treatment under the law and to predict the dire consequences of ending the social order. Such predictions and prophecies render us spiritually, morally, and ethically bankrupt.

Are people afraid of the new multiethnic America? Yes. I know they are. But haven’t we been moving away from Euro-centric culture (many Americans seem opposed to European socialism; I wonder how they define their whiteness) since the first Pilgrims landed on America’s shores, since America opened its arms to immigrants (the Native Americans being the first to allow strangers on their shores)? Haven’t we always had different cultures mixing to create a culture that is singularly and uniquely American? What are we afraid of?

I wrote the following comment on Facebook and attached the political cartoon below it:

When people hate so much they want to secede from the country they claim to love, we need to invite them to the table so we can offer them the chance to talk about it and to show them we love the country as much as they do and we don't plan on going anywhere. I know, they haven't offered that to us, but I think the high road is the better route, even if it takes a little longer.

Lincoln took the high road, even as he questioned his own methods and the power of his office. The country, with the Southern States once again part of the Union, took the high road and enacted the 13^th Amendment. As Lincoln counseled Stevens in the film about the virtue of using one’s moral compass to head true north, we have to walk in that direction, but avoid what the compass cannot foretell, the pitfalls and traps that may stand in front of us. Let’s relocate our country’s moral compass, find true north, take the high road, and, avoiding that which can stop us in our tracks, complete the journey to race equality. 

Politics Ain't Beanbag

“Politics ain’t beanbag. ‘Tis a man’s game; an’ women, childher, an’ pro-hybitionists ‘d do well to keep out iv it.”

~ Finley Peter Dunne, 1895

Politics are nasty and complicated, and I doubt most of us could weather the election process or the day-to-day decisions that must be attended to in leading one of the world powers. I’ve always thought that I wanted to use my vote to elect someone much, much smarter than I am, not someone whose intelligence I could easily eclipse. I also want someone who can be both rational and intuitive: someone who cares about people but also has the ability to think about the greater good. If I voted today, I would vote for President Obama, just as I did in 2008. In my mind he embodies both those qualities.

I think it’s safe to say, “I’m liberal.” I’ve been called a bleeding heart, a socialist, a communist, and some good adjectives, too, such as empathic, humanistic, and caring. Caring is an important moral value for me, as it is for countless liberals. We are all about creating a safety net and a level playing field for those who are oppressed, victimized, or otherwise left on the fringes of society. I realize that my liberal leanings mean that sometimes I will sacrifice my better judgment in order to assist others.  I’m not ashamed of that, but I know I lead with my heart and not with my mind on many occasions.  

I remember the doorbell ringing at my apartment in the spring of 1979, when I was a senior at Syracuse University. I was the only one home of the four of us women who lived together. I opened the door, and it was a woman and her daughter. They were Jehovah Witnesses. The mother handed me a copy of Watchtower, then prodded her daughter to speak. The little girl was five or six, shy, and severely developmentally and physically disabled. My heartstrings plucked a melancholy tune as she struggled to get her words out. I ran over to my purse and dumped out the contents of my wallet into the woman’s open hand.

Unlike two of my other roommates, whose parents bought them cars, paid their rent, and sent them monthly spending allowances, I paid for my share of the rent and my food out of my work study money and the additional money I made taping books for visually handicapped students. I worked thirty hours a week and carried a full course load. Except for the daily rides I accepted to and from the school where I student taught with one of my roommates, I walked every place else I had to go. After dumping out my wallet in that woman’s hand, I would go without that week, perhaps eating more peanut butter and jelly and less meat sauce and pasta, but my heart felt good.

Thirty-four years later I answered my doorbell again today. It rained all day today. When I opened the door, holding my dog Ru by the collar, a man around thirty years old stood in front of me, his umbrella upside down on my porch, and his large red knapsack at his feet. He wore khakis, a plaid shirt, and a knit tie. His teeth sported a lot of gold fillings, and several chipped teeth caused a distinct lisp. He was selling “Grandma’s Cleaner” at $48.00 a bottle. I listened to his whole story, watched while he sprayed the window on the door, wiped with a towel, and left nary a streak. Then he spritzed a little on my wedding ring and shined it up. He sprayed the cleaner on his clothes and in his mouth to prove its all-natural makeup. He pulled my heartstrings, and I bought a bottle, after which he took my hand and planted a kiss on it. My daughter Mackenzie, staying with us while in transition to a new city, said, “Ma, why did you buy a bottle? It’s probably a scam.”  The seven years she lived in New York City have perhaps made her cynical.

“I know,” I said. “But I don’t mind.”

He was polite, and he worked hard for his money. It’s no different than when Ronald picked up a couple begging for a ride to the soup kitchen. He said that the place was about to close as he dropped them off, and, had they walked, they would have probably missed the only meal they’d get that day. Or when he handed the homeless couple we often see downtown a twenty so they could get something to eat. See my post Get Up, Stand Up: Redemption Songs.

We both have soft hearts.

Ma taught me to champion the underdog, even though we were underdogs ourselves. Maybe that’s why I understand it so well. I never thought being poor was bad, and Dad worked really hard to support us, until he had his first heart attack and we were on Welfare until he could go back to work. He cried the day the social worker came and inspected our home as part of the application process.  He was ashamed neighbors left bags of groceries on our doorstep and rang the bell before running away. They knew Dad wouldn’t take the groceries if he knew to whom to return them.

He didn’t think of himself as one of the “victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

Mitt Romney, who said the above quote in a closed door meeting with wealthy campaign backers, never knew Dad. He doesn’t understand that you can live with dignity even when you don’t have wealth. He doesn’t know Dad dropped out of eighth grade to go to work to help his family. He doesn’t know how proud Dad was to put food on our table and a roof over our heads, or that he worked double shifts as often as they allowed him so we might have a little extra. He doesn’t know that Dad pulled his own tooth, a rotten, infected molar, because he couldn’t afford to go to the dentist. He doesn’t know that Dad suffered for days afterward, his face gray with pain, but he kept going to work anyway. Maybe it’s for Dad that I champion the underdogs.

Maybe it’s for my father-in-law. He finished high school, moved his family up north where there were more opportunities for black men, lived in the housing projects so he could save money to buy a house, and worked for Millbrook Bread and a rag dealer driving trucks. Then got his foot in the door at Niagara Mohawk, the power company, after a group of blacks staged a protest outside the main building because no blacks worked there. He worked as a janitor and studied at night to become an electrician. After he applied for a promotion to a better job posted on the bulletin board, he found his application in the job supervisor’s trashcan the next day. He went to human resources, and they posted a job especially for him. In the years that followed he became the first black foreman at Niagara Mohawk, and he supervised the building and maintenance of the sub-stations. He moved his family out of the housing projects and bought a house on the eastside of Syracuse.  Read my post This Life We Live In.

Maybe it’s for my mother-in-law who married at sixteen and didn’t graduate high school because she was having her first child. When the youngest of her five children went to kindergarten, she got a job as a bus monitor then worked her way up to being a teacher assistant. She finished her high school degree and went on to take college courses to obtain tenure.

Maybe it’s for my husband Ronald who proved that you can grow up in the projects to serve your community with honor and integrity while putting your life on the line every time you show up for work. Ronald retired in 2006 as a Syracuse Fire Lieutenant after serving for twenty-five years.  Read my post Fighting Fires.

I have a soft heart, but I also know that being poor and uneducated is not the equivalent to being worth less than those that came from wealth, privilege, and entitlement. I know that a country that provides equal opportunity is stronger because its citizens are more able. I know that if someone has a problem such as losing a job, going through a divorce or a catastrophic illness, or living in poverty, that, as a people, we should help that person until he or she can stand on his/her own.

The conservative view differs from that. It isn’t that conservatives are more heartless, at least not all of them. But they view fairness as proportionality – if you work hard enough, you will get your just rewards. If you don’t work hard, no one will carry your load for you.

I get that, but I also believe that when you are down and out, no amount of hard work will get you through if no one gives you the chance to do the work. There may be people who abuse the social programs we have established through the government. There will always be people who take advantage. There are just as many wealthy people, or maybe more, who use loopholes or keep their money in the Cayman Islands so that they pay less than their fair share of taxes, or they cook the books to increase their profits illegally. But why punish those, like my dad, who just needed a safety net to get back on his feet? If we didn’t get Welfare back then, I can’t imagine where I might be today. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone on to college, or become a wife and mother, or become a manager for a multinational corporation, or gotten two master’s degrees. Maybe I would not have been an upstanding, contributing citizen who pays my fair share of taxes and also helps out others when I can.

I read a wonderfully informative book titled The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt, a professor at Stern School of Business, New York University. He has spent his adult life researching moral psychology. He wrote this book to explain why we find ourselves in this time of division, suspicion, and uncooperativeness.

There are three principles to his moral psychology theory: 1) Intuitions come first, reasoning second; 2) There is more to morality than harm and fairness (there are actually six foundations of morality: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, and liberty/oppression); and 3) Morality binds and blinds.

Long story short, we react to something a certain way, partially due to heredity and partially to environment, and we develop reasons to back the reaction post hoc. Liberals tend to view the world through a moral code that is based on the foundations of care and fairness – they often take up causes of inequality and victimization. Conservatives are more likely to see the world through a moral code consisting of loyalty, sanctity and liberty.  They believe in the individual, freedom, and being American.

That’s how we can look at exactly the same situation and come away from it miles apart in describing what we’ve just witnessed.

Haidt, a self-identified liberal, says that conservatives are better able to rally supporters to their causes since they are more likely to frame them using all six foundations of morality, while liberals tend to tick-off conservatives because their appeals tend to rely on just care and fairness. We have to learn to strengthen our liberal stances using the other moral foundations, e.g. emphasizing how we are part of the same group and that all group members will benefit.

He also quotes from the Bible when talking about our differing moral stances.

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? … You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (Matthew, 7:3-5)

We have to stop hating and accusing one another, and take a moment to listen and try to understand our differing views. Why is that important?

Haidt says liberals and conservatives are part of a whole, like yin and yang. They need each other. In the past in our country, they worked cooperatively and got a lot of wonderful things accomplished. Liberals push forward socially progressive programs, while conservatives help shape fiscal responsibility. It’s been a successful collaboration that helped build America into a world power. At this time in our history, we are at an impasse and our country and our people are hurting for it.

Humans formed groups tens of thousands of years ago and began acting cooperatively. Groups protected members and distributed labor, so groupism, as Haidt called it, or tribalism, is an important trait. It is also a trait that leads to a kind of blindness, because it is easy to become suspicious of outsiders or non-group members and react with hatred and violence.

Now it seems our tribalism has divided us in America. We’re blinded by our own group loyalty, liberals vs. conservatives, and that causes us to dislike the other group. We need to learn to work cooperatively again.

In an interview conducted by Bill Moyers, Haidt said, “[We need to] share a conscience not an ideology.”

I could use a friend who isn’t afraid to tell me when my heartstrings are singing so loudly they drown out all reason, and I am sure I can be a friend who can help convince another that we need to fight for the underdog. At one time or another, we might be that underdog.

Politics ain’t beanbag. I want an intelligent leader who is both intuitive and rational and who builds his moral conscience on all six foundations. Mitt Romney has proven he has group loyalty and authority as his foundations, as well as liberty, e.g. he has fiercely defended his right to keep his tax returns private, but he missed out on caring and fairness when he said that 47% of Americans are not deserving of his interest and leadership. President Obama is my pick. His moral conscience includes all six moral foundations.

For more information on Jonathan Haidt, his book is titled The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, ISBN: 978-0-307-37790-6. Here’s the wonderful interview conducted by Bill Moyers.

Black Lie, White Hope

The GOP continues its quest for the Great White Hope. What about Herman Cain, you remind me. He was a straw dog. Charismatic? How about that wealthy Mormon, Mitt? Self-righteous Christian? Here’s Perry. How about the man that suggested a cure for obesity? No-more-food-stamps Santorum. Militant conservative? How about Michele “abolish minimum wage” Bachmann? Short-term memory? Here’s Newt “I took the marriage pledge” Gingrich. Best GOP candidate since GW. He cavalierly suggested that poor children ought to work as janitors in their schools.

In many ways it doesn’t matter who the GOP selects as their candidate. They want to ensure the wealthy keep their wealth and grow wealthier. They want to ensure President Obama doesn’t get re-elected. Some call him the worst president in the history of our country.

President Obama saved us from an economic depression. He defeated Osama Bin Laden. He ended the ten-year war in Iraq. He has worked diligently to preserve the middle class. What makes him the worst president in the history of our country? It’s the color of his skin. No one wants to articulate it quite that way. The moral compass of the collective society would balk at such blatant honesty. Most people would rather deny their racist assessment and pin their dislike on anything else that might appear rational. But their arguments aren’t rational. They are lies: lies that protect the liar from having to face his own prejudices; lies that smartly cover up what no one wants to say aloud; lies that make it seem as if we live in a post-racial society; lies that make everyone who harbors racist feelings feel smug and righteous.

I can’t just point fingers at the GOP or Christian conservatives who believe God is on their side and are bonded by hate and moral superiority. The 99%, a predominately white organization, is also bashing our president. I wouldn’t mind, except that their demands are unrealistic. The president can’t force change. If one has not personally experienced the tremendous backlash against everything the President is trying to push through, one cannot imagine the difficulty he is up against. To the 99% who are warming the benches while others are out on the playing field, consider a future in politics if you want to initiate change and learn to work within a system that is not only immovable but also difficult to negotiate. Then you’ll have earned your right to complain.

In the meantime I won’t encourage you to look at a third party solution. You’ll just waste precious votes needed to ensure that the GOP doesn’t get elected to the highest office in the land and take us all down by blurring the lines between church and state, destroying the middle class, and bolstering the power and wealth of the 1%.

We will live in a world where religious zealots create the law of the land based on the Old Testament. Apparently they missed the Good News. In this new world homosexuals are criminals; fetuses have more rights than children; women are submissive; poor people die for lack of basic necessities; whites are armed and dangerous to anyone that threatens their way of life; minorities are assigned non-American status; and slavery is re-instituted. The vision is extreme, yes, but possible given the extreme rhetoric of Tea Partiers and Christian conservatives.

Have you noticed that President Obama’s enemies have not found even one skeleton in his closet? They tried with the birther conspiracy. They tried to tie him to unsavory characters and Illinois political corruption. They tried to deny his Christianity, as if not being Christian would disqualify him from office. They have accused him of the character flaw of humanitarianism, if one can call that a flaw. I don’t. The only truth that no one wants to speak is that his African heritage is a flaw in the eyes of many.

We need President Obama for four more years. We need to fight the good fight right beside him.

(Excerpt from essay Keep Hope Alive: Post-Racialism in America)

Everyone in the bleachers kept craning their necks around to see behind us. We all knew Senator Obama would enter the square from the rear of the bleachers. The number of men in black suits with earphones made it obvious.

Suddenly the men in suits gathered together, and my sight rested on Senator Obama in the middle of them: tall, handsome, a spring in his step despite the grueling schedule he kept. He wore a pressed, bright-white shirt, the sleeves casually rolled up, and a blue, white and silver tie. As he stepped up to the podium amidst the cheers, he appeared confident, smart, and presidential.

“Yes we can! Yes we can!” the crowd chanted. I wanted to believe them.

“Our destiny is not written for us, it is written by us,” Obama told the crowd. We cheered louder.

“We can rewrite our destiny,” I thought. “We can change our destiny in my lifetime.”

“Yes we can! Yes we can!”

Obama stopped in the middle of his speech and asked for people to attend to a woman who was weak from the heat and press of the crowd. Volunteers ripped into plastic flats filled with bottled water and started passing them back through the crowd. From our perch on the bleachers, the thousands of water bottles being handed high above heads from black hand to white hand to brown hand, looked like bubbles floating over the crowd.

Ronald assisted citizens and saved their lives and property for twenty-five years as a firefighter, but sometimes they did not want his help. One man said he would not let Ronald resuscitate his dying wife. Another citizen, his house on fire, said he did not want black people in his house. Disregarding Ronald’s lieutenant stripes and his command over the scene, another citizen called him a nigger. Could hatred be that strong? Yes it can.

Obama finished his speech, and he walked around the circle of people closest to the podium, shaking their hands, speaking to them. I watched him, and I watched them, some of them wiping tears away after he had moved on to the next person. I knew he would exit beside the bleachers just as he had entered. Some people were already standing and headed off the other side of the bleachers, maybe trying to beat the dispersing crowd. I went in the opposite direction and crouched at the edge of the bleachers three or four people back. I could see Obama nearing us. I stuck my hand through the crowd of legs, and he grabbed it and firmly shook it. His hand was dry and warm.

I stood from the crouched position I had taken to reach him and turned around. I was crying.

“You did it,” Cara said. “You shook his hand.”

“Yes, I did.”