I recognize that black people don't own oppression but we certainly know a hell of a lot about it first hand. I first understood what it meant to be black in this country the summer when I was 8. That was the big knee cutting incident when rubbing alcohol came in glass bottles. I tripped over my own feet while carrying a bottle to my mother, knelt down to pick up the pieces and sliced open my left knee. My mother scooped me up, grabbed my younger brother and sister and raced to the local clinic where she attempted to enter the emergency entrance, the white only entrance. As she tried to enter with me in her arms, a blood soaked towel wrapped around my knee, someone told her that she needed to go to the nigger entrance. She did.
What I learned from that experience was patience. No amount of language, foul or otherwise, no amount of defiant attitude impacts people who are driven by ignorance, hate, and downright stupidity. When Dr. King came along, he understood this. He preached nonviolence not because he was afraid but because he recognized that the real crazies were unreasonable and unreachable, but that the rest of American whites might still have enough of a conscience to feel guilt. Those peaceful marches weren't really peaceful except on the part of the protesters. They were beaten, attacked by dogs, fired upon with high pressure water hoses, murdered on dark highways and they met this violence with nonviolence. The other big factor was television. Images of people being subjected to violence were shown around the world and sympathy was with the nonviolent protesters.
Always image conscious, White America didn't suddenly acknowledge that all people are created equal but a significant number of them sought to disassociate themselves from the overtly racist extremists. Racism wasn't dead, but laws were passed that made its overt practice illegal. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.--MLK, The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.
I tend to think in analogical connections and our current battle against the unfettered conservatism that threatens to devour our country reminds me of the battle that was fought against that other voracious monster known as institutionalized racism . The feelings of powerlessness, frustration, and fear expressed by my fellow liberals are understandable and no Pollyanna pep talk is going to change those feelings. I don't believe that people are naturally good at heart, but from what I've seen in my lifetime, I do believe that change can happen. Forty-five years ago, I couldn't drink from a public water fountain unless it had a sign above it that read, "For Coloreds Only." The world of my childhood and today's world are as different as night and day.
We are far from a post-racial society. I'm a big science fiction fan and I think of racism as being a creature like that of the Alien movies, incubating in the chests of some people until it breaks forth screaming, spreading destruction everywhere. In the movies, Sigourney Weaver kicks its alien ass. Alas, Sigourney isn't available except on the silver screen, so we have to do our own ass kicking when it comes to racism and the disease known as the Tea Party.
To do this, we have to be better strategists than they are. Like Dr. King, we have to determine how best to overcome. Venting our frustration may be necessary on occasion, but anger and frustration do not generate solutions. Our strength is our ability to act rationally in the face of irrationality. I don't find the use of vulgarity offensive, just useless. Anger is exactly what these people best understand. King and Ghandi understood this. Meet irrational hate with anger and you feed the fire of their hate; meet irrationality with reason and persistence and your enemy is confused and does not know what to make of your response. For that reason, we must keep our wits about us because our strength lies in our rationality, in our ability to reason and though the path be rocky, we must continue to traverse it, one step at a time.
A most excellent post, Sheria. Not much more to add other than pointing out the paucity of leadership on many of these issues. And I agree, profanity or just plain railing at the architects of racial and economic inequity just won't do. We need real leadership, of the sort the MLK brought to the forefront—and a media willing to cover him/her...to repeat what I said earlier:
ReplyDelete"Invective won't work. Unless, that is, you have a direct rapport with the dispossessed victims of the system, and a strong forum that can directly confronts the perpetrators of the problems.
"I understand the frustration. But as I keep saying, the real conflict is not between the right and left (which has been co-opted and continually engineered by the top), it's between the top and the bottom."
Your post advances the discussion greatly.
Such a thoughtful post.
ReplyDelete"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.--MLK, The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967."
ReplyDeleteThat kind of quote is usually a conversation stopper, but last night on the news, there was a story about a black man having been beaten to a pulp in a motel parking lot and then run over and left as road kill by a truck. Some teenagers; boys and girls looking for a black man to "mess with." He was the first one they found. Beat the hell out of him, taking turns, laughing at his humiliation. They had a party afterwards.
It's tempting to say nothing has changed, but these vermin will go to jail, at least. There was a time when the story wouldn't have made the news and such people would have gone free. I'm not happy that this is as far as we've come or that there is a generation so ignorant of our immediate past but so in tune with the Southern sentiment of the post-reconstruction era, but yes, there has been some progress.
"Anger is exactly what these people best understand. King and Ghandi understood this. Meet irrational hate with anger and you feed the fire of their hate; meet irrationality with reason and persistence and your enemy is confused and does not know what to make of your response"
Yes, of course, very few could say that more succinctly than you do, and if I dance in mock rage at this neo-Confederate ugliness and loathsomeness, it's in mockery more than it is in rage.
No, I'm not Dr. King nor Gandhi and I can't be as publically dispassionate, but I know which side of history they were on and I know I'm not a factor in history at all, other than to make fun of their enemies for my own gratification.
But to see this ugliness come back and back again like algae in a swimming pool, roaches in a pantry or weeds in the garden, again and again, and again and to public approval. . . to see the country I once believed in as a lighhouse of enlightenment, melt into the slime. . . I'm sorry, but I just get so damned angry. I believe in compassion above all other virtues, but I would have slaughtered those kids without hesitation, had I been there and with little regret beyond having been dragged into their hideous world. I'm only human and I'm saying that without thinking that being human is a good thing.
You know, if we were really the kind of country that built monuments to those who deserve them, we'd have another polished wall with the names, countless names of those who have suffered and died victims to "traditional values."
Clearly and beautifully written, Sheria. I tend to give into anger, frustration and despair--all too often since December 12, 2000.
ReplyDeleteA post like this brings me back to rational thinking and the long view.
But like the good captain, I reserve the right to mock the crap out of those who continue to drag us into the gutter.
Well said, Sheria, thanks.
ReplyDeleteI think what's worrisome is the suspicion that some of today's American Righties aren't as susceptible to Gandhi/MLK Jr. tactics as even the Brits or the 1950's-60's fellow travelers of the Southern racists -- for those tactics to work, as you know, your adversary must at least proclaim belief in a value system beyond vicious greed and bigotry -- if they say they're "Christians," you can then force them (or rather their lukewarm half-supporters) to confront their own barbaric violations of that set of beliefs. The American Right has morphed into something so loathsome that I have to wonder if they even care when they're exposed. From the look of their reactions nowadays, I'd have to say they're not: you point out irrefutably that they're mistaken about something, and they just smile and keep saying it again, and again, and again, until you quiet down and wallow in despair. So do the millions of morons who watch all the appropriate right-wing cable programming. And those seem to me the sadistic tactics of Old Beelzebub himself, not of decent but misguided people.
But perhaps that's all too gloomy -- on the whole, I think the president's dignified bearing will serve him well. One of the few bright spots right now in the polling is that at least a majority sort of like the fellow: they appreciate his decency, intelligence, and patience, but aren't sure there's much he can do to fix anything. They suspect he's the wrong man for the job just now. That's what he has to change, lest they jump to the mad conclusion that "Bushier than Bush" Rick Perry or the Mittster IS the right man for the job.
Sheria,
ReplyDeleteI wish I could share your optimism but I can’t. What makes circumstances and events different today? The country is not the same as it was during the 1960s. In some respects, the civil rights movement of the 1960s was the last nail in the coffin of the antebellum South. All branches of the Federal government and both political parties (in the days when there were Republicans who had a conscience) came together to stop filibusters and end the Jim Crow era. None of this can happen in today’s political environment.
Today, the Republican Party trades on gridlock, anarchy, and nihilism; the GOP are hell bent on sabotaging government to promote a public distrust of government – Ronald Reagan’s old mantra. Republicans are no longer partners in participatory democracy but adversaries. Or as Hannah Arendt observed, “a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.”
I tried to make a case in earlier posts that the purpose of current Republicans strategy is to leverage POWER; moral persuasion is an anachronism - all too easily buried beneath the talking heads bullshit of our trash news media. How else can you explain the resurgence of racist and bigoted fear mongering in contemporary politics? These days, the messages are spoken in code with a wink and a nod but nevertheless metastasizing like a cancer.
Frankly, I am preparing for the worst with little optimism for better outcome.
"I think the president's dignified bearing will serve him well."
ReplyDeleteI think that's one of the last things Americans seek or admire in a President. A swaggering, beer swilling braggart seems more often to make us quiver with desire. Of course there was the sainted Reagan, but he could never be elected today and probably couldn't be nominated.
It's the dignified bearing that makes his enemies hate him the more however. I think many would be more comfortable with a character out of a minstrel show, who knew his "place." I delight actually, in the pain he gives them and how he forces them to deny their sick racism while dreaming of lynch mobs.
Like Octopus, I expect dire consequences and I have few long-term hopes, but I admit I'm a chronic pessimist and but dearly hope I'm entirely wrong and there's a new generation coming who will give up their entertainment addiction, their skateboards and their deep and abiding ignorance and rebuild the country - but I don't think so. Sometimes I'm glad to be old.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteI don't know -- the polls I've seen suggest otherwise. Obama's job ratings are way down, but his more personal marks are still pretty high. People like him, generally speaking, and that's something he can build on. Anyhow, I think my comment is also factoring in the racial dynamic -- he CAN'T go nuclear on his opponents, can't appear to be angry. It wouldn't be tolerated coming from an African-American president.
Dino,
ReplyDeletePerhaps my perceptions are skewed from being surrounded by the self righteous right down here in the swamps. But yes, an angry Obama reminds me of the line from an Eddie Murphy movie - "I'm your biggest nightmare, a n***** with a badge"
That's why I'd love to see a 2000 pound, bright green ( sorta like someone else I know) Obama mowing down the Teaweeds. I know, I know, the lust for revenge is toxic, but it feels so good.
Capt.,
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine what would happen if, say, a feckless Republican were to shout out "YOU LIE!" at a LARGE PREDATORY DINOSAUR during a joint session of Congress? Not a pretty picture. Not a pretty picture even if I happened to be lying, which Obama wasn't. You just don't mess with a big lizard that way. It's not polite.
"You just don't mess with a big lizard that way. It's not polite."
ReplyDeleteNor safe; perhaps this is just what the electorate is clamoring for ... a strong voice, a REAL LEADER, one who takes no crap.
Lets run the dinosaur for POTUS; then we can implement Sheria Law. Exactly what we need, a soft voice and a big stick. Of course, the Captain gets a cabinet post, say, Commerce or Transportation Secretary, and the cephalopod will head the Food and Crustacean Administration.