The finish line of faith

Not too long ago, a friend asked me to attend an event at which she was to have a role. I had intended to go, but life got in the way. I'm not sure of the specific events of the week, but there was ugliness in the right-wing media about women (I'm one of those); immigrants (guilty again as charged) and people of color (three for three!) that week and frankly, it had the effect of laying me flat. When I wrote to my friend and advised her that I wouldn't be available because I wasn't feeling right, she responded, "I'm so sorry you're feeling bad again (still?). Feel better." I replied making clear what all was causing my upset. Her response to my articulation of my issues? Silence. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt misheard or ignored but it was to be the last in that particular dyad. The willful deafness to my story told me everything I wanted or needed to know. It told me that I needed to guard my soul, my self. I have done so.

A couple of weeks ago, when the whole Taylor Swift/Kanye West/Kim Kardashian's receipts story broke, Damon Young of Very Smart Brothas wrote a terrific piece about White feminism and its performative feature(s). Specifically, Damon referred to it as "White female performative faux melodrama". After I had cackled, I thought to myself, "Hm! Hm! Hm! Hm! Hm!"  

I am not for a moment claiming that Swift doesn't have a just cause against West against his petty ugliness on his latest CD, but I am saying that it is interesting that in every exchange, Ms. Swift manages to paint herself as the damsel in distress in need of saving, and in the very next breath, she calls herself a feminist. That crap gets old. At this point, it's performance art and it is tired and tiresome.

As much of a feminist as she is though, I never heard a mumblin' word out of her and her like-minded so-called feminist friends when actor Leslie Jones was being brutalized on Twitter not too long ago. What I've come to accept is that feminism, much like the 19th Amendment when it was first passed, really doesn't have my needs in mind. I'm an afterthought to 'mainstream' feminism. When today's feminists act in defense of women, it ain't women who look like me. I get it.

Taylor makes me wonder about the long history of the deft use (wielding, really) of delicate 'please protect me' White womanhood to brutalize men of color and by extension their families and to raise up the reptilian passions of White men against those same groups. I think it’s that understanding that causes me to have a bit of a disconnect with Hillary Clinton. Whether she wants/ed to or no, her super predators remark stands, for me, as a strategic inflection point in my understanding of who she is and who she's working for. I don't hate her. I don't think she should go to jail. I don't have especially strong negative feelings about her, I'm just not quite convinced that when she speaks for women, she's actually speaking to or for me. Perhaps, my disconnect is not so much with Hillary as it is with American feminism which very casually and routinely excludes women of color. 

I read something some time ago about women and the KKK and realized as I was reading, that it was a narrative with which not only was I not familiar, it was something I simply hadn’t considered.

We know that early twentieth century lynch mobs were primarily comprised of men. It was they who did the actual lynching, but Sunday after church lynch attendees included a good many nice Christian women and their children. No one had to beg them to show up. They attended of their own volition. More important still, lynchings frequently began with a White woman claiming that some Black man had somehow offended the ‘natural order’ by making advances towards her. Frequently, the entire story was more of what Young referred to as “White female performative faux melodrama” but no one knew that in the moment did they? Nor did they care. 

These women are ever taken at their word when they claim that something has occurred and White men race off and handle it. No need for Olivia Pope, it's handled! That is still the case. Surely, we all remember the case of Susan Smith? She who strapped her children into their car seats and rolled her car into a lake. When questioned by the police, she claimed that a Black man had stolen the car and her children. It was several days before she broke down and told the truth. Until she did, the police were out searching for a Black man and her two White children. And it ain't only White women who excel at this type of performance. Surely we remember John Crawford, shot dead in a Walmart carrying an air rifle he was seeking to purchase? Ronald Richie called 911 and claimed that Mr. Crawford was threatening shoppers with the gun. No such claim has been proven but Mr. Crawford  will threaten no one ever again. 

So forgive me if former FLOTUS Clinton's claim, in the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, that some of us were super-predators (a term, hithertofore used only to describe animals) who needed to be brought to heel (a term hithertofore used in reference to animals) casts a long ugly and dark shadow which I can't shake. Since those days of super-predation, folk have been routinely bringing young Black men to heel, courtesy the school to prison pipeline, Stop & Frisk, three strikes laws and the granddaddy of 'em all, extra-judicial executions on the streets.

I admire Secretary Clinton, the work she has done and the folks she has chosen to help but I just have a really hard time crossing the finish line of faith with her. This ain't about Benghazi. This ain't about an email server. This ain't about Bill or his peccadilloes, neither is it about how she dealt with Monica Lewinsky, Jennifer Flowers or whomever else Bill was allegedly messing around with. I'm sure she's great and while I feel that she has a wee bit more awareness of her privilege than The Donald, I remain wary, kinda like I'm wary every time Taylor Swift drops a new CD. I know she's about to diss somebody. I know somebody's going to get hurt. I know the passive aggressive claws are going to come out, I just don't know who will be on the receiving end of her next swipe.

I'm sure Sec'y Clinton is a wonderful mother, but does she comprehend that maternal wonderfulness is directly related to resource availability? I just don't know.

I'm sure that she regrets the unintended consequences of the 1994 Crime Bill signed by her husband, but I'm not sure that either she or Bill will ever admit to the unintended consequences of the 1994 Crime Bill.

I'm sure she wants women around the world to make a better living, but I'm not sure that she took that into consideration when her State Department sided with billion-dollar garment companies to limit wage growth for Haitian manufacturing workers or that she will give equal weight to workers when faced with a TPP bill.

I'm sure she decries the horror that is the for-profit prison industry but I'm not sure that she refuses their contributions to her campaigns or that she will ever call out the industry for being what it is: entirely odious and an abomination.

Is she qualified? Hell yeah that goes without saying. Am I a fangirl though? No. I'm not. I don't know that I ever will be. 

Damon Young, in his article on VSB, describes Taylor as the coworker who manages to parlay the smallest slight into a raise and a promotion through Oscar-worthy performance of faux melodrama. I am not convinced that Taylor and Hillary aren't kissing kin. Hillary is guilty of her own form of faux melodrama, her own form of crying wolf.

I won’t soon forget Madame Secretary of State on the debate stage with Bernie Sanders claiming - with a straight face - that she couldn’t possibly represent the establishment because she’s a girl. A Clinton? Not establishment? I don't see it. The former Secretary who holds every establishment position that it is possible to hold and who is supported by a good two-thirds of the House and Senate claims to be an outsider? Um, k. The Secretary is as establishment as it's possible to be and at the same time gets to claim "I am woman hear me roar" privileges. 

Not too long ago, a friend asked me to attend an event at which she was to have a role. I had intended to go, but life got in the way. I feel much the same way about Hillary. I want to be all in, I want to be a fan but life keeps getting in the way, history keeps getting in the way. 

I know better now than to expect the Secretary of State or any politician to have me on their mind when they make their decisions as president. I know that I must guard my soul, my self. I know that whomever wins in the fall, I'm on my own. So I'm with her, but I'm both weary and wary. As we say at home, Tom drunk but Tom eh no fool. Tom knows that drunk or sober, he'd better mind his business. 

I'm with her but I'm watching my step and my back.

Broken-winged birds

This poem spoke to me earlier this week. It's Hold Fast to Dreams by Langston Hughes.

Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die                                               
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

In two well-known Langston Hughes poems, Hughes writes movingly about hope and dreams. In the first, he advises us to hold fast to our dreams out of psychological necessity. Without dreams, he contends, life is nothing but a "barren field, frozen with snow". In Dream Deferred he is more direct, suggesting that one of the results of constant deferral of dreams is that we explode. Mr. Hughes might be on to something.

In the shadow of this week's horrors in Nice, France; last week's horrors in Dallas, TX; St. Paul, MN and New Orleans, LA; last month's in Orlando, FL and on and on, I've been wondering about broken-wings and broken dreams.

America is a fairly equal opportunity wing-breaker. We need to acknowledge this truth. Whatever the leadership, wings are going to get broken. It is the nature of the system that there will be winners and losers. Losers get their wings broken. Both American domestic and foreign policy tend to break wings. We break wings with our militaristic adventures whatever the stated reasons for them might be; by employing our democracy-at-the-point-of-a-gun policies; by propping up dictators; by 'fixing' the social safety net thereby almost rending it asunder; by demonizing the poor; by cavalierly letting folk fall through the cracks; by poisoning a city's water and jailing no one. Every one of these breakages is born of our legacy of White supremacy which blithely dismisses entire groups of people. We've been doing that since Christopher Columbussed up on these shores and claimed he'd ‘discovered’ it. Given that the Taino were here first, any claims of ‘discovery’ are hyperbolic at best.

The past lays the ground work for and sets the tone of the present. Generations of disdainful attitudes to Native people in particular and to people of color in general, neither disappear nor dissipate. I want to especially thank Congressman Steve King of NY for his unsolicited if, terrifyingly ignorant utterances, which serve to clearly prove my point.

For the five centuries immediately following the arrival of Columbus in the New World (bringing with him the church’s brand of White Christian supremacy which is still being promulgated by such as Cong. King. Thank you again Stevie), people of color around the globe have borne the brunt of the impact of that philosophy. In the wake of various conquering heroes - from Columbus to Vasco da Gama - millions of broken-winged people have been left staggering on a "barren field frozen with snow" per Hughes.

Today, rather than focus entirely on effects perhaps we should be focused on the causes of the violence, the brokenness, we see around us? I'd blame Columbus for the brokenness but he was merely a messenger and frankly, if I blame Columbus I might also have to blame Steve King and others of his ilk.

Columbus’ attitudes and actions sprang from Papal instructions. I’m inclined to ask what King’s excuse might be. Columbus and others like him unleashed a world of hurt on people of color. What we see in the world today is a long-delayed reaction to that hurt. That the First World pretends to be unaware of the hurts it has inflicted makes the injuries no less real.

We have no time these days for a study of causes. We fixate on effects. We have no time for a study of poverty or hopelessness, we'd rather fixate on how folk are being radicalized. We have no interest in broken wings or broken dreams only in how to break them further. 

We live in a time of near ubiquitous brokenness. We're all broken-winged in one way or another. We live in an economic and social system built on generations of exploitation and oppression and we have been entirely unwilling and unable (or is that "unable because we're unwilling”) to acknowledge that. It is not possible to participate in an oppressive system and not also be oppressed in some way ourselves, but more of that anon I suppose. Until we recognize our modus operandi, we haven't a hope of radically changing it; we haven’t a chance of pausing or ending the wing-breaking.

Whenever some one or two or three act out violently, I wonder about their wings; their dreams. Baltasar Gracián, a Spanish Jesuit writing in the 17th century, wrote. “Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.” Perhaps he should have written, "Never create men who have nothing to lose"? Wings are being broken, dreams are being forced into deferral and all over the world we are leaving men and women with nothing to lose. In Dream Deferred Hughes suggests that one of the results of constant deferral of dreams is that we explode. We're there. Orlando, New Orleans, Dallas, Ankara, Iraq, India, France, Nigeria. We are there.

On any given day, in any given locale there's likely to be a conflagration of one type or another. Whether it is terrorism or urban violence or state-sanctioned violence, it's broken wings demanding healing. Rather than talk about the despair that our policies and actions have caused and continue to cause, we would rather talk about banning folk; building walls and labeling movements for justice as domestic terrorist organizations.

Hurt people hurt people I've heard. We are surrounded by a lot of hurt. There is, I fear, far more hurt to come.

A hedge of protection

West Indian mothers have what is commonly known as The Look. Ask any West Indian of your acquaintance if their mother had a Look (with a requisite uppercase L) and they will tell you "Yes." It matters not from where in the West Indies this person hails. If you ask about The Look, you're going to get an affirmative response. What is The Look? It is the glare that both demands and ensures compliance; it may be a stare or even a fleeting glance that ensures that a child stops doing whatever the hell it is they're doing. It's the "comply or else" look. Apparently police forces all across America also have a Look, but it means "Comply or Die".

There's a school of thought that runs thus: if those men/women/boys/girls had just complied with the lawful orders of peace officers, they would not have died. Leaving aside for the moment, any and all questions about the lawfulness of the orders; leaving aside the question of whether or not the recently dead were in fact in the process of complying; leaving aside even any consideration of whether or not the offenses the recently deceased have committed warranted execution on neighborhood streets, I'm moved to ask: are we now at a point where there are orders from peace officers with which we must comply or face death? This is where we've reached? 

Whereas with your West Indian mother you might have your a$$ handed to you on a platter, you knew you would survive to tell a funny story about "that time when" years later. No such guarantee exists with the police on Main Street America. Failure to comply when dealing with America's finest could quite easily leave you a smudge on some town's sidewalk or grassy verge, and yet another rallying cry or hashtag.

With my West Indian mama, I could be sure that to comply would be to diffuse the situation; to de-escalate shall we say? With the popo these days, even compliance doesn't ensure de-escalation, and we know too well what the end result looks like.

With a West Indian mama, you could twitch, grimace, or even though it was ill-advised and likely to bring back the full force of The Look, you could perhaps try to explain. There was no guarantee that these techniques would serve you well, but none of them would cause you to be consigned to the crossing of the chilly Jordan (river). On the other hand, any one of these behaviors in an interaction with the police can, and from time to time, does prove fatal. 

Months ago, there was an international story, of the death of a young Japanese musician while she was on a learning/performing/mas' playing trip to Trinidad and Tobago's Carnival. One of the aspects of the story that was especially unfortunate was the report of people - both men AND women - blaming the victim for her demise, because she was skimpily dressed. For those who do not know, Carnival costumes in Trinidad and Tobago are frequently skimpy. Skimpiness is par for the course in many bands. That aside though, really? We're wardrobe policing the victim?

Oddly enough, that kind of talk was very much in evidence in a feminist forum to which I belong. In response to one post, I offered that I completely understood the need to police a female victim's dress at the time of her victimization. It was, I said, perfectly reasonable. It was especially reasonable - if wholly ridiculous and inappropriate - coming from other women.

Women who engage in this policing behavior, my logic ran, are entirely rational. As women we say to ourselves, "If I dress 'decently' and I comport myself 'demurely'  (whatever these words mean) in the streets, I will not be victimized." I know this to be foolish talk but I must tell myself this on a daily basis otherwise I'd never get up the gumption to leave my house. I have to work; I have to eat; I have a family to raise. I must leave my house, so in an effort to make that possible, I will harshly judge victims so that I'm not a basket case or an agoraphobe. 

The reality of our current rash of police excessive force complaints and videos is that many of us have to justisplain  the behavior of the officers because if we don't, we'll start to feel at risk. White folk need to believe that this only happens to Black and brown folk; and Black and brown apologists need to believe that it only happens to Black and brown folk who are not like them. We all know this to be cacalaca but..... 

Hell, Tim Scott, US Senator from South Carolina, reports that he's been pulled over seven times in a single year, while in office, but we just can't give that too much juice. We have to go on, and so we'll keep telling ourselves comforting stories; we'll keep building our cute little hedges of protection.


This is the reality: we police others so as to create just enough of a wall behind which we can hide. Truth? We know it's all boolsheet. Seriously. We know this but we also know that we have to live; we have to go to the grocery; we have to work late; we have to work. Sometimes we want to go out at night, and God knows, with our broad noses and such, we just might "fit the description" as did Philando Castile. So, instead of hiding under the bed - which, frankly, I very much want to do - I, we, build these hedges of protection behind which we can 'hide', and like toddlers playing peek-a-boo, we imagine that our failure to see means we are unseen.

It's laughable really......or it would be, if it weren't so damn terrifying. 

. 

Jump off and run like hell

Until last summer, my niece attended a terrific summer camp where, every day would begin with all the campers reciting this story: Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you'd better be running. I love that story. 

It struck me the other day that while predation occurs in nature and the threat of it occurs in this story, hate does not. Lions and gazelles don't hate each other. Gazelles fear, understandably, lions, tigers, hyenas and other apex predators, but they don't hate them. They give them a wide berth but hate? I asked myself, a propos of Dallas, TX why, if hate isn't a natural state, we spend so much time and energy on it. Why have we invented this thing that seems to serve zero useful purpose? And then I had to ask myself if the violence we perpetrate against other groups is a natural outgrowth of the hate we've manufactured, what are we to do about it?

I've wondered for five days now what I could possibly say about Dallas that made any sense. I've wondered whether there was any sense to be made of Dallas. Finally today, the story of the lion and the gazelle came to me. 

We will never truly know the perpetrator's motivations. We can piece a story together, but we will never know the totality of his internal dialog or the series of experiences that brought him to this point. He may have had PTSD consequent upon his military service. He could have had PTSD consequent upon his experience as a person of color in America. We will never know. What we do know is that the hate, that manufactured useless emotion, brought him to a tipping point. Are there others teetering on the edge? I want to hope not, but that is a foolish hope. The things that pushed this shooter over the edge are potentially pushing others. The response to this shooting may serve as catalyst for someone else. And so here we are, at this place once again, awash in tears, anger and blood. And still more hate. 

Does hate occur in nature? I don't think so. Is it a creation of human kind? It certainly seems to be. Is it a natural state? No, I do not think that it is. If it were, gazelles would hate lions; and plankton and whales would be at war. But, you say, we are greater than they! We are more advanced than they! We are better than they! Are we really? I'm not so sure. 

I think we manufacture reasons to hate through narratives we tell ourselves. We are ignorant and therefore fearful. We would rather hate on the basis of ignorance than lean in to the fear and find out the truth. God forbid we have to dislodge some of our long-held beliefs! Out of fear, we create reasons to hate and then we infect others with it. Instead of trying to find out about each other, and dislodge the fear of the unknown, we manufacture stories and an alternate reality and then, we corral the 'other', the gazelles, up and put 'em in that reality. Eventually, we act upon this manufactured thing as if it were real. 

Hate does not occur in nature. Lions don't hate gazelles, they are but the next necessary meal. Whales don't hate plankton. And yet, each of the former feeds on the latter. Perhaps we need to stop and figure out that we don't need to feed on each other to survive? It's not kill or be killed. We're not on the Serengeti Plain....most of us. Maybe if we didn't think of the universe as zero sum we might be able to find a better way to coexist. 

Hate may have started this but I'm pretty sure it won't end it. Hate is a carousel. It sits in one place and goes around and around. It will not get us far. If we want to put some distance between ourselves and this carousel, we're going to have to jump off, risk injury and run like hell. 

I don't think too deeply about this or any other shooter other than to wonder what broke in him to get him to this point, but I do spend a lot of time wondering about hate. Don't you?

Are we there yet?

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to....." So reads the opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence. I just want to know, are we there yet? Are we, as people of color, at a place where we can say, "Given the course of certain human events, it has become necessary for us to...."? Because I'm feeling a certain course of human events myself and I am more than ready to say "it has become necessary to.....".

In a video editorial on independence done some years ago, Bill Moyers reminds us that at the same moment in time that Thomas Jefferson was writing the memorable words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", he was also living an entirely different truth. By day, he was the much-vaunted Thomas Jefferson, but by night, he was Sally Hemming's rapist. I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel much the same way about American democracy; by day it's this wondrous thing, a great experiment that seems to be proceeding quite well (for some) and producing good results (for some), but by night, by afternoon, in the gloaming and sometimes in broad daylight, lynching, murder, social and economic terror prevail. But has it not ever been thus? 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." So reads the Declaration of Independence. It boggles the mind to think that at the time that those words were being eloquently spoken, all Natives were under threat; all women had limited rights; all African Americans were being enslaved, and many of them were being beaten, tortured, or raped, and Jefferson himself was both enslaving and raping Sally Hemmings.

It has become necessary for me to recall these passages from the Declaration of Independence because well, it's July. It's Independence Celebration Season. It's the time of year when we publicly celebrate our democracy. Unfortunately, this year, it also seems to be hunting season. 

In the last forty-eight hours, two Black men have been killed by police officers for, it would appear, the crime of negritude and I say that knowing full well that both had guns in their possession, in open carry states. Many others have had larger guns and been far more confrontational and lived to see another day, the name  Cliven Bundy comes to mind. Given that the crime of negritude is one I commit daily myself, I am compelled to speak on it. Call it enlightened self-interest. I speak in defense of my own rights, my own life and the rights of those I know and love.

So let me ask this: when will it be our time to be independent? When will our time to be free come? When will all those high-flown democratic values apply to us'n? These are my questions. When? "When in the course of human events" will our men, women and children not be terrorized on the streets? When? When will we get there?

In 1857, Justice Roger B. Taney asserted in the Dred Scott decision that the Black man had no rights that the White man was bound to respect. As a nation, we frequently claim to have come so far (from slavery, genocide and the most virulent forms of racist behavior I suppose), we claim to be better than this ('this' being lynching and racial terror, I assume), but can we really? How is Taney's thinking not the underlying philosophy of American policing and jurisprudence? How? Cite me some case(s) wherein the right of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" per rapist-cum-President Thomas Jefferson is actually applicable to all of us. Please. I'm open to being convinced. Help me. Convince me. 

In 1996, the Supreme Court made a decision on what Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow author) refers to as 'pretext stops'. In Whren v. U.S., the Supreme Court held that an officer who suspects a vehicle's occupants of criminal offenses may use an observed traffic violation to stop the vehicle. In Whren, narcotics suspects were stopped for moving violations. Drugs left in plain sight by the defendants were later admissible in court because, the court ruled, the officers' subjective reason for making the stop - even if in truth, a pretext for deeper criminal investigation - did not invalidate the stop. 

Twenty years later, in the 2016 session, SCOTUS handed down a decision on evidence collected in those pretext stops. In Utah v Strieff, the Supreme Court decided that evidence collected in an illegal stop was perfectly admissible in court. According to the attached NY Times article, the evidence is admissible if the officers conducted a search on the pretext that the individual had an open warrant, even if the warrant is unrelated to the conduct that caused the stop. So you can stop me for a lane change, run my license and find a warrant for unpaid parking tickets. On that basis, the officer can conduct a search of my vehicle and person, then arrest and convict me for possession of marijuana or some other contraband unrelated to the stop; all this, despite the fact that neither the initial pretext for the stop, nor the offense for which I had a warrant was reasonable cause for suspicion of any other offense. Bootstrapping and inferring of broad criminality. Criminals should, I suppose, have no expectation of having rights. By this measure, he can dig and dig until he finds a cause to charge me. And even if he doesn't, he can just charge me with resisting or obstruction. Freedom? What freedom?

I don't know about you, but the future looks very dark to me. This is 'broken windows' policing run amok. In the quest for more arrest, there will be more pretext stops (and guess who are more often 'pretext stopped'? Remember Sandra Bland?), more illegal searches, more bootstrapping and inferring of other criminal behavior, more incarceration of people of color for offenses that are often missed or overlooked entirely in other populations, and ultimately, more deaths because a good many of these extra-judicial executions start with these pretext stops.

Thank you SCOTUS for signing our death warrants. Thank you Justice Taney for establishing the framework within which we still seem to be operating; the one that says that the Black or brown man still has no rights that the White man is bound to respect. So much for the Fourth Amendment. I think we can safely kiss that goodbye. 

So I ask again, are we there yet? Are we at the place where, "given the course of human events....it has become necessary for us to" engage in direct action and loud public protest? 

As MLK put it in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, "we [must be ready to] present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community." Of course, the community before which we would lay our bodies is currently under the spell of Hillary's email and her questionable concern for the matter of our safety and Donald's vitriol. Still, MLK, Elijah Cummings and thousands of others faced dogs; Vivian Malone and James Hood faced George Wallace over the desegregation of the University of Alabama; Medgar Evers faced the KKK; Paul Robeson faced McCarthy; Marian Anderson faced the Daughters of the American Revolution; Ali faced the US government. This ain't 'posed to be easy. We must bear that in mind and press forward.

Very early on in my niece's Kindergarten career, she had a homework assignment to write sentences. With the innocence of the very young, she looked at her mother and asked, "Mummy, what 'sentence' mean?". When it comes to American democracy, people of color need to be asking, "America, what 'democracy' mean; "What "freedom" mean?'; "What "equal" mean?"; "What "life" mean?" because I am here to tell you that I do not know and I am not sure that America knows either. What I do know, is that democracy speaks to the character of a nation and this nation's character needs to be under review.

According to Dale Turner, "Character is not a gift. It is a conquest and its kingdom lives upstream. You never get there by drifting." When two men, doing nothing more than being Black, interact with the police and end up dead. you have to know that America is drifting. America will not soon arrive at an upstream destination without some hard work. Who's ready? You're going to have to put your back into it America.

Who's ready? I'm ready. August 1st. It starts there. 

Cognitive 'dissidents'

This is a story about cognitive 'dissidents'.

In my last post Some We Will Have to Carry, I shared my late choir director's oft-repeated maxim "Until all have crossed, none have crossed and some we will have to carry". Her contention was that while there is indeed something to be celebrated in one person's success, we cannot claim success as a group until all have crossed. To her mind, all must be the goal, even if some of that 'all' will need to be carried if they are to get over.

Today though, I think I may need to reconsider that. The reality is that some have no wish to get their feet wet. Oh, they want to get over, to be sure, but if the crossing is going to involve wet feet, no, no, no and no again. 

Take for example Ms. Stacey Dash of Clueless fame. I'm going to refrain from making any of a hundred obvious jokes here. I will say though that if ever there was a dry foot gyal Stacey is it. If the crossing is going require that moisture be introduced between Stacey's toes, we'd best bid her "Adieu" now or get her a pair of rubber boots. Full disclosure: I lean "Adieu".

I read Stacey's piece in response to the much-discussed Jesse Williams BET Awards acceptance speech and thought to challenge her thinking here. I presumed there'd be points to refute and insights to challenge (I especially thought this when I saw that her comments were 'trending') but no. There are neither points nor insights. I might have done better to challenge Tomi Lahren's bit but Kim Kane of the HuffPost and Tim Wise have already handled that situation. I'm not entirely sure there's anything more to say to Ms. Lahren.

With regard to Stacey's bit though, mostly it's Stacey doing her standard Stacey shtick. Where she doesn't willfully misunderstand, she simply misunderstands. Williams' words on cultural appropriation? Pshew! (That's the sound of Jesse's speech flying straight over her head.) Williams' riff on 'brands on our bodies'? Pshew again. Dash missed the relevance of that too, failing to notice the obvious and deliberate simplicity of Williams' wardrobe choices and his refusal to indulge in the culture of 'brands on our bodies'. I keep returning to Dash's column in the hopes that on my next read, something of depth might leap out at me, but alas, it is not to be....unless her pointing out that Williams' mother is White is a valid and stinging criticism? 

I had thought to write a funny bit, laughing off her ridiculousness, poking fun at her 'cognitive dissidents' remark, then word came of the death of the great Elie Wiesel. Suddenly, Ms. Dash's foolishness no longer seemed quite as harmless. Her nonsense now seemed more dangerous than merely silly.

It is quite likely that from the first time human beings organized themselves into societies there have been dissidents, not cognitive dissidents per Ms. Dash's malapropism, but the real dissidents, people who have had to challenge the status quo so as to survive or so as to make it possible for others to do so. Wiesel's life's work - as a writer and activist for the cause of peace - as a real dissident against the warmongering status quo and the dangers of quiet complicity, shone a light on the darkness that mankind often creates for itself and reminded us of the importance of truth-telling. 

On the flip side of that truth teller status, we have such as Ms. Dash and Ms. Lahren whose fears of loss of access and privilege trump (grrrr!) the discomfort of truth. I wish I could just say that I disagree with these two ladies but what I experience when I hear them speak goes well beyond mere disagreement. 

I mention Wiesel because the cause of his life was to demand that we face the full truth of our history and the consequences of the choices we - through our elected leaders - make. Dash and Lahren, by contrast, would rather cherry-pick history, highlighting facts and events that suit the narrative with which they're more comfortable. These women would rather claim that BET is racist than acknowledge that it is a response to the exclusion of people of color from representation in film. Apparently exclusion; invisibility in a society you've helped build and to which you contribute isn't racist.

No war of ideas or values has ever been won by rolling over and playing dead, or by prostituting ourselves to the cause of the status quo in the (vain) hope that one day you will be treated like an equal because those in power woke up and saw Jesus. As Frederick Douglass warned us, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Ain't no waking up to see Jesus gon' happen. We must fight to be heard, seen and treated as equal. 

The Mses Dash and Lahren are free to label dissenting voices however they choose, but when Janelle Monae can write an entire song listing the names of the dead and still have to leave out dozens and dozens of names from the Rolls of the Dead 2015, there's clearly a reason for dissent. To deny that is to join the Flat Earth Society. When Texas alone, has 550 cases of death in custody, it takes a special kind of denial to pretend that Williams' anger is a symptom of claimed victim status. To find ways to justisplain all those deaths, is to join the Flat Earth Society. To ignore report after report of racially driven policing, is to run for the Presidency of the Flat Earth Society. 

I have no advice for Dash or Lahren save an invitation to make Google a friend and trusted confidante. If, in 2016, one remains ignorant of the truth, it is a choice. There's too much technology, too much information readily available for anyone to be ignorant for any reason other than choice. We are lucky to live in a time when information will chase us down in the streets, seeking to be processed and understood; info walks up to our front doors begging to come in and make itself a home. Why come you still ain't know nothin'? That's a choice, nothing but willful ignorance. I'ma have to call y'all cognitive dissidents: persons who dissent against the practice of thinking; of reasoning. You are free to come to different conclusions, but it's hard to see how you would if you were informed. 

If Ms. Dash wants to keep playing her Clueless role, she is free so to do. She and Tomi can make it a two-woman show and take it on the road. The rest of us however will be addressing ourselves to the riverside because "until all most have crossed, none have crossed, and some we will have to carry". 

I leave Stacey and Tomi with these words from Elie Wiesel himself: "We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

May Mr. Wiesel rest in peace, and may the deniers of this world one day rise to the glory of standing up for the truth and ultimately, themselves.