Black Girl Unmagical

I am not magical. I may be smart; fairly well-educated; exposed to art, literature, and music; gifted in various ways; hardworking and capable but what I am not, is magical. I don't think I need to be. Given the list of things I know I can do, what need have I of magic? I'm perfectly comfortable saying that there is no Black girl magic in me. There is hard work, blessings and more hard work. Magic is entirely superfluous. Would that I lived in a world that could accept me as I am: entirely unmagical but no less brilliant and capable. Yeah, I said it.

The BGM terminology is something POC have created to communicate that we too are human; that we too are valuable; that we too have much to offer. I understand it, but honestly, I want no part of it. 

Some in the majority find it difficult to comprehend that Black folk are more than conquerors, more than capable and *whispers* from time to time, more powerful, more brilliant, more gifted than they. And so, we birthed a label to aid comprehension but does it really help?

For me, the major problem with the language of "Black girl/boy magic" is that it gives an oppressive system one more way to divide and conquer those whom it oppresses; one more way to consider some marginalized people worthy of consideration and others not...as if it needed one more way. It's one more tool to separate human wheat from chaff.

Personally, I want no part of it but then I'm grown and I grew up in a place where anything was possible from someone who looked like me. African-American youngsters need this phrase because they're growing up in a place where so much is damn near impossible for many of them. They need to be told that they can be magic, and do wondrous things, because the system works overtime to grind them into the dust. And yet, even with our hashtags and attempts at affirming them, the system routinely brutalizes them for having the temerity to hold a positive view of themselves as young people, and as adults, it will likely brutalize them for arrogance when they present themselves in the world believing in their effort and achievements. Seems like we can't win for losing.

My take is that the idea of #BlackGirlMagic is only partially for us and our children. Mostly, it's a push back and a push in to the systems in which we live. It's our attempt at inoculation against the ugliness and an attempt to change the prevailing stories about us.

But I say again: we are not magic. Some of us may be better than a good number of folk at a few things or even many things, but that is not magic, that's the bell curve. Magic is not required because nature is quite sufficient.

The problem is that labels are rarely for the labeled. Whether good or bad, labels are an attempt to communicate. Affirming labels tell the world what you believe or know about yourself. Negative labels tell the labeled what the world thinks it knows about you.

Take for example, James Baldwin's words about The En Word (about which word I've written a few thoughts). He pointed out in the clip below, that the language used to describe Blackness tells us more about those doing the describing than it does about those so described. Fast forward 50 or so years, and, we have got in on the labeling game, in another effort to aid the process of the humanization of the negro. Remember the Black is Beautiful movement of the sixties and seventies? BGM is more of that. Probably likely to be just as successful.

It's 2017. Tell me again why we're still doing this? 

In spite of the fact that:
Maya Angelou & James Baldwin have written great words; 

Marian Anderson & Paul Robeson have sung great songs;

James Earl Jones & Cicely Tyson have masterfully trod the boards;

John Coltrane & Miles Davis have played and created wondrous music;

Jacob Lawrence done painted and Edmonia Lewis have sculpted gloriously;

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Johnson & Mary Jackson has calculated and star-gazed their way into history; 

John Urschel has worked his sums and written his peer-reviewed papers.

And yet, with all that achievement (and those are just from the twentieth century), despite hurdles erected by the system and moving goal posts, and we need to be magic too?

Clearly, there is little appetite to see Blackness as real. Our offering up this language won't help. It is willful blindness that prevents true acknowledgement of us. That blindness has been necessary to survive the brutality of the plantation and everything that has occurred here before and since. And given the obvious continuing unwillingness to own up to the nation's brutalities, there will be no return of sight in the foreseeable (smirk) future.

I don't think African-Americans do themselves any favors by adding to the fantastical narratives around Blackness. Already, we're stuck with the myth that Blackness that feels less pain; myths about Black strength; myths about Black sexuality (which frequently led - and still do - to dangerous rape accusations); myths about Black intelligence and general myths about Black inferiority. And to all this we add magicality? As if one more myth were needed.

America is a land of fairy tales. We've believed in noble savages; simultaneously lazy and job stealing immigrants (Schrodinger's immigrants); bullet-dodging young Black men; the threat of looming Sharia law; the gay agenda; the trans agenda and pizzagate. Clearly, there is a deep unwillingness to deal exclusively in the land of truth and each fantasy believed makes the next one even easier to believe. 

In the midst of all of America's fairytaling, is it possible to see someone else's truth and reality? I don't think so. As long as America clings to the blinding fantasies of who and what America is and has been, it will be impossible to make reality (including the real humanness of POC) visible. We cannot live in reality and in fantasy simultaneously. By refusing to see its own truth, America ensures that the lies it has long told about the marginalized continue.

So here I am, telling you the truth. Here it is, straight, no chaser: there is no magic. There are natural gifts + hard work and lucky breaks and more hard work. There are gifts, hard work, no breaks, years of sweat and toil, and sometimes a moment of recognition. Or not. There is success, there is failure, there is blood, sweat, and tears, but there is no damn magic.

Blackness is not magical. If it were, wouldn't we all be sitting on top of the world? 

We are not magical, We work, we study, we practice our crafts, and if we are a success, you best believe we worked very, very hard for it. There's no "Abracadabra!" in any of that.

The experiments Schrodinger should have done

Erwin Schrödinger, do you know the name? He was a Nobel-winning, Austrian physicist who questioned the commonly held view of what quantum physicists call superposition. The core conundrum of superposition is that subatomic particles exist in multiple states at the same time. Schrödinger's challenge to this view came in the form of a mental puzzle, which is sometimes called a thought experiment, which forced other physicists, including Einstein, to acknowledge that superposition did not seem to hold with observable reality with non-subatomic things, like say cats.

OK, so that’s very heavy and science-y but I need you to stay with me! The actual thought experiment (all thoughts, no actual cats were harmed in the performance of this experiment. No need to call PETA on me. Or him.) helps to make this much easier to comprehend.

Schrödinger’s experiment imagines a cat in a box with a contraption that stands a 50/50 chance of setting off poisonous gas.  (Einstein had a version in which the contraption set off explosives).  Thus, once the experiment is concluded, the cat is either alive or dead, but before opening the box, you, standing on the outside of the box, don't know which is true.

According to the accepted theory of superposition, in that moment, the cat technically, is in both states: dead and alive. Again, according to the theory, it is the act of looking into the box that forces nature's decision, in the language of the video (above) and “collapses the dual reality”. It is quite literally our curiosity that kills the cat. To be perfectly clear, Schrödinger didn't believe this to be true; he devised the thought experiment to show that superposition, at least for visible objects, is absurd.

I lay all of that out to offer this for your consideration: if Schrödinger had done this thought experiment with African Americans instead of cats, his conclusion might have been completely different.    It seems that Black folk involved in dangerous, possibly life-ending encounters with the police are the proof that the dual state does in fact exist for things larger than subatomic particles. Perhaps it doesn’t for cats, but for Black, Native, and Hispanic folk? Oh yeah. That dual state, that superposition, is very real.

People of color live in a perpetual state of dual reality.

They are simultaneously guilty (& not) [Walter Scott];
They are simultaneously compliant (& not) [Mike Brown];
They are simultaneously threatening (& not) [Terrence Crutcher];
They are simultaneously fitting the description (& not) [Philando Castile];

They are simultaneously adult (& not) [Tamir Rice];

They are simultaneously victim (& not) [Charleena Lyles].

There is another important difference.  Schrödinger's cats have a 50% survival rate, but Schrödinger's POC end up dead a whole lot more often.

Additionally, the revised thought experiment confirms that it is the observation (by the police) that causes Schrödinger's POC to die.  A siren, a flashing blue light, a badge, a gun, and the observation of a POC, and Schrödinger might deserve another Nobel Prize.  Which like justice for Schrödinger's POC, must be awarded posthumously.

Which brings us to the trials………

If we extend the Schrödinger metaphor to the trials of those charged with unlawfully killing POC in routine police encounters, we find that the probabilities that ought to apply simply do not.   Perhaps, once the dual reality of the alive and dead POC collapses, bringing the officers to court further “collapses [any semblance of a] dual reality”?

With cats and poison gas (or explosives), the laws of probability apply. With Schrödinger’s Police Trials, as with Schrödinger’s POC? Not so much. When we look at the trials, probabilities go entirely out the window. Malefactors get acquitted a whole lot more than 50% of the time.

When it comes to the trials, this ain’t much of an experiment. There is no duality, there is only reality. We don't have to get to the end of the experiment to know the outcome. There don’t seem to be two possible outcomes. Probability of acquittal seems to be 1 (which if you remember from high school math, means 100% certainty). All the time, 1. Sure thing. The glove never fits. The jury generally acquits. And in the rare event that it doesn't, sentences are commuted, or charges are completely vacated. So ~1.

When it comes to POC and police trials, there is no dual reality. There is death for POC and acquittal for the POB (people of blue).

Wouldja just look at us! We are busting science wide open! POC outchere proving superposition and shit.

*shrugs*

Joe Medicine Crow - shining just beyond the common man's sight

I read the story of the death of Joe Medicine Crow with tears in my eyes. I cannot tell you why......or maybe I can. Medicine Crow represents something. Or he should. 

Here are five thoughts that floated through my mind as I read his story.

1. Joe Medicine Crow represents the last of a particular stripe of man. He was the last man in his tribe to successfully complete the requirements to become a war chief of his tribe. There are specific requirements to become the chief and Joe, without intending to do so in some instances, completed them all. From the article, 

"During World War II, when he was a scout for the 103rd Infantry in Europe, he strode into battle wearing war paint beneath his uniform and a yellow eagle feather inside his helmet. So armed, he led a mission through German lines to procure ammunition. He helped capture a German village and disarmed — but didn’t kill — an enemy soldier. And, in the minutes before a planned attack, he set off a stampede of 50 horses from a Nazi stable, singing a traditional Crow honor song as he rode away."

Maybe he meant to complete the requirements, or maybe, those requirements were so deeply ingrained; were so much a part of who he was, that completing them was inevitable? How many more like him are there? How many of us have who we are so deeply engraved into our DNA? How much has our approach to Native culture robbed us of access to that strength and those character traits?

Medicine Crow was the last of a certain kind of man and he was our last bridge to a particular tradition. He was a war chief, a writer and an activist and while there are others who are each of these, even some who are two of these, there are no more who are all of these in his tribe, and quite possibly, in any tribe.

2. Joe Medicine Crow represents the distance we have yet to travel between the Trail of Tears and equality. Bear in mind that it was only 7 years ago that he was recognized with a Medal of Honor for his lifetime's worth of activism, storytelling, and serving as griot for his tradition and his people. His death serves as a stark reminder of how far we have yet to go to arrive at a place of true equality and just treatment because.....

3. In the year that Joe Medicine Crow died, we had the images and events of the Oceti Sakowin Camp and the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.

In the year that Joe Medicine Crow died, we saw dogs and hoses turned on peaceful Native protesters (water protectors) in the dead of winter.

Water protectors drenched by water cannons @ Standing Rock
Stephanie Keith / Reuters

4. In the year that Joe Medicine Crow died, we have seen flagrant desecration of sacred land and the trampling of treaty rights in the quest for profit.

5. In the year that Joe Medicine Crow died the past served once again, as prologue.

Look closely at yourself America. Do you like what you see?

Five hundred+ years removed from Columbus’ ‘discovery’ of America, one might hope that Native Americans - Joe Medicine Crow's people - would finally be seen and respected as fully American. And yet, we are still not there yet.

Medicine Crow's death signals the end of an era as such deaths always do. His death also signifies that the new era has yet to begin...or perhaps it has, just beyond our view? Perhaps men like Gyasi Ross and David Archambault II are made in the same tradition and are doing similar work? Perhaps there are plenty of others whose names we (I) do not yet know?

What we do know is that US history is yet to turn the corner....a corner that Medicine Crow and men and women like him tried to bring us to. US history is yet to come to terms with its claim that "All men are created equal" or "with liberty and justice for all". 'All' not some, not some are more equal than others, but all. Equal. No provisos. 

The 102 years that Crow lived may have been enough to build railroads, an interstate system, the institutions of 'democracy', an internet, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitter and myriad multinational businesses and industries and the largest economy on the planet, and yet it was not quite enough time for America to live out its creed; for Native people to realize all the rights of citizenship. Some things take longer than others I guess. How how long exactly is equality gonna take? 102 years and counting. 500 years and counting. 

The life of Joe Medicine Crow, is a love song no, a life song of and to his nation, to all nations and especially to this one that still has not quite got it. 

In spite of every dishonorable thing done to him personally or to his people generally, he fought for this country….the country of dogs and water cannons in mid-winter 2016. More than a hundred years after his birth, this is still the nation of dogs and the water cannons. 

In 2016, we said fare-thee-well to an inordinate number of 'stars'. But what is stardom? With all due respect to the famous, Medicine Crow's death is a clear reminder that some of our brightest stars have shone and burned out just beyond the common man's sight. 

May his spirit travel safely on.

Survival of the Fittest: the Trump Years

When next you hear someone claiming that "We will survive" or "I will survive" the Trump years because others have survived worse in the past consider this: 'we' certainly will survive but 'we' won't all make it to the other side. 

Here's how I know......

1. Thirty years ago, there was the piss poor HIV/AIDS response, and still we survived
HIV positive people survived Ronald Reagan's cavalier attitude to the early appearance of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Reagan himself is said to have laughed off the growing crisis and Mrs. Reagan turned her back on longtime friend Rock Hudson when he was diagnosed.

St. Ronnie and his administration laughed off the crisis, kinda like the President-elect laughs off climate change. The world was slow to recognize the gravity of the situation (then as now) or to begin working on treatment and prevention protocols. The greater 'we' certainly survived, but we haven't all made to the other side have we? The AIDS quilt is proof of that fact.

2. Thirty years later, there's Flint & Standing Rock, and we will yet survive
In Flint, as in Standing Rock, calls for a potable water supply have been shrugged off. In Flint, early alarms raised by pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Atisha were shrugged off as "data" (which apparently is a bad thing). It was more than twelve months before anything like an admission was forthcoming from the powers that be. That probably explains why there are now public officers facing felony charges.

Ultimately, the greater 'we' will survive the Flint crisis, but the children of Flint will not survive unharmed. Lead poisoning has lifetime consequences and we can be assured that they won't get the financial, emotional and/or educational support they will need. 

Thirty years from now, Flint's children will be struggling to find their way, Governor Snyder will be long gone, and we will all have conveniently forgotten what malfeasance and classist + racist Republican politics visited upon them.

So yes....
The greater 'we' will survive, but some of us won't make it to the other side: lives will be shortened, prospects will be dimmed or lost, families will be destroyed. 

We are entering an era of conservatism. Remember where the last one left us? 'Compassionate conservatism' my ass. There's an ox and a moron (oxymoron) if ever I heard one!

Did Black folk survive Jim Crow and slavery? Yes they did, but ask the good people at EJI (Equal Justice Initiative) how many people were murdered by mobs. How many lynching sites are they now trying to recognize? How many victims are they trying to remember and recognize? How many Neil deGrasse Tysons did we lose? How many Hadiyah-Nicole Greens?

Did Jews survive the Holocaust? Yes, they did, but ask any Jewish friend how many of their relatives didn't make it. How many Elie Wiesels did we lose? How many Anne Franks?

Did Native Americans survive the Trail of Tears? Yes indeed, but talk to an elder about the stories of loss. How many Joe Medicine Crows did we lose? How many Elouise Cobbells?

When we say "We will survive" we're also saying that a survival of the fittest approach is acceptable. It isn't; we're saying that entirely preventable human losses are acceptable. They aren't. 

Preventable losses are a criminal waste of human potential. We're in a compassionately conservative time. Brace yourself. This version of 'compassion' will leave some of us dead. We will not all make it. Sorry to be the harbinger of those sad tidings. 

Can you hear me now?

I see and hear people's pain over the outcome of this election, and as much as I too am pained, I want to scream, "Can you facking hear me now?!" It's a bizarre thing to be caught between Schandenfreude and grief.

If, as a nation, we hadn't made such a practice of marginalizing people and then dismissing their wailings; if we hadn't made such a practice of enshrining our bigotries in law and social practice, we might have avoided this pass. But no, being ugly to those not like us is what we do; it's who we are and so here we are. How're you liking the view so far?

There's plenty of talk about identity politics now in the post-election period but what is that exactly? Is that expressing concern for and crafting solutions to the problems of specific groups? Cuz that just sounds like 'politics' to me but I could be wrong about that. It seems to me that the only reason we would need identity politics is if we still believe that some identities are more equal than others......but I could be wrong. Identity politics is the name we've come up with for the politics that gives a shat about non-white people. 

Rather than attend to the needs of the working and middle classes broadly, politicians have been scrambling to attract one segment or another by offering goodies and benefits and subtly downplaying the legitimacy of other groups' demands. We run a zero sum politic that results in a nearly-zero-for-everybody-but-the-one-percent outcome and then act all surprised when folk retreat and vote along tribal lines? 

My assessment reamins that our troubles go back to our original sin (which I've already written is not slavery but White supremacy). Our refusal to treat every citizen/resident equally has had and will continue to have consequences but we are committed to our three monkeys approach....because it's working so very well!

We will not face the issue of race like adults. We run from the challenges like an African distance runner closing in on the finish line of a marathon: with a burst of incomprehensible speed, racing as if there were a gold medal awaiting us at the finish line. Hint: there ain't, but carry on.

As a nation, we're yet to accept that all citizens are equal. Oh we talk about "with liberty and justice for all" but those are empty words. They have absolutely no meaning and they never have in this society. When have we ever tried to live them out? Name me an era. We talk about them but we have zero interest in putting them into practice.

This nation started from a place of inequity, dismissal and oppression. The Naturalization Act of 1790 opened the door to immigration to "any alien" who was "a free white person". That's where America's ideas about who could be American began and while much has changed, we continue to weaponize our bigotries [i] every chance we get. 

And so now, when I see latte liberals [ii] sounding the alarum bells, beating their breasts and wailing about what these next 4 (8?) years will bring, all I really want to say is, "Welp, I guess you can hear me now huh? Shoulda heard me sooner. Shoulda stood up for the right thing sooner. And now, we can watch what little we've achieved be destroyed together. You comfy? You got popcorn? Cuz the show is about to start."

And if your takeaway is that I blame mealy-mouthed liberality for the pass in which we now find ourselves, you would be correct in your assessment. 

The responsibility for pushing back on ignorance was not the sole purview of POC, but it was left to them primarily. The responsibility for handling bigoted aunts, uncles, mothers and/or fathers was not POC's but you did not take it up. The responsibility to purge Town Councils, Boards of Education, PTAs and leadership councils of all kinds of gross racists and racialized policy-making was not ours alone but those best placed to repudiate hate simply did not stand up in large enough numbers. Rather than stand and call ugliness out, some of y'all chuckled quietly behind your hands and enjoyed the warmth and comfort of your privilege. Welp, I guess you can hear me now, huh? I guess you had to have some skin in the game before you felt a need to play. Well the court is all yours. Lemme see whatchu got. 
  

From http://bennorton.com/mlk-on-white-moderates/

It is, as MLK Jr first said in his Letter from A Birmingham Jail: the White moderates' approach to the slow liberation of minorities is more harmful to progress than the intolerance and angry resistance of the bigot. Why? Because the coddling of bigots made bigotry feel welcome rather than loathed and in the damp and welcoming space you gave it, it grew. And so, here we are. Now, that there are acts of ugliness everywhere, I guess you can hear me now huh? Cool!

Still, I don't expect your newfound awareness to redound to my benefit in the long run. When the shit hits the proverbial fan, I'm pretty sure you're gonna do what you have always done: retreat into the comfort of your privilege leaving me, my kith and my kin to fend for ourselves. Self-preservation and all that. I hear you Boo. 's OK.

Note to self: nothing much has changed since 1963. Many are still moderate and me & mine are still Black.

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[i] weaponized bigotry: public policy that enshrines bigoted beliefs into actionable steps to keep people of color locked into circumstances that limit their options and progress

[ii] Liberals who want me to believe that they and I share a philosophy but only as long as that philosophy ignores all notions of intersectionality. So should I wish to discuss my pocket book issues in reference to or in conjunction with my race, my gender, my sexual orientation, my gender identity or my national origin, the question will likely be asked, “Why you gotta bring into it??”

Democracy is work

What is this thing called democracy? How easy is it to create, to sustain? What are the factors that undermine it, strengthen it? These are the things I've been forced to think about since election night turned out way differently than I'd expected. 

Here are a few thoughts I've had about the fragility of democracy since that night. 

1. Every democracy is an experiment. Sometimes experiments fail, abysmally

We don't talk about this enough, nor do we respect this notion enough, but every democracy is a series of experiments. Every time we go to the voting booth, we are saying (and actively doing) something about democracy. We're taking control of it and staking our claim to it. When we fail to participate, we're doing precisely the opposite. When we shrug and walk away, we leave the door open to those whose version of democracy is anything but democratic. Those people are motivated. They show up every time. Those who have opposing views must be equally so.

It's tough to overstate how easy it is for this experiment in democracy to fail completely. With every tweet, every Thank You rally utterance, we are given further reason to question PEOTUS's suitability for high office, but we stumble on. We must. 

The American election process gives us an escape hatch in the form of so-called faithless electors of the Electoral College, but I'm pretty sure we won't use it (and, unsurprisingly, we didn't) but even if we had, then what? We would then have been in completely uncharted waters if the required 37 electors had said “Nay” to the Donald. 

And so we're a-stumblin' on because the people have spoken, though to whom and what exactly they said is an open question. 

The experiment continues. 

Whether the experiment will ultimately prove successful remains to be seen. 

2. Functional democracy? We have one of those?

This US democracy[i] may have been around for 240 years but it's not perfect; it never was, attestations to the contrary notwithstanding. After two centuries one might think that most of the kinks would have been worked out by now. Not so, mon cher! Equal rights? We're just not there yet. Equal justice remains a (largely elusive) dream; Civil Rights for people of color are barely 50 years old and are being undermined every year; equal marriage recognition is barely two years old - and could easily go away with the 'right' appointment to the SCOTUS; and the rights of LGBTQI people are still not completely protected under the law and such protections as do exist can be easily undermined; and prisoners are still technically enslaved and that's upheld by the Constitution. And that's after 240 years. 

Real democracy isn't like evolution, moving from one stage to the next, pushed on by necessity. No, democracy is art and with an unskilled painter, the outcome is no Mona Lisa. 

A relatively functional democracy is what the majority of Americans have always known. Because of that, none of us has any idea what it takes to establish this thing we call democracy from scratch; what it takes to create something from nothing. 

We've never had to consider that process before since we discovered our democracy in relatively good working order (hence the italicization of the word democracy) and generation after generation has mostly left it in slightly better order. Our job, generally, has been to 'perfect' the union not create it; mind the store not build a startup. Four years from now, things might be  a little different.

We look at places like Grenada, Syria, Iraq, Libya  and much of Latin America (places, coincidentally, where our government has had a hand in destabilizing or removing governments) and cast aspersions on the character and will of the people and their leaders to establish a lasting peace, a shared prosperity and a participatory democracy. We've had the temerity to judge others' efforts at establishing democracy when we haven't the first clue what it takes to create political and social order out of chaos. We have no idea what it takes to rebuild a failed democracy, especially one broken by an authoritarian, but we may be about to find out. 

Let's hope that our years of sneering at others don't come back to bite us in the arse.

3. When it comes to democracies, 'functional' ain't the default setting

We've been lulled into a false sense of security thinking that after 240 years, 'functional' was the default setting on our democracy and that all we had to do was (i) show up from time to time (even if halfheartedly); (ii) depend on the news media for factual information and all would be well. Those days are over. 'Functional' isn't the default. There is no default. If we want functional democracy, we're going to have to work for it. Hard. Every day.

We've presumed that what obtained yesterday - politically-speaking - would necessarily obtain tomorrow, because We Are America! We've assumed that what we were experiencing was the baseline; the low water mark. We've assumed that gains, once made, were permanent. Yeah, NO. 

My great takeaway from this election is this: democracy is not sustained by the disinterested. You have to show up. For every one just barely interested citizen, there are at least two or three passionately engaged folk whose aims are direct opposition to your barely interested aims, so the onus is on both sides to show up, and may the bigger side win. 

Those who object to growing freedoms are eternally vigilant, concerned as they are about the erosion of their standards of decency. They stand ever ready for a fight. Those who complain about big government and social programs - but never about the ginormity of the defense budget somehow - are registered to vote and show up at the polls without being asked or coaxed. Those who object to rights for LGBTQI persons; protections for criminals/suspects in police custody; recognition of rights for undocumented persons and all manner of other things, have no trouble getting involved. Democracy is a fight between ideas. If one side fails to show up, its ideas won't see the light of day. It's really that simple. Worse still, if one side fails to show up, there are no longer any guarantees of good faith actions on the part of the other side. cf North Carolina's legislature this past week.

Tomorrow, as people of faith are fond of saying, is not promised, yeah well, neither is democracy. Tomorrow's democracy is the work of today's participants in the democratic process.  If you want democracy tomorrow, you'd better show up today.

The election of 2016 has proven to me that we have casually and cavalierly presumed that democracy would continue without our express efforts to ensure same. We now have proof that it will not. 

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[i] The word democracy is italicized because so much that has occurred here in the last 240 years really is the antithesis of democratic. 

A Knowing

The point of creating stuff for others' consumption is to move the needle; to bend the arc of history as it were. History's arc, as I wrote a few weeks ago, does not bend on its own. Effort must be made. And so, writers write; musicians compose; artists paint; jewelers create; sculptors sculpt; impresarios create shows that bring various works together to generate thought, thought being the parent to action.  

All the writing and speaking of writers, comedians, musicians and thinkers of all stripes - color and otherwise - can bear no fruit if the land in which we plant is uncultivable; barren. Until the land upon which the seed falls is fertile, nothing will grow. 

I really want to believe that the land isn't uncultivable. I want to believe that the land is in fact rich and fertile, so fertile that even before the seeds are planted, the land knows what it must do. The land knows, likewise, the minds into which writers and artists attempt to pour their seeds already know the truth.

So the question is to be asked: why then is there so much resistance to the knowing? Why so much resistance to new knowledge? Why so much resistance to hearing a perspective that differs from your own?

A brilliant friend of mine suggested that there was a 'collective dissociation' at work with denialists. "As human beings on an individual level, we can dissociate from the awful things that might happen to us or things we might do [or might have done]", he suggested. "That dissociation", he went on to say "is like psychic amputation [severing the self from the act]. If this can happen individually, it sure as hell can happen collectively." This behavior is an act of psychic self-preservation. 

White supremacy knows what it has done. Supremacy knows what evil it has perpetrated and in whose name such evils have been perpetrated. Supremacy knows, but those who have benefited most from those acts don't want to. An entire industry of denialism[1] has sprung up to separate the beneficiaries from the roots of their benefits. Those who have even a passing understanding of the history really don't want to see in full; they don't want to hear the truth. And even before they've seen or heard the truth, they want to be absolved of all responsibility. They want the sweet comfort of forgiveness and forget-ness well before there is any acknowledgement of wrongdoing. This is why there is so much White fragility. No one wants to be confronted with the truth. And when confronted, ytpipo would rather say, as Tomi Lahren did on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, "What has the KKK done?". The rest of y’all ask, "What have I done, I never owned slaves?" when the truth is that what you want to say is, "Actually, you know what, I don't want to know, just forgive me and let's forget it. That's all so long ago, it hardly matters any more!"

Some of us have so dissociated from historical truth that we are now able to deny its very existence. You deny genocide; you deny brutality, even yesterday's, claiming that it was too long in the past to matter. You deny verifiable facts because we weren't ringside when they occurred. All of which allows you to pretend that we live in a perfect equal and just world......and then a man caught on videotape shooting a fleeing Black man in the back and then staging the crime scene gets a hung jury and your center cannot hold. But still you deny. Still you dissemble and split hairs. "We don't know what came before (the bits we see on video)!", you bellow, because you are convinced that something that happened out of sight is justification enough for what you do see.

Having learned to deny the realities of history, and hell, the realities you see on video, those ‘realities’ no longer exist. There are no more facts. Didn't one of the President-Elect's surrogates say exactly that? Facts no longer exist. The truth is no longer a thing. Supremacy has created an entire narrative that gives its adherents plausible deniability of real, provable facts never mind that that denial is simply not plausible.

My friend hypothesized that "deep in the psyche of every racist [sic] person is a knowing. Their psyches know that their views and potential actions are detrimental to other human beings." A knowing. We know when what we're saying dehumanizes or otherwise negatively impacts others. We know. 

We know when the policy we're advocating harms one group more than others as was the case with the surgically precise targeting of 'voter ID' laws in SC. We know. We know when our deals will likely negatively impact clean air or water supply but still we wail about the importance of such projects as Keystone XL and DAPL.  We know. We just don't care. Or perhaps it is that we do know and the outcome is precisely what we secretly want but we have good sense enough not to say so out loud? 

The problem, at the end of the day, is not the knowing, it's the caring and if you live in a land of intellectual dishonesty, you are predisposed not to care. You're quite content to demonize, otherize and dehumanize. Your issue isn't dissonance, it's dishonesty. 

Perhaps the land is, in fact, uncultivable. There are no words that I (or anyone else) can write to make another person care. The work required to reach a place of caring is not mine to do. I cannot write you a soul. That is work entirely yours to do. Good luck.

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[1] Industry of denialism: that would be the media – both traditional and non – whose entire raison d’être is to present a fiction-based narrative that counters lived reality. Who are the greatest prponents of this alternate reality? The Tomi Lahrens; Alex Joneses and Fox ‘News’-types