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

What we do, who we are

What do the following five examples have in common? George Stinney (15), killed June 14, 1944;  Emmett Till (14), killed August 28, 1955; the Birmingham Church Bombing four, killed September 15. 1963; Tamir Rice (12), killed November 23, 2014; Tyre King (13), September 14, 2016? The obvious answer of course is that they were all children and they were all murdered by 'real Americans': adults men, and that there was little to no remorse shown by any of the criminals. At some point as a nation, we might want to ask ourselves why these children were killed and why we feel so little shame at their deaths.

It is hard to conceive of adults murdering children. It should be. It is not natural, and yet, through America's history, this very thing has occurred again and again. I recently read a brief description of the lynching of an eight-month pregnant victim. You would think that the victim's belly alone would have given folk pause but you would be wrong. Basic human decency simply didn't apply to people such as her. Whatever her 'crime', her baby had to pay the price as well. Bad luck for the kid I guess.  

The majority in this country has, for hundreds of years, been perfectly at peace with the murder and/or brutalization of innocents. That is not hyperbole, it is a simple statement of fact. People have died in this country as a result of suspicion; lies; whispers; arrogance; running, standing still; getting lost; seeking aid after an accident; reading a book; being. Any of these, could be an offense punishable by death. And that's as true today as it was during slavery. As a nation, we have stood by and shrugged our collective shoulders and said, "Meh" every time.

What is that? What is that? That is the American psyche built on the bones and graves of slaves and First People. We built that and if we ever want the bloodletting to end, we're going to have to demolish it, brick by brick. First of all though, we'll need to acknowledge it as truth. Yeah, good luck with that. 

For all the writing and preaching of people of color, I am very clear that this is not our problem to fix. We ain't build it, it ain't ours to disassemble. Oh it's certainly our house to inhabit but this edifice is not ours to repair or demolish. And therein lies the problem. 

When I burn my hand, I remove it from the source of heat and take immediate remedial action. When I cut my finger, I put down the knife, inspect the wound and take appropriate remedial action. When I burn your hand or cut your finger though, my responses are apt to be very different. I can either empathize or I shrug and walk away. In America we've become experts at shrugging and walking away, For 400 years we've been shrugging and walking away, denying aid and then blaming the dead for burning or bleeding to death. This is what we do. This is who we are. 

Here's the truth: there is something wrong with a whole lot of us and until we accept that, we're not going to be able to fix it. It's not that some of us don't care about others, it is that some of us can't. There is a huge empty space where our empathy should reside and that vacuum was first created all the way back in initial crucible of the Native genocide and hardened in the second crucible of the plantation. 

The reality is that we had to learn to feel nothing if we were to be comfortable with what our country has done to marginalized people for 500 years. We had to learn to accept the brutality that our government routinely meted and metes out to others in the 'best interests of America'.We had to learn that our interests trump everyone else's humanity and we have to continue to feel nothing in the face of a multitude of wrongs being done on our behalf every day. Flint? Rampant poverty - urban and rural? Repeated environmental catastrophes caused by oil companies? It's all okay with us as long as the trouble doesn't actually impact us directly. This is what we do. This is who we are. 

We have been living the Stanford Prison experiment but there's no off switch, there's no way to quit the experiment early. 

Artwork by Patrick Campbell

In the Stanford experiment, students - acting as guards - humiliated and harassed other students playing the roles of 'prisoners'. "Often, the guards operated without explicit, moment-to-moment instructions. [sic] Occasionally, disputes between prisoner and guards got out of hand, violating an explicit injunction against physical force that both prisoners and guards had read prior to enrolling in the study. When the “superintendent” and “warden” overlooked these incidents, the message to the guards was clear: all is well; keep going as you are" (from this New Yorker article available here). This is America today.  This is what we do. This is who we are.

We've been doing Stanford all over America for several generations, and we're clearly intent on doing it for several more. We have been brutalizing segments of our population and then blaming them for their victimhood. What our behavior bespeaks is a complete lack of moral responsibility or social conscience. This is who we are. 

We continue to be content to kill children, men and women, young and old without benefit of trial or even arrest because there is something very wrong with a whole lot of us. and if you don't believe me, read some of Colin Kaepernick's twitter feed.

We're less outraged about deaths in custody and death while being taken into custody than we are about athletes taking a knee during the playing of the anthem. We're more concerned about folk respecting the flag than we are about respecting the people living under that flag. Why? Because something is very wrong with a whole lot of us and we need treatment. STAT. This is who we are. 

Benign Neglect

I’ve been doing some guided introspection recently and I’ve come to the conclusion that difficult situations at home (in our childhood) lead to difficulties in adulthood. This is hardly new, but I think that in a nation awash in crime and some of it terribly violent, perhaps that simple truism is one we need to take out and inspect and see how we might be able to make a change for the next generation.

Picture this: A man and woman get together and have children. Everything is honky dory until it isn’t anymore and the man (or woman) walks out. He remains in the country but makes no attempt to see his children or to support them in any way. The woman on the other hand, is still ‘on the hook’ so to speak. Unfortunately, she now has full fiscal and emotional responsibility for the children and must make it all work. What mechanisms are there in the legal system in Trinidad & Tobago to make her life a little easier? I’m asking this now because of an article I read just yesterday in which a young man (John) indicated that his father (an addict and generally unfocussed fella) left his family of 5 when the children were all quite young. John went on to point out that that abandonment had not only the inevitable consequences for the children in terms of the loss of the father figure, but also had the consequence of creating an environment of ‘benign neglect’ on the part of their mother. I thought to myself, “Interesting”.

If we consider the circumstances we realize that really, benign neglect is probably the low end of what’s likely to happen. When a family originally created by two, must be supported by one that is a big deal. It’s a huge responsibility. Think about it. The remaining parent is responsible for every bill, every meal, every school meeting, every pick up and every drop off, every everything. In a small country like Trinidad or Tobago, maybe Granny or Papa can pitch in, but that doesn’t lessen the burden of worry. The pressure is still always on this one person. Think of it this way, when sick people lie in bed in the same position every day, the pressure causes the development of bedsores. What I think we’re seeing now in Trinidad & Tobago is the ‘bedsores’ that family pressure has created.

So that brings me to the laws of T&T and child support. I would venture to guess (and I assure you I have no empirical evidence to support the following claim but it seems to make sense to me) that many of the young people out there making bassa bassa and generally causing commess in the place, are the children of fractured families where one person had to do the job of two and obviously didn’t do a perfect job. While I don’t completely exonerate the remaining parent, I can’t blame him/her alone if the children get into difficulty. Frankly, I blame a society that hasn’t yet figured out that if we could take a wee bit of pressure off the single parent household, we might eventually lower the crime rate, raise the high school graduation rates and lower the rates of homelessness and hopelessness.

Parents who spend their entire lives angry or antsy or anxious about one thing after the other after the other, are not the best parents. How can they be? What emotional resources do they have left with which to parent after they've battled their way through the day? It seems very simple and straightforward to me that the more relaxed a mother is about her bills being paid, the more relaxed she is period and the more of a chance she and her children have of having a healthy home life. How does this have an impact on the crime statistics? I would guess that children raised in homes where ‘benign neglect’ is not a factor, are on a shorter leash. The chances of them getting into wrong company or just getting in trouble, are lower. That’s what we should be working towards. There must be someone at UWI who has the research to support (or refute) my hypothesis. Is there any correlation between socio-economic status and criminal behavior? Seems obvious to me but me ent no Sociologist, never mind what the degree paper says. Perhaps empirical proof may be just the fillip needed to get laws on the books to make absent parents contribute financially to their children’s ongoing care. Unfortunately, there are no laws that can be enacted to compel parents to parent. We have to leave that to conscience.

As a nation we would also do well to establish and fund the kinds of social safety nets that can lift the least of us, since by doing so we will have lifted all of us. It’s all well and good to talk about crime and talk about praying for things to change, but I think it would serve us all better though to start “thinking outside the box”. Indeed, we may want to toss the proverbial box away entirely and look for solutions that are well outside the norm, solutions that will not necessarily bring results tomorrow or next week.

At the end of the day what I’m saying simply is that child support should be required for non-custodial parents, and that support should be efficiently supported by government social services for those in need. The mathematics is simple: child support makes the children’s lives better, not perfect, just a bit better. Support means that the little things: three new ribbons, a nice Christmas present, an extra snack in the lunch kit, heck, the lunch kit, can be bought without something else having to go undone or unpaid. It’s only fair and reasonable and certainly, it’s preferable to doing nothing and letting the chirren run wild, benignly neglected by their mothers and malignantly neglected by the social system in which they grow up.

A thought for your consideration on this Father's Day.

David, Whoopi and Me

David Carradine died early this morning, or late last night, apparently by his own hand. I am sure that some writer will posit that this was unnecessary because his career was experiencing a resurgence (he was in Bangkok, Thailand working on a movie). But perhaps while on the outside this looked to be a resurgent career, on his insides it was already too late. We will probably never know what specific trigger caused him to take this action, but we do know the outcome. That much is not in doubt.

There are a couple of things about this situation that are distressing to me. First of all, he was the Kung Fu Master, from whom one expected a certain zen-like calm about the storms of life. Even though, I understand that that was a persona he inhabited only for several hours a day nearly 30 years ago, one tends to imbue stars with the traits of the characters they play. Forgive me then my cognitive dissonance on that score.

Another facet of this scenario that is disquieting, is the report of the long lulls in his career. Just this morning on The View, I heard Whoopi Goldberg say that sometimes you come to a point where the work has so dried up that you’ll do just about anything. (She went on to say in her usual acerbic fashion, you'll do anything that is, except taking up a spot on the corner, ‘cuz that’s so tiring. To that I reply: "Honey, I hear ya!")

Here is the nexus point between me, David and Whoopi: sometimes all you really want is for someone to just give you a chance. You want to scream, “Let me in the door and I’ll knock your socks off. Just let me in the door!” As a person who has had to look for a job a time or two thousand, I totally understand what it is to be frustrated. I’m fortunate not to understand desperation, but then I have no child to feed or mortgage to pay. Moreover, although I do have a retirement to think about, I’m pretending that the time I’m losing now I’ll make up later (when I’m making oodles of dollars). I’m also fortunate to have other resources – financial, emotional, spiritual and intellectual – but what if I didn’t? Had David run low or was he all out?

And so here we are. The Kung Fu Master is gone because he, like so many others I fear, was running on empty.