Sunday, October 23, 2016
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Friday, September 30, 2016
Providence, pass the Community Safety Act
This was my testimony on Wednesday night September 28th, at the East Side neighborhood meeting on the Community Safety Act (CSA) here in Providence. The East Side is a predominantly white part of the city, and the goal was to convey to our elected officials that people here care deeply about having an accountable police force and criminal justice system that both reflects and respects all the people who live within it.
***********************************
In thousands of households around the country
tonight, there are young black men receiving “The Talk” from someone who loves
them. It is happening in Charlotte. It is happening in Tulsa. It is happening in Providence. It is happening in wealthy families, poor
families, middle class families. It is
happening in the homes of black policemen.
It has happened, generation over generation, throughout the entire
history of this country. Attorney
General Eric Holder, who is black, got the talk from his father when he was
young – and he recently gave it to his own son.
Eric Holder, who was until recently the highest-ranking law enforcement
official in the United States.
Does everyone know what I mean by ‘the Talk’? I am white.
My 10 year old son lives here on the East Side with us. I doubt it ever occurred to my father to give
me The Talk. The fact that I know some
of my son’s school friends have already received it, and that he will never
have to, horrifies me. This conveys a
message to our children, about who we are – and who they are. It is not a message that is consistent with
any of our faith traditions, or the best of our national ones. It tells us, in the words of black writer Ta
Nehisi-Coates, that “something went very wrong, long ago…something we are
scared to see straight. That something
has very little to do with the officer on the beat and everything to do with
ourselves.”
Our society has tolerated the conditions
which have necessitated The Talk -- even encouraged them – for centuries. In modern societies the state, at all levels,
has a monopoly on violence. In American history, that monopoly has
consistently been used to contain black people, and to protect white people and
their property. It was true under slavery, when access to arms by white
individuals and white militias was 'needed' to deter and suppress slave
rebellions, and to chase down fugitive slaves. It was true out West in
the 19th century, when the state used its military power (and granted white
citizens related power) to displace and destroy native economies and peoples.
It was true in the Jim Crow South, where the primary role of police
forces (and of the 2nd amendment) was first and foremost to reinforce the
racial order. And as blacks moved to Northern cities by the millions
1910-1970, the job of all-white urban police forces in black neighborhoods was
to maintain racial boundaries in housing and public spaces; they were generally
absent when needed, and abusive when present. Virtually every Northern
black protest movement of the 1960s -- and virtually every riot -- began with a
focus on police brutality.
Whether conscious or not (and for most of our
history, it was very much conscious), this has been the clear will of white
Americans for most of our history. The injustice of this, Coates
tells us, “compounds, congeals until there is an almost tangible sense of dread
and grievance that compels a community to understand the police as objects of
fear, not respect.” When Officer Timothy
Loehmann got away with murdering a 12-year-old Tamir Rice, white Americans may
have believed it was aberrational, however awful – but it was consistent with
generations of black experience.
The problem, ultimately, is a deep one.
When police officers encounter citizens of
color, they do so in a situation that white Americans have spent decades
constructing and defending. Too many
whites hide (literally as well as morally) from the consequences of their
complicity behind housing segregation, and explain away what they can’t ignore
with platitudes about black criminality and white innocence.
Our 'policing problem' is really a societal
problem. A policy problem. A white problem. Cops don't make policy. Citizens do.
You can't ask people to do the dirty work of white privilege, and then
blame them for being dirty.
Just last week, the head of the
Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division – the entity tasked with
investigating the police departments in Ferguson, Baltimore, and other cities –
told a legal symposium that “Unconstitutional policing undermines community
trust.” “Blanket assumptions and
stereotypes about certain neighborhoods and certain communities can lead
residents to see the justice system as illegitimate and authorities as
corrupt. Those perceptions can drive
resentment. And resentment can prevent
the type of effective policing needed to keep communities and officers safe.”
In many black and Latino
communities today, police derive their power solely from the force they
deploy. This is dangerous to those being
policed, but it is ultimately dangerous to do those doing the policing
too. A liberal democracy, a society
based on the rule of law, will not long survive if all the law represents is
brute force.
If the police are seen as having no
legitimacy in certain communities -- as having a license to exercise power that
is arbitrary, capricious, and unaccountable -- they will be increasingly seen
as an occupying force, and mistrust and resistance to them will be seen as
legitimate. Endangered and ineffective, police will focus more and more
on force protection, and will have implicit and explicit biases confirmed,
further delegitimizing their authority. Whites, fearful that the
'criminality' in black communities will threaten them, will enact policies that
make the situation worse. This is not
where we are in Providence. Not yet.
White Americans have never lived under those
conditions, not in the past, and not now. That is why white Americans of
good will have to learn their history, they have to listen as empathetically as
they can, and they have to act.
The CSA is an important and powerful step in
the right direction for Providence, and I fully support it.
No competent professional should fear a
system of accountability, as long as there is adequate training and due
process, and the system of accountability is evidence-based. In fact,
they should welcome it. It buttresses and legitimates their authority,
and it ensures that they are surrounded by other professionals who know what
they're doing, enabling them to be more safe and effective.
Let us create a Providence in which the
generations to come never need to give or receive The Talk, and in which police
officers of all backgrounds can do the people’s will safely, effectively, and
justly.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
"These white folks, they think the world belongs to them": Charleston, Race, and Forgiveness
In the wake of Dylann Roof's racial terrorism in Charleston last week, many Americans were profoundly touched by the forgiveness extended to Roof by the victims' families at his bond hearing. I was too.
Anthony Thompson, the grandson of victim Myra Thompson, told Roof, “I forgive you, my family forgives you.” Others made sure he knew of their pain and suffering, but extended the same forgiveness.
Today, two African-American writers, Kiese Laymon and Stacey Patton, tried to understand these events within the larger context of the nation's bloody racial history. Laymon's reflections are intensely personal, while Patton's are largely political.
Both of these extraordinary pieces, each in their own way, questions whether white America is worthy of forgiveness -- and whether the granting of forgiveness by black Americans, repeatedly, contributes more to black shame and white blindness than it does to justice. “These white folks, they think the world belongs to them," Kiese Laymon's grandmother lamented in the wake of the Charleston murders. And, he implies later in the piece, white folks think they live outside of history, which means beyond accountability or responsibility. The articles should be read together -- and, white people, you really should read them. Particularly if you identify as a Christian.
As for what I think of all of this, its hard to say. I am white, I'm not a Christian, and I have no faith to test in this circumstance, save perhaps the one I barely hold in the basic goodness of human beings. I do think that perhaps whites should stop asking for forgiveness, stop expecting it, and stop taking some sort of redemptive pleasure when it is genuinely offered by black people.
Patton, in her piece, acknowledges that black acts of forgiveness have always been a form of protest as well as self-preservation -- a soul-shout against being a victim, a way to expunge anger, and to tell the oppressor that they are still standing. But she also notes that the constant white demand for black forgiveness is yet another burden black Americans have always had to carry, one imposed as much by the persistence of white supremacy as by the tenets of Christian faith. White atonement in our unequal society seems to need black forgiveness first, and Patton wonders whether that is just or sustainable.
Laymon wonders what it would look like for truth to really be set free: "What I do know is that love reckons with the past and evil reminds us to look to the future. Evil loves tomorrow because peddling in possibility is what abusers do. At my worst, I know that I’ve wanted the people that I’ve hurt to look forward, imagining all that I can be and forgetting the contours of who I have been to them." Laymon worries that if blacks are too quick to forgive, they will perpetuate this white blindness, and thus their own suffering: "We will heavy-handedly help in our own deception and moral obliteration. We will forget how much easier it is to talk about gun control, mental illness and riots than it is to talk about the moral and material consequences of manufactured white American innocence."
To even be worthy of forgiveness -- if that is something important -- it is clear that white America MUST look backward, into history, and then walk forward again, understanding how much of who we are (and aren't) today is constituted by that past. To do otherwise, to ask, in effect, 'why do they keep bringing up the past?, is, as Laymon notes, to act like an abuser. As Claudia Rankine put it recently, "history’s authority over us is not broken by maintaining a silence about its continued effects." White atonement must have its own movement, its own logic. And then, if black forgiveness comes to us -- like the grace it resembles -- so be it. With Lincoln, we might fondly hope and pray that this "mighty scourge" of slavery and its poisonous legacy will "speedily pass away." But nothing disappears when we close our eyes. Other than our ability to see.
Historian Nell Painter, in a thoughtful New York Times piece this past weekend, noted that the meaning of 'whiteness' in the present tends to be binary: racist, or empty. Today, at least, most white Americans embrace racial emptiness, in the form of 'color-blindness." The problem with this, of course, is that by doing so, they essentially refuse to "shoulder the burden of race in America." Claiming 'racelessness' is a uniquely white privilege, as is white frustration with the unwillingness (and inability) of blacks to recognize that claim, and to claim it themselves.
"Eliminating the binary definition of whiteness -- between nothingness and awfulness -- is essential for a new racial vision that ethical people can share across the color line," Painter argues. Instead, perhaps, white Americans in the 21st century can choose to walk the path that so many white crusaders for racial justice have trod over the centuries, and see their 'whiteness' as inseparable from the abolition of white privilege and racial inequality. Embed social justice in its very meaning. In the words of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, “The problem is we have to find some way with these dialogues to show and to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical.”
Anthony Thompson, the grandson of victim Myra Thompson, told Roof, “I forgive you, my family forgives you.” Others made sure he knew of their pain and suffering, but extended the same forgiveness.
Today, two African-American writers, Kiese Laymon and Stacey Patton, tried to understand these events within the larger context of the nation's bloody racial history. Laymon's reflections are intensely personal, while Patton's are largely political.
Both of these extraordinary pieces, each in their own way, questions whether white America is worthy of forgiveness -- and whether the granting of forgiveness by black Americans, repeatedly, contributes more to black shame and white blindness than it does to justice. “These white folks, they think the world belongs to them," Kiese Laymon's grandmother lamented in the wake of the Charleston murders. And, he implies later in the piece, white folks think they live outside of history, which means beyond accountability or responsibility. The articles should be read together -- and, white people, you really should read them. Particularly if you identify as a Christian.
As for what I think of all of this, its hard to say. I am white, I'm not a Christian, and I have no faith to test in this circumstance, save perhaps the one I barely hold in the basic goodness of human beings. I do think that perhaps whites should stop asking for forgiveness, stop expecting it, and stop taking some sort of redemptive pleasure when it is genuinely offered by black people.
Patton, in her piece, acknowledges that black acts of forgiveness have always been a form of protest as well as self-preservation -- a soul-shout against being a victim, a way to expunge anger, and to tell the oppressor that they are still standing. But she also notes that the constant white demand for black forgiveness is yet another burden black Americans have always had to carry, one imposed as much by the persistence of white supremacy as by the tenets of Christian faith. White atonement in our unequal society seems to need black forgiveness first, and Patton wonders whether that is just or sustainable.
Laymon wonders what it would look like for truth to really be set free: "What I do know is that love reckons with the past and evil reminds us to look to the future. Evil loves tomorrow because peddling in possibility is what abusers do. At my worst, I know that I’ve wanted the people that I’ve hurt to look forward, imagining all that I can be and forgetting the contours of who I have been to them." Laymon worries that if blacks are too quick to forgive, they will perpetuate this white blindness, and thus their own suffering: "We will heavy-handedly help in our own deception and moral obliteration. We will forget how much easier it is to talk about gun control, mental illness and riots than it is to talk about the moral and material consequences of manufactured white American innocence."
To even be worthy of forgiveness -- if that is something important -- it is clear that white America MUST look backward, into history, and then walk forward again, understanding how much of who we are (and aren't) today is constituted by that past. To do otherwise, to ask, in effect, 'why do they keep bringing up the past?, is, as Laymon notes, to act like an abuser. As Claudia Rankine put it recently, "history’s authority over us is not broken by maintaining a silence about its continued effects." White atonement must have its own movement, its own logic. And then, if black forgiveness comes to us -- like the grace it resembles -- so be it. With Lincoln, we might fondly hope and pray that this "mighty scourge" of slavery and its poisonous legacy will "speedily pass away." But nothing disappears when we close our eyes. Other than our ability to see.
Historian Nell Painter, in a thoughtful New York Times piece this past weekend, noted that the meaning of 'whiteness' in the present tends to be binary: racist, or empty. Today, at least, most white Americans embrace racial emptiness, in the form of 'color-blindness." The problem with this, of course, is that by doing so, they essentially refuse to "shoulder the burden of race in America." Claiming 'racelessness' is a uniquely white privilege, as is white frustration with the unwillingness (and inability) of blacks to recognize that claim, and to claim it themselves.
"Eliminating the binary definition of whiteness -- between nothingness and awfulness -- is essential for a new racial vision that ethical people can share across the color line," Painter argues. Instead, perhaps, white Americans in the 21st century can choose to walk the path that so many white crusaders for racial justice have trod over the centuries, and see their 'whiteness' as inseparable from the abolition of white privilege and racial inequality. Embed social justice in its very meaning. In the words of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, “The problem is we have to find some way with these dialogues to show and to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an American radical.”
Thursday, December 04, 2014
I am a white man, stumbling...
Below
are Eric Garner's final words, before his life was snuffed out by a New
York City cop. It reads like a dark unwritten sequel to Langston
Hughes' "I, Too, Sing America" --the sequel that ends not with ashamed
whites welcoming him to the table, but rather with him kicking the table
over, and understanding that white supremacy is beyond shame.
I am a white man. All my adult life I have tried, in my own stumbling way -- and with all of my limitations -- to be a race traitor.
What do I mean by that?
I don't mean trying to be 'color blind,' which really amounts to nothing more than complicity with oppression. White man, don't tell me you 'don't see race.' What the hell are you looking at?
And by 'race traitor' I don't mean trying to get right with God by cleansing my mind and soul of bias. What good is it to have one's conscience clean, and one's hands dirty? What good is it to walk away from Omelas? What does that change?
No.
To be a traitor is not to walk away from something you reject.
To be a traitor is to walk right up to what you reject, and kick it over. Treason to whiteness, as Noel Ignatiev once wrote, is loyalty to humanity. And treason, by definition, is a political act.
NONE of us will breathe, until white Americans collectively recognize the devastating power that racial subordination has over daily life in this country, and how implicated we are in it. We'd best dis-enthrall ourselves, and quickly.
As sickened as I've been by the reactions of so many whites to recent events, I have been truly inspired by the willingness of so many people to get out in the streets. I'm trying to hold on to the belief that the moral arc of the universe does in fact bend toward justice. But holy shit is that arc long, and I fear I lack the vision to see over the far horizon.
"Get away [garbled] for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I'm tired of it. It stops today. Why would you...? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn't do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because everytime you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me [garbled] Selling cigarettes. I'm minding my business, officer, I'm minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone. please please, don't touch me. Do not touch me. [garbled] I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe."
I am a white man. All my adult life I have tried, in my own stumbling way -- and with all of my limitations -- to be a race traitor.
What do I mean by that?
I don't mean trying to be 'color blind,' which really amounts to nothing more than complicity with oppression. White man, don't tell me you 'don't see race.' What the hell are you looking at?
And by 'race traitor' I don't mean trying to get right with God by cleansing my mind and soul of bias. What good is it to have one's conscience clean, and one's hands dirty? What good is it to walk away from Omelas? What does that change?
No.
To be a traitor is not to walk away from something you reject.
To be a traitor is to walk right up to what you reject, and kick it over. Treason to whiteness, as Noel Ignatiev once wrote, is loyalty to humanity. And treason, by definition, is a political act.
NONE of us will breathe, until white Americans collectively recognize the devastating power that racial subordination has over daily life in this country, and how implicated we are in it. We'd best dis-enthrall ourselves, and quickly.
As sickened as I've been by the reactions of so many whites to recent events, I have been truly inspired by the willingness of so many people to get out in the streets. I'm trying to hold on to the belief that the moral arc of the universe does in fact bend toward justice. But holy shit is that arc long, and I fear I lack the vision to see over the far horizon.
Saturday, November 01, 2014
East Siders, Write In Marcus Mitchell for City Council in Ward 3
Voters in Providence’s 3rd ward here on the East
Side have the chance to make history on Tuesday, by writing in Marcus Mitchell
for City Council in his race against Kevin Jackson. I believe we should take it. In conjunction with the election of Jorge Elorza
as mayor, it's a vital step toward making our city government more responsive,
honest, open, and representative of our increasingly diverse, young and
creative population.
I have lived here for a decade. My wife and I are raising our children here,
and we long ago fell in love with the youthful, creative, and quirky exuberance
of Providence. We’ve made our home
here. We want our kids to see its politics
and government as something that is noble and important, worthy of their time, consideration
and respect. I am an American History
professor, and I write and teach about cities, politics, and social movements. One of the things I’ve learned over the
years, and that I constantly try to impress upon my students, is that history
teaches us how truly ephemeral – and recent – societies governed by democratic
institutions and the rule of law truly are.
This country has really only been a functioning democracy for just over
3 decades, and that accomplishment is under constant threat even now. Most people throughout human history have
lived in societies where the power to make the rules – the laws -- was
determined by birth, by wealth, by ‘connections,’ and by violence. Most people today still do. It is often said that we get the government
we deserve. Providence – and my children
– deserve a municipal government filled with citizens who understand that the
power we give them is a sacred trust, which they exercise with us, not over us,
or for their own direct benefit.
We have some important choices to make in Providence this
year, I’ve recently realized. It wasn’t
just Buddy Cianci’s campaign for mayor, and his long (and ongoing) proclivity for
treating democratic laws and processes with disrespect, that woke me up to this. It was Kevin Jackson’s participation in his
campaign that got me. I honor and
appreciate Jackson’s service to the neighborhood. I agree with him on many
policy issues. And like Tom Waits, I like my town with a "little drop of poison." But this is too much. His behavior tells me that he's become
a bit too comfortable in his seat. As historian Robert Caro once said of
NYC highway maven Robert Moses, he originally sought power because of the
things it would enable him to do; later, he did things because of the power it
would bring him.
Surely the people of
Summit/Mt. Hope don’t need to settle for this.
We can’t. We will be failing our
children if we do. Even if we think that
Jackson is often ‘right’ on policy issues, or that Cianci is ‘effective,’ the
cost is simply too high. Mussolini, they
say, used to make the trains run on time.
There are lots of people right in our own neighborhood who could serve
on the City Council and make those trains run on time -- but who could also do good while doing well. We don’t have to settle for a mess of pottage,
when something more nourishing is within our grasp.
We need to elect someone
who fights the good fight while using power in a responsible way. We're
about to send Aaron Regunberg to the State House, for example. I believe
Marcus Mitchell is also one of these people.
While I can't claim to 'know' Marcus, I have talked with him quite a bit
over the past few weeks. We share some personal experiences, having to do
with family and health, and I know he has answered the call to run at
considerable personal sacrifice.
I have found Marcus to be a decent,
thoughtful person, a good listener, with an empathetic sensibility that aims
toward inclusion, civility, and moderation. I believe his commitment to
the public good is genuine and deeply-felt, and that he would seek to build on
the movement that puts him into office, rather than abandoning it once safely
on the Council. While he is an idealist, he isn’t a naive one.
I know where he came from in Philly, and I doubt anything he has seen or
will see here will throw him. His Quaker sensibilities seem to infuse his
approach to politics, and we certainly could use a councilman who listens, and
believes all voices deserve a measure of respect. I think he has the desire and the ability to bridge differences of race
and class in our neighborhood. People I respect feel strongly about his
candidacy. That goes a long way with me. Your friends and allies
say a lot about you.
Marcus
has a vision of the role our councilperson should play in the community: to knit together the racial and class
divisions of Ward 3, find common ground, and make of our diverse neighborhood a
model for the city. We can do that. But only we
can do that.
We have not just a chance
to make history on Tuesday – we have an opportunity, even a responsibility, to
do so. I will proudly write in Marcus
Mitchell, and connect the two arrows.
You should too.
Friday, October 03, 2014
Are teaching American history and teaching patriotism the same thing?
The recent controversy about how American history should be taught in
public schools (in Colorado and elsewhere) has me thinking a lot about
patriotism, and what it would mean to teach it -- and why so many Americans seem to think that teaching a fuller version of our national history somehow diminishes it (and us).
I assigned a thought provoking essay by George Kateb in my Just War Theory class this semester, "Is Patriotism a Mistake," and that's pushed me a bit too. Kateb argues that patriotism, in its essence, is an attack on the Enlightenment. One's country is an abstraction, not a principle; morally speaking, there is 'no there there.' A moral principle is by definition universal, while patriotism decidedly is not. Patriotism makes self-love and self-concern into an ideal - and the inevitable result, Kateb concludes, is self-preference. And violence.
As an American history professor, I'm having difficulty figuring out how one 'teaches patriotism,' and indeed whether one should consciously seek to do so at all.
If we assume that patriotism is defined as love of country -- as opposed to nationalism or jingoism, which includes an assertion that our country is somehow 'better' or 'superior' to others -- then I fail to see how teaching an American history drained of conflict, ambiguity, and wrongful deeds encourages students to love their country, any more than loving our spouse requires us to willfully ignore their flaws and mistakes.
I have been teaching and writing about the history of race, inequality, war and politics for two decades now, and my patriotism remains undiminished, though it is tempered and imperfect, like all love is; how is one to value and respect the lightest parts of us -- the 'better angels of our nature' -- without understanding the dark ones too?
More to the point, how are we supposed to understand some of the trials and tribulations of other members of our American community in the present (patriotism requires us to love them too, yes?) without opening our eyes to ALL of our history? If America is a country worth loving, we have nothing to fear from the truth. And if America is NOT a country worth loving, surely patriotism is indeed a mistake. It is something to be valued as long as valuing it remains consistent with justice; when these two paths diverge, the principled person must plant their seeds in deeper soil. The task for all of us, of course, is to make our collective enterprise worthy of love. To me, that's patriotism. A relationship is a process, not a golden idol requiring genuflection.
I assigned a thought provoking essay by George Kateb in my Just War Theory class this semester, "Is Patriotism a Mistake," and that's pushed me a bit too. Kateb argues that patriotism, in its essence, is an attack on the Enlightenment. One's country is an abstraction, not a principle; morally speaking, there is 'no there there.' A moral principle is by definition universal, while patriotism decidedly is not. Patriotism makes self-love and self-concern into an ideal - and the inevitable result, Kateb concludes, is self-preference. And violence.
As an American history professor, I'm having difficulty figuring out how one 'teaches patriotism,' and indeed whether one should consciously seek to do so at all.
If we assume that patriotism is defined as love of country -- as opposed to nationalism or jingoism, which includes an assertion that our country is somehow 'better' or 'superior' to others -- then I fail to see how teaching an American history drained of conflict, ambiguity, and wrongful deeds encourages students to love their country, any more than loving our spouse requires us to willfully ignore their flaws and mistakes.
I have been teaching and writing about the history of race, inequality, war and politics for two decades now, and my patriotism remains undiminished, though it is tempered and imperfect, like all love is; how is one to value and respect the lightest parts of us -- the 'better angels of our nature' -- without understanding the dark ones too?
More to the point, how are we supposed to understand some of the trials and tribulations of other members of our American community in the present (patriotism requires us to love them too, yes?) without opening our eyes to ALL of our history? If America is a country worth loving, we have nothing to fear from the truth. And if America is NOT a country worth loving, surely patriotism is indeed a mistake. It is something to be valued as long as valuing it remains consistent with justice; when these two paths diverge, the principled person must plant their seeds in deeper soil. The task for all of us, of course, is to make our collective enterprise worthy of love. To me, that's patriotism. A relationship is a process, not a golden idol requiring genuflection.
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock...
Something uplifting, to share with you on this lovely Mother's Day morning.
Early in 1973, the 74 year-old writer E.B. White received a letter from a man who had lost faith in humanity.
White -- the author of Charlotte's Web as well as the widely-used Elements of Style -- generously took the time to dash off a short but heartfelt note:
Dear Mr. Nadeau:
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society – things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
March 30th, 1973
Early in 1973, the 74 year-old writer E.B. White received a letter from a man who had lost faith in humanity.
White -- the author of Charlotte's Web as well as the widely-used Elements of Style -- generously took the time to dash off a short but heartfelt note:
Dear Mr. Nadeau:
As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.
Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society – things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.
Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.
Sincerely,
E. B. White
March 30th, 1973
Thursday, May 01, 2014
The mass incarceration state, and American barbarity
Yesterday, the National Research Council published a massive 464-page report that looks at the extraordinary four-decade rise of incarceration in the United States and concludes that all of its costs — for families, communities, state budgets and society — have simply not been worth the benefit in deterrence and crime reduction. The report, which was commissioned by the MacArthur Foundation and the National Institute of Justice, is a devastating confirmation of the ground-breaking work of Heather Ann Thompson, Michelle Alexander, Bruce Western and others on the American mass incarceration state -- what Alexander has called 'the New Jim Crow.' Emily Badger has a good summary of it in today's Washington Post.
1 out of every 100 American adults is now in prison or jail -- the highest in the world, and 5 to 10 times higher than other Western democracies. Nearly 1/4 of the world's prison population is in the United States. But this actually undercounts how many of our citizens are caught up in this system, because it doesn't include people on probation or parole:
One must keep in mind that most of those nearly 8 million people are young, black or Latino, and swept up into the criminal justice system because of small-scale drug possession crimes and racially-targeted policing. The consequences, for these individuals and their families and communities, are devastating: they lose access to public housing, student loans, Food Stamps, and -- in far too many states -- the right to vote and serve on a jury. They also generally lose access to employment.
If a nation's government budgets tell us something about what that country values, what Americans now care about is abundantly clear: militarism abroad, and incarceration at home. State spending on corrections has increased 400% since 1980, with state prison populations growing by 475%. This has taken place during a time of declining crime rates -- and there is no evidence that mass incarceration has contributed in any way to that decline. There is plenty of evidence of its devastating impact on families, communities, and public priorities. The vast majority of these arrests have been for small-time drug violations, particularly for people of color, even though their use of illegal drugs is no greater than that of whites.
Stunningly, in many states the criminal justice system has become the primary provider of health care, substance abuse treatment, mental health services, job training and education for low-income adults. If you've ever wondered where all the funding for public higher education has gone, the answer is clear: the mass incarceration state. This is just as true in blue states like Massachusetts, as it is in red states in the South and West.
Much of the barbarity of American life in recent decades has been revealed in the past 10 days, in all of its ugliness -- the mass incarceration state, the death penalty, and the willful racial ignorance of those who interpret our laws. My country tortures (its own people, as well as others), condemns millions of children to lives of poverty and ill-health, and maintains a racial caste system with the taser, the gavel, the syringe, and the morally abhorrent myth of its own color-blindness. It also auctions off its political system to the highest bidder. As I get older, I'm finding it harder and harder to even understand, let alone feel, patriotism.
1 out of every 100 American adults is now in prison or jail -- the highest in the world, and 5 to 10 times higher than other Western democracies. Nearly 1/4 of the world's prison population is in the United States. But this actually undercounts how many of our citizens are caught up in this system, because it doesn't include people on probation or parole:
One must keep in mind that most of those nearly 8 million people are young, black or Latino, and swept up into the criminal justice system because of small-scale drug possession crimes and racially-targeted policing. The consequences, for these individuals and their families and communities, are devastating: they lose access to public housing, student loans, Food Stamps, and -- in far too many states -- the right to vote and serve on a jury. They also generally lose access to employment.
If a nation's government budgets tell us something about what that country values, what Americans now care about is abundantly clear: militarism abroad, and incarceration at home. State spending on corrections has increased 400% since 1980, with state prison populations growing by 475%. This has taken place during a time of declining crime rates -- and there is no evidence that mass incarceration has contributed in any way to that decline. There is plenty of evidence of its devastating impact on families, communities, and public priorities. The vast majority of these arrests have been for small-time drug violations, particularly for people of color, even though their use of illegal drugs is no greater than that of whites.
Stunningly, in many states the criminal justice system has become the primary provider of health care, substance abuse treatment, mental health services, job training and education for low-income adults. If you've ever wondered where all the funding for public higher education has gone, the answer is clear: the mass incarceration state. This is just as true in blue states like Massachusetts, as it is in red states in the South and West.
Much of the barbarity of American life in recent decades has been revealed in the past 10 days, in all of its ugliness -- the mass incarceration state, the death penalty, and the willful racial ignorance of those who interpret our laws. My country tortures (its own people, as well as others), condemns millions of children to lives of poverty and ill-health, and maintains a racial caste system with the taser, the gavel, the syringe, and the morally abhorrent myth of its own color-blindness. It also auctions off its political system to the highest bidder. As I get older, I'm finding it harder and harder to even understand, let alone feel, patriotism.
Saturday, March 01, 2014
Obama's 'My Brother's Keeper' initiative, and the limits of racial uplift
This past Thursday, President Obama announced the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, a partnership between the public and private sectors aimed at bettering outcomes for some of the nation’s most at-risk young men. I of course appreciate what New York Times columnist Charles Blow (and Obama) are emphasizing here, but the materialist part of me gets frustrated with this approach to things.
The struggles of young black men ultimately don't come down to the lack of hugs from their fathers, though obviously we all need that. Material conditions can facilitate nurturing relationships, and they can undermine them. When one looks to the material conditions under which so many young African-American men live, one finds things that are attributable largely to poverty, and are thus shared by many poor Latino and white kids too. But one also finds conditions that have been uniquely imposed upon blacks in this country, and one must address those too.
If Obama wants to truly address the underlying issues, he would create universal preschool, change the welfare system to directly attack child poverty, desegregate suburban housing and schools along lines of race and class, pump massive resources into inner-city schools, and radically transform our predatory criminal justice system, which does more to destroy the lives of young black boys and their families than any uplift efforts can possibly counter.
Of course, I know that if Obama had a pliant Congress he actually would do many of these things, so I don't blame him entirely. But there is a danger to having our first black president approach these issues in this way, by essentially containing the problem to the behaviors of black adults, and the institutions in black communities, thereby absolving from responsibility and reparation those public and private institutions that sustain racial inequality and white privilege. On the subject of racial inequality, when something is proposed with which everyone nods in agreement (as appears to be the case here), that probably means it isn't worth much. Bit cynical of me, I suppose.
The struggles of young black men ultimately don't come down to the lack of hugs from their fathers, though obviously we all need that. Material conditions can facilitate nurturing relationships, and they can undermine them. When one looks to the material conditions under which so many young African-American men live, one finds things that are attributable largely to poverty, and are thus shared by many poor Latino and white kids too. But one also finds conditions that have been uniquely imposed upon blacks in this country, and one must address those too.
If Obama wants to truly address the underlying issues, he would create universal preschool, change the welfare system to directly attack child poverty, desegregate suburban housing and schools along lines of race and class, pump massive resources into inner-city schools, and radically transform our predatory criminal justice system, which does more to destroy the lives of young black boys and their families than any uplift efforts can possibly counter.
Of course, I know that if Obama had a pliant Congress he actually would do many of these things, so I don't blame him entirely. But there is a danger to having our first black president approach these issues in this way, by essentially containing the problem to the behaviors of black adults, and the institutions in black communities, thereby absolving from responsibility and reparation those public and private institutions that sustain racial inequality and white privilege. On the subject of racial inequality, when something is proposed with which everyone nods in agreement (as appears to be the case here), that probably means it isn't worth much. Bit cynical of me, I suppose.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
I'm sure I'll get back to my usual politics-music-sports snarky blah blah shortly. I'm generally not accustomed to reflecting on my emotions in this setting, but writing seems to help a bit. So please forgive the self-obsessed intrusion.
Our beautiful dog Bogey is gone -- so fast, just a week after his 14th birthday.
The kids are heartbroken, and Shana and I are just devastated. Those of you who have been through this before know how awful it feels. We know it will get better, but right now we just feel empty and desperately sad. As I watch the snow cover up the last of Bogey's footprints in the backyard, I'm trying to make sense of all of this.
Grief is a strange, strange thing. When you are middle-aged, it has its own particular strangeness. Yesterday, for the first time in 22 years (my entire adult life, really -- I'm 46), I woke up in my house without a dog to greet me. This of course made me desperately sad. But it also frightened me a bit, and that one I'm still trying to figure out. Obviously some of it is the reminder of my own mortality, and how easily life is extinguished -- like blowing out a candle. But I also think it's this: it reminded me, as an emotional gut-punch, how many little things we -- I -- tend to take for granted each day.
Obviously losing souls that you love is hard, no matter how old you are, and no matter your current circumstance.
But one of the things that seems to characterize middle age, or at least my experience of it, is the combination of two things: evanescence, and white noise.
Evanescence: many of the people you love in your 40s change quickly, and sometimes even disappear completely.
White noise: daily life sweeps you up in a surround of force that tends to make you overlook or take for granted how so much of what you have is ephemeral, contingent -- the result of fortune, timing, circumstance, and past choices you've unwittingly gotten right.
Right now, at 46, there are so many things in my life that are true, and that may not be in just a few years time. Shana is healthy, brings a hard-won wisdom to all of this that I clearly lack, and seems to think I'm a bit of alright;). My son Micah would rather play with me than with anyone else in the world. My daughter Maya cares about what I think, usually wants my help, and thinks I'm funny. I can call, text or visit both of my parents, and my mother-in-law too. Most of the time, I can trust both my body and my mind to help me rather than hinder me. How many of these things will greet me when I wake in my home 5 years from now? I don't know.
I'm not really seeing all of this through the lens of regret or remorse, at least not primarily. I don't live in the world that way, and I never have. You know those silly erection pill ads, where they say 'this is the age of knowing what you're doing, knowing how to get things done,' etc? That's true, but its also the age where we start to lose people -- and lose track of people. Its a lousy combination. And alas, we have no control over the former. We do have some control over the latter.
So, do I have any wisdom to impart on this? No not really. But when you wake up tomorrow morning, and your dog looks at you -- look back.
Our beautiful dog Bogey is gone -- so fast, just a week after his 14th birthday.
Grief is a strange, strange thing. When you are middle-aged, it has its own particular strangeness. Yesterday, for the first time in 22 years (my entire adult life, really -- I'm 46), I woke up in my house without a dog to greet me. This of course made me desperately sad. But it also frightened me a bit, and that one I'm still trying to figure out. Obviously some of it is the reminder of my own mortality, and how easily life is extinguished -- like blowing out a candle. But I also think it's this: it reminded me, as an emotional gut-punch, how many little things we -- I -- tend to take for granted each day.
Obviously losing souls that you love is hard, no matter how old you are, and no matter your current circumstance.
But one of the things that seems to characterize middle age, or at least my experience of it, is the combination of two things: evanescence, and white noise.
Evanescence: many of the people you love in your 40s change quickly, and sometimes even disappear completely.
White noise: daily life sweeps you up in a surround of force that tends to make you overlook or take for granted how so much of what you have is ephemeral, contingent -- the result of fortune, timing, circumstance, and past choices you've unwittingly gotten right.
Right now, at 46, there are so many things in my life that are true, and that may not be in just a few years time. Shana is healthy, brings a hard-won wisdom to all of this that I clearly lack, and seems to think I'm a bit of alright;). My son Micah would rather play with me than with anyone else in the world. My daughter Maya cares about what I think, usually wants my help, and thinks I'm funny. I can call, text or visit both of my parents, and my mother-in-law too. Most of the time, I can trust both my body and my mind to help me rather than hinder me. How many of these things will greet me when I wake in my home 5 years from now? I don't know.
I'm not really seeing all of this through the lens of regret or remorse, at least not primarily. I don't live in the world that way, and I never have. You know those silly erection pill ads, where they say 'this is the age of knowing what you're doing, knowing how to get things done,' etc? That's true, but its also the age where we start to lose people -- and lose track of people. Its a lousy combination. And alas, we have no control over the former. We do have some control over the latter.
So, do I have any wisdom to impart on this? No not really. But when you wake up tomorrow morning, and your dog looks at you -- look back.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
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