What do I tell them? Part 1

“Maybe it’s time to get uncomfortable…”

– Amber Ruffin, comedy writer, African American

 

This thing is hanging over me like the Sword of Damocles. I feel driven to write, but there is so much to say I don’t know where to start. And yet, what can I say that has not already been said? What can I do other than raising my voice? 

 

I’m out of school for the summer, but when I return in the fall, what will I tell my young Hispanic, African American, Asian, and white students about the summer of 2020? What do I tell them about their hopes and aspirations for a life in this country?

 

Any person living here knows the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis is not a new thing. Horrific on its own but tragically not unique. Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, Walter Scott, Freddy Gray, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor…There isn’t room in this piece for the list…and their deaths are only the events that made the national news.

 

Wait, stop! These are not events! These are people…sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, mothers, and fathers…just like the people we love. Do we suppose that any culture has the corner on sorrow?

 

This has played out far too often, and it is numbing. In my lifetime, it has happened in places like Selma, Birmingham, Watts, Detroit, and South-Central Los Angeles, and now Minneapolis. The story is the same; only the actors differ. This time, however, because of social media, the underbelly of our country has been exposed, and the failure for most African Americans to participate in the American Dream is on display and as close as the phones in our hands…on the phones of people around the world to see.

 

“Isn’t there a better way?”

 

Maybe that’s what the British thought about the American patriots in Boston. You can almost hear the colonists saying to the British, “We have petitioned, argued, sent representatives, and peacefully protested en masse more than once. Don’t you see what you are doing to us?” 

 

How did that work out? It took a tea party in Boston ‘…a shot heard round the world…' and a revolution to take the knee of the British government off the neck of the American Colonists. GOD FORBID it takes that here!!

 

I hear from some of my white friends. “Is this kind of social disruption really what it takes? Tell me.”

 

The short answer to the question is ‘yes.’  The longer answer is ‘because.’  The even longer answer? Many white people do not want to know the longer answer, because it is opaque to them. To people of color, it is as clear as crystal. There is a deeply rooted endemic problem of systematic abuse of African Americans in this country. It takes the consistent pressure of large-scale open protest, by all who see this injustice, to move the dial.

 

 Martin Luther King said, “The arc of moral history is long, but it bends toward justice…” 

Theodore Parker, a white Unitarian minister, wrote about the arc of the moral universe, in a sermon titled Of justice and the Conscience (1853), saying, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one…I cannot calculate the curve…I can divine it by conscience…[and] I am sure it bends toward justice.” It was a long time from Parker to King and a long time from King to now, and yet “…faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen…” (Heb 1:1, Bible)

 

How is it that leadership in this country does not understand that none of this happens when people are treated like human beings and provided opportunities to follow their dreams, whatever they may be. How do they not understand that when the citizenry is upwardly mobile, their power base increases, and everybody wins? How is it they do not heed the warning of history, that oppression is a failed policy for a healthy society. It doesn't take much thought to appreciate that without real change, what we see on the streets in this country and around the world, is only the beginning.

 

What’s the deal?

As citizens of this country, we have a social contract based on our Constitutional rights and the Declaration of Independence, which begins with these words:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness…”

 

Do we believe this? Are they just empty words trotted out at convenient times for the few?

 

What did they mean in the battle for women’s right to vote? Our great grandmothers were beaten, disabused, threatened, jailed, lost families, and some, their lives. Why? Because they believed these words and fought for that belief. Why did they have to fight so hard? Because the power structure (white men) thought women to be inferior and feared by allowing women the vote, it would lessen their grip on power.

 

In this battle for the vote, Sarah Moore Grimké, a white suffragette, abolitionist, and journalist in the eighteen hundreds, wrote, "…I ask no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”  Does this sound familiar?

 

She understood the Declaration of Independence was written for all, and she was on the right side of history. To be clear, ultimately, women were not given the right to vote; they took it! The result? The moral arc of the universe bent a little more toward justice. It would be impossible to argue that the Women’s Suffragette movement did not make our country stronger.

 

If we are to believe The Declaration of Independence, we must understand it was written for all Americans. Not just white men, but for African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asians - unalienable Rights not transferable to another…not…capable of being taken away or denied. They were written for all citizen men and women living in this great melding pot – The United States of America!

 

The Constitution and Declaration of Independence are mirrors into which we should gaze to remind us of the country's intent. The country to which we pledge allegiance.

 

The sad reality is that this contract is not a two-way street for all our citizens. These rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not equally distributed to and amongst African Americans. When people cry for freedom, they are really crying for safety. It's not just the freedom to live under our founding documents as a mantle to pursue our dreams. It is the safety to do so — the security to move about society freely. The protection to know, barring a catastrophic event or criminal behavior, we will return to our homes, securely sleep, and meet the next day without fear.

 

The truth? For African Americans, the playing fields are anything but level.

(to be continued...)