Pride

“Pride”   July 22, 2018   Dr. Roger Ray  

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Excerpted from On The Pulse Of Morning by Maya Angelou

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers--
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.

Early in the 2015 primary season, the liberal candidate in the field, Bernie Sanders, had a rally interrupted by Black Lives Matter protestors. He was caught off guard and I was too. Like a lot of liberals, I wondered, “Why pick on Bernie Sanders?” Why wouldn’t they be interfering with a Trump, or a Rubio, or even a Clinton rally? 

Wasn’t Bernie the most likely candidate running to be sincerely sympathetic with the political issues that most affected the black community? Bernie had been involved with civil rights demonstations since 1962, and, it seemed to me, was hitting all of the health care, living wage, and justice system issues that, in my middle aged, white man’s mind, should have made him the favorite candidate to win the black vote.

And he said, in response to the demonstrators taking the stage and stealing the microphone, just what I and a lot of people so mired in white privilege and we couldn’t see the forest for the trees, “All lives matter.” All lives do matter. It seems like an inclusive, non-prejudiced thing to say. We are not trying to advocate for any kind of a reverse racism. Sure, black lives matter, brown lives matter, white lives matter. 

It seemed innocent enough but not long after that the Democratic National Committee issued a warning to all aspiring candidates to never be caught saying “all lives matter” in public. It is not that it isn’t true, it is that it shows a cultural insensitivity that is painfully insulting.

There has never been a time when the fact that white lives matter has been in question. A little white girl goes missing and the newspaper presses run hot. That white lives matter can be seen nowhere as clearly as when an attractive white woman from an affluent family goes missing. 

Let a Laci Peterson or a Natalee Holloway go missing and the TV news cycle cannot let it go. When JonBenét Ramsey is killed, the search for the killer went on in the media for two decades. Black and Latina women and girls go missing, and there is rarely more than a mention in the news. Gwen Ifell, of PBS, even coined a phrase to describe it, “Missing White Woman Syndrome.” Not that an abducted white woman is not a horrible crime, it is just that it is not one sand grain more horrible than the abduction of black or brown women, but you could not tell that from media coverage. All lives do matter, but when you say that, you are negating, diluting, dismissing the necessary proclamation that black lives also matter . . . a fact that simply is not evident in the media or in social concerns. 

At the behest of our current president, the NFL has recently enacted rules forbidding protest during the playing of the national anthem at football games.

Colin Kaepernick started this controversy a couple of years ago when he began taking a knee during the playing of the National Anthem in protest for the numbers of black people who are being killed by the police. 

He wasn’t protesting the National Anthem, though, considering that it has a verse in it that assures any blacks that if they try to escape slavery that they will be killed, but that wasn’t his issue. 

He wasn’t disrespecting the flag or trying to insult the nation. He was silently and respectfully protesting the inexplicable number of police killings of unarmed black women and men. It isn’t just that Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Sam Dubose, 

Philando Castile, Terence Crutcher, Alton Sterling, Jamar Clark, Jeremy McDole, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Eric Gardner, and Tamir Rice have been so unjustly murdered, it is that the police who kill them rarely are found guilty of a crime. Try shooting a list of unarmed white people during a traffic stop for having a broken tail light and see how that goes. 

We are being asked to be outraged by this protest which has been judged to be unpatriotic. The president seems almost unable to manage his rage, screaming “get that s.o.b. off the field!” But, now, I’m no expert, but this is what looks unpatriotic to me:

Which of these looks like a betrayal of America to you?  I’m not trying to bait you here. Kaepernick kneeling in quiet protest of an unspeakably racist problem in America looks patriotic to me. After all, what is a patriot but someone who strives to make America great? Trump’s inexplicable loyalty to the media murdering, political rival assassinating, national resource stealing dictator of Russia, that seems really dangerous to me… dangerous on the level of treason. So, seriously, which s.o.b. needs to be thrown off the field? 

The mere fact that Kaepernick has not been allowed to define his own protest… he says it is about police killings but Trump and others say it is about disrespecting the flag or disrespecting our country . . . and in response to this peaceful protest, he has been unemployed for the last two years, losing nearly $30 million in income. Still, even though he is personally losing millions of dollars, he is not backing down.

May I remind you of something? During the 2016 campaign, Trump skipped a debate and held a fundraiser for Veterans in a show of great patriotism and respect for our Veterans. He got his supporters to donated nearly $6 million dollars. Months later, investigative reporters tried to follow up on which charities had been the recipients of this charity. Do you remember who had the money? Donald J. Trump! He kept it. He was hoping no one would notice. Only when he was publicly ridiculed did he actually give the money to charities. Do you see how white privilege works? Colin Kaepernick, a very wealthy black man, engages in peaceful protest of violent crimes and he is ridiculed, and his career is ruined. Trump tries to steal millions of dollars from a charity, and it hardly survived a 24 hour news cycle before we went on to something else. Something that you probably didn’t even remember, something that doesn’t even show up on lists of Trump scandals, something that would have gotten Obama or Clinton impeached, and the Donald just takes it in stride. 

A black motorist gets pulled over for having a burned out tail light and ends up dead. 

Trump, a self-described billionaire, steals millions of dollars from his poor followers who had donated to a charity . . . do you see why Colin Kaepernick was kneeling and why Marissa Johnson took the microphone out of Bernie Sanders’ hands? 

I have been known to give speeches at civil rights rally’s in the past, saying that it is fair to make everyone race for the same finish line as long as they all get to start at the same starting line. For most of America’s history, being born white meant that you were born on third base. But when you look at the way things have been playing out lately, people of color in America don’t have the same starting line and they aren’t competing for the same finish line. 

And it seems to upset people when this fact is held up in a public way. Beyond the insulting counter claim that “All Lives Matter,” another attempt at dismissing the Black Lives Matter movement was the Blue Lives Matter mantra, in support of the police who often lose their lives in the performance of their public duties.

But has there ever been any doubt that Blue Lives matter? When the police are almost never even charged with a crime when they use lethal force against an unarmed black man and if they are charged, they are almost never found to be guilty? And when a police officer does lose his or her life in the line of duty, 

There is a motorcade, the mayor makes a soaring patriotic speech, the news helicopters fly overhead and a city goes into mourning…. and I’m not saying that they shouldn’t.

I’m just asking, where is the motorcade for Philando Castile, who was shot during a traffic stop for no apparent reason? Or Walter Scott, who was shot in the back while fleeing a traffic stop. Where was the mayor at their memorials? Where were the police in their formal uniforms standing at attention when his casket passed? Yes, Blue Lives do matter and it is a tragedy when an officer of the law is killed in the line of duty but then, no one ever questioned that, did they? 

Talking to white people about white privilege is often quite similar to trying to talk to a fish about water. We have grown up in it, enjoyed it, and unconsciously benefited from it, all while insisting that it doesn’t exist. And, I have to tell you, growing up white doesn’t always feel like being born on third base. Nearly half of our white children are born into poverty. White kids sometimes live in violent, drug addicted, alcoholic, dangerous homes where they are subjected to sexual violence and deprivations of all sorts. 

And yet, you would hardly be able to find one of those deprived children who would be willing to switch skin color, with even an upper-class black kids because, consciously or unconsciously, they know that their skin color is their pass in many of life’s most difficult spots. It shouldn’t be that way, it just is. 

You remember the story about the white woman who was pulled over by a traffic cop in Georgia after dark and she told officer Greg Abbott that she was nervous because of all the things that she had seen on the news about police shooting people at traffic stops, and Officer Abbott reassured her saying, “But you’re not black. Remember, we only shoot black people. Yeah, we only kill black people, right?” Now, there may have been some bitter, gallows humor there, but the story line is familiar enough that everyone knows what he meant. And this is a guy who has been pulling people over in Georgia for nearly 30 years. He didn’t get this way just last summer. 

I know that most cops aren’t racists, and I know that most of them are not corrupt, and most don’t have serious authority problems. But I will tell you what I do believe. I believe that most of them know who the racist, corrupt, mentally unstable cops are and they almost all observe the thin blue line of silence in which they protect one another, even the ones they know good and well need to have their badge and gun taken from them. And until they do, I’m not standing up for the national anthem again. To paraphrase Forest Gump, “I’m no NFL quarterback, but I know the difference between right and wrong.” 

Black people are trying to explain what it is like being black in America. We don’t have to shout back that “All lives matter,” or “Blue lives matter.” In fact, we don’t have to say anything at all. We just have to shut up and listen. That’s an uncomfortable prescription for most of us, but it needs to happen, and we should lead the way.

Racism is not an unsolvable problem, we just have to stop being so absurdly defensive. Just give up the microphone now and then, and when someone is protesting, don’t try to tell them that they are doing it the wrong way or at the wrong time. Just shut up and listen. We can get through this together.

As Maya Angelu so beautifully said at Bill Clinton’s first innaugeration:

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher. . .

If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.

We still look for the day when the many will become one. That is when America will be great. E Pluribus Unum