Lyndon Johnson, writes historian Peniel E. Joseph, in The Sword and the Shield, noted how the violence of racism undermines "the grandeur of the American experiment." Delivering these words in a speech after Bloody Sunday, Johnson added that such violence as witnessed that day when police bloodied Black citizens protesting the right to vote, sullies "the moral aspirations of all its citizens."
Comparing Black demonstrators in Selma to soldiers at the Battle of Appomattox, signaling the end of the Civil War, for Black Americans the struggle for civil rights would continue. White America could go on about the business of getting ahead, some taking advantage of their belief in whiteness to pretend the struggle for Blacks had ended at the Battle of Appomattox. Other white Americans, however, the battle for the maintenance of white supremacy was beginning anew.
The kind of American citizenry Johnson imagines would be endowed with a collective fair mind and a willingness identify with victims of enslavement. insisting, along with these victims of violence, that they have a right to be! Imagine a world in which victims and perpetrators, as American citizens recognize a history of human resistance against tyranny of Kings, fascism, and totalitarianism. They recognize and, collectively, vigilantly reject such an intrusion on human progress.
Unfortunately, today, it would seem that the tyranny of would-be-kings, the iron rule of fascists and totalitarians is fighting to dissolve any remembrance of human rights.
The John Lewis voting bill is sitting in some box in Washington, D. C. as is the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. If after the Civil War, America had turned the corner and decided that democracy was, after all, worth trying-- for really-- then maybe, it would be the guiding light leading this nation to a more perfect union, a diverse, an equitable country, where humanity is welcomed. But democracy has interfered, if our politicians are honest, with the flow of profits and tax breaks for corporations and billionaires.
With eyes wide-open, however, the US is waging a war against democracy, by embracing a fascist president who has turned his sights to Putin, admiring the strongman and arming himself with politicians loyal to the goal of divesting the US from any further concerns with democracy. European nations along with Canada and Mexico are no longer acknowledged as allies and neighbors. Democracy is an enemy!
On the other hand, fascism is attractive. Look at how corporations and the likes of Amazon's Bezos and Google's Pichai and others have purchased jackboots to walk lockstep behind the leader. Elon Musk, no official office holder, nonetheless, points his cabal of teen hackers to set up shop at one government agency after another, to infiltrate the buildings, dismiss heads of departments and fire employees, and, then disrupting services thousands of people around the world have come to rely on. The cruelty of it all conjures up images I would see on the nightly news during the Vietnam War. Men, women, and children running from flames furiously engulfing their homes and fields. Shouts of "Fire in the hole!" and explosion of bombs from American war planes landing on their "targets," is inhumane as is the wearing of jackboots, signaling the power granted one by a fascist government to crush all enemies.
It requires patience, a willingness to recognize in the Other a human being. It isn't necessary to worship a divine being or to regularly attend services at a church, a mosque, or a synagogue. Many have historically perceived in the Other's denomination a threat or a danger to the stability, if not existence, of their difference.
Fascism is cruelty. Why is there a willingness, even a determination on the part of one generation to pass on to the next a sensation of enjoyment-- when maiming or killing another? Why are Americans thrilled by the opportunity to dehumanize others and destroy what others have created? How, over the generations since enslavement, are there Americans still perceiving the right to inflict pain or death on others as somehow a way to feel "exceptional"? Superior?
After Bloody Sunday, Joseph reminds us, Johnson called for the nation to consider the "'long-suffering men and women,'" Black men and women, once enslaved and still unfree from tyranny of Jim Crow laws that restricted their economic, social, and political mobility. The stakes, writes Joseph, couldn't be higher as Johnson recognized because it was all about democracy. As I've stated before, fascism was already familiar to Black Americans in Jim Crow South as well as those Blacks in the segregated North. Blacks could receive a knock at the door in the middle of the night by hooded white men. A home could be set ablaze. Black American's little girl could be "dirtied," as Toni Morrison's Sethe explained, and there would be no recourse.
Terror and cruelty thrived together to create, as Johnson understood, a tragedy. A "sullied" dream, at best, for those rejecting the idea that America was anything but a good and welcoming country. A beacon for the poor and huddled masses-- of European descent-- that is. It was, as Johnson understood, all about the "'destiny of democracy.'"
In 1965, "'white spectators, watching the proceedings from businesses that lined the road, cheered as if viewing a sporting event,'" writes Joseph, watched police batons on that infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge land on the heads of Black people. This bridge, named after a KKK Grand Dragon, should have been re-named the John Lewis Bridge. The batons, dogs, and fire holes were intended by anti-democratic terrorists to express white anger against a people thought to be less than human. Think about the nightly news featuring whole Vietnamese villages under attack. And the US government believed itself to be a democracy.
Maybe the US was never a democracy, except when Black Americans decided that enough was enough. The sun was too hot or their backs too sore after bending all day in the fields. One too many days of humiliating bowing. One too many minutes standing in the back of the bus. One too many hours caring for the little girl who will go on to point a finger in your face and talk about how unfortunate you for not possessing white skin.
Everything we ever accomplished seems suspect now that Trump isn't concealing his willingness on behalf of the Oligarchs to offer the US up to the altar of tyranny. The removal of anything that smacks of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will have Black Americans running-- backward! Barefooted! So, the fascists believe. Blacks will be too busy trying to regain footing and direction to notice the dismantling of citizen rights and anything else regarding our civil and human rights.
Black Americans are still irritating white America, kicking up its collective white anger. Just this morning I went to a leading pharmacy to have pictures printed when I encountered a young white woman who gave me a quick glance and, without looking at me, asked what did I want? I noted that she wouldn't have been my ideal clerk, but I tried to explain that I didn't know much about printing from my cellphone.
I had come by over the weekend, and wonderful older also white woman was much more patient with me had the excuse, I guess, of not having children. Seventy-one! Another excuse. This younger woman couldn't care about my predicament. She was in a hurry.
I was not succeeding with the instructions uttered by the younger woman. Something was wrong, and the older woman would have been willing and skilled at getting my cellphone to respond correctly.
I remember saying to the young woman that if she was too busy, maybe I should have someone else helping me. That is when the older woman came up from behind with a smile. She and I recognized one another. I responded to her smile. Sincere and welcoming.
I heard the younger woman tell me that she was HELPING ME! NOW JUST STOP IT!
Excuse me, stop what? And do I look like a child? But I didn't say anything out loud because this is Kenosha. Wisconsin. In Kenosha white Americans have rights! White Americans are never anything but innocent!
The older woman stepped up to help after the younger one excused herself. I preferred assistance, I said, from this woman-- and I was pointing to the older woman.
In "The Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Dr. King talked about how we bring to the "surface the hidden tensions that is already alive."
"We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be likewise exposed, with all of the tensions it's exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of natural opinion before it can be cured."
Our books are banned, our history is banned. Today, anyone of us who ever held a position as FBI agents, nurses, teachers, professors, medical doctors, lawyers, airline pilots-- we are all suspected of being less qualified than white people? We are looked on as criminals because we have done something to impede the forward progress of white America!
Who is to blame for America's decline?
Think our former slaveholders are smiling?
Post Article Comment and Rate This Article
