Tag: racism

Freedom Riders: An Appreciation

President John Kennedy, and his brother Robert, the Attorney General, needed to be prodded into action, just as President Barack Obama needs political pressure applied to continue on the right path.

While praising New York state lawmakers as they debated legalizing gay marriage, President Barack Obama stopped short of embracing it. Instead, he asked gay and lesbian donors for patience. “I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country,” the president said at a Manhattan fundraiser [last Thursday], his first geared specifically to the gay community.

Last week, my Internet buddy Arthur posited the question: Has President Obama done enough for gay rights? He included a news video. “Let me be clear: President Obama is dead wrong on marriage equality: Civil unions are not a substitute for real marriage. It’s time for the president to stop “evolving” and get there and support full equality for GLBT people.

“However, Dan Choi is also wrong, possibly because he doesn’t know history. As Brian Ellner of the Human Rights Campaign says, this president has done more than any other president for GLBT equality than any other president in history.”

And this reminded me of a program I watched on PBS last month called Freedom Riders.

FREEDOM RIDERS is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. Harrowing is right; it took me at least four sittings to get through the whole thing, not because it was boring, but because it was so intense. Just watch the two-minute Freedom Riders trailer.

From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives—and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment—for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism.

From award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Wounded Knee, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, The Murder of Emmett Till) FREEDOM RIDERS features testimony from a fascinating cast of central characters: the Riders themselves, state and federal government officials, and journalists who witnessed the Rides firsthand. The two-hour documentary is based on Raymond Arsenault’s book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice…

Despite two earlier Supreme Court decisions that mandated the desegregation of interstate travel facilities, black Americans in 1961 continued to endure hostility and racism while traveling through the South. The newly inaugurated Kennedy administration, embroiled in the Cold War and worried about the nuclear threat, did little to address domestic civil rights.

“It became clear that the civil rights leaders had to do something desperate, something dramatic to get Kennedy’s attention. That was the idea behind the Freedom Rides—to dare the federal government to do what it was supposed to do, and see if their constitutional rights would be protected by the Kennedy administration,” explains Arsenault.

Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the self-proclaimed “Freedom Riders” came from all strata of American society—black and white, young and old, male and female, Northern and Southern. They embarked on the Rides knowing the danger but firmly committed to the ideals of non-violent protest, aware that their actions could provoke a savage response but willing to put their lives on the line for the cause of justice.

President John Kennedy, and his brother Robert, the Attorney General, needed to be prodded into action, just as President Barack Obama needs political pressure applied to continue on the right path.

Watch the Freedom Riders film, and/or read the transcript, and/or buy the video from PBS.

Ordinary People Making Great Changes: An Interview With “Freedom Riders” Director Stanley Nelson.

 

Civil War books

Blight helps to explain why America today continues to wrestle with the seemingly endless and divisive issue of race, even while a black man resides in the White House.

Late last year, Glenn W LaFantasie came up with The top 12 Civil War books ever written for Salon magazine. A bold list with a lot of caveats (no biographies, no series or multivolume works, no fiction.) And if you’re interested, you can check out his choices, and the four dozen comments about the same.

But I came to a dead stop when he described his #5 book, “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” by David W. Blight (2001), which I have never read. It’s because the description seems so important to our 21st-century lives in America:

[It] explores how the past is connected to the present by looking at the ways in which Americans have remembered the Civil War. His deeply researched and carefully crafted study argues that after the war white veterans, Union and Confederate, facilitated the reconciliation of the two sections by consciously avoiding the fact that slavery had brought on the sectional conflict, choosing instead to celebrate the courage that they and their comrades had brandished in battle. Less consciously, they and their fellow Americans found this new narrative — this rewriting of history based on a kind of historical amnesia — comforting and restorative. Reunification became a joyful event, but it came at a steep price. After Reconstruction, Northerners and Southerners alike took hold of a “Lost Cause” ideology that showed pity toward the South in its defeat, accepted Jim Crow policies that deprived blacks of their civil rights, and pushed for policies and practices that would ensure white supremacy across the land. Blight carefully avoids grinding axes as he makes his argument, which taken as a whole helps to explain why America today continues to wrestle with the seemingly endless and divisive issue of race, even while a black man resides in the White House. Here is a powerful book, artfully written by a scholar of learned poise who believes that by knowing the past we might better know ourselves.

I was wowed by the description, and if the book is as good as its review, it seems evident that I, and perhaps many of us, should be reading it.

The Readers Reply to the Racism Question

“It seemed to me that everyone was so very quick to disown racism that none of us had anything to really work on. It made me think that if the Church is going to effectively bring healing in this area it is going to have to make a distinction between racism as an ideology that some subscribe to, and racism as the fear, suspicion, or broken attitudes that blight all of us to various degrees as a result of being fallen creatures in a broken world.”

About six months ago, I laid out a scenario, about a white woman going into a halal shop, and asked, “Is it racist?” I was unconvinced that it was, although I recognized a likely ethnic-based discomfort.

And I got three really fine, and well thought out answers:

Francisca, a “white woman living in Asia” noted that “most of the time what I get is profiling to my advantage (it helps that I’m the smiling type and people generally like my face). The scene is complicated by my Chinese-born husband, who regularly gets mistaken as my driver, my interpreter, or my employee…and gets treated accordingly…”

Uthaclena said: “I think that the use of language has become very sloppy; my 15-year old informs me that ‘racism’ is used for ALL SORTS of discrimination, incl. what I myself would identify as sexism. Racism implies to me more of a power-based form of discrimination: ‘I will actively prevent you from obtaining something that is your due because of your race or ethnic background.’ I think that there is far more BIGOTRY than there is out-and-out racism, ASSUMING something about a person because of their stereotypical traits.”

Then there was Anthony: “I think I read somewhere in the writings of N.T. Wright that when Paul speaks of Christ dismantling the barrier between Jew and Gentile, implied within that idea is that Jesus overcame the forces that contribute to tribalism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, etc.” I would specifically add sexism. My Biblical scholarship is lacking, but I recall Jesus being called out by a woman about his sexist attitude.

“This idea is also associated with Christ’s cosmic work: the overcoming of the powers and principalities which distort God’s creation and the healthy functioning of social institutions.

“I mention this, because a number of years ago I was at a Christian college where I and various staff members were involved in a study on racial reconciliation by Raleigh Washington & Glen Kehrein called ‘Breaking Down Walls,’ and it seemed to me that everyone was so very quick to disown racism that none of us had anything to really work on. It made me think that if the Church is going to effectively bring healing in this area it is going to have to make a distinction between racism as an ideology that some subscribe to, and racism as the fear, suspicion, or broken attitudes that blight all of us to various degrees as a result of being fallen creatures in a broken world.”

Boy, did I relate to THAT! Organizing Black History Month in predominately white churches, I have definitely seen that. Not incidentally, this notion of a post-racial country in the US, because the country elected a black President, I always thought was absurd. Our tribalism runs deep. We may not all be racist, but we aren’t finished creatures, either.

I recommend you read all three excellent comments.

The Racial Aspect of Obamaphobia Revealed! (Maybe)

A category of biracial, which has been recognized for less than two decades culturally just does not trump centuries of someone who looks like Barack Obama, with a black parent, being categorized as black.


Last month, I wrote this blogpost about the shooting of 20 people, six fatally, in Arizona. Got a lot of comments, some of which inevitably fell off the mark. In fact, a duologue developed between two commenters, and I pretty much stayed out of it until one wrote:
Also calling the President a “black” man would be wrong. He happens to be biracial.

This made me peevish. I responded:

It would NOT be wrong to call the President a black man. He identifies himself as a black man. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17958438

One of the interesting things that the OMB in 1997, in anticipation of the 2000 Census, did was to allow people to opt to identify themselves as of more than one race. Previously, someone like Barack Obama WOULD have been identified as black by Census.

There are plenty of Americans who identify as white [that are] of mixed heritage, just as there are mixed-race people (Halle Berry, whose mother is white, comes to mind) who identify as black. Their decision, not anyone else’s. I should have noted that Berry’s mother ENCOURAGED her to identify as black since that’s how the world would see her anyway.

To which he responded:
Mr. Green
You would be correct, at the end of the day, it is the person that wishes to be identified with a race or group. I just know my wife was a tad upset when he kept calling himself a black man. It kind of disavows half of you, I guess.

Then suddenly, I GOT it. Barack Obama identifying as a black man means, to some people, that he is rejecting part of himself. That WHITE part of himself. And in doing so, he must be, to their minds, kind of reverse racist.

That idiotic “365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy” I’ve referred to actually also addressed this: “Next time you hear a reference to ‘America’s first black president,’ counter by referring to Obama as ‘America’s 44th white president.’ Explain that you’re doing so on feminist grounds: ‘What? You’re trying to tell me that his Caucasian mom’s genetic input doesn’t count? But that’s so SEXIST!'”

A category of biracial, which has been recognized for less than two decades culturally just does not trump centuries of someone who looks like Barack Obama, with a black parent, being categorized as black. In the 1970 Census, the 1980 Census, the 1990 Census, he would be considered black (or Negro or African-American – whatever). When Barbara Walters asked him on The View why he didn’t consider himself biracial, I suspect that she already knew the answer from his autobiographies and from her understanding of history.

Not that he rejects his white mother, for whom he has expressed great love, and who was present when his father was not. Or even her race, as when the President-elect referred to himself as a mutt, which displeased some people, many of them black, who did not want to diminish in any way the significance of a President of African descent.

So race in America is still a bit of a landmine, even with a black – or biracial – President.

Editing literature and the N-word Questions

As usual, The Daily Show addresses the Mark Twain controversy well.


You’ve probably heard about someone wanting to take the works of Mark Twain and republish them, replacing the word N@$$%! with the word “slave”. I think this is pretty lame as I have previously indicated.

Yet, while I’m not crazy about the word, I’m less bothered by it when it’s 1) used in historic context or 2) to make a particular point. Film critic Roger Ebert got into some hot water using the word recently. He didn’t bother me, but some of the comments I’ve seen in response to his use – “well, he has a N@##%! wife” – seems to justify my general antipathy for the word.

Should Huck Finn and other works of Mark Twain be edited to remove a word current sensibilities might find offensive? If so, how should such a book be labeled?

When, if ever, are racially charged words acceptable? There’s a John Lennon song that I believe is making a larger point of social commentary.

As usual, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart addresses this well. NSFW, if the use of N@##$! might get you fired.

Ramblin' with Roger
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