December 2, 2019--Moderation

I suspect in response to a piece I posted early last week urging Democrats for political purposes to move on from supporting impeachment and focus instead on censuring Trump, I have been chided by some progressive friends who are fed up with moderation in general and me specifically. They feel passionately that we need less moderation of the sort they feel I am promoting and more revolutionary thinking and behavior.

I have revolutionary thoughts of my own, for example, that we need deep structural change in much of our public policy--from education to healthcare to economic inequality--but feel that by pressing many of these issues at this time we would only contribute to Trump's reelection because Trump and his followers would weaponize them by labeling those of us who oppose him socialists and communists. For Trump and his people, we would further fuel this demagogic, potent reelection strategy already underway. 

Our focus, I have been arguing, should be exclusively on denying Trump a second term by all means possible. This is so urgent that it is smart to put the revolution on hold until he is no longer in the White House.

The part of my piece that I suspect was responsible for some of the negative reaction was--

Democrats should condemn Trump's behavior and move on. Take impeachment off the table. Censuring a sitting president is a big deal and would demonstrate to moderate voters that the Democrats are capable of behaving decisively and moderately.

To both disagree and take a poke at me, among other things that came my way, was this from the New York Times. It was posted on Facebook by a young friend. It is an excerpt from Jamie Aroosi's "Are You a Moderate? Think Again"--

As Dr. Martin Luther King understood, the problem he was facing--and that we now face again--is the problem of moral imagination. Moderates might have the “good will” that leads them to acknowledge injustice, but their very moderation is indicative of a “shallow understanding” that is emptied of the pain of those who currently suffer. For these moderates, injustice is a foreign affair, an abstract problem to be solved. Their response then lacks the urgency that a true understanding would bring. Learning how to expand their moral universe--learning how to turn opponents into allies--is just as pressing a problem as ever.

There is much to be said in response to this. Among other things it is absolutist and thus lacks the nuance we need to figure out where we stand and what we need to do to prevail. The Aroosi piece also drives deeper the wedges already separating those of us who should be strategic allies. 

And it doesn't help to compare moderates to the Ku Klux Klan, as Aroosi does in the full piece, when he quoted Reverend King--

"These white moderates were a potentially greater threat than the members of the Ku Klux Klan." 

This kind of talk is enough to dash all hope for rational and temperate dialogue. 

But sadly, this is where too many Democrats are--fighting each other, calling even those who are potential allies names. It is no wonder that this encourages many to seek the comfort of their favorite echo chambers. 

April 5, 2018--My Martin Luther King Story

Fifty yeas ago last night I was a junior faculty member at Queens College in New York City and one of my classes scheduled for that evening was an interdisciplinary seminar in literature and the arts for a carefully selected group of community leaders, mainly adults from the black ghetto of Jamaica, Queens. This meant that all 25 of the students in the class were African American.

We were well into a discussion about Jonathan Swift when a late-arriving student, Alan Jenkins, burst into the classroom.

Struggling to catch his breath, he finally gasped, "He's been shot," as if we knew who the "he" was. Sensing this, he added, "Martin. Martin Luther King. In Memphis."

"Is he . . . ?"

"I don't know. I was driving here and on the radio heard the report about the shooting. But not about his condition."

By then many of the students were quietly sobbing.  From their experience they knew the news would turn out to be devastating. It would not be that he was "just" shot. They had lived too long with violence in their lives to not immediately sense the truth.

A number of the students held hands and, kneeling, prayed. Others, clinging to each other, softly began to sing, including psalms and the civil rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome."

Grieving, supporting myself on the lectern, feeling estranged, denying what was occurring, I tried to convince myself that if I behaved "normally," got us back to Swift, reality itself would revert to where it had been only minutes before when we had talked together, dispassionately, about Gulliver.  

Then slowly it occurred to me I was the only white person in the room. I am not sure from where that feeling originated. It was not quite from feeling danger, but something close to that. Some primal recidivism close to tribalism, some self-protective reflex wired in my DNA. 

"Do you think you might drive me home?" Whispering was the most academically promising of my students, Nellie McKay.

By then Alan had come back from listening to the radio in his car. He trembled as he told us that it was over. King was dead. Shot down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The news, he said, was now turning to reports from inner cities across the country. Dozens were already in flames, stores and houses were set on fire by rampaging street gangs crazed with rage and fear.

"I'm afraid," Nellie said, "And about you . . . I don't think it's safe for you . . . to be driving home alone . . . the only . . . person in the area."

She meant white person. She asked me to drive her home not so much because of her fear but because she was concerned about me. White people out and about, well after dark, on the evening Martin Luther King was assassinated, would, she felt, not be safe. Being in the car with me would give me a margin of safety. She knew from inner-city uprisings during the previous few years that some white car and truck drivers had been ripped from their vehicles, beaten and even killed, as the riots spiraled out of control.

Opting to think less about myself I tried to concentrate on how I might provide safety for her--she commuted to the college by local buses. 

By then all the other students in ones and twos had departed. Nellie and I were the only ones remaining and we walked to the parking lot, clinging to each other.

In my car, a conspicuously yellow Opal, we headed south, needing to drive through segregated Jamaica, out toward where she lived in an integrated neighborhood near the bay.

Buildings were on fire all along the way. As I slowed to stop for a red light Nellie told me to ignore it, to keep moving, as it would be unsafe if we stopped.

To distract me from the news crackling on the radio she told me about her dreams--for her teenage son, it meat helping him get though his adolescence intact. By that she meant alive, out of the clutches and demands of violent street gangs. He was very bright, she said, but was already showing signs of succumbing to the allure of street life.

"I'm thinking of sending him to live with my mother, in Mississippi. Believe it or not, it's safer there. Even with Jim Crow."

"And what about you? You're a terrific student. Especially of literature. Are you thinking . . . ? We heard gunshots and saw a car a block ahead of us burst into flames and explode when the fire reached the gas tank.

"Turn that way," Nellie instructed me. "Quickly. Down there," she pointed to a one-way street where we would have to drive into oncoming traffic. "I know it's a one-way against us but it takes us to what I'm sure will be a safer route."

I followed her directions and at the end of one block we came to a cross street of abandoned houses and undeveloped lots where there were no signs of life or disorder. I began to breath more normally. 

"I am thinking about graduate school," Nellie said, resuming her story as if nothing unusual was happening, "Perhaps even working on a PhD. I know I'm a little old for that, but it's my dream. To be like you. A college professor." She smiled.

"We're getting close," she continued. "You are welcome to stay with me. But I know you live in Brooklyn and are married. Your wife will be worried about you."

I almost told her our marriage was on the rocks and that I would prefer to stay with her. But those emotions, if we survived, were perhaps for another day. 

At her house I got out to open her car door and, on the sidewalk, sobbing, we embraced for what felt like not enough time. As if we would not see each other again. That we were saying goodbye forever.

"We'll be all right," she said. "America will recover and be all right. You will be all right. And so will I."

With that she ran to the steps that led to her house and disappeared behind her aluminum front door.

I got home safely and the following week classes resumed. We all knew we were living in a changed America. Two months later Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Swift and Jane Austen lost some of their importance.

Nellie's son did well, eventually becoming a social worker, and after Queens College, Nellie pursued her dream. She was admitted to graduate school at Harvard where she eventually earned her doctorate. After Harvard, Nellie began a distinguished career as a professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin.

I reencountered her when she approached the Ford Foundation, seeking a grant to support her work. I was happy to be able to assist. 

Nellie McKay, at only 76, died in 2006.

October 27, 2016--Wisdom from Robert Kennedy

As we are within the last two weeks of one of the nastiest, most divisive presidential elections in history, it is not too soon to think about what kind of nation will remain after the ballots are cast, counted, and a new president is selected.

The day Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis, against the best advice of his aides who feared for his life, Robert Kennedy, seeking the nomination of his party, on the night of April 4, 1968, ventured into the flaming ghetto in Indianapolis and delivered these words. Words that almost equally could stand for a statement about our divided circumstances and point to a future of reconciliation.

I have added the italics.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black . . . you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. 

But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times. 

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: 

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of god.

January 28, 2015--"Selma"

As award season unfolds there is controversy surrounding the film Selma. Some are asking why, if it was nominated for an Oscar for best picture, why weren't the director, Ava DuVernay, and David Oyelowo who plays Martin Luther King nominated? Could it be, it is being whispered, because of Hollywood's racism? Forgetting for the moment that last year, Twelve Years A Slave won for best picture.

An additional controversy surrounds the depiction of Lyndon Johnson, who was president at the time. In "Selma" he is represented as resisting King's efforts to secure legislation to strip away impediments to Negroes being able to register and vote in the South and is shown needing to be pressured and even forced to support this struggle.

The historical record reveals this to be untrue and thus the film presents a seriously unfair picture of LBJ and his position on voting rights. In fact, some former Johnson aides and historians are claiming that the idea to march in Selma was more LBJ's than King's and they marshall evidence from audio tapes of White House conversations between MLK and Johnson to support that view.

Here, from the transcript of a taped telephone call between King on Johnson on January 15, 1965 (two months before the King-led Selma campaign) is that evidence of LBJ's commitment and how he suggested the strategy--

JOHNSON: We take the position that every person born in this country, when he reaches a certain age, that he have the right to vote . . . whether it's a Negro, whether it's a Mexican, or who it is . . . . I think you can contribute a great deal by getting your leaders and you, yourself, taking very simple elements of discrimination; where a [black] man's got . . . to quote the first 10 Amendments [in a voter registration literacy test], . . . and some people don't have to do that, but when a Negro comes in to do it, and if we can, just repeat and repeat and repeat. 

And if you can find the worst condition that you run into in Alabama, Mississippi or Louisiana or South Carolina . . . and if you just take that one illustration and get it on radio, get it on television, get it in the pulpits, get it in the meetings, get it everyplace you can. Pretty soon the fellow that didn't do anything but drive a tractor will say, "Well, that's not right," and then that will help us on what we're going to shove through [Congress] in the end. 

KING: Yes. 

JOHNSON:  And if we do that we will break through. It will be the greatest breakthrough of anything, not even excepting this '64 [Civil Rights] Act, I think the greatest achievement of my administration.

This does not sound like LBJ needed to be dragged kicking and screaming to support the voting rights agenda.

What would have been the problem to represent King and Johnson as partners, albeit wary partners?  Let's see what the film's director had to say about this distortion of history.

When asked, Ava DuVernay said that the original screenplay needed "extensive rewriting" because it was a script for a "traditional bio-pic" that presented "antiquated and patronizing" ideas about history and the civil rights movement.

In her words--

If, in 2014, we're still making 'white-savior movies' than it's just lazy and unfortunate. We've grown up as a country and cinema should be able to reflect what's true. And what's true is that black folks are the center of their own lives and should tell their own stories from their own experiences. [My italics.]

Even if what is represented as "true" isn't.

It is a shame that this otherwise inspiring and meaningful movie is being shown to young students as a full and accurate history of that brave era. I think it might have been the Reverend King himself who many times reminded us that it is only the truth that will set us free.