Pat Taub
This past July 4th was unlike any in American history. Americans were battling a deadly virus, which forced the cancellation of parades and public gatherings. At the same time, Americans were facing heightened divisions between the factions of hate and love.
July 4, 2020
The President was the poster boy for hate, delivering two back-to-back racist speeches at Mt. Rushmore and in the White House’s Rose Garden. In his familiar bellicose style he labeled the peaceful protesters “evil people” and “far-left fascists” in an effort to discredit their movement against police brutality and the unlawful killings of blacks.
I was feeling pretty dismal about our national divide until I read a post by Caitlin Johnstone, the Australian blogger. The 5 week-old protests have filled her with optimism. Johnstone believes we are experiencing a national awakening:
On the largest scale humanity is struggling to expand consciousness . . . where a critical mass of people understand what’s really happening . . . and use the power of their numbers to force an end to the oppression, exploitation, violence and ecocide of the immense global power structures which rule our planet.
The recent national protests for Black Lives Matter were sparked by the police murder of George Floyd
As a sheltered white woman of privilege, I’ve been trying to raise my consciousness by educating myself about racism. Remembering how moved I had been watching the James Baldwin documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro,” I re-watched it this weekend. Baldwin sets the stage for the film’s unfolding with the declaration, “The story of the Negro in America is the story of America.” There is historical footage of black slaves being auctioned off, including a 9 month old infant.
Baldwin pays homage to the great black leaders of his generation: Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. All three were murdered before they reached 40. I’ll never forget seeing Harry Belafonte with tears streaming down his face at King’s funeral, and watching the young widowed mother, Myrlie Evers consoling her bereft young son at his father’s funeral.
Myrlie Evers comforting her son, Darrell at his father’s funeral, 1963
When my youngest son was a defiant teenager and my attempts to discipline him failed, he challenged me, saying, “You should be like the black mothers.” I now understand what I didn’t fully understand at the time. Black mothers are tough with their sons to protect them from white cops and a white world that looks unfavorably at them.
I was beginning to recognize that racism is complicated and insidious, but hadn’t thought of racism as having a caste component until I read Isabel Wilkerson’s brilliant article, “America’s Enduring Racial Caste System.” She writes that the blatant caste system of the slave era has been replaced by the subtle policing of roles and behavior, lodged in the muscle memory of blacks.
To quote Wilkerson:
They are following rules not set down on paper but reinforced in commercials, television shows and billboards from boardrooms to newsrooms to gated subdivisions to who gets killed first in the first half hour of a movie, and affects everyone up and down the hierarchy.
A segregated trolley in Atlanta, 1956, when the caste system was less subtle than at present.
Wilkerson speculates that good whites keep the caste system intact through unconscious behavior like asking a black guest to fetch drinks, which actually happened to Obama when he was a senator, or presuming a black shopper is a clerk, asking her for help.
James Baldwin, speaking before an audience in the 1960’s, described America as a country symbolized by “the death of the heart.” As our hearts expand through new awakenings and the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement we have the opportunity to resuscitate our national heart.
We can pump out new love for one another. To get there whites will have to stop being defensive about their racism. They will have to be willing to investigate it and recognize how they exhibit racist behavior. To quote Baldwin, “Nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
