I watched the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris January 20, 2021 with hope and tears. I was reminded of the roads we have traveled and the “hills” we’ve climbed by a young woman who was ten years old when Barack Obama was sworn into office as the first African American president in 2009. Yet Amanda Gorman brilliantly reminded me that in any struggle there is always light, and we mustn’t be afraid. Indeed, at twenty-two, she is unafraid to be that light.
The beauty of this inauguration was that Biden’s address lacked usual high-flying inaugural oratory, words designed to have us focus on some noble route to the future, while overlooking a not-so-noble past. Reflection is always dangerous in a turbulent republic such as ours. President Biden did not sweep the unreconciled tragedies of our history under the rug. Indeed, he has pledged to flush out systemic racism which many see as the underlying cause of America’s civil unrest. Our American president is unafraid to admit to us and the world that persistent and protected racism has been hidden deep under the rug of national conscience for too many years.
We cannot reach that “mountaintop” together if we don’t reconcile the events that have been conveniently purged from memory. One such memory was brought back to me on January 6th when our nation’s capital came under siege. I witnessed a man carrying a confederate flag, defiant and proud, across the floor of the capitol building. This hateful symbol of the lost southern cause had never, ever been unfurled in this country’s capitol building – until now. Ironically, there were two portraits hanging on the walls. To his right was a portrait of the proud abolitionist, Charles Sumner. To the left of the flag bearer was a portrait of John C. Calhoun, a proud defender of slavery. The irony tells me that some battles are never over; never won, never lost – forever locked in ugly stalemate. And while the north may be credited with winning the war, the south can be credited, as evinced by the flag-bearer’s display, with winning the message.
That message was driven home for me one morning in 1998, my 10th year of teaching high school English in a small western New York town. That morning was unremarkable until I entered my building to find five angry white boys surrounding the door to my classroom – all draped in the confederate flag. I knew these boys were hell-bent on teaching me the same lesson other racist whites have provided for people of my collective for generations. Apparently, I needed to learn fear – for having reported one of the boys for writing “KKK, all niggers must die” on his desk the week before. There was no doubt who wrote the message on this desk that I had just cleaned the prior evening. But then, as now, I found it curious that whenever a racist is outed to the public, righteous indignation goes into overdrive. The young man and his family were incensed at my accusation. And to prove himself he started wearing a hat with the confederate flag emblem on the front. (Irony is not dead.) The story is long and involves many attempts on my part to talk to the young man in efforts to find any compassion beneath the bravado of good-old-country-boy grievance. Nothing worked. Not a community meeting with the NAACP nor other white students defending the rights of students and teachers of color against offensive displays like the confederate flag. My approach failed in the late 1998. Even so, I hope that my abbreviated story can act as guide for teachers and administrators when their school is rocked with the leftover stones of racial prejudice.
Educators, especially teachers of American history, I ask that you not be afraid to teach the truth. In fact, work backwards and unteach the lie of slavery being a simple working agreement between blacks and whites. And if there is any doubt that presumably intelligent adults already understand the truth about slavery, introduce them to “Gene Allmond, the chief of the police department in Hamilton, Ga.” According to New York Times reporter, Bryan Pietsch, Mr. Allmond is heard saying, “They furnished them a house to live in, they furnished them clothes to put on their back, they furnished them food to put on their table, and all they had to do was work.” Chief Allmond as speaking to Mr. Brooks a patrolman who was heard “using a racial slur while making lewd comments about [Atlanta Mayor] Ms. Bottoms and Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic candidate for governor.” Both chief Allmond and officer Brooks were unaware of Brooks’ body camera recording the conversation. This incident makes for an excellent lesson in the difficulty in getting to the truth about slavery. Let all the students know you are going to teach a mostly ignored history. Give students the courtesy of expectation. Expect them to understand the truth that southern states wanted the right to govern themselves insofar as their desires to own other human beings were concerned. Tell them this lesson is not to instill guilt or promote retribution, but it is a lesson about an American past meant to inform an American future. If we don’t know where we come from, we are doomed to never be able to answer the whys of the present and the why-nots for the future. I’ve taken the wind out of a few bully-sails by being up front regarding racist retorts. “There’s nothing original or decent about racism.” Cutting the bully off at the pass can sometimes remove sneak attacks. Sometimes. Most importantly for educators, you have to believe historical truths. If you don’t, I beg you, please get another profession.
The level of comfort in any given classroom begins with the teacher: For the white teacher who may have his/her own buried, unaddressed issues around race and white supremacy, establishing a level of comfort around an uncomfortable subject can be an insurmountable task. Knowing the truth about this country’s history means knowing the truth about one’s self. There is no faking it. If you, as a white teacher, have any discomfort springing from your own preconceived ideas and or negative experiences with students of color, your students from racist family cultures will know where your sympathies lie. Intuition is strong in many students especially minority students. Indeed, some may never tell you but, believe me, they will know your comfort level, sometimes even better than you. I asked the African American editor of our school newspaper why she had chosen to forego her senior year? (Preferring an early start at Georgetown University). She explained that three years of being the recipient of bullying racist behavior from her peers was more than enough. Another reason she was in a hurry to leave sprang from the white adult “presumption of black ignorance.” Every student has a teacher-radar. They know when we are being sincere. They know when we want them to thrive just as they know when teachers don’t care if they fail.
Administrators are important in deciding who gets to teach as well as determining the comfort level of the entire school. A good idea might be to have prospective teachers, as part of the interview process, model the introduction of a race related unit. An actual presentation of a candidate’s introduction to race sensitive topics such as, Slavery in the U.S., Huck Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, can give fair insight into a teaching candidate’s classroom approach.
An administrator’s job is not easy. Navigating the vicissitudes of school board and administrative demands is not for the weak of heart. When a student insists on bullying or intimidating others with items like a confederate flag, the administrator needs to act swiftly to defend a peaceful and educational learning environment. Any equivocation lends legitimacy to racism. The Confederate flag issue at my school should have been a teachable moment. My administrator should have suspended those individuals for intimidation and harassment. (There was no question as to why they blocked my door). The entire school should have been made aware of the incident and informed, in no uncertain terms, that such behaviors would not be tolerated. My administrator failed in showing how the confederate flag was offensive to her as it should have been to every compassionate human being. My principal levied no punishment. In fact, in efforts at appeasement, the wearing of the flag was allowed – but only in two-inch-by-two-inch displays on hats or t-shirts. (I’m sure the ridiculousness in expecting teachers and hall monitors to carry rulers for measuring offenders is why this decision too, was a failure). My administrator’s actions told me I was not worth the outcry from aggrieved, though misguided, parents fighting to preserve a fabricated heritage. I never believed nor do I now see this administrator as racist and I fully understood the pitfalls of navigating a high school student body filled with kids from all socio-economic strata – ranging from kids of parents with six-figure incomes to those on public assistance. What I found most offensive though, was my principal’s weakness and inability to stand up and proclaim this flag utterly offensive – just as she had done with me in private. Yes, my principal did not want to upset a community that might have called for her resignation. My right to work in a non-threatening environment was not worth it for her. This episode happened in the spring semester and I wanted my principal to take a stand. And because she didn’t, that same student stalked me the entire fall semester finding my prep periods, coming to my room and pulling the, since banned, flag from his pocket. I informed her of these infractions too many times because it wasn’t long before I became the problem. I quit complaining. Maybe, in the late 1998, I wanted too much. But today, expecting an understanding of the evil of slavery and knowledge of how the image of the confederate flag furthered that evil, is not too much to ask.
Nothing is lost on the perceptive student and time has proven this true. One young man who was part of the confederate flag tormentors blocking my door, stopped at my desk a few days after the incident wanting to apologize. Not only did he need to apologize to me, but his family also encouraged him to apologize to the entire class. I remember his name to this day and wonder what became of him. I do know he moved to Florida soon after the apology to be with other family members. I don’t know why. Another incident that gives me reason to hope, happened eight years after my retirement, in 2016. I was a long-term substitute teacher at a high school in a neighboring city. At a faculty luncheon I was approached by a young teacher who asked if I had ever taught at her high school. I said yes. She then proceeded to apologize for her inaction during the “confederate flag incident.” I was stunned to tears – it had been so long ago. I was caught off guard, assailed by an unaddressed grief at the inaction of my principal and the silence of most of my white colleagues. This young teacher continues to be guided by the decency required to fight a racist culture. I am encouraged that the entire confederate flag issue held some positive lessons even as I know putting an end to the confederate fight for legitimacy has not been and will not be easy. I can only promise to fight the flawed rationale of State’s Rights. In order to remain above the rabbit-hole of hatred, I remember the positives that sprang from negative events. I remember the white students, a young woman in particular who dared stand up at our meetings and call out the racists amongst her peers. (Today, this young woman now runs an advocacy law firm and remains good friends with my niece). I have long been amazed at the courage it must have taken for her to stand up and be strong all the while navigating the vicissitudes of an unforgiving high school culture. So too do I owe gratitude and respect to those few white teachers who refused to ignore students wearing racially offensive clothing in their classrooms. I had become far more conscious of those educators in my building who would consider themselves my friends yet not challenge a white student’s desire to wear racially offensive clothing in our workplace. This waffling regarding my right to work in a non-hostile environment was painful even as it was understandable. We teachers tend to be a docile lot. I understand as well that, as a teacher who’s been called many things, docile was never one of them.
Ironically, what those aggrieved rioters who ransacked the Capitol Building on January 6th of this year helped to pull rug from under the feet of this nation. A rug that had become so bumpy and uneven that it impeded our forward march. I saw the flag of the south waved in grievance as a potential stand-in for people who feared loss and desecration of their rural lifestyle. I realized as well that my former confederate flag-waving students were not knocking at the ceilings of academic or athletic success. The rural dairy farms were all but gone. Local machining and factory jobs were upping the skills requirements that would leave the less motivated on the outside. I see now that in their inarticulate hearts they must have felt they were being forced out of a way of life by the influx of highly skilled, very diverse, and educated workers hired by the county’s two major fortune 500 employers. I wondered how many of the DC rioters shared the same grievance?
Racism ceases to be a problem when most people feel prosperous and employed in meaningful work. Yes, racist groups like the KKK and Proud Boys exist but their numbers increase with the increase in this white majority’s fear of loss. I wonder how many of my confederate flag tormentors looked at the newsclips with sympathy for the angry mob? I don’t think the January 6th crowd understood the manipulation of their anger and frustration by racist and anti-Semitic groups. Just as those who blocked my door were being manipulated by the instigator whose initial grievance was being labled racist for his racist graffiti and not the shared grievance of lost position in school and community.
On my good days I am hopeful. Hopeful that those who wanted to wreck democracy on January 6, 2021 can come to some understanding of how their grievances are being coopted by hate groups who’ve blinded them to the irony of storming the “citadel of freedom” demanding a nebulous freedom for themselves. On my worst days, I know education has failed some students. We’ve failed to push them to do the right thing when we allowed a hateful rationale to prevail. We’ve equivocated when we should have been strong in our demands for decency and empathy. We didn’t want to hurt feelings by informing some that a time would come when the family farm would no longer sustain them after graduation. We failed to impress upon them the need for the human being to be useful, compassionate, and work for the good of the whole. As educators we’ve delighted in the successes of those motivated and strong students whose lives after college have made us proud. But all of that seems to have come at the expense of those who needed more from us than we were ever capable of imagining. Much is demanded of educators. I’m not alone in my memories of leaving work in the dark, mired in fatigue after a long and tiring meeting with my Students Against Violence And Discrimination group. Countless times I’ve sat in my car wondering why I worked so damn hard at an extracurricular that pays nothing? But years later, I recognize I was paid – every time a student finds me on social media or writes a thank-you card letting me know the impact I had on their lives. Yes, I’ve been paid – in the currency of hope.
Teachers are expected to solve the problems of the world. As such, we must remember that our light will shine even if we can’t see its reflection in the moment. We have to be fearless as we take up education’s lantern, to shine the light that shows all students that America has a place for them. If nothing else – we must remember this.
Yesterday, as the steps of the Capitol Building were being cleared, I witnessed a black D.C. police officer kindly escort an elderly white woman, clad in trump supporting gear, down the capitol steps. This image clashed violently with the sight of angry Q-Anon supporters chasing another black policeman up the steps of the building’s interior with intent on bodily harm. I wondered if this elderly woman was aware her presence was simply a smokescreen to justify the sedition planned by far-right insurgents intent on making real the Day of the Rope? (Day of the Rope references a fictional event – depicting the slaughter of all Non-Aryans). The image of a rope in the form of a noose has become the homegrown homage to the Neo-Nazi idea that educators, academic, lawmakers, liberals, and all elites should be hung for treason. Would this woman, who received such kindness, have stayed home if she had known she would be forever linked to the mission of neo-Nazis and white supremacists?
There was a wooden gallows erected on the far side of the reflecting pool in the U.S. Capital January 6, 2021. The expertly tied noose was supported by 10 x 10 uprights and a cross beam that suggested the construction of this gallows was not haphazard. It had been planned and implemented by more than one person. I’m guessing the elderly white woman having trouble negotiating her oxygen canister down the capitol building steps was not one of them. The sight of the gallows did not, as was expected, instill fear in me. Rather I was immediately engulfed in an ancient and historical sadness that has, over the years, kept me and other people of color from really engaging in the political apparatus of this democracy. Then, it was easy to feel defeated knowing that white Americans were, at their very core, racist. The notion that blacks alone were doomed to fight a losing battle with racism was underscored for me in the 90’s when I sat in a meeting of educators and administrators and made the statement that I’ve been driven to believe that if all blacks were too vanish from the country tomorrow there would not be one white person who would care enough to ask about our disappearance. Indeed, after the meeting, not one person among them, some whom I’d considered friends, cared enough to disabuse me of my notion of hopelessness.
I credit the group Black Lives Matter with restoration of my hope. Last summer, when I looked at the faces, young and old, people of color and whites gathering and marching in protest of racist police tactics – I was no longer hopeless. I am no longer hopeless when I witness the work of people like Stacey Abrams who’ve done the monumental task of real grassroots organizing and getting people out to vote in record numbers. No longer will I be afraid or delayed in speaking out against racial injustice.
So today, while that gallows was intended to create fear in me, I see through that hateful intent. That gallows was erected by those who fear BLM, Stacey Abrams, and all people of color who refuse to be marginalized and made so fearful that we don’t vote. The result of November’s elections, fair and free from fear, have flushed out the haters and driven them to Washington to take back a country that they’ve never lost – because they’ve never owned it. Fear is the tool of tyranny. Fear is the hammer this president has used to pound into the palms of those who’ve lost control of their ability to reason. Those are the Americans who would rush into the arms of any tin-pot messiah who promises safety from the imagined demons of his making.
I find it amazing (not in a good way) that we are at 250 thousand deaths from the Corona Virus and the President is holed up in some emotional underground bunker tweeting instructions to those who enable him in his efforts to subvert democracy. He has no plan to help Americans through this pandemic. His only plan is to help himself to a second term. I’d like to say we Americans don’t deserve this but, I’m sure we do.
For so long we’ve moved ahead (those of us with good jobs and relatively happy existences) willing to put an uncomfortable, unaddressed history behind us. We have buried our worst moral transgressions so far below the dirt of this country’s emotional North South Line that when part two of the Civil War erupts, we fail to see it. We’ve been blinded to the GOP’s red on one side and the Democrat’s blue on the other. Only now we are becoming increasingly aware that the Mason-Dixon Line in this part II of our Civil War is – Donald J. Trump.
We’ve been blinded. Had – by that long arm of the far-right con working always behind a curtain. We’ve been distracted by the clown sent out to mollify and entertain the crowd. We couldn’t see the con because we are the mark.
Yes, going forward sounds easy – yet we’ve crossed so many rivers roiled with havoc. We’ve bridged so many valleys made lower with doubt.
I cry at the memory of what was my sincere hatred of unhappy people – who’ve made the world unhappier. I’ve gone to bed at night with hatred and doubt my personal valets only to awake with the only question left; WHY? That word is the leash that has lashed me to the mast of hope.
Going forward I will walk with hope open in one hand and doubt doubled in the other. I will hope with all the tears of the mothers who’ve lost children to the systemic hatred of the patriarchy. I will hope with all the tears of those who wait to come into our own troubled land knowing this despairing country is far better than the despair they’ve left. I will hope and be washed clean with all the tears of those who’ve marched for justice in the streets and the courts. Those who know that when injustice is leveled at ONE it is leveled at us ALL. I will walk forward with all the hope fashioned from the depths of a four-year-old misery. I will walk forward knowing my purpose; that justice is never achieved by detachment but through hard work – one foot in front of the other until my feet are worn and rent with protest.
There is no valley of peace – I know now – every hiatus in the struggle, however warm with camaraderie, can be stolen and used against me. Against justice. The thieves of justice will never sleep. I’ve had four years to learn this. And I am, going forward, a damned good student!
I was asked this question 25 years ago by one of my 10th grade English students. Classroom discussion had turned to the notorious O.J. Simpson case. Interest in this high-profile murder trial had found a willing population in this small-town, filled with the hero worship of football fanatics. To some students, Orenthal James Simpson was the hero they wished they could be. While for other students, regurgitating family dinner table comments from the night before, the trial became a low-road referendum on why beautiful white women should not marry black men.
For a split second, I felt trapped by the question. I knew, as the only African American teacher in the building, my usual faculty lounge equal opportunity to (my opinion) approach wasn’t going to work. I looked at my students, who were quiet and waiting for my response.
“Race relations, in this country,” I said, “are like a deep wound that scabs over too soon. Sometimes that scab is pulled off because the wound has not healed”.
My analogy held, at least – until the bell rang.
The longer I live the more I’ve come to realize just how close to the truth I’d gotten with my off-the-cuff analogy of racism. The United States of America is a beautiful and large 50-part body. But it is a body that, when undressed, is blemished with many big and small bandages that have been hastily applied over the decades to staunch the bloody flow of recollection.
I grew up in a time of hope in spite of the assassinations of President Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Malcolm X; flawed heroes to be sure but the flaws did not erase the passionate messages they left in their combined wakes. These messages offered a hope that sprung eternal in many African-American hearts. It certainly did in mine. In 1969 I marched across Compton High’s graduation stage to receive my diploma; a piece of paper weighted with hope for my future in college and beyond. I am the recipient of the economic infusion that came as reparation in the aftermath of black protests of the mid-60’s. I was twelve at the time of the Watts Rebellion. My speech at my 9th grade graduation was titled “Where do We Go From Here?” But by the time I had reached 12th grade I still had no idea what I wanted to do or be. I just knew I was moving forward. And with money made available through grants and low interest loans, I was going to college – with hope. Hope propelled me through a time when it appeared this country had come face-to-face with its past inhumanity. When we made tracks from the back of the bus to the outer limits of space. Hope filled my heart when I looked closer at the pictures and the black and white faces of those marching across bridges and standing at the Lincoln Memorial listening to a man’s wish for his progeny and their ultimate place at the table of humanity. But my heart was never so full of hope as it was when I witnessed Barack Obama sworn in as the first African-American president of these United States.
For most of us, there was a collective hope in 2009. There was hope that this country could heal and become more than a culturally loose affiliation of wounded states. But all the hopes and dreams of those working to keep the conversation alive, could not survive the biggest blow to the empire – the resurrection, the reemergence of the bare-knuckled fist of America’s Manifest Destiny now dressed in the regalia of white supremacy. Manifest Destiny was the belief that early America was fated, ordained to expand her influence and supremacy no matter the land and lives of her indigenous people. This first and largest wound to America’s still young and vibrant body came from the lie that white European men were superior in intellect and desire. It was a lie supported by political attitude and weaponry. The spread of the propaganda of Manifest Destiny sowed the seeds of white supremacy into stolen soil.
It is true, history is written by the winner. That whites should reap the benefits of a stolen land and take on the virtues of an annihilated people is an idea hard-baked into 20th Century white supremacy. Even today, the prevailing white power structure continues to gore the body of America in its failure to recognize the Native American as worthy, even human.
Growing a sturdy body, like building a durable nation, requires a strong and stable foundation. That this country began with land theft and the genocide of its native people should have been a dire warning to Jefferson and the other “founding fathers.” But it wasn’t. And when the need arose for a larger labor force, African people were imported. Bought and sold like chattel, the African’s rich dark skin and foreign tongue further failed to invoke any humanity in their overseers. That Hitler used the American institution of slavery as a blue print for his holocaust was not surprising. Slavery was profitable. It was the slave who enriched the new world beyond measure. And it was the white male who took credit for this young country’s elevated economic standing. Everyone profited from yet another gaping wound to America’s Body. Even those who refused to engage in the overt act of buying and selling human beings profited from the idea that some human beings are less worthy than others.
The lie of Manifest Destiny has grown and morphed into a hierarchy of lies ordained by God with the white man, unfettered by compassion, securely positioned at its peak. It is the lie that deems some humans of no value. The lie that continues to consume the U.S. body with a flesh-eating dishonesty. It is a lie made visible by the continuing protest for simple dignity.
The road is long. We are tired. And we have yet to reach our goal of a truly unified body of states. Reaching that goal means this country removes the knife that has been plunged into the Native American heart with its reverence for Indian Killers like Andrew Jackson – revered on the twenty-dollar bill for his Trail of Tears. We will be close to our goal when we understand that the installation of many Confederate memorial statues took place, not right after the Civil War, but during the 1920’s, an era suffused with Jim Crow violence against black people. We are told these statues are only to commemorate a more prosperous southern history. But these statues were being erected on the lawns of state buildings and county courthouses during a time of violent disenfranchisement of black people. And that tells a different, more murderous history.
Today, it grieves me to know there are young people who feel hopeless. It grieves me to know that we still have to remind people that we are human and that our lives matter. It grieves me to know that the closer we get to that Table of Humanity the further away it seems. The body-US still suffers from severe wounds. Still writhes in hateful, violent spasms of white supremacy. Today’s protests are necessary to highlight that vulgarity of corruption within the body. We protest to break the bandages and scrape the scab from the wound to further allow the pus of hatred to drain. Only then can we proceed to wash clean the bloodstained fiber that should bind this country’s entire body.
Yes, it is about race and until we heal from the inside out by addressing white supremacy in all its forms, it will always be about race.
