***Due to bad storms, we have been without power since 12:30 PM Wednesday. Sorry for the delay in posting.***
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence helps the tormentor, never the tormented.” ~ Elie Wiesel
Last week, I wrote about civilization and how America needs to revisit the meaning of community and social responsibility.
This week has seen what happens when the social contract is broken with a particular group of people again and again and again for generations. When a group of people is consistently seen as less, as expendable, as not worthy of belonging to that social contract, we end up right here. With an officer of the law coldly and deliberately murdering a black man in broad daylight, in front of many witnesses, being videotaped…and not caring. He and the 3 officers that were his accomplices were so assured they would suffer no consequences that they didn’t mind having an audience.
America is broken. For African-Americans, it has been broken for hundreds of years—and the massive protests we have seen in the wake of this latest brazen murder are the result.
I’m not talking about the looting. By most accounts, the looting is separate, instigated by people who would take advantage of the legitimate grief and rage and fear of Americans and twist it for their own agenda. Let it not distract us from the central issue.
The real protests, the peaceful protests, are filled with people who have had enough. Enough of the injustice. Enough of the inequality. Enough of the brutality. Enough of the hate. Enough of the death.
They are filled with people grieving the needless deaths of African-Americans, but also the death of the ideals we Americans profess to believe in—equality under the law, that all men are created equal, and the inalienable right to LIFE.
History shows that African-Americans have never really lived in that America. For them, it has been a litany of broken promises. The growing prevalence of cell phones and social media is shining the light on racism like never before. It is bringing its horror and ugliness into our living rooms, much as TV did the Vietnam War, and the results are similar. With the truth right in front of us, more and more people—of every skin color—are saying, “Enough!”
Enough.
The coronavius stopped the world and gave us a chance to contemplate what sort of “normal” we want to return to. I don’t want a normal where people have no health care. A normal where people live paycheck to paycheck. A normal where the lives of African-Americans are thrown away with such casual disdain.
Racism has been a cancer in America for too long. The convulsions we are experiencing are necessary to birth something better. Painful as this is, this moment is an opportunity. An opportunity to begin fixing a wrong too long unattended.
Let’s not waste this opportunity.
Let’s get it right this time.
I see you. I hear you. I stand with you.
Civilization – Lockdown Day 75
We’re quite a ways into this pandemic now, with still a long way to go, but many places are starting to reopen. Some slowly and methodically, guided by data and science, others all at once, willy-nilly. No state has achieved the suggested levels of cases, testing, and medical capacity to reopen, but lack of federal support for the unemployed and small businesses has caused economic pressure to reopen early. So now we are in a situation where we have gun-wielding pseudo-militiamen storming capitol buildings, governors being hung in effigy, and security guards murdered for asking people to wear a mask in a store.
The pandemic is clearly not bringing out the best in some people.
But the one image that has remained seared in my brain is the protestor holding the sign: “Sacrifice the Weak, Reopen TN”.
I find that notion horrifying. Who gets to decide who comprises “the weak”? Are the weak my parents, who are in their 70s but still working? Is it my 40-year-old friend who is on chemo? The child I know who is has an auto-immune disease? Is it the grocery store worker with asthma? The manicurist with the heart defect? Please, define for me just who are these “weak” people you want to sacrifice? Who are these people who, for you, hold absolutely no value in our society?
I cannot believe that America, home of “out of many, one”, has come to this.
Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead described what she thought was the first sign of civilization. Her answer surprised people. It was not an artifact or tool—it was a 15,000 year old healed femur bone.
Stunned, the questioner asked what was so important about this bone. Mead replied that in the animal world, a broken leg meant death. Absent modern medicine, it takes about 6 weeks for a broken human femur to heal. That meant that someone tended to this person for 6 weeks—protected them, nursed them, fed them. They didn’t just leave them to die. And that, she said, was civilization.
I’m glad that poor guy with the broken femur didn’t live with the person with the sign.
We in America seem to need a remedial lesson in society, in the notion of communal responsibility. We need to unlearn the toxic selfishness that has become such a part of our culture and relearn the idea of “a greater good.”
In June 1944, American soldiers ran into almost certain death to save democracy.
In June 2020, American “patriots” won’t even wear a mask to save Grandma.
I honestly don’t know where we go from here. How we cleanse the ugliness that has shown itself. How we heal the divides that have shattered us. How we give our children a better world than this one.
I suggest we start by emulating the empathy and compassion for others that those people showed 15,000 years ago. You know—back when we were civilized.