Identity Politics

We hear a lot about “identity politics” these days, and most of it is bad. The basic image is of ever-more strident and intolerant groups who are interested only in airing their grievances, establishing their victimhood, furthering their agendas, and shouting down anyone who disagrees – all at the expense of the greater good. But instead of looking at identity politics as an effort to destroy the social fabric of America, what if we looked at it as part of a slow and often painful journey toward including people in the story that America tells about itself – the story of American Exceptionalism? It’s a story that left a lot of people out.

How are Native Americans supposed to resonate to westward expansion? African-Americans to the sanctity of property? Women to equality? Muslims to the melting pot? And working-class people to the wonders of globalization? When they demand that their voices be heard in America’s story, these people are insisting we expand our definition of community to live up to our own ideals.

As I learned in my travels through the Rust Belt last summer, and from reading J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, Amy Goldstein’s forthcoming Janesville, and Chris Arnade’s odyssey across America, we are at last confronting the hardships white working-class people have faced in the last 25 years and the alienation many feel from much of today’s America.

They are an integral part of our story – but only to expand our idea of America, not as a wedge issue to divide us. For to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., the arc of our history bends toward inclusion. It’s been a long journey from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to today’s diversity, and we aren’t going back.

A Mission Statement for America, Part 2

Please join me in this ongoing effort to create a working mission statement for America that may help us to hang together lest, as Benjamin Franklin noted, “we shall all hang separately.” (Note to Oval Office: Franklin: a great American, invented electricity, currently dead.) At the end of yesterday’s post, I wrote of four times in our history when leaders articulated a common story to unite us. At least three things bind their stories together: (1) the community (later nation) faced a severe crisis; (2) The stories were aspirational – that is, they tried to inspire future actions, rather than glorify, or even justify, past behaviors; and (3) the later ones built on the ones that had gone before – and sought to expand the community to include those who had previously been left out. As such, they were building blocks in the ongoing project of constructing a nation.

1630: John Winthrop and his small band of Puritans aboard the Arbella faced a frightening and, to them, hostile wilderness, having left behind everything they had ever known, except each other. They had not come to practice religious toleration but to escape it, and they ill-treated almost everyone they encountered, annihilating the Native Americans, hanging the occasional Quaker who wandered into their Massachusetts Bay Colony, banishing Antinomians and all other heretics from their midst, and generally trying to build as exclusive, intolerant and holy a community as they could. Mostly they failed, although one runs into their spiritual descendants from time to time.

1776: When the Framers looked out across America a century and a half later, the Puritan community had been superseded by all kinds of people clamoring for a place: Protestants of almost infinite denominations; Catholics; Jews; Deists; even Black freedman . . .but of Native Americans, slaves, women, and even most non-property owners, there were none. But the Declaration of Independence was also a declaration of war, and so the framers, at least rhetorically, opened their arms to “all men.”

1863: In response to this nation’s greatest crisis, Abraham Lincoln expanded the definition of its community beyond what anyone had ever imagined – extending it to four million slaves who had until then been the property of fewer than 400,000 families. Yet again the job was not complete. Many of the generals who had led the Union army went on to exterminate the Plains Indians; women were nowhere to be found in the new definition; nor were the great waves of immigrants coming to stoke the furnaces of our massive industrial growth.

1963: As Freedom Riders launched a surging movement for simple justice against Jim Crow and American apartheid, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech at Lincoln’s Memorial pushed boundaries further than they had ever been pushed before – even in the face of intractable resistance from those who sought not to broaden, but to constrict, America’s community.*

A floodgate had opened, as others kept coming forward to demand their place in the definition of America, including the gay community, the disabled, and working class whites.

Next up: Identity Politics

*“In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth,” said Alabama Governor George Wallace, also in 1963, “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.”

A Mission Statement for America

A New Series. America has not been this dangerously divided in many years, and the myths that in the past have held us together and shaped our identity as a people are no longer working. Instead, we have become an angry country where, in the words of W.B. Yeats, “everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned” and our public discourse is passionate, poisoned and dangerously illiterate.

It seems a good time to try to rebuild a national myth – or at least come up with a mission statement – that could help unify us. It's not a new idea: Here are four examples from our history:

• In 1630 John Winthrop admonished his Puritan followers that “we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, . . . we must be knit together, in this work, as one man.”
• A century and a half later, the framers looked out over a far different America and wrote these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
• At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln pointed to “the great task remaining before us – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
• And a century later, Martin Luther King, Jr., said beneath Lincoln’s monument: “When we let [freedom] ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Each of these statements builds on the ones that came before, and each came as the community faced a time of crisis and great fear. As I will try to show in my next post, each sought to reiterate the essence of the American experience – of “American exceptionalism,” if you will – and, more importantly, to expand the definition of our American community to include those who had been left out.

In these days of the great unraveling, we need to restate who we are as a people and build a more inclusive community.

“As We Go Marching On” *

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can get you to commit atrocities." Voltaire  It’s been noted that I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a big fan of Donald Trump and that I have at times used this space to express my biased views.

True.

The responses from those who disagree have fallen into two categories:

1. Trump is doing what he said he would do. You may not like it. But he won.

All three sentences are correct.

2. Those who vent their sour grapes – with their unbalanced editorials and angry protest marches – are actually playing into Trump’s narrative, reinforcing his message, and firing up his base.

I believe that also is true.

#1. Not fair. The first objection is based on fairness, as quaint as that may seem in these times. Trump won, get over it and give the man a chance. The peaceful transition of power is how a democracy functions, so we all need to play by the rules.

But an election is not a coronation, and the latest one has not yet repealed the people’s first-amendment right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (as a proponent of non-violence, I stress “peaceably”).

#2: Not smart. The second objection is based on stupidity. Trump’s opponents continue to pursue a losing strategy, and it’s backfiring.

But that may simply be buying into Trump’s narrative – repeated over and over and over again – that he won a crushing victory by tapping not just into Americans’ anger but into America’s soul. And therefore we should all just shut up.

The resistance may well be firing up his hard core. But it may also be (1) shrinking his broader support, which was never a majority in the first place; and (2) getting the attention of people who aren’t part of anybody’s base, including business leaders and Republican members of Congress.

If the opposition doesn’t keep drawing lines, then soon there may not be any lines.

* From:  "Marching Song of the First Arkansas Colored Regiment" 

Bubbles

OK, I admit it. I live in a bubble. And you live in a bubble.

We all live in bubbles.

Even those who criticize us for living in bubbles live in bubbles.

And those who say that people who live in bubbles can’t understand the “real” America, they live in bubbles, too.

So, let’s acknowledge our mutual bubbleness – the reality that most of us spend much of our time with people who are like us, people who share our views and reaffirm our values and with whom we can relax and be ourselves.

Problems arise, however, when we mistake our bubble for the whole world – which is why it’s good to get out of our bubble from time to time. To make an effort to climb – or at least look – over what Arlie Russell Hochschild calls the “empathy wall” in Strangers in Their Own Land and try to understand people who are different from us. Maybe even to celebrate those differences, delighting in the vast diversity that is America.

That recognition of “the other” was at the heart of many of the responses to the Giving Very Small post: “With most of us living in our respective, rather narrow, community ‘bubble,’” wrote one reader, “a real interaction with someone outside of our comfort zone is remarkably valuable to all concerned.”

This is true because, by definition, the more narrow your bubble, the more constricted your life.

Donald Trump lives in an alarmingly narrow bubble, and he spent last week signaling his intention to impose his insular views on all of America. We must not let that happen.

I could care less about the size of Trump’s hands. But his tiny bubble scares the hell out of me.

It’s always ourselves we find in the sea*

“What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue,” Ayn Rand (1964). This is the second in a series of responses to my recent post, Giving Very Small, reflections on hunger and homelessness in American cities not as detached statistics but as human encounters.

• You now prompt me to do the same. Now there are three of us throwing starfish back into the surf.

• My wife and I often carried the apples we grew to people on the street, only to notice that a lot of them threw the fruit into the gutter. You can't trade what they wanted for apples. So then we started bringing food to the food shelter.

• Those connections, those acts of kindness, are the best way forward.

• I have often wondered the same thing myself, but also have hesitated, as NYC is so full of grifters posing as AIDS victims, military vets, etc. Maybe a handful of bills and taking a chance is the way to go.

• Recently, I have found myself frequently annoyed by members of the young punk crowd with their little cardboard signs that say things like "Why lie? I need a beer."  I feel like saying, "You know, there are people on the street who really do need help."

• One summer in San Francisco, with lots of homeless and/or street people asking for money, I was uncomfortable and conflicted. My friend, a woman of color from Memphis, did not give them any money or even consider doing so. She said that nearly all these people know where the community help organizations are located – the soup kitchens and shelters and drug/alcohol advising centers – that San Francisco has significant numbers of them and has put lots of resources into such programs. She believes that giving the people we pass money does not help them with the larger issues they are facing.

• Is it about being a lapsed Episcopalian? Or was it Your "Giving Small" post that made me roll down my window for the elderly man I'd passed many times without five bucks for the look on his face? I'll pass that way again. Count on it.

* e.e. cummings, “maggie and milly and molly and may” (1956)

Giving Very Small

It’s an old tale. One morning after a big storm, a wise man walks along a beach covered with starfish. He watches as a small boy bends to pick up a starfish and throw it into the ocean. “What are you doing,” he asks?

“Throwing starfish into the ocean,” the boy replies. “If I don’t, they will die when the sun gets high.”

“But there are tens of thousands of starfish,” says the man. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to make much of a difference.”

The boy picks up another starfish and throws it into the sea. “It made a difference to that one,” he says.

(Cited in Amy Goldstein’s forthcoming Janesville, An American Story, p. 51)

These days, as I walk through the city I pass so many homeless people, often slumped on the sidewalk with a small, sad sign in black magic marker, a note to catch someone’s attention. But there are so many, I’m overwhelmed. How do I choose? What difference can my “spare change” possibly make to this immense tragedy? I look away, not just from their signs but from their faces. I pass by, embarrassed.

I decided to change that. My New Year’s resolution was to take with me each day a certain number of dollar bills and give them away until they are gone. I still have to choose, of course, but not in exactly the same way. Now I have a goal and I have a limit. I don't need to judge worthiness or compare hardships. I only have to give the money away, and since it’s not much money, it’s hardly a sacrifice on my part.

The day after I made the resolution, I got a note from my brother, Walker. It included an article he wrote in which he described his efforts to give something to someone every day, no matter how inconsequential the gift may seem.

Walker is a Buddhist, so I suspect this may come more naturally to him; whereas I am a lapsed Episcopalian, and a more tight-fisted bunch is hard to imagine. (Believe me, I’ve thought about how to make these gifts tax-deductible, although I haven’t yet asked anyone for a receipt.)

The reactions vary. Most are grateful, as much it sometimes seems for the recognition as the small amount of money; a few hardly notice. Because each small gift won’t alleviate the recipient’s distress – nor will they collectively make a dent in the city's poverty – I suppose you could argue they’re little more than random acts of selfishness.

But each transaction is an interaction with another being, someone I do not know, yet may pass by every day. It’s an exchange, and in that moment when I don’t look away – a moment I hope transcends both selfishness and charity – I imagine two people a little happier and a city a little more human.

Read Walker’s article. We could make this a movement.

The Gift Outright

Fifty-six years ago, on a cold and windy day in Washington, eighty-six-year-old Robert Frost stood to read “Dedication,” a poem he had written for the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. Squinting into the bright sun, he found himself unable to read the faint type in front of him, and so instead he recited an earlier poem from memory. “The Gift Outright” is a far better poem, more succinct and more complex in its depiction of America. It’s a poem worth pondering, especially today, about the connection between Americans and their land – not just about the repository of vast resources to be exploited for great wealth, but about the still-unfolding story of ourselves as a people. What’s missing, as in so many of our stories, is the remembrance that the land the Europeans found was not empty, was not “unstoried, artless, unenhanced,” but filled with people we displaced and often worked by people we enslaved.

Maybe that’s because we possessed the land before we gave ourselves to it, because we mistook a gift to be shared for a possession to be hoarded, even defining an entire people as private property.

It is said these days that people only want to read the news they agree with. We have always approached our history the same way, leaving out the things we don’t want to remember. But we will only, I believe, appreciate the gift that is America when we embrace all of its messy, deplorable, inspiring story. Then perhaps we will find “salvation in surrender.”

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land’s.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England’s, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become.

Beyond Legitimacy

Few people have more justification to question the legitimacy – not merely of Donald Trump’s presidency, but of our entire political system – than John Lewis. Born to sharecroppers in the violent, apartheid world of rural Alabama, he later had his head split open on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

Only six years apart in age, Lewis (76) and Trump (70) are now forever linked. Yet how different have been the trajectories of their lives. One a bullhorn bellowing from outside the ropes, looking out for himself and encouraging violence by others on others; the other a man pledged to non-violence, beaten senseless for insisting his country live up to its “self-evident” truths long denied to his people.

Until November, Lewis seemed to point the way forward for America, toward increasing inclusiveness and greater justice. Now our future seems less clear, as the man who underwrote eight years of malicious attacks on our current president’s legitimacy prepares to succeed him in office.

It’s time to accept the reality of the election and move ahead. That does not mean we must put aside our principles or give up our hopes. Rather, we must learn how to come together under a president who is intent on keeping us divided.

In this quest I take heart from something Van Jones said last month, that “Trump is much worse than anybody in this country is willing to accept, but a lot of his voters are much better.”

Elegy in Black and White (Part 2)

My discovery 40 years ago (Part 1) that white people living in an urban ghetto exhibited many of the behaviors – addiction, crime, truancy, teenage pregnancy – associated with inner-city black life came as a revelation to me. I wasn’t alone in my ignorance. The Moynihan Report (1965) had declared, “the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling” and called for a new national goal: “the establishment of a stable Negro family structure.” Three years later, in the wake of US military tanks rumbling through the streets of America’s burning cities, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders concluded: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal,” giving the clear impression that whites had moved to the suburbs while blacks were locked in the ghetto. Meanwhile, voices from the right blamed African Americans – and initiative-robbing welfare programs – for their problems.

And so both sympathetic progressives and antagonistic conservatives came to filter “how class and family affect the poor . . . through a racial prism,” writes J.D. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy. That prism denigrated black culture, and it overlooked white poverty.

Many people have rediscovered white poverty and rural discontent since November 8^th, but the stereotype of black culture endures. “To many analysts, terms like ‘welfare queen’ conjure unfair images of the lazy black mom living on the dole,” notes Vance. “I have known many welfare queens; some were my neighbors, and all were white.”

Instead of focusing on the behaviors people exhibit, as I did in the first sentence, shouldn’t we address, instead, the problems they face? For we will never overcome our divisions until we recognize our common ground.

Elegy in Black and White (Part 1)

“I’m Ty,” he said as he launched himself from the top of the steps, a tiny human missile heading straight at me, standing on the floor below. It wasn’t the last time I would be startled by Ty’s combination of complete recklessness and complete trust. He was six. He had come, with his shy and far more timid twin brother, Troy, and about 12 others, to an after-school program I had started in an inner-city public housing project in Boston. The year was 1975, and Boston was under a federal court order to desegregate its public school system through a citywide busing program that was met by often-violent resistance in many of the city’s still solidly ethnic neighborhoods.

Ty and Troy lived with their mother in one of those dreary brick-and-concrete housing projects that had been built with good intentions but ended up cut off from the communities around them, insular and menacing to outsiders. I always believed it was lucky for me as well as Ty that I caught him that first afternoon.

He was a great kid, but it was hard to feel optimistic about the future he faced in a place of violence and drugs and all the other pathologies we had been taught to associate with life in an urban ghetto: teenage pregnancies and single-parent families, truancy, vandalism, unemployment, crime.

In one way only did Ty’s neighborhood defy the stereotype: it was entirely white. And not just white, but still predominantly Irish and Catholic, bulwarks I had thought against the disintegration afflicting black families on the other side of the city – families whose children Ty’s neighbors hurled epithets at as the buses rolled through their streets, accompanied by phalanxes of motorcycle cops, while police sharpshooters stood sentinel on the high-school roof.

Clearly, the person who had the most to learn in my after-school program was me.

And so it begins

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?” ("Who will guard the guards themselves?") Juvenal. It was a holiday, the first one of the year, and who knew these guys would be at work, or even in town? But there they were in a presumably smokeless room deep in the caverns of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. filleting the Congressional Ethics Office, the independent agency set up to, well, monitor Congressional ethics.

By a vote of 119-74, with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in opposition, House Republicans approved Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte’s proposal to replace the ethics office with the “Office of Congressional Complaint Review,” which will answer to the House Ethics Committee.

If you find all that confusing, said Goodlatte, don’t worry. "The amendment builds upon and strengthens the existing Office of Congressional Ethics by maintaining its primary area of focus of accepting and reviewing complaints from the public and referring them, if appropriate, to the Committee on Ethics."

Never mind that the Committee on Ethics is controlled by the members – that is to say, by the people the original office was set up to investigate.

It seems ominous that, with all the issues we face, the first act of the new Congressional majority is to gut its own ethical guidelines. But the more important issue is how they twist the language to sow confusion rather than clarity.

''Political language,” wrote George Orwell many years ago, “is designed to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.''

Out Among the Stars (Johnny Cash)

Ninety-two years ago yesterday, Edwin Hubble announced the discovery of V1, the first star anyone had ever seen in a galaxy beyond the Milky Way. Called “the most important star in the history of cosmology,” it turned our world upside down. Piers Sellers died on Dec. 23^rd at the age of 61. Vera Rubin died two days later. She was 88. Both were scientists who spent a lot of time out among the stars, an experience that made them feel humble about humankind’s place in the vast cosmos, stunned by the beauty of the earth and, and yet ever hopeful.

Sellers, a naturalized American citizen who made three trips to the Atlantis space shuttle, died less than a year after being diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He spent much of that year trying to awaken people to the reality of global warming.

Still, he said of his short life and looming death, “I’ve no complaints. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. . . .I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future.”

Rubin was an astronomer who looked out from the earth as far into space as she could see. She saw so far she reached the limit of her sight; and that was when she realized that most of what was out there – literally millions of other galaxies – was invisible to her. “I’m sorry I know so little,” she once said. “I’m sorry we all know so little. But that’s kind of the fun, isn’t it?”

Far from being the center of the universe, we are infinitesimal, fleeting blips on a vast cosmic screen. And yet, for Rubin and Sellers, that fact is not a reason for despair, but for hope, even fun. In these times of strutting egomania, perhaps realizing how small we really are is the first step toward wisdom.

“Each one of you can change the world,” Rubin told the 1996 graduating class at Berkeley, “for you are made of star stuff, and you are connected to the universe.”

Happy New Year.

What Would Jesus Say?

This is the time of year when I always used to say, “Merry Christmas.” I never thought of those as fighting words, but as part of my heritage, even though I am a lapsed Christian. It is my family’s way of greeting the season that celebrates the renewal of life and, yes, peace on earth – which in our tradition is embodied in the image of a small child born to a 14-year-old virgin in a stable in Bethlehem in Judea. I was offering my tradition to others, not to be offensive but to be open, offering it in the spirit of Scrooge’s nephew in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol:

"But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time . . . as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

But that was before I learned about the War on Christmas and the ensuing call to arms that has weaponized “Merry Christmas” and admonished us to shut our hearts against those fellow-passengers to the grave who have different traditions and different beliefs. I hesitate now to say “Merry Christmas,” lest it be misunderstood as part of that cultural war being waged in the name of the prince of peace.

But I can’t suppress my exuberance. Children arrive today from distant parts. We’ll go and cut down a (Christmas) tree, and in three days we will open stockings by the fire.

And so I say with Tiny Tim, “God bless us, every one!”

The Fourth Estate

In 1976 the Gallup Poll reported that 72% of Americans trusted the press. It hasn’t come close to that level since, and its approval ratings now stand at 32%, and 14% among Republicans, the lowest ever. It’s worth noting that its highest ratings came in the wake of tough reporting on Vietnam and Watergate, which made it reviled – and also feared – by powerful people. They accused it of bias, tried to discredit its stories and attacked the motivations of its reporters and editors. Perhaps no one hated the press more than Richard Nixon, who believed that “the elite, East Coast liberals of the media” only told one side of the story. He often appealed directly to the public, and after his speech on Vietnam brought a flood of support from the “silent majority,” he gloated, “The press corps is dying.” Yet the public continued to trust the press and admire its work, and young people flocked to news careers. Obviously, things have changed – most importantly, I would argue, the plummeting advertising revenues that once enabled the press to fund investigative reporting and withstand attacks on its credibility. Its ability to operate as a public trust depended on its ability to prosper as a private enterprise. That is now in doubt.

But one thing hasn’t changed: the attacks from those who would discredit it, often the powerful and those with something to hide. And it’s worth remembering that the press was trusted most, not when it tried to be “balanced,” but when it got the story right.