One of my dear friends posted an item that some would wear black today because of what happened to a woman who was trying to board a flight. She's 95 years old, a cancer patient, and she was wearing a diaper. The Transportation Security Agency personnel who were doing the screening at that terminal subjected this woman to a search that went as far as making this woman remove that diaper. There is, I guess, some justification for concern on the part of the TSA - they didn't know who it was that dressed her that day - but really? Seriously?
When my friend posted this, she posted with a note, "Take back Independence Day." I thought that was a bit overstated. Did you lose Independence Day somewhere? I thought it was. . .yeah - it is! Right there, on July 4. Like always. Just where we'd left it. Besides, the concerns brought up were constitutional, a matter of the Bill of Rights and that unreasonable search and seizure thingy. The U.S. Constitution didn't take effect until years after the Declaration.
Still, my friend makes a point that I now see as valid. (And it's really a socialistic point from that libertarian.) If one person's rights are diminished or violated, then the rights of all of us are violated. If one person's dignity is assaulted, then the dignity of all of us is under attack. Point well-made. Point taken.
So I wear black. If I knew that woman, or if we had any mutual acquaintances, then I would say that I am so very sorry that someone representing my country - someone who, since I vote and I pay taxes, is in my employ - thought it either necessary or appropriate to do that to you. I am sorry. We all should apologize.
We celebrate Independence Day for the promise of America. We celebrate because of an ideal, because of what America should stand for. In that very Declaration we see the profound statement: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (how about we leave that word out?) 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." Please note that this does not say that all white natural-born U.S. males are so endowed. It's a statement of a universal - all are thus endowed. Today I wear black, because we've fallen short.
I wear black for that woman in Florida.
I wear black for Native Americans. We (yes, we - I'm not all Anglo although you couldn't tell by looking) have been starved, driven off lands onto reservations, the land no whites wanted. The Rez becomes a lifelong trap. Poverty is endemic; alcoholism abounds. The whites who started educational systems were well-intentioned, but part of their effort was to eradicate the native civilization. Children who spoke their own language were severely punished. As a result, the number of Arapaho speakers, to use one example, is low and dwindling. Diabetes on the Rez is almost pandemic.
Mount Rushmore comes to mind. A monument to four Presidents, carved right in the middle of what had been Native American lands. I know what that looks like to most. Do you know what that looks like through Native American eyes? Betcha don't know. Bet you never thought about it.
I wear black for African Americans. Faulkner, in writing about his South, treated it as a cursed land, and Southern civilization as a cursed civilization. The source of the curse was that it was stolen land (from the Native Americans) built by stolen labor (slave labor). The question: Was it just the South? And, is it any less true now? Have the vestiges of racism gone away?
Short answer: no, they have not. Case in point: Barack Obama and the "birther" garbage. He'd produced his short form birth certificate. That's all we would have required of Hillary Clinton, of John McCain, of Mitt Romney. Not only did the birthers not have any reason to doubt that Barack Obama is a native-born citizen; they had been presented affirmative proof that he is such.
It was not enough for the birthers. It wasn't a matter of Obama's standing. The simple fact of the matter is, the birthers could not stand it that an African-American is President. The birther nonsense stemmed from racism, pure and simple.
Case in point: DWB is an offense that will still get you pulled over, despite police departments' protestations that they do no racial profiling. For the unititated, "DWB" - Driving While Black. Or, since this happens also to those of Hispanic heritage, Driving While Brown.
Case in point: two reporters - one black, one white - graduated from college about 25 years ago. They hired on to the same news organization. They handled savings and investments in a similar manner. Both married and had families. After 25 years, the white reporter was about $500,000 ahead of the black one. How could this happen? Fifty years ago both of these reporters' parents went house-shopping. Both came from professional families, but there real estate salespeople wouldn't show houses in certain affluent areas to blacks. That still has repercussions.
I wear black for our treatment of undocumented immigrants. The various ethnic groups that have made up our country have long been possessed of a "last one off the boat" thought pattern. The result is they sound like a KKK chapter. The KKK was, in its origins, an anti-immigrant group. They didn't like blacks or Jews, but they really didn't like those Poles or Italians or Irish. They were all Catholic, and the Poles and Italians - for that matter, the immigrant Germans - didn't speak much English. The Catholic schools were founded largely because the Catholic kids weren't allowed into public schools. Now, the immigration is Mexican. They don't speask much English; they are almost uniformly Catholic and they have an additional quality that makes them especially inviting as targets: their brown skin. So, kick 'em all out. Never mind that they've been holding a job and paying taxes for twenty years. Never mind that you're imposing a family split because the kids were born in the U.S. and are citizens.
And about that little bit of uneducated garbage that I see on Facebook: "You're in America. Speak English." No. No. How's this: "You're in America. Speak Cherokee." Or, "You're in Arizona. Speak Spanish - it was there before English."
Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she,
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the tempest-tossed, to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
We might as well take that statue down and send it back to France.
I wear black for our schoolkids, who are relegated to middle-of-the-world-pack status in math and science. Our school years are limited to about 180 days. Can't overload the poor little brains! OK, maybe. But if we want to know why India, China, Japan, Korea are gaining on us so fast technologically and economically, pay attention to their longer school years. Pay attention to Americans' lack of family involvement in their kids' education. Pay attention to funding. Abundance of funding doers not necessarily guarantee good outcomes, but pay some attention, anyway. And quit whining about those overpaid, overbenefitted teachers. They are no such thing.
Come back home to the refinery;
Hiring man says, "Son, if it was up to me";
I go down to see the VA man;
He says, "Son, don't you understand. . ."
I am a Vietnam-era vet. The status is a matter of when I enlisted in the Navy; I never saw the 'Nam. Bruce Springsteen's Born In the USA (the song, not the whole album) is a protest against the way such vets were treated by the society we served to protect. Note that the sentences are unfinished: "Son, if it was up to me. . ." "Son, don't you understand now. . ." Springsteen didn't have to finish the sentences. Every single one of us vets knows the rest of the sentences. America celebrates those who serve, before it tosses them aside. And I'm seeing the same sort of pattern setting up for those who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Go serve! We honor you! We'll take care of you!" Then, when they come home, "We're broke!"
So I wear black for all vets who served so well and are served so badly.
I do love my country. I wore the uniform of the U.S. Navy, and I swore to defend my country. I love that America, while it has its flaws, has many people in it who are aware of the flaws and who want to fix them - who strive for our reaching of the higher dream that we should represent. I love that we can speak in opposition to our government - well, many of us can - without fear of repercussion. There is so much to love, and I would enlist to defend this nation again. I thank God that I'm an American.
But. . .but. . .
"It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people (and the immigrant, and the vet, and the schoolkids, and the Native Americans, and that lady in Florida) a bad check, which has come back marked, 'Insufficient funds.'"
But -
"But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt."
Preach it, Dr. King!
There was One who also preached a higher standard:
"Inasmuch as you have done it for the least of these, my brothers (and sisters), you have done it to me."
That's the hope we cling to. In my work with the core group at St. Mary's - in my involvement with Quad Cities Interfaith and its immigration task force - that's the hope I cling to. We can do better. And, until recently, I was convinced that America wanted to do better, that we wanted to rise above and reach for better. I'm not as sure now, but I cling to the hope. I do cling.
So, I wear black today.
Thanks for hanging out for a few. Your reactions?
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