Of National Lies and Racial Amnesia

I am going to post this essay from Tim Wise in full because I think it’s important to hear this from a white man.

 

For most white folks, indignation just doesn’t wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot.

Indignation doesn’t work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country–the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples–we are just a bit late to get into the game of moral rectitude. And once we enter it, our efforts at righteousness tend to fail the test of sincerity.

But here we are, in 2008, fuming at the words of Pastor Jeremiah Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago–occasionally Barack Obama’s pastor, and the man whom Obama credits with having brought him to Christianity–for merely reminding us of those evils about which we have remained so quiet, so dismissive, so unconcerned. It is not the crime that bothers us, but the remembrance of it, the unwillingness to let it go–these last words being the first ones uttered by most whites it seems whenever anyone, least of all an “angry black man” like Jeremiah Wright, foists upon us the bill of particulars for several centuries of white supremacy.

But our collective indignation, no matter how loudly we announce it, cannot drown out the truth. And as much as white America may not be able to hear it (and as much as politics may require Obama to condemn it) let us be clear, Jeremiah Wright fundamentally told the truth.

Oh I know that for some such a comment will seem shocking. After all, didn’t he say that America “got what it deserved” on 9/11? And didn’t he say that black people should be singing “God Damn America” because of its treatment of the African American community throughout the years?

Well actually, no he didn’t.

Wright said not that the attacks of September 11th were justified, but that they were, in effect, predictable. Deploying the imagery of chickens coming home to roost is not to give thanks for the return of the poultry or to endorse such feathered homecoming as a positive good; rather, it is merely to note two things: first, that what goes around, indeed, comes around–a notion with longstanding theological grounding–and secondly, that the U.S. has indeed engaged in more than enough violence against innocent people to make it just a tad bit hypocritical for us to then evince shock and outrage about an attack on ourselves, as if the latter were unprecedented.

He noted that we killed far more people, far more innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were killed on 9/11 and “never batted an eye.” That this statement is true is inarguable, at least amongst sane people. He is correct on the math, he is correct on the innocence of the dead (neither city was a military target), and he is most definitely correct on the lack of remorse or even self-doubt about the act: sixty-plus years later most Americans still believe those attacks were justified, that they were needed to end the war and “save American lives.”

But not only does such a calculus suggest that American lives are inherently worth more than the lives of Japanese civilians (or, one supposes, Vietnamese, Iraqi or Afghan civilians too), but it also ignores the long-declassified documents, and President Truman’s own war diaries, all of which indicate clearly that Japan had already signaled its desire to end the war, and that we knew they were going to surrender, even without the dropping of atomic weapons. The conclusion to which these truths then attest is simple, both in its basic veracity and it monstrousness: namely, that in those places we committed premeditated and deliberate mass murder, with no justification whatsoever; and yet for saying that I will receive more hate mail, more hostility, more dismissive and contemptuous responses than will those who suggest that no body count is too high when we’re the ones doing the killing. Jeremiah Wright becomes a pariah, because, you see, we much prefer the logic of George Bush the First, who once said that as President he would “never apologize for the United States of America. I don’t care what the facts are.”

And Wright didn’t say blacks should be singing “God Damn America.” He was suggesting that blacks owe little moral allegiance to a nation that has treated so many of them for so long as animals, as persons undeserving of dignity and respect, and which even now locks up hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders (especially for drug possession), even while whites who do the same crimes (and according to the data, when it comes to drugs, more often in fact), are walking around free. His reference to God in that sermon was more about what God will do to such a nation, than it was about what should or shouldn’t happen. It was a comment derived from, and fully in keeping with, the black prophetic tradition, and although one can surely disagree with the theology (I do, actually, and don’t believe that any God either blesses or condemns nation states for their actions), the statement itself was no call for blacks to turn on America. If anything, it was a demand that America earn the respect of black people, something the evidence and history suggests it has yet to do.

Finally, although one can certainly disagree with Wright about his suggestion that the government created AIDS to get rid of black folks–and I do, for instance–it is worth pointing out that Wright isn’t the only one who has said this. In fact, none other than Bill Cosby (oh yes, that Bill Cosby, the one white folks love because of his recent moral crusade against the black poor) proffered his belief in the very same thing back in the early ’90s in an interview on CNN, when he said that AIDS may well have been created to get rid of people whom the government deemed “undesirable” including gays and racial minorities.

So that’s the truth of the matter: Wright made one comment that is highly arguable, but which has also been voiced by white America’s favorite black man, another that was horribly misinterpreted and stripped of all context, and then another that was demonstrably accurate. And for this, he is pilloried and made into a virtual enemy of the state; for this, Barack Obama may lose the support of just enough white folks to cost him the Democratic nomination, and/or the Presidency; all of it, because Jeremiah Wright, unlike most preachers opted for truth. If he had been one of those “prosperity ministers” who says Jesus wants nothing so much as for you to be rich, like Joel Osteen, that would have been fine. Had he been a retread bigot like Falwell was, or Pat Robertson is, he might have been criticized, but he would have remained in good standing and surely not have damaged a Presidential candidate in this way. But unlike Osteen, and Falwell, and Robertson, Jeremiah Wright refused to feed his parishioners lies.

What Jeremiah Wright knows, and told his flock–though make no mistake, they already knew it–is that 9/11 was neither the first, nor worst act of terrorism on American soil. The history of this nation for folks of color, was for generations, nothing less than an intergenerational hate crime, one in which 9/11s were woven into the fabric of everyday life: hundreds of thousands of the enslaved who died from the conditions of their bondage; thousands more who were lynched (as many as 10,000 in the first few years after the Civil War, according to testimony in the Congressional Record at the time); millions of indigenous persons wiped off the face of the Earth. No, to some, the horror of 9/11 was not new. To some it was not on that day that “everything changed.” To some, everything changed four hundred years ago, when that first ship landed at what would become Jamestown. To some, everything changed when their ancestors were forced into the hulls of slave ships at Goree Island and brought to a strange land as chattel. To some, everything changed when they were run out of Northern Mexico, only to watch it become the Southwest United States, thanks to a war of annihilation initiated by the U.S. government. To some, being on the receiving end of terrorism has been a way of life. Until recently it was absolutely normal in fact.

But white folks have a hard time hearing these simple truths. We find it almost impossible to listen to an alternative version of reality. Indeed, what seems to bother white people more than anything, whether in the recent episode, or at any other time, is being confronted with the recognition that black people do not, by and large, see the world like we do; that black people, by and large, do not view America as white people view it. We are, in fact, shocked that this should be so, having come to believe, apparently, that the falsehoods to which we cling like a kidney patient clings to a dialysis machine, are equally shared by our darker-skinned compatriots.

This is what James Baldwin was talking about in his classic 1972 work, No Name in the Street, wherein he noted:

White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded–about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through their entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac.

And so we were shocked in 1987, when Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall declined to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution, because, as he noted, most of that history had been one of overt racism and injustice, and to his way of thinking, the only history worth celebrating had been that of the past three or four decades.

We were shocked to learn that black people actually believed that a white cop who was a documented racist might frame a black man; and we’re shocked to learn that lots of black folks still perceive the U.S. as a racist nation–we’re literally stunned that people who say they experience discrimination regularly (and who have the social science research to back them up) actually think that those experiences and that data might actually say something about the nation in which they reside. Imagine.

Whites are easily shocked by what we see and hear from Pastor Wright and Trinity Church, because what we see and hear so thoroughly challenges our understanding of who we are as a nation. But black people have never, for the most part, believed in the imagery of the “shining city on a hill,” for they have never had the option of looking at their nation and ignoring the mountain-sized warts still dotting its face when it comes to race. Black people do not, in the main, get misty eyed at the sight of the flag the way white people do–and this is true even for millions of black veterans–for they understand that the nation for whom that flag waves is still not fully committed to their own equality. They have a harder time singing those tunes that white people seem so eager to belt out, like “God Bless America,” for they know that whites sang those words loudly and proudly even as they were enforcing Jim Crow segregation, rioting against blacks who dared move into previously white neighborhoods, throwing rocks at Dr. King and then cheering, as so many did, when they heard the news that he had been assassinated.

Whites refuse to remember (or perhaps have never learned) that which black folks cannot afford to forget. I’ve seen white people stunned to the point of paralysis when they learn the truth about lynchings in this country–when they discover that such events were not just a couple of good old boys with a truck and a rope hauling some black guy out to the tree, hanging him, and letting him swing there. They were never told the truth: that lynchings were often community events, advertised in papers as “Negro Barbecues,” involving hundreds or even thousands of whites, who would join in the fun, eat chicken salad and drink sweet tea, all while the black victims of their depravity were being hung, then shot, then burned, and then having their body parts cut off, to be handed out to onlookers. They are stunned to learn that postcards of the events were traded as souvenirs, and that very few whites, including members of their own families did or said anything to stop it.

Rather than knowing about and confronting the ugliness of our past, whites take steps to excise the less flattering aspects of our history so that we need not be bothered with them. So, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for example, site of an orgy of violence against the black community in 1921, city officials literally went into the town library and removed all reference to the mass killings in the Greenwood district from the papers with a razor blade–an excising of truth and an assault on memory that would remain unchanged for over seventy years.

Most white people desire, or perhaps even require the propagation of lies when it comes to our history. Surely we prefer the lies to anything resembling, even remotely, the truth. Our version of history, of our national past, simply cannot allow for the intrusion of fact into a worldview so thoroughly identified with fiction. But that white version of America is not only extraordinarily incomplete, in that it so favors the white experience to the exclusion of others; it is more than that; it is actually a slap in the face to people of color, a re-injury, a reminder that they are essentially irrelevant, their concerns trivial, their lives unworthy of being taken seriously. In that sense, and what few if any white Americans appear capable of grasping at present, is that “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best,” portray an America so divorced from the reality of the times in which they were produced, as to raise serious questions about the sanity of those who found them so moving, so accurate, so real. These iconographic representations of life in the U.S. are worse than selective, worse than false, they are assaults to the humanity and memory of black people, who were being savagely oppressed even as June Cleaver did housework in heels and laughed about the hilarious hijinks of Beaver and Larry Mondello.

These portraits of America are certifiable evidence of how disconnected white folks were–and to the extent we still love them and view them as representations of the “good old days” to which we wish we could return, still are–from those men and women of color with whom we have long shared a nation. Just two months before “Leave it to Beaver” debuted, proposed civil rights legislation was killed thanks to Strom Thurmond’s 24-hour filibuster speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. One month prior, Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to block black students from entering Little Rock Central High; and nine days before America was introduced to the Cleavers, and the comforting image of national life they represented, those black students were finally allowed to enter, amid the screams of enraged, unhinged, viciously bigoted white people, who saw nothing wrong with calling children niggers in front of cameras. That was America of the 1950s: not the sanitized version into which so many escape thanks to the miracle of syndication, which merely allows white people to relive a lie, year after year after year.

No, it is not the pastor who distorts history; Nick at Nite and your teenager’s textbooks do that. It is not he who casts aspersions upon “this great country” as Barack Obama put it in his public denunciations of him; it is the historic leadership of the nation that has cast aspersions upon it; it is they who have cheapened it, who have made gaudy and vile the promise of American democracy by defiling it with lies. They engage in a patriotism that is pathological in its implications, that asks of those who adhere to it not merely a love of country but the turning of one’s nation into an idol to be worshipped, if not literally, then at least in terms of consequence.

It is they–the flag-lapel-pin wearing leaders of this land–who bring shame to the country with their nonsensical suggestions that we are always noble in warfare, always well-intended, and although we occasionally make mistakes, we are never the ones to blame for anything. Nothing that happens to us has anything to do with us at all. It is always about them. They are evil, crazy, fanatical, hate our freedoms, and are jealous of our prosperity. When individuals prattle on in this manner we diagnose them as narcissistic, as deluded. When nations do it–when our nation does–we celebrate it as though it were the very model of rational and informed citizenship.

So what can we say about a nation that values lies more than it loves truth? A place where adherence to sincerely believed and internalized fictions allows one to rise to the highest offices in the land, and to earn the respect of millions, while a willingness to challenge those fictions and offer a more accurate counter-narrative earns one nothing but contempt, derision, indeed outright hatred? What we can say is that such a place is signing its own death warrant. What we can say is that such a place is missing the only and last opportunity it may ever have to make things right, to live up to its professed ideals. What we can say is that such a place can never move forward, because we have yet to fully address and come to terms with that which lay behind.

What can we say about a nation where white preachers can lie every week from their pulpits without so much as having to worry that their lies might be noticed by the shiny white faces in their pews, while black preachers who tell one after another essential truth are demonized, not only for the stridency of their tone–which needless to say scares white folks, who have long preferred a style of praise and worship resembling nothing so much as a coma–but for merely calling bullshit on those whose lies are swallowed whole?

And oh yes, I said it: white preachers lie. In fact, they lie with a skill, fluidity, and precision unparalleled in the history of either preaching or lying, both of which histories stretch back a ways and have often overlapped. They lie every Sunday, as they talk about a Savior they have chosen to represent dishonestly as a white man, in every picture to be found of him in their tabernacles, every children’s story book in their Sunday Schools, every Christmas card they’ll send to relatives and friends this December. But to lie about Jesus, about the one they consider God–to bear false witness as to who this man was and what he looked like–is no cause for concern.

Nor is it a problem for these preachers to teach and preach that those who don’t believe as they believe are going to hell. Despite the fact that such a belief casts aspersions upon God that are so profound as to defy belief–after all, they imply that God is so fundamentally evil that he would burn non-believers in a lake of eternal fire–many of the white folks who now condemn Jeremiah Wright welcome that theology of hate. Indeed, back when President Bush was the Governor of Texas, he endorsed this kind of thinking, responding to a question about whether Jews were going to go to hell, by saying that unless one accepted Jesus as one’s personal savior, the Bible made it pretty clear that indeed, hell was where you’d be heading.

So you can curse God in this way–and to imply such hate on God’s part is surely to curse him–and in effect, curse those who aren’t Christians, and no one says anything. That isn’t considered bigoted. That isn’t considered beyond the pale of polite society. One is not disqualified from becoming President in the minds of millions because they go to a church that says that shit every single week, or because they believe it themselves. And millions do believe it, and see nothing wrong with it whatsoever.

So white folks are mad at Jeremiah Wright because he challenges their views about their country. Meanwhile, those same white folks, and their ministers and priests, every week put forth a false image of the God Jeremiah Wright serves, and yet it is whites who feel we have the right to be offended.

Pardon me, but something is wrong here, and whatever it is, is not to be found at Trinity United Church of Christ.

Blog Closed

Until further notice this blog is closed. I am working on another big project and I just don’t have time to keep this one going for now. I apologise for not letting you know sooner. I really thought that I could do it, but time is not my friend. Thank you for your comments here and thank you to my supporters and friends who encouraged me. Perhaps one day,  I will come back to this one….

State of Mind

Cross-posted at THIS IS NOT MY COUNTRY

To regular readers of this blog, people who know me and anyone who cares,

Over the last couple of months I have promised posts that have not appeared or have been a long time in coming. For that I apologise but I also want to explain what is going on. I have been very scattered in my thinking/blogging these days and my real life has been the same. We have to move house in the very near future. I know that it doesn’t sound like a very big deal but it really is, on a personal level.

I have moved many, many times before so I should, in theory, be taking this in my stride but the older I get, the more difficult it has become. Having invested so much time and effort into our home and more significantly (to me) in our garden, I am terribly sad to be leaving it. Also, for those who know me in real life, we will be leaving something that is very important to us in our creative life.

I am, on the one hand, excited to be moving. New house. New beginnings. A decent bathroom ! On the other side, I am leaving a garden that I so lovingly made out of nothing. I am leaving plants that I nutured and struggled with. I am leaving the jasmine that I planted in the memory of my mother-in-law. I am leaving the soil that I dug and fed and tried to bring to life. I have a strong attachment to this tiny patch of land.

But it’s not just the plants. I can grow more. I can even take some with me for the new place. It’s also the memories. The overwhelming nostalgia. Our very good friends used to live upstairs. They have now moved a long way from us and that is part of why we are having to leave too. Our kids grew up together. Those three boys (my one and their two) have all peed on the lemon trees. They have all fallen out of their branches. Their basketball/footballs have smashed various windows and flowerpots. Their screaming and silliness have got on our nerves. Their bikes have crashed into walls and been left out in the rain (much to our annoyance). Their laughter has filled our ears so that they are still ringing.

The memories are strong, almost overwhelming. The parties, the barbecues, the late night music sessions, the impromptu coffees in the sun, the “I have a few sausages and potatoes, you have some salad and bread, why don’t we pool our resources and eat together?”

I know there will be new memories. Good ones. Great ones. And our lives have already changed, in that we and many of our great friends have moved away , got real jobs, different commitments and all that that entails.

That we are all getting older is a fact. And I am not so worried about that as I was when I turned 40. What I want to say is that I treasure the memories that I have of this place and of all of you that made those memories. I am just having a hard time letting go…

So deep breath… here’s to a new era. And new memories. And bear with me if I’m a bit wobbly for a while…

Close Guantánamo

Loxias of “…neither reveals nor conceals” sent me this link for Amnesty’s new campaign to close down the Guantánamo “detention centre”. It’s bit like a sim game where you add a character to a flotilla travelling to the base but the cause is serious. Close down Guantánamo.

It is now over five years since the first detainees were transferred to the detention camp at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba

Despite widespread international condemnation, hundreds of people of more than 30 nationalities are still there: without charge, and with little hope of obtaining a fair trial.

Enough is enough!

Guantánamo Bay is a symbol of injustice and abuse.

It must be closed down.

Over 12,000 people have joined the campaign so far. Add your character and spread the word…

Inspiration

Lymphopo blogs at As the Tumour Turns and is

a single woman in my fifties, in debt, no income, no health insurance, and then that grapefruit-sized tumor wedged between my lungs turns out to be a malignant high-grade highly aggressive stage IV lymphoma. How much worse can it get? Bwahahaha! Stay tuned and find out.

And she is an amazing writer and total inspiration. She used to blog at Granny gets a Vibrator but has moved here since and her old blog (which was brilliant too) has gone. Go and read. I am sure you will be inspired too….

Blog for Choice

Why am I Pro-choice ?

I had to make a decision once, a long time ago, when I wasn’t really grown enough to know what I thought about such things, and I was pregnant by a boy, who didn’t want me or want to be part of my life, or a baby’s life or anyone’s life and I was not ready to have a baby or a husband or a boyfriend or another life to take care of, and it was hard and terrifying even, but I am forever grateful that I had that choice, that it was safe, that it was free, that I never once regretted making that choice, that good people around me helped and talked to me and reminded me that I could make that choice, and that that choice was the best choice I could have made for me, in that situation. at that time of my life. Thank you

Technorati Tags: Blog for Choice, Blog for Choice Day

Martin Luther King Day

Today is a holiday in the USA (I wish it was here too but alas, it is not). I have been thinking about Martin Luther King and his words and above all, thinking how we need a “new” MLK or Mandela or Ghandi in these desperate days. How we need a new strong and controversial voice to conteract the mediocrity and small-minded thinking I see and hear these days. Big voices talking about visions and change and almost impossible dreams.

The “I Have a Dream” speech, spurred a generation and still inspires today. What we need is another strong resonant voice to talk of our times. Because, even though the speech is still relevent, it is from another time. I am not saying we EVER forget Martin Luther King or Mandela or Ghandi or any of the powerful voices of the past but that we need some new ones too. I would like to hear this beautiful speech said in our time, with our new words, in our current situations. Wouldn’t you ?

I Have a Dream

by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Delivered on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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 a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it 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!”

Technorati Tags: human rights day, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King Day, racism

The Ashley Treatment

I haven’t been able to write about this little girl because it brings up so many feelings and confusions. One of my very favorite bloggers bfp has put into words what some of us bloggers, who have no experience of disability, have been unable or even unwilling to say. So, thank you bfp for your thoughts and for inadvertently giving me the courage to do the same.

I want to say first of all that I have no experience of caring for a disabled child and I am not disabled myself. I lived with a woman who was severely disabled for 6 months, acting as one of her independent living “helpers”. The truth is I probably got more out of that experience than she did. One of the best things I learned was how to get totally drunk in the local pub together and ride shotgun on her wheelchair all the way home (It was downhill). Couldn’t resist that, Elaine !

Most people blogging this case have focused on how the parents are nice people and are doing this in the best interest of their “pillow angel“. Let me just say that I am sure her parents think they were acting in her best interests and, from what I read, they adore their daughter. I have been faced with making decisions about my child and it’s hard. I cannot imagine how much harder it must be when you are parenting a severely disabled child. I am not dismissing their difficulties. I am questioning the advice they were given by doctors and other professionals. I am questioning the choices they finally made.

I was offered the “chance” to circumsise my boy at three days old. I was told it was routine and would save problems occuring in the future, for my child and his future sexual partners. People told me it would be almost painless and (probably) without complications. I remember the confusing thoughts. If I said no and he had problems later, how will I live with that ? But my overiding feeling was “Is this my choice to make?” I don’t want to get into religious arguments here but as I do not have a one, that wasn’t a consideration. I decided the choice wasn’t mine.

How does this relate to this case ? Possibly, not at all… but that’s what came up…

Ashley was “given” a hysterectomy.

“Ashley has no need for her uterus since she will not be bearing children,” they said, adding that the decision means she will not experience the menstrual cycle and the bleeding and discomfort commonly associated with it

There are other ways to manage the discomfort or pain of the menstrual cycle that do not involve surgery and dealing with menstrual blood should not be a problem for the kind of caregivers the parents would want ?

Just because someone will not bear children, through choice or circumstance, does that mean they should have their wombs removed ? Should we be removing the wombs of infertile women ? Or women who decide not to have children ? No.

The parents also said that the operation would remove the possibility of pregnancy, should Ashley be raped ! Don’t you think we should be doing something about rape rather than removing people’s wombs ? It’s not our wombs that cause rape for goodness sake.

Ashley also had her breast buds removed. One of the reasons given was to avoid discomfort caused by lying down. I don’t know medically of course, but I have never heard of such a thing ? This kind of pre-emptive strike disturbs me. We will never know if she would have suffered discomfort because of her breasts? She will never have them.

Another reason given was that both sides of the family have a history of breast cancer (which is of concern) but there are monthly examinations and mammograms aren’t there?

Again, sexual abuse was cited as another reason for breast removal. And again… it is not breasts that cause rape and abuse. If that was the case, are we advocating that all girls should have their breasts removed to prevent it?

People without wombs or breasts are raped or sexually abused. In my humble opinion, this should not be part of the argument in this case.

Anyway, bfp says it far better than me

Is it ok to cut off a disabled woman’s legs because she’s not going to use them in traditional ways ?

I don’t know what else to say other than that I find this “pre-emptive surgery” very disturbing. She had her appendix removed just in case she got appendicitis. We do not remove the appendix of children just in case… even if they are unable to tell us what hurts and where. We have doctors and scans and all kinds of technology to find out what is wrong, don’t we ? Where does it all end ? Should we remove her teeth too because she might get an abcess or a cavity and she uses a feeding tube anyway?

It’s complicated. Much more complicated than I have suggested here. I know that. It’s hard. I know it’s hard and I cannot imagine what it must be like to have a severely disabled child.

But keeping this little girl suspended as a little girl is surely not the answer ?

Technorati Tags: ashley, ashley treatment, pillow angel, medical

The Execution of Saddam Hussein

I am against the death penalty. Full stop.

The Quaker Agitator has a superb post, written before the execution, that explains exactly why he opposes it and I agree 100%.

The grainy footage of the hanging is the most sought after video on the internet and the sad truth is that it seems many, many people disagree with us about the death sentence. It is also extremely chilling to think that people really want to see someone being killed. I would like to have found out the truth about the ALL the crimes that Hussein committed and and ordered. I am certain that the families of the thousands of victims of his regime would rather have found out the truth. Now we will never know. Instead of justice, we have a 2 minute video of a state-sanctioned killing.

Technorati Tags: death penalty, execution, saddam hussein

Happy New Year

Have fun celebrating the coming of a new year and see you in 2007