Diary of an Autodidact: Black History Month

I first read about Colson Whitehead back in 2016, when The Underground Railroad was published - and won the Pulitzer. I didn’t read it then, because it was quite popular, and thus the library wait list was pretty long. Instead, I grabbed an audiobook of Zone One, best described as a literary fiction meets the zombie apocalypse. It was a bit out of my usual reading zone, but quite thoughtful, so I added Whitehead to my regular read list. That it has taken me more than three years to read him again is sad, although it isn’t for lack of trying. I nominated different books of his for our book club, but they never got enough votes to be chosen. Oh well.

The Underground Railroad also defies expectations. On the one hand, it is fantastical: the Underground Railroad is re-envisioned as a literal railroad, with underground tunnels and trains. Kind of like a subway at continental scale. (This leads to one of the most hilarious lines in the book, from one of the station operators: “If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America.”)

Add to this a symbolic character: the slavecatcher Ridgeway, who is kind of a less appealing Javert, and that pretty much sums up the fantastical elements. There are other parts that I think can be seen as metaphorical - indeed, the whole book is a synecdoche. But much of the book is at least on the surface quite realistic.

To be sure, Whitehead does not pull punches in showing the brutality of slavery and white supremacy. The book is in sections devoted to certain states, each of which has its own flavor - and expression of racial violence. It starts on the plantation in Georgia, which is pretty much a typical plantation narrative. (There are plenty of sad connections between Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Kindred.) From there, once the protagonist, Cora, escapes on the Railroad, the scene shifts to South Carolina, where a “model” town of free negroes is revealed to be the center of medical experimentation and involuntary sterilizations. North Carolina (in this telling) has decided to attempt to end slavery by outlawing (and exterminating) its negro population, and replacing them with Irish and German immigrants. (While this didn’t happen on a statewide scale, and mass deportation was usually preferred to genocide, this idea was shockingly popular in white intellectual circles at the time.) Tennessee has become a fire and plague ravaged wasteland. Indiana, formerly a slave state, now a free state, expresses its violence by proto-Jim Crow and pogroms against free African-American communities which become “too successful.”

Against this background, Whitehead tells of Cora, a teenage who escapes. But she is believably human - in fact, she just wants to live her life as a human, free from disrespect and violence. Which is pretty much what we all want, isn’t it? At least the decent people among us?

The problem, of course, is that the United States still has a system of white supremacy that expresses itself in violence when threatened. (See, for example, our ongoing problem with police brutality, and our vicious approach to immigration from Latin America.) I think the strongest element of this book is the way that Whitehead demonstrates the way that slavery, white supremacy, and racism function as a system which brutalizes everyone. It destroys everyone, and makes the nation as a whole far less strong and functional than it should be. Even those who “benefit” from the system are degraded and spiritually violated. And those who fight the system fare badly almost across the board. It is easy to forget just how much those who worked the real-life Underground Railroad risked - and how many paid the ultimate price.

Colson Whitehead’s style tends to be ironic and more than a bit snarky. This book isn’t quite that way, because of the topic. There are certainly moments which seem satirical, and there is enough of the combination of cynicism and determination to survive to make it recognizable as a Whitehead book. I also found a certain similarity between this one and Zone One. After all, the protagonist is on the run from an overwhelming menace, and finds ways to survive. And the ending is equally ambiguous. The book ends, but the journey doesn’t.

As usual, I have to quote a few lines that were outstanding. First is this one, about the first white man working on the Railroad that Cora encounters, a man named Fletcher who offers Cora’s fellow slave Caesar a ride.

He had met this sort of white man before, earnest and believing what came out of their mouths. The veracity of their words was another matter, but at least they believed them.

That’s a classic Whitehead observation, ironic, snarky, and uncomfortably true. Another is essentially Ridgeway’s observation about the white immigrants and their future role in America.

The possibilities lay before these pilgrims like a banquet, and they’d been so hungry their whole lives. They’d never seen the likes of this, but they’d leave their mark on this new land, as surely as those famous souls at Jamestown, making it theirs through unstoppable racial logic. If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn’t be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it’d still be his. If the white man wasn’t destined to take this new world, he wouldn’t own it now.

Here was the Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor - if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.

Damn, that’s ugly, stated that way. But what else is the meaning of Manifest Destiny? What else is the meaning of the “peculiar institution”? And, although my ancestors didn’t come to the US until the 1880s, didn’t we just assume it was our right to free stolen land through the Homestead Act? Didn’t we assume that we had the right to the benefits of a segregated society? Alas, that’s the case, from what I can tell listening to my ancestors. (And far too many of my extended family, sadly.)

While slavery as it was no longer exists, the poisonous ideas linger. I was struck by what Valentine, the free farmer in Indiana who is concerned about white hostility and considering selling out and moving west, said about the problem.

What we built here...there are too many white people who don’t want us to have it. Even if they didn’t suspect our alliance with the railroad. Look around. If they kill a slave for learning his letters, how do you think they feel about a library? We’re in a room brimming with ideas. Too many ideas for a colored man. Or woman.

And years later, a woman born in freedom - a survivor of the destruction of the farm - comments in a similar vein.

She said that white towns had simply banded together to rid themselves of the black stronghold in their midst. That is how the European tribes operate, she said. If they can’t control it, they destroy it.

This is a thread that runs through our history, as Carol Anderson details in White Rage. (Highly recommended.) This too is something I still hear on a regular basis. An acquaintance talked about moving out of California to a very white (and white supremacist) part of Idaho. “A better cultural climate” was the goal. Which is, well, code for...I don’t think I need to explain that. An older former neighbor said he was planning to move because “when I got here, it was all Americans, but now it’s Mexicans everywhere.” We live in a nice, middle class suburb/exburb filled with professionals and government workers. Cops, lawyers, doctors, teachers, firefighters. But yes, I guess there are a lot more successful non-whites in the neighborhood than there were 30 years ago. I find that rather nice, honestly, but a lot of whites apparently don’t. That makes me sad.

And what is the destruction of the public sector but an example of the “we’d rather destroy it if we can’t control it and keep it away from brown people”?

I also want to mention two interesting scenes. The first involves one of the several “character background” chapters disconnected from the main narrative. It is all about a corpse stealer - providing the medical schools with cadavers. I was reminded of a chapter in Stiff by Mary Roach. Like Roach, Whitehead notes that the advantage of stealing negro corpses is that nobody noticed or cared. Yet another example of the dehumanization inherent in racism.

The second scene is one with Ridgeway and his servant Homer. Ridgeway sees Homer being sold to pay a gambling debt, and buys him, then frees him. But Homer stays on. There is a hint later in the book that some suspect Homer of being Ridgeway’s lover, but Ridgeway has a rather simpler explanation:

“If he’s free, why don’t he go?”

“Where?” Ridgeway asked. “He’s seen enough to know a black boy has no future, free papers or no. Not in this country. Some disreputable character would snatch him and put him on the block lickety-split. With me, he can learn about the world. Find purpose.”

And this, contrasted with Cora’s experiences, gets at the truth. It wasn’t enough to end slavery. It wasn’t enough to end official segregation. Equality requires true equality: political, social, and economic equality. And until that happens, we will never be a truly “free” country.

Colson Whitehead is a fascinating author to me. His writing, as can be seen, has “unliterary” features like contractions and simple sentences. But it is also clearly literary, not boilerplate. It is accessible, but keeps you thinking long afterward. And that includes his zombie novel, which continues to haunt me. I have a few more of his books on my list, and it will be interesting to read them. Not one is in the same genre as another, which is unusual for an author. But so far, the themes in both of his books have some overlap. The survivor against the odds, an ironic detachment, piercing insights into reality, and a refusal to live in denialism of how America really works for people who lack racial privilege.

Monday, February 25, 2019

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

Source of book: I own the complete essays of James Baldwin

This is my official choice for Black History Month this year.

Here is the list of Black History Month selections since I started this blog, and also some related books:

2011: 50 Years and Other Poems by James Weldon Johnson

2012: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

2013: The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois

2014: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

2015: Kindred by Octavia Butler

2016: Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

2017: Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South

And

Black Boy (American Hunger) by Richard Wright

2018: Poems 1921-1930 by Langston Hughes

Other notable books by African American or African authors:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Poems by Phillis Wheatley

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

I Greet The Dawn (Poems) by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh by Daina Ramey Berry

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis

Books on Black History by other authors:

Red Tails, Black Wings by John B. Holway

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Ragtime (the Musical)

The Slaves’ War by Andrew Ward

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Vol.1 by M. T. Anderson

Devil In The Grove by Gilbert King

***

Three years ago, I read James Baldwin for the first time: his semi-autobiographical novel, Go Tell It On The Mountain. While the depiction of domestic violence and dysfunction was difficult at times, the book really impressed me with its psychological perceptiveness and nuanced view of various political and religious movements.

I had a chance to pick up a collection of Baldwin’s essays in the Library of America format, so I did. I decided to start at the beginning, and read the first collection for Black History Month this year.

This collection was fascinating and thought provoking. It is divided into three sections. The first is essentially critical reviews of books of movies - specifically, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Native Son by Richard Wright, and the film version of Bizet’s Carmen starring African Americans, Carmen Jones. (My wife had heard of the last of these despite its obscurity.) The second section looks at the African American experience in the United States. The third is about the author’s experiences in Europe. Preceding all of this is an introduction entitled “Autobiographical Notes,” which is fantastic.

I’ll look at these roughly in the order they are in the book. First are a couple of wonderful lines from the introduction. Baldwin really articulates well the unspoken and unacknowledged role of racism and white supremacy in the very core of our politics. It is impossible to coherently talk about pretty much any issue in our current political discussion - particularly the election of The Toupee Who Shall Not Be Named - without acknowledging the past and its effects on the present. As Baldwin puts it:

I don’t think that the Negro problem in America can be even discussed coherently without bearing in mind its context; its context being the history, traditions, customs, the moral assumptions and preoccupations of the country; in short the general social fabric. Appearances to the contrary, no one in America escapes its effects and everyone in America bears some responsibility for it. I believe this the more firmly because it is the overwhelming tendency to speak of this problem as though it were a thing apart.

There is more good stuff about this in the final essay, which I hope to discuss later in this post. The second quote is fantastic, and is one I hope to steal.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

This is a common - and intentional in my opinion - misunderstanding of those of us who criticize America. We love our country, and want to see her live up to her ideals, not degrade to our worst instincts and historical moments. And this is why the Colin Kaepernicks of the world will always be far truer patriots than the jingoistic gun-toting sorts. To love is to expect the best, not enable the worst.

I didn’t note any particular quotes from the literary reviews, but I did want to touch on them. First, Baldwin’s criticisms of Uncle Tom’s Cabin are entirely just. He is right that, to reach her audience, she had to make her Negros either exotic (see: Topsy) or all too perfect to be realistic. As Baldwin notes, they cannot be fully human, with weaknesses and all, or they would be rejected by Stowe’s white audience. And yes, this remains a problem in white portrayals of people of color, from the “magical negro” on down. I won’t get into that further, other than to say that the essay is worth a read. It isn’t so much a takedown of Stowe as a critique of white audiences in general.

I can’t say much about Baldwin’s criticism of Richard Wright’s Native Son, as I have not yet read that. I thought his autobiographical work, Black Boy (American Hunger) was good.

The takedown (and takedown it was) of Carmen Jones appears to be entirely justified. Heck, so much of classic Hollywood has aged extremely badly - particularly on issues of race. I will particularly note his fantastic riff on why Black Carmen - and particularly the black men who desire her - cannot be allowed to be truly sexual. After all, that would get uncomfortably close to the most pernicious stereotypes about African Americans.

The second section is both intriguing and depressing. Baldwin is not much of an optimist, and is pretty much a self-admitted misanthrope in many cases. His view of black politicians is pretty dismal, even as he acknowledges the need for more blacks in politics. Sadly, so much of what he says seems to be true about today as well. Sigh.

I do want to quote one of his percipient statements, at the beginning of his description of the hazards of traveling to the deep south - specifically a horribly botched fundraising campaign involving a friend of his.

It is considered a rather cheerful axiom that all Americans distrust politicians. (No one takes the further and less cheerful step of considering just what effect this mutual contempt has on either the public or the politicians, who have, indeed, very little to do with one another.)

That’s both depressing and far too true these days as well.

In a later essay, Baldwin also makes a thoughtful observation about hate. Baldwin had a vicious, abusive father. In this essay, he mentions that he didn’t want to see his father on his deathbed. Although he told his mother that the reason was that he hated his father, he acknowledges in this essay that the real reason is that he didn’t want to see his father in a condition too pathetic to hate. Baldwin’s level of self-awareness is impressive and admirable. But the quote applies beyond just his situation.

I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.

There is so much truth in this, both on the personal level, and on the broader societal level, as we endure a season where hate has gained a renewed vigor.

The final section was, in many ways, my favorite. If that is the right word. During the Jim Crow era, Europe, particularly Paris, was a bit of a haven for African Americans. It was a place where they would be treated relatively equally, and had access to the mainstream of intellectual and social live. But it wasn’t exactly a utopia, as Baldwin points out. While one wouldn’t be denied food, shelter, or employment, one was always burdened with the assumptions that came with being an American. Baldwin also notes that white supremacy is endemic to Europe too - that whole colonialist enterprise was founded on the idea of white superiority. It just manifests differently.

Perhaps the most horrifying essay is the one that tells the tale of Baldwin’s experience with the French criminal justice system. So, this fellow American runs into Baldwin, and gets his help in finding lodging in the same dive hotel in Paris. Unbeknownst to Baldwin, this guy stole the sheets from his previous lodging. Baldwin borrows these sheets while he does a protest that he can’t get his own sheets washed by the hotel. The cops are called, and an identifying mark is noticed, and Baldwin and his acquaintance end up in a bewildering cycle of bureaucracy and oppression which keeps them incarcerated for weeks on end on what is the most petty of thefts. (And Baldwin didn’t even do anything!) Finally, after an agonizing and seemingly endless series of hearings, Baldwin manages to get a fellow inmate who is released to go contact a lawyer friend of Baldwin’s, who gets things dismissed in fairly short order. The whole episode is a chilling reminder of the challenges - and abuses - faced by immigrants in our own justice system. Forget not sharing a common language. Baldwin is most horrified by the fact that he can’t read the culture like he could at home. Even in the South, he would have been able to kiss the right asses and get out. But in France, it is a bewildering mystery. This is why a bristle at those who claim that immigrants and refugees should somehow be able to master our own system the first time, without mistakes, and that any mistake should result in catastrophic consequences. I wish that each of those persons might find themselves afoul of a justice system they don’t instinctively understand. (Our own would be good enough - but a foreign one would be even better.) I love Baldwin’s observation on culture:

One had, in short, to come in contact with an alien culture in order to understand that a culture was not a community basket-weaving project, nor yet an act of God; was something neither desirable nor undesirable in itself, being inevitable, being nothing more or less than the recorded and visible effects on a body of people of the vicissitudes with which they had been forced to deal.

I am reminded of Abraham Maslow’s amazing quote about culture:

It is too often not realized that culture itself is an adaptive tool, one of whose main functions is to make the physiological emergencies come less and less often.

This is one of the main arguments I have had with people in the last few years. “Culture” is essentially used as a euphemism for race, of course, but more than that is the argument that somehow a culture is superior by definition because it has subjugated other cultures. Rather, cultures and subcultures are as much driven by circumstances as by choice.

Another essay in this section concerns Baldwin’s experience in a tiny Swiss village, where he was essentially the first black person anyone had seen. It is pretty horrifying in many ways, even though it is predictable as to the human behaviors. One of the best lines in this comes from Baldwin’s notice of a missionary collection box - seeking money to “convert the heathen Africans.” As Baldwin contemplates the irony of “buying” souls as black bodies were bought in the recent past, he makes an observation about his own father, who was a devout preacher even as he was abusive to his family.

I tried not to think of these so lately baptized kinsmen, of the price paid for them, or the peculiar price they themselves would pay, and said nothing about my own father, who having taken his own conversion too literally never, at bottom, forgave the white world (which he described as heathen) for having saddled him with a Christ in whom, to judge at least from their treatment of him, they themselves no longer believed.

This is, indeed, the conclusion I myself have come to about white American Evangelicals. They sure believe in their doctrine, in their beliefs, and especially in their white nationalist politics - but they sure as fucking hell do not believe in Jesus Christ. At least not in a way that might possibly affect their behavior toward their fellow humans.

The final four pages of this essay are some of the best writing on race I have ever read. Baldwin takes the reader on a tour-de-force of the history of European chauvinism and the need whites have to remain wilfully ignorant of their own complicity in harming others. He starts with the idea that the American dream, of the equality of mankind, runs directly counter to American behavior. The expansion of equality to include the black man has caused tremendous cognitive dissonance. Let me quote at length.

[T]o betray a belief is not not by any means to have put oneself beyond its power; the betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be now moral standards in the world at all. Yet one must recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous - dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say. And dangerous in this respect: that confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses. The ideas on which American beliefs are not, though Americans often seem to think so, ideas which originated in America. They came out of Europe. And the establishment of democracy on the American continent was scarcely as radical a beak with the past as was the necessity, which Americans faced, of broadening this concept to include black men.

This was, literally, a hard necessity. It was impossible, for one thing, for Americans to abandon their beliefs, not only because these beliefs alone seemed able to justify the sacrifice they had endured and the blood that they had spilled, but also because these beliefs afforded them their only bulwark against a moral chaos as absolute as the physical chaos of the continent it was their destiny to conquer. But in the situation in which Americans found themselves, these beliefs threatened an idea which, whether or not one likes to think so, is the very warp and woof of the heritage of the West, the idea of white supremacy.

Americans have made themselves notorious by the shrillness and the brutality with which they have insisted on this idea, but they did not invent it; and it has escaped the world’s notice that those very excesses of which Americans have been guilty imply a certain, unprecedented uneasiness over the idea’s life and power, if not, indeed, the idea’s validity. The idea of white supremacy rests simply on the fact that white men are the creators of civilization (the present civilization, which is the only one that matters; all previous civilizations are simply “contributions” to our own) and are therefore civilization’s guardians and defenders. Thus it was impossible for Americans to accept the black man as one of themselves, for to do so was to jeopardize their status as white men. But not so to accept him was to deny his human reality, his human weight and complexity, and the strain of denying the overwhelmingly undeniable forced Americans into rationalizations so fantastic that they approached the pathological.

Dang. The idea of the pathological rationalizations is even more true today of white Evangelicals than when Baldwin wrote it. It goes on:

At the root of the American Negro problem is the necessity of the American white man to find a way of living with the Negro in order to be able to live with himself.

Baldwin goes on to note the history of lynching and segregation - and calls this an insanity which overtakes white men. Indeed. Baldwin then goes on to get to a really raw nerve. One which is at the heart of both our toxic excuse for religion and our equally toxic politics. I have to quote the final two paragraphs in their entirety, because they are so prophetic in explaining both our current political moment and indeed the way that white Evangelicalism has self-destructed over the last few decades.

Yet, if the American Negro has arrived at his identity by virtue of the absoluteness of his estrangement from his past, American white men still nourish the illusion that there is some means of recovering the European innocence, of returning to a state in which black men do not exist. This is one of the greatest errors Americans can make. The identity they fought so hard to protect has, by virtue of that battle, undergone a change: Americans are as unlike any other white people in the world as it is possible to be. I do not thing, for example, that it is too much to suggest that the American vision of the world - which allows so little reality, generally speaking, for any of the darker forces in human life, which tends until today to paint moral issues in glaring black and white - owes a great deal to the battle waged by Americans to maintain between themselves and black men a human separation which could not be bridged. It is only now beginning to be borne in on us - very faintly, it must be admitted, very slowly, and very much against our will - that this vision of the world is dangerously inaccurate, and perfectly useless. For it protects our moral high-mindedness at the terrible expense of weakening our grasp of reality. People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

The time has come to realize that the interracial drama acted out on the American continent has not only created a new black man, it has created a new white man, too. No road whatever will lead Americans back to the simplicity of this European village where white men still have the luxury of looking on me as a stranger. I am not, really, a stranger any longer for any American alive. One of the things that distinguishes Americans from other people is that no other people has ever been so deeply involved in the lives of black men, and vice versa. This fact face, with all its implications, it can be seen that the history of the American Negro problem is not merely shameful, it is also something of an achievement. For even when the worst has been said, it must also be added that the perpetual challenge posed by this problem was always, somehow, perpetually met. It is precisely this black-white experience which may prove of indispensable value to us in the world we face today. This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again.

I have read and re-read these paragraphs over and over a few times, because they are so fantastic. Really, the political and cultural moment we find ourselves in is contained therein. Trump ran on a platform which is essentially what Baldwin describes as “European innocence.” That state in which the existence of non-whites can be denied. MAGA is really - and has always been - “make America white again.” But the world is no longer white, and it never will be again. These warring ideas play out in so many ways, from the debate about immigration, to the Black Lives Matter movement, to our discussion of taxation and public benefits. The undercurrent of white supremacy has yet to be fully addressed, a full 75 years after Baldwin wrote these words. And it is nowhere as fully unaddressed as within white Evangelicalism. So many things here apply, from the naive (or, more likely, malevolent) insistence on a black and white morality (literally and figuratively), to the pathological denial of reality, to the way that moral high-mindedness and false innocence turns one into a monster: these are literally the defining characteristics of white Evangelicalism these days.

This collection of essays is well worth the read. Baldwin, even though he wrote decades ago, seems more prophetic and relevant than ever. His writing seems, like Jean Sibelius’ music, to be “cold, clear water” offering that clarity so needed today.

Monday, September 3, 2018

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose

Source of book: Audiobook from the library.

While our audiobook selections have primarily been fiction, there are exceptions. This book is one of them.

When most of us think of the Civil Rights Movement, two names are usually the first to come to mind: Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks. And to be sure, both of them are deserving of honor. They played crucial roles in the struggle, and acquitted themselves well.

But throughout history, there are names that are unjustly forgotten, or even unjustly maligned, who are also important and inspiring. Fortunately, for some of them at least, history eventually recognizes their contributions.

One of those unjustly neglected heroes is Claudette Colvin. This book tells her story.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was one of the key events of the Civil Rights Movement, and one that had long term repercussions. It formed a rallying point for the movement, brought Martin Luther King Jr. to leadership, and resulted in one of the most important court cases of the 1950s. Without the boycott, it is unlikely we would have seen the Civil Rights Act a decade later.

But this event is usually told in a way that misses much of the history. We all learn (okay, those of you who actually studied the Civil Rights Movement in school - A Beka pretended it didn’t happen…) that the boycott was sparked when Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in deference to a white person.

That is a half-truth at best.

Again, no disrespect to Rosa Parks, who took her life in her hands by her actions and is justly remembered as a hero. But she was a carefully selected protester, and her act a carefully planned stunt. And it wasn’t even the first act of protest.

Rather, about nine months before Rosa Parks refused to move, a 15 year old girl named Claudette Colvin did the same thing - and was likewise arrested and prosecuted. It was her act - done spontaneously on her own initiative - that inspired the plan to have a boycott and a specific trigger - Rosa Parks.

Let that sink in a moment. A 15 year old girl - a mere child - decided on her own to take on the system. She refused to yield her seat (on a technicality which the court later recognized), and was dragged off the bus by policemen, jailed, and prosecuted. Think of the courage that took. She had no guarantee that anyone would support her. And, in fact, after some initial support, she was largely abandoned and forgotten.

Claudette Colvin, one year before she protested.

It isn’t that hard to understand why, given the times she lived in. She got pregnant about four months after the incident, by an older married (but separated) man, thus ruining her reputation. She was also young, and although intelligent and a good student, lacked the gravitas to be a good figurehead for a movement.

In contrast, Rosa Parks was thoroughly respectable, middle class, middle aged, and lighter skinned. I am sad to have to add the last, and, again, none of this was Rosa Parks’ fault. That she was an outstanding embodiment of the evil done by segregation is to her credit in every way, and her dignity and decency helped defuse the stereotypes that were wielded in an attempt to stop desegregation.

However, Colvin’s brave act gave the idea to the community leaders in Montgomery. Segregated buses would be the issue, and a suitable protester - a rallying point - would be chosen. Rosa Parks, already active in the NAACP and well known, was the obvious choice. And Colvin was pushed aside.

After Parks’ arrest, the boycott started. Simultaneously with this, the NAACP along with attorney Fred Gray - who defended both Colvin and Parks - filed a federal lawsuit challenging segregation. This case, Browder v. Gayle, is one of those cases that lawyers and law students know, but most laypersons do not. In fact, while the boycott drew national media attention, it was in fact the legal case which actually ended bus segregation throughout the United States. Claudette Colvin was a star witness in the case, and Gray would later say that she was crucial in convincing two of the three judge panel in favor of desegregation.

This book is interesting in part because the author spent considerable time talking with Colvin after her retirement from a career as a nurse’s aide. The book is full of direct quotes from Colvin about the events, about her feelings and experiences. Thus, it can be said to be truly her story, not just a story about her.

I will confess that much of the information in this book was new to me, even though I do care about history, and have read quite a bit about the era. I knew that Rosa Parks wasn’t the first, but I didn’t know much about the others. And yes, there was more than one - at least two teenage girls came first. I am glad my kids got to hear this one.

I had a few thoughts about this book and the history behind it.

First is this: I think it is vital to understand that the lie that the past was better is one of the most pernicious falsehoods in our political and religious discourse in this country. No, it was not better. It was, in fact, horrible for many people. That is why it is so obvious that “Make America Great Again” is nothing less than a call for a return to white supremacy. That is why it is appealing in the first place. We can go back to the past when “women and negroes knew their place.” That is the meaning of MAGA.

The second, related point is that this isn’t ancient history.

These events took place during my parents’ lifetime.

We as a nation are so not over the Civil Rights Movement. Rather, there are many - including an entire political party these days - who are actively fighting against the victories that non-whites have won over the last 65 years. It is certainly no excuse to say this, but it is key to remember that my parents’ generation - the Baby Boomers - grew up when it was normal to tell blacks that they had to be humiliated so that whites would maintain superiority. I hasten to add that my parents don’t think this way, and certainly didn’t raise me that way. But too many white Boomers seem to have this belief that things were so much better back before MLK. It is surreal to me - growing up in the 1980s in California - just how recently segregation was the literal law of the land.

Third observation is that the courts have always played a crucial role in human rights. I really understand these days why the Right in the US hates the court system for the most part. It has served as a bulwark against racist laws from the 1950s on. Some important names came into the story in a collateral way. Earl Warren was perhaps the most influential person to come out of Bakersfield, although conservative whites in our town aren’t all that proud, sad to say. Thurgood Marshall argued for the winning side in Brown v. Board of Education, and was later appointed to the Supreme Court as the first African American justice. These are big names, and justifiably so.

But I want to mention two others. I noted Fred Gray above. When he defended Colvin, he was fresh out of law school, and thrown into the fire. This story - and a bit of research on him - was enough to convince me that he belongs in the gallery of badass attorneys in history. The book quotes from the transcript of the oral arguments and witness examination, and Gray was fantastic.

I also need to mention Judge Frank Johnson. A young judge (younger than me!) at the time of the trial in Browder v. Gayle, he went on to preside over a number of major civil rights cases in the Alabama district of the Federal Court. As Bill Moyers put it much later, he “altered forever the face of the South.” One could argue that he was as important as Lincoln himself in establishing the human rights of African Americans.

Three things bear mentioning here. First, Johnson received numerous death threats, had a cross burned on his lawn, and had his mother’s house firebombed. Opposing the Ku Klux Klan had real consequences back then, and he did the right thing anyway. Second, in what has to be one of the most infuriating (to me), if entirely common, events, Johnson received a letter essentially telling him he had better repent for elevating blacks to the level of whites, or he would burn in hell. Which is, alas, pretty much the position of the Religious Right these days when you challenge their racism. Third, Johnson was a Republican. Seriously, back in the not-that-distant past, the GOP was actually the party of integration. By the time Jimmy Carter nominated him to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, that had been completely changed by Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the rise of the Religious Right. Sad and frustrating that things have changed.

On that note, something else really struck me. Here is the admonition of MLK during the boycott:

“If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence. Remember the words of Jesus: "He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword". We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us. We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you". This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love. Remember, if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance.”

In contrast to this, the White Citizens’ Council and the KKK committed numerous acts of violence against those involved. Even the mayor of Montgomery openly called for violence in response.

I cannot help but notice that The Toupee Who Shall Not Be Named continues (as he has since the beginning of his campaign) to take plays out of the KKK playbook, and has essentially threatened violence if his party is voted out in the next election. This is pretty parallel to the “if we lose, the blacks will rule Montgomery,” so whites should take up arms. It is the same thing, in a new era...nearly 70 years later. In what is surely not a coincidence, he is also vilifying peaceful protest against injustice. Things haven’t really changed that much.

One final thought on this book. Today’s teens seem to understand that we live in an era in which they will need to take action, because their parents’ generation is too cowardly (or compromised) to do it. The students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school get it. And they have paid for their courage with death threats from the white nationalists who fear that gun control will deprive them of their defense against the black “animals” they fear. Like the white librarian who spoke up against desegregation and received death threats for her trouble (she later committed suicide, alas), the warriors for justice and human decency these days will face consequences from the forces of evil - as they always have. But that doesn’t change the fact that even children can make a difference in the fight against evil. Claudette Colvin, inspired by an active sense that what she suffered was injustice, took action against it. While she didn’t receive recognition until just a few years ago, she deserves the credit for inspiring a revolution.

This book is thoroughly outstanding. My kids loved it - they have a strong sense of justice, and have been raised - as I was - to understand the ugly truth of our nation’s history. And ghastly present White Nationalist moment. Stories are powerful. This one humanizes the humiliation that African Americans suffered under Jim Crow. And, let us not forget - this isn’t ancient history. Many today are alive who participated in this event. Claudette Colvin is still with us. Fred Gray is still alive. Many of those who spit in the faces of the African Americans seeking equality still live. Perhaps some have changed, but many probably cling to their hate. Many of those who were forced to give way to whites on the bus still can tell their stories. Let us listen with empathy and with a renewed commitment to justice.

***

One more note that I couldn’t figure out where to put in the post. I am white. I married a white woman. (Hey, I fell madly in love with her...what can I say?) I have white kids. So, I kind of have this dilemma. On the one hand, our history is pretty awful. People of my color have done horrid things. My personal ancestors came over after the Civil War, and haven’t been rich, so I don’t have personal stuff to be ashamed of, but we have definitely benefited from racist systems in the United States.

But I don’t want my kids to just feel bad - that isn’t productive. What I want is for them to see examples of whites who did the right thing. The Quakers who sheltered those escaping from slavery. The abolitionists. The men and women who stood up against Jim Crow - and often paid the price. (That many of these were lawyers, judges, and Christian ministers makes me proud.) The men and women today who join in protesting police brutality, discrimination, and hate. Those who don’t just stay silent when others make racist jokes, or air their hate. Those who speak up, come along side the oppressed, and who fight for justice.

I want my children to see these good examples and to emulate them.

Books like this also remind us that doing right has consequences. While we haven’t suffered the firebombing and death threats of the past, we have lost friends over our commitment to speak out against racial hatred and the political parties and candidates that fan those evil flames. This is to be expected. Those who threatened Civil Rights leaders, black and white, were convinced god was on their side. A god that somehow believed segregation and white supremacy was good, and human rights were evil. That god is still widely worshipped today, in white Evangelical churches across our nation. We lost our connection to that community over our refusal to bow to that idol. Thus is the price of refusing to sell one’s soul. My prayer is that we see a better world as a result.

***

Some related reading that I highly recommend:

Remembering Jim Crow (oral history)

The Price for their Pound of Flesh by Daina Ramey Berry

The Slaves’ War by Andrew Ward

The Other Slavery by Andres Resendez

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward

Thursday, March 8, 2018

The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

This was a random Black History Month selection - our library usually has a little display for whatever month it is, from the usual, recurring ones, to one-offs like Inventor’s Month. There were several books I could have chosen, but this one looked interesting and not too long.

The title is a reference to James Baldwin’s pair of essays that helped spark the Civil Rights Movement - and that title was itself a reference to the traditional belief that the next time the earth is destroyed, it will be by fire. The book is a collection of essays (and two poems) on the same general topic as Baldwin’s: civil rights past, present, and future. Ward herself wrote one, and most of the others were written specifically for this book.

Because the book came out in 2016, several significant events dominate the collection: the murder of Trayvon Martin, the Ferguson killing and protests, Rachel Dolezal’s impersonation, and the backlash by whites against Black Lives Matter.

Because the styles and topics vary pretty wildly, I will just touch on a few things. The book is a good, quick read, in the tradition of essay collections. They have commonalities and differences, and thus function well as a diverse set of voices giving a window into a different set of experiences. (For us whites, at least.)

Some particular essays that stood out were these: “Homegoing, AD,” by Kima Jones, which was a lovely sketch of her family experiences. The essay by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (with a long title) which reevaluated what we were taught about Phillis Wheatley and her husband (which turns out to have been told by someone who may well have made most of it up.) “White Rage” by Carol Anderson, the one essay I had read before, and which still explains so much about Trump’s election. “Cracking the Code,” Jesmyn Ward’s story of using DNA to explore her family tree. “Black and Blue,” by Jamaican-born Garnette Cadogan, which is an all too common story of police harassment and abuse in the United States. “Know Your Rights!” by Emily Raboteau, about the murals with the same name in New York City. “Lonely in America,” by Wendy S. Walters, in which she researches the African-american grave site in Portsmouth, Maine.

The beauty of the writing is evident. Most of these aren’t protest pieces, or political in the partisan sense. They are stories from the real lives of the writers. The experience of being black in America is story enough to be worth reading - and not just reading, but allowing ourselves to be changed by the process of empathy. More than anything else, my own journey away from right wing politics has been driven by actually listening. To quote Wendy S. Walters:

When a story is unpleasant, it is hard to focus on details that allow you to put yourself in the place of the subject, because the pain of distortion starts to feel familiar. Paying attention often requires some sort of empathy for the subject, or at the very least, for the speaker. But empathy, these days, is hard to come by. Maybe this is because everyone is having such a hard time being understood themselves. Or because empathy requires us to dig way down into the murk, deeper than our own feelings go, to a place where the boundaries between our experience and everyone else’s no longer exist.

Perhaps one of the best examples of this is the murder of Trayvon Martin. And yes, I use that word intentionally, because that is what it was. Ward, in the introduction, expresses her horror that the media failed - refused really - to say what this was. An adult man stalked and killed a minor child walking home from the store. At every possible juncture, the adult chose to escalate the situation, until the child was dead. I have teenagers. (And a 12 year old son, who isn’t always the most aware of what is going on around him. If he weren’t white, I would be constantly worried he would be gunned down by a fearful cop.) The Trayvon Martin murder is one reason I left the NRA. (It is one thing to defend against an armed burglar. It is something else to adopt “stand and fight” as a slogan. What the actual hell? This isn’t the wild west. Don’t start fights over whose sidewalk it is. Sheesh!) It was also one significant step in my journey to a new way of thinking about race relations in America. A world where you can follow someone around, and shoot them dead as soon as you subjectively feel afraid isn’t a civilized one - it is a society that worships violence. That was how I came to realize that no, to all too many, black lives don’t matter - they are expendable. And that needs to change.

Anyway, this book is a quick read, and is a good one to hear some different perspectives. None of us can claim to have a god-like, purely objective view and experience of the world. There isn’t a “black perspective” as opposed to a “neutral” perspective, which is why the idea that any of us can arrogantly tell other people why their experience of the world is somehow invalid or doesn’t exist is ludicrous. Empathy and basic human decency require that we shut up - and listen.

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Poems 1921-1930 by Langston Hughes

Source of book: I own the complete poems of Langston Hughes

This is my official choice for Black History Month this year.

Here is the list of Black History Month selections since I started this blog, and also some related books:

2011: 50 Years and Other Poems by James Weldon Johnson

2012: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

2013: The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois

2014: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

2015: Kindred by Octavia Butler

2016: Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin

2017: Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South

And

Black Boy (American Hunger) by Richard Wright

Other notable books by African American or African authors:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Poems by Phillis Wheatley

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

I Greet The Dawn (Poems) by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh by Daina Ramey Berry

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Books on Black History by other authors:

Red Tails, Black Wings by John B. Holway

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Ragtime (the Musical)

The Slaves’ War by Andrew Ward

***

I remember discovering Langston Hughes in high school, although, honestly, I cannot remember exactly which poem it was - two and a half decades tend to do that. However, I can say with confidence that it was a revelation to re-discover “Let America Be America Again” in the aftermath of election of an openly white nationalist candidate in 2016. In any case, I do enjoy Langston Hughes.

I also will be performing a song cycle by Robert Owens, Fields of Wonder, with texts from the poems of Langston Hughes, this weekend. Good stuff.

Hughes was part of the Harlem Renaissance, a great flowering of the arts among the African American community in Harlem, New York City, in the 1920s. It is interesting that this took place during the same period as the revival of the Ku Klux Klan (the “second” KKK). Causation is tricky, but it seems plausible that insecure whites felt threatened by the entry of black artists and art into the mainstream.

I have long been fascinated by the Harlem Renaissance, because of the high quality that was produced, and also the sense of community that bridged class divides within the movement. It is easy to see the influence that Duke Ellington, W.E.B Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Marian Anderson, and so many more have had on art, music, and writing throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries. Langston Hughes too was influential, and remains one of the best loved poets of the era.

I am slowly accumulating an extensive poetry collection for my own library, and as part of my poetry project, I am systematically reading poetry. In this case, I started at the beginning, with Hughes’ first decade of poems. Obviously, I intend to return and read through the rest later.

This collection is both expected and unexpected. Certainly, I expected the many poems about the African American experience - Hughes is rightly renowned for bringing the Harlen culture to life. I also expected his more lyrical and descriptive poems. What I did not expect was that quite a few would be on the topic of suicide. There are quite a few, and they are from the perspective of someone either contemplating or doing the deed. Sometimes, these are circumstantial: the speaker has suffered some heartbreak or hardship, and contemplates ending it all. Some are just the speaker’s intent and mindset. A bit chilling in many instances. Fortunately, whatever ideation Hughes had in his youth led merely to some haunting poetry, rather than his untimely death at his own hands.

The other thing I did not expect was that Hughes wrote many poems in the form of blues lyrics. These are quite good - you could set them to a 12 bar framework and they would fit perfectly in meter and mood. I’ll quote some of these.

One more thing I will mention is that Hughes doesn’t sugar coat anything. All the dark parts of our human experience are in these poems, from domestic violence to rape to poverty to despair. But there are also the positives too. Hughes is unashamed of his race, and expresses pride at the African American spirit, their experiences and hardships, and their resilience. He stands up in the face of a reinvigorated white supremacy with his head high, his gaze dead ahead, and doesn’t apologize for anything.

Here are the poems that particularly stood out.

Question(1)

When the old junk man Death

Comes to gather up our bodies

And toss them into the sack of oblivion,

I wonder if he will find

The corpse of a white multi-millionaire

Worth more pennies of eternity,

Than the black torso of

A Negro cotton-picker.

Short and sweet. We all take up our five or six feet of earth in the end, right?

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
    flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
    went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
    bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

This one is rightly regarded as one of his best. Every time I read it, it gives me a thrill.

The next one is rather uncomfortable. But true, which is why it is uncomfortable.

Liars

It is we who are liars:

The Pretenders-to-be who are not

And the Pretenders-not-to-be who are.

It is we who use words

As screens for thoughts

And weave dark garments

To cover the naked body

Of the too white Truth.

It is we with the civilized souls

Who are liars.

I love how Hughes uses multiple layers of meaning in this one. Dark garments, white truth. Truth offends us because it is too bright. It is also white in the sense of light and darkness. And “white” truth may well have the meaning of what whites believe or wish to be true, or perhaps the truth of white supremacy which has been endemic to American society since the first slave was brought here. And certainly acting “civilized” has during my lifetime served to cover some real ugliness which became obvious once the dark garments were removed.

I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

This classic was certainly one of the first Langston Hughes poems I experienced. And, for much of my life, I lived under the illusion that most people I knew agreed with it. It was quite the shock in the last two years to realize that in fact a great many people I know do not agree. And those people have dedicated a lot of political capital to ensure that America does not in fact become any browner than it is. The foundational truth that we are all America runs contrary to the goals of a shockingly high percentage of our population. I do not believe it is a majority overall, but it appears to be among conservative whites at least. That makes me sad.

But regardless, “I, Too” remains an inspiring poem to me, and I hope I live to see it truly come to pass.

In some cases, Hughes gets openly political - and in ways that would have him categorized with modern day protesters. Here is one of those:

God to Hungry Child

Hungry child,

I didn't make this world for you.

You didn't buy any stock in my railroad.

You didn't invest in my corporation.

Where are your shares in standard oil?

I made the world for the rich

And the will-be-rich

And the have-always-been-rich.

Not for you.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the church of Ayn Rand, commonly known as the modern GOP.

On a related note, this one resonates with me: it is how I feel about my former faith tradition, which appears to take its morality not from the Holy Writ, but from Fox News and Brietbart.

To Certain “Brothers”

You sicken me with lies,

With truthful lies.

And with your pious faces.

And your wide, out-stretched,

mock-welcome, Christian hands.

While underneath

Is dirt and ugliness,

And rotting hearts,

And wild hyenas howling

In your soul's wasteland.

Because ultimately, there is no welcome. There is no use for the poor, the immigrant, the brown, or for those outside the political tribe. That much was made clear to me on my way out the door.

How about some blues? Langston Hughes wrote literally dozens of blues lyrics during this decade, any of which would be worth quoting. I picked one, but could have quoted many more.

Midwinter Blues

In the middle of the winter,

Snow all over the ground.

In the middle of the winter,

Snow all over the ground —

'Twas the night befo' Christmas

My good man turned me down.

Don't know's I'd mind his goin'

But he left me when the coal was low.

Don't know's I'd mind his goin'

But he left when the coal was low.

Now, if a man loves a woman

That ain't no time to go.

He told me that he loved me

But he must a been tellin' a lie.

He told me that he loved me.

He must a been tellin' a lie.

But he's the only man I'll

Love till the day I die.

I'm gonna buy me a rose bud

An' plant it at my back door,

Buy me a rose bud,

Plant it at my back door,

So when I'm dead they won't need

No flowers from the store.

I’m a classical musician for the most part, but I enjoy a wide variety of music. Over the last couple of decades, I have come to appreciate the blues more and more. It is no exaggeration to say that all of the truly “American” musical forms are African American in origin. Heck, no less a luminary than Antonin Dvorak, after his tour of the US in the 1890s, wrote a series of articles urging American composers to look to the music of African Americans for the true American sound. And so it was. From Ragtime to Jazz to Rock to Hip Hop, the innovation has come from there. Perhaps, as Dvorak realized, power and privilege may well be able to buy good music, but it cannot invent it. Music comes from the depths of the soul - and from ordinary people with hard lives. I am not a composer, and never will be, but I can at least take musical ideas and add my own soul to the music. And thus, I love blues improvisation. It is challenging and rewarding, and speaks to a part of me in a special way.

The blues aren’t the only music that makes it into Hughes’ poems. He was a pioneer of “Jazz Poetry,” and the sounds of the speakeasies and street music pervade many of his works. Here is an example:

Lennox Avenue: Midnight

The rhythm of life

Is a jazz rhythm,

Honey.

The gods are laughing at us.

The broken heart of love,

The weary, weary heart of pain,-

Overtones,

Undertones,

To the rumble of street cars,

To the swish of rain.

Lenox Avenue,

Honey.

Midnight,

And the gods are laughing at us.

I’ll finish with this short poem, which is one of my favorites.

Desire

Desire to us

Was like a double death,

Swift dying

Of our mingled breath,

Evaporation

Of an unknown strange perfume

Between us quickly

In a naked

Room.

Just wow. Sometimes a poet just speaks in a way that goes beyond the actual words of the poem. The picture, the things left unsaid, the meaning in the margins. I love this poem.

I started my Black History Month reading with poetry, and I still find that it is one of the most powerful expressions of truth and beauty and meaning. The voices of the Harlem Renaissance still seem fresh and timeless today. Langston Hughes is a good poet to start with, but there are many others. If you haven’t spent some time reading them, what are you waiting for?

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Wednesday, March 4, 2020

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead