Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own. However, this one was an exception, because this was my nomination. 

Little Fires Everywhere takes on some pretty complex, tricky, and controversial topics. It does so through some morally difficult - and realistic - situations faced by nuanced characters. The writing is also excellent, the plot tight and focused, and the pacing perfect. Despite the heavier themes, it doesn’t feel like a heavy book. It is literary fiction, but doesn’t feel Literary™. 

I should warn that in order to say what I want to about the book, I will have to give some spoilers. If you haven’t read the book, you might want to bookmark this page, and come back to it after you have read it. 

Before getting into the story itself, let me say a few things about the setting. Ng chose one of the most fascinating places in America to set her story: Shaker Heights, Ohio. This suburb of Cleveland was one of the first “planned communities” in the US, long before such things became the hackneyed “gated community” dystopias that dominate the middle class suburbs and exburbs surrounding most major cities. 

Shaker Heights was, at the time, a legitimately inspirational idea. It was connected to Cleveland by streetcar, making commuting easy in an era before cars became dominant. It was laid out so that children could walk to schools, parks, and grocery stores without crossing any major streets. Indeed, even today, children usually walk, rather than take a bus or car. Although Shaker Heights now is mostly home to well above median income people, it was designed to have mixed income housing. (Essentially, it is a victim of its own success. Even the apartments are desirable, while the large houses are out-of-sight expensive.) 

Later, Shaker Heights would become famous for its intentional and successful efforts to integrate - decades before the Civil Rights Act. This included not just being open to non-whites moving in, but recruiting middle-class minorities, and assisting in securing financing in an era of redlining and open discrimination - it still maintains its own housing assistance office. As a result, Shaker Heights is a fairly integrated and diverse city, and avoided the “white flight” so many places have experienced. It still has a reputation as a progressive and tolerant place to live - although it isn’t particularly affordable these days, alas. 

Ng grew up in Shaker Heights, so one might guess that she knows a thing or three about the experience. As she said about it, it was “a little bit like writing about a relative. You see all of the great things about them, you love them dearly, and yet you also know all of their quirks and their foibles.” 

Shaker Heights serves as a bit of a metaphor as well as the setting. As a carefully planned community, it parallels the life of Elena Richardson, the matriarch of the picture-perfect Richardson family. Upper middle class, progressive, and concerned with their image, the Richardsons are recognizable. They are basically decent people, who try to do the right thing. Always. Always the perfect thing. Particularly Elena, as her husband Bill is a prominent attorney, and works the sort of hours that go with that kind of job. There are four Richardson children. Lexie is the all-American girl, progressive style. She has an African-American boyfriend who is smart and intends to go far, killer looks, and a personality that makes her popular. Likewise, Trip is the handsome, blond athletic sort, who has scored with most of the girls in the school. Moody is the thoughtful and kind one, who is a bit hapless in relationships - largely because of the competition from his older siblings. Izzy is the odd kid out, misunderstood, strong willed, deeply moral, and uninterested in the middle-class facade. 

Into the lives of the Richardsons come Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl. Mia is an itinerant artist with a mysterious past. Pearl has never known stability, moving regularly, never making friends or putting down roots. When Mia rents an apartment from the Richardsons, Moody comes over to check things out and meets Pearl. He introduces her to the rest of the family, and Pearl finds herself wanting to be part of that world. 

On the other hand, Elena recognizes something in Mia that troubles her. Elena has always done the perfect thing. But that meant, in her circumstances, never following her own dreams. She grew up in Shaker Heights, went to college, met and married Bill, and brought him back to live in her hometown. This means sacrifices. Elena writes for the local-local paper. You know, the one that covers school plays and local sports and stuff. She never breaks into the big leagues - in part because of the demands of family. By the time the story opens, she knows deep down that she will never be more than she is. Not really. The perfect life, but not her career dreams. 

Mia, on the other hand, is a complete contrast. Although she never finished her degree, Mia is an artistic photographer who has followed her own path. She works menial jobs as necessary to pay the rent, plus sells a few of her photos through a New York art dealer. Just enough to get by. Everything Mia and Pearl own is second-hand, from the ancient car Mia inherited (more or less) from her late brother, to the thrift-shop clothes and discarded furniture they find whenever they more to a new place. Despite the poverty, Mia and Pearl have a close relationship, and Mia gets to live life essentially on her own terms. 

This isn’t the life Pearl would choose, however, and she wants to put down roots and build relationships. What she does have, unlike the Richardson kids, though, is a truly good relationship with her mother. (She has no idea who her dad is - that topic is essentially off the table.) 

Into this already complex situation comes a serious disruption. Mia’s coworker at a local restaurant, Chinese immigrant Bebe, has been through a horrible experience. After being impregnated, then abandoned, she loses her job and her housing in short order, and finds she can’t get enough food to keep the infant alive. She abandons her (carefully) at a fire station, but later regrets it after she is able to get on her feet again. By coincidence, Mia overhears Elena talking about her childhood friend, who is in the process of adopting an infant that must be Bebe’s daughter. Bebe challenges the adoption, and the court case roils Shaker Heights. 

Furious that her friend is going through this, Elena starts investigating Mia’s past, and makes some unexpected discoveries. The aftermath of all this includes the title of the book, when Izzy burns the family home to the ground and runs away. 

The crux of the discovery about Mia is this (spoiler alert): When in college as an art major, Mia’s scholarship is cut off due to budget cuts. Lacking support from her family, she agrees to be a surrogate for a wealthy infertile couple, using her own egg and his sperm. When she reveals this to her family, they express their strong disapproval. After her brother dies in a car crash, she realizes she can’t go through with the surrogacy, tells the couple that she miscarried, and flees to the West Coast. From there on out, she has been on the run from her past. 

These two cases - the adoption and the surrogacy - bring to light some unpleasant truths about our society. 

First, some of my own background. For the last 16 years, I have done contract work for an Indian Tribe, handling their California “juvenile dependency” cases. That is a fancy legalese term for cases where a child is removed from its parents for alleged abuse or neglect. If the parents fail to “reunify” successfully, the child will probably be adopted. Because of my work in these cases, I have seen the system up close, and, I will admit, I have some deeply conflicted feelings about the whole thing. 

In general, the system seems to do a better job of splitting up families than keeping them together, and there is a strong economic and racial disparity in which families stay together. Certainly, there are cases in which there is no reasonable way for parents and children to be reunified. Some parents have issues with mental illness and/or substance abuse that so incapacitates them that the children are truly unsafe. In a very small number, there are truly sociopathic parents (or a parent) who gets off on violence or sexual abuse. In these cases, there isn’t a good solution. 

But in a surprising number, the root issue isn’t “bad parents,” but poverty. 

This is the elephant in the room - and something the book really brings out. 

Here is how you can tell that money (or lack thereof) is at the root of these issues. In general, what you see in the system is the children of poor people being adopted by middle or higher class people. You will practically NEVER see a child of wealthy parents in the system at all, and it certainly wouldn’t be adopted by a poverty-level adoptive parent. Likewise, have you EVER heard of a wealthy woman agreeing to be a surrogate for a lower income infertile couple? I bet you haven’t. Because the dynamic here is all about wealth. (On a related note, you very rarely see a white baby adopted by minority parents. The opposite is often true, though…so maybe race is an issue here…)

I imagine that you are willing to grant that bad parenting exists at all socioeconomic levels. And you would be right. But the system is set up to punish poverty, not bad parenting. And, even when a wealthy parent has issue, relatives are typically able to step in and prevent things from going to court. For example, the wealthy mom on powder cocaine (as opposed to crack) will typically quietly enter rehab while a relative takes over care. And the court system never gets involved. Or, a wealthy child can miss school to avoid showing bruises - someone is there to watch him. But a poverty level parent can’t afford to miss work, and suddenly you have a CPS complaint. 

Or how about the system itself. CPS has to offer what are euphemistically termed “reunification services” to parents. But that is a terrible term. What it really means is a series of hoops for the parent to jump through if they want their kid back. Typically, these are classes (say, abuse and neglect prevention, drug rehab, or anger management.) Which are only offered at certain times on certain days, and rarely within walking distance of the parent’s home. And if the parent is working (which they are commanded to do), the classes often conflict with typical low-income job schedules. Oh, and then there are the drug tests, with little notice (for obvious reasons), but these too require leaving work - if you can even get a long enough break to go down and test on the other side of town. 

Having watched this, it is a freaking miracle any low-income parents EVER reunify successfully. And in order to do so, they have to be practically superhuman. And lucky. Particularly if, like Bebe, they lack local relatives or other social support. For that matter, unlike wealthier families, those who do have relatives able to take the kids in will often find that their homes don’t qualify...because of poverty-related issues. 

The history of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is an interesting illustration. At the time the law was passed in 1978, fully three quarters of all Indian families living on reservations (where our racist policies put them) had lost at least one child to adoption by white families. This is basically a form of genocide: removing children from their families. (Hmm, sound like immigration policy right now?) 

In the book, this pattern is pretty clear. Bebe surrenders her baby not because she doesn’t love and want her, but because the child is starving due to Bebe’s poverty and circumstances. This whole thing could have been prevented had society noticed and addressed the poverty problems. Likewise, in the court case, the adoptive parents make the extremely universal argument that “we can provide all these things for the child that mom cannot.” Basically, “we have money.” 

This leads me to what I see as the ugly underbelly of the adoption industry. And it is sure as hell an industry. Don’t get me wrong. The adoptive parents I know are overwhelmingly wonderful, kind, generous people. In some cases, I know people who have intentionally sought out vulnerable kids less likely to be adopted because of disability, age, or other traits. I have nothing but admiration for them. Particularly the ones who have taken on teens, which are extremely difficult to find homes for. 

But. But there is a tremendous demand for certain types of kid. Namely, infants. Particularly healthy infants with blue eyes and light skin. Get one of these in the system under circumstances where a parent lacks the financial clout to fight, and...it isn’t pretty. But infants of all sorts are like this. In super high demand. Wealthy(ish) American parents have gone all over the world seeking adoptable infants now that a combination of readily available birth control, abortion, and more parents choosing to keep children conceived out of wedlock has reduced the “supply” of adoptable infants locally. The days when teen girls would get “in trouble” and quietly disappear for a few months, while a couple got to adopt a cute little baby have largely passed. Which I think drives the adoption industry to find other “sources.” 

Wrapped up with this is a definite entitlement complex among wealthy infertile couples. The idea of accepting that they won’t be parents seems somehow unamerican or something. If you have money, of course you can buy a child from somewhere. And of course children are better off growing up with money than in poverty, right? So what if we have to destroy another family, right?

The bottom line is this: adoption is a response to a catastrophic failure - a horrible tragedy. In the natural course of things, families should stay together. Back in the old days, genuine orphans were more common. Disease killed people in their youth: it was a fact of life. But even back then, many - perhaps most - “orphans” had living parents. Who were too poor to feed them. (For more about this, I suggest reading How To Create the Perfect Wife by Wendy Moore.) This is still the pattern in much of the developing world. And all too often the case here too. 

We need to start thinking about preventing the failure first - keeping families together, even though that will cost money - rather than just removing children from their families. Yes, this will require a different approach to poverty. One less punitive. One that doesn’t criminalize poverty. One where threatening to tear children away from their parents isn’t considered a reasonable response to unpaid school lunch fees. (I really wish I were making that up.) Sure, some tragedies will not be fixable. But some are, and we don’t seem to care. And yes, this will indeed reduce the number of cute adoptable infants. Wealthy infertile couples will have to learn to accept that money can’t buy everything. 

Moving on to the surrogacy issue. Pregnancy is no joke. It has its risks, to be sure. And it can incapacitate a woman for months if something is not quite right - or even sometimes if it is. So, it should be zero surprise that people generally do not wish to endure pregnancy for no reason. For most, obviously, the goal is a child. 

But what about surrogates? If pregnancy were something people did for fun, there surely would be a long line of women offering to carry children for others for free. It turns out that isn’t the case. There are willing surrogates….for the right price. 

Let’s be honest here. Surrogates (except for the rare family member) are overwhelmingly lower income young women, for whom the financial incentive compensates for the risk and discomfort. And those who are renting wombs are overwhelmingly - probably exclusively - people with significant money to pay the price. Mia clearly would not have done so had she not felt she had few if any other options to finish school. And this is the general pattern with surrogates, if you look at the appellate cases on the issue. Womb rental is a thing because of inequality, and would largely disappear in a more equal society. 

Sorry for the rant on this, but this is something that has seriously stuck in my craw, to the point where I considered writing a post just on this issue. Probably in connection with the Abortion Wars™, which are driven in part by a desire to have a larger supply of cute white babies available for adoption. (Sorry, that’s the inconvenient truth.) 

This theme of motherhood - and what makes a person a mother - is a central theme, certainly. How much does blood matter? How much does relationship matter? Who do children truly “belong” to anyway? 

The other theme, which I also found to be highly relevant, was the question of trying to follow the perfect formula. I grew up in a subculture that was trying ever so hard to find the perfect formula to guarantee that the kids would turn out perfectly. (Which included, unfortunately, the desire that the kids turn out to be theological, political, and cultural clones.) From homeschooling to Gothard’s cult to the endless “worldview” and “apologetics” classes, everything was geared toward the formula. It’s not just Fundie Evangelicalism, of course. Ng writes the book to look at progressive liberal upper-middle-class formulae specifically. It is certainly a 21st Century American obsession - and probably a human tendency in general. 

Like Elena, though, for so many of my parents’ generation, it has come to pass that the formula didn’t work. Instead of the perfect life, there is a trail of damaged relationships, disappointed expectations, and trauma. Life happens. Children are born (like Izzy) in medically fragile states. Like Izzy, they often fail to have the compliant personalities parents crave. (For what it’s worth, I am temperamentally a cross between Moody - the guy the girls ignored, despite being intelligent and caring - and Izzy, perpetually fighting against both injustice and authoritarian expectations. Because I am like Moody, I never considered burning it all down. But because I am like Izzy, I chose to follow my own path - away from the formulae and expectations - when I was old enough to do so. I think I am a bizarre combination of rule-follower and rule-breaker. 

It is in this that the book hits on some truths. Mia and Pearl do find themselves having to reevaluate their relationship, and rebuild it on a foundation of truth. But because of the history of love and acceptance, they have something to work with. In contrast, Elena wants to find Izzy, and fix things. But sorry, that will never happen. Izzy has determined to keep running away until she no longer has to come back. And someday, she will leave and never, ever see Elena again. Because Elena has destroyed that relationship beyond repair. 

And Elena doesn’t even know (even at the end) the full truth about her kids. She has no idea that Lexie got pregnant and had an abortion. (Using Pearl’s name to avoid discovery - Elena knows an administrator at the clinic.) Elana has no idea why Moody reacted like he did, or that Trip is sleeping his way through the school. She has focused on her perfect life, at the expense of her relationships. And yes, that hits really, really close to home for me. 

One incident that really shed light on a number of interesting dynamics was the abortion. When Lexie discovers she is pregnant (having been...not as careful as she was raised to be), she doesn’t tell her boyfriend Brian outright. Rather, she uses hypotheticals to gauge his reaction. She is inclined to keep the child. After all, she has a support system, including a mom who can do child care while she goes to college locally. They can marry eventually, and, no big deal right? Money makes everything easier. (And yes, I knew quite a few middle class white kids back in my teens who did just that. And in some cases, married someone other than the father later. Money did make for options…) 

But Brian has an unexpected (for Lexie) reaction. He points out (correctly) that the consequences for him would be rather different. He may come from a middle class home, but the script for him is different because of race. He isn’t the pretty white girl who made a mistake and should be supported. He is every negative stereotype of the African American male. He knocked up a white girl. He got a girl pregnant in high school rather than focusing on his education and career. He will be the bad guy no matter what, no matter what they do. Society will judge him in a way that it will never judge Lexie. Ng gets this precisely right. 

Here is a story to illustrate it. When I was in my mid teens, we attended a multicultural charismatic church for a few years (before moving away.) There were a lot of good things there, and I have kept a number of friends from there. Because it was in a working-class neighborhood (although it was still the most economically diverse church I have attended), there were multiple cultural dynamics (for lack of a better term) at play. Like the population at large, young people had sex. And there were shotgun weddings, because that was how Christians tended to handle things. I’m sure there were plenty of abortions too, but those were kept secret. And, to be fair, some of those marriages are together today, so I don’t mean to sound judgy. Life happened. 

But I noticed an interesting dynamic in one case. A young African American man liked to date white young women. When he eventually got one pregnant and they married, the talk was just...different than it was when it was any other racial combination. (And there was a LOT of interracial marriage and dating - this was Los Angeles in the 1990s, not the 1940s.) While it wasn’t exactly said out loud, people like my parents strongly implied that this was why white girls shouldn’t date black boys. Ouch. 

So, Lexie, realizing that this pregnancy was not going to have a happy ending, goes and gets an abortion without telling her parents. She enlists Pearl to drive her, and ends up crashing for a few nights with Pearl and Mia, as she is in more pain than she expected. Unlike her own parents, Mia is sympathetic and caring - no matter what. Now, admittedly, it is generally easier to handle sensitive stuff outside the dynamic of one’s family. (One reason I believe kids should have people they love and trust other than their parents in their lives.) Some things hit too close to family dynamics. But there is no doubt why Lexie goes elsewhere when things go wrong for her. Her mistake would upset the perfect vision Elena has of the family, and Lexie won’t risk that. Izzy, on the other hand…

There is so much more one can say about this. Mia’s photography is another metaphor, I believe. As my perceptive wife pointed out, when Mia is first learning her craft, she shoots long (yet detailed) shots of her brother and his friends. Later, moving in with Pearl, she takes a mid-range shot with Pearl and a bed frame. By the end, she has taken careful photographs of close up - macro - range for each of the Richardsons, in which she captures their personality through carefully arranged objects. Amanda felt that this represented Mia (and Pearl’s) move to build relationships in Shaker Heights. 

The story has so many details that Ng gets so right, from older vehicles to thrift shopping to city planning to photographic technique. And yes, the legal stuff, which is so rare in media. Our book club has people with different areas of expertise, and all of us found that the details were correct in our realms of knowledge. Ng either draws on a wide range herself, or researched things well. Probably both. 

I know I am forgetting something I want to say, but that’s how it goes with blogging. I will end with a quote that really sums up so much. It comes from Bill’s sudden understanding of Elena, and her reasons why her wealthy friend “deserves” the baby, and Bebe - the biological mother - does not. It sounds so very much like the typical middle-to-upper-class view of poverty. It is something that transcends the liberal/conservative divide, and gets to the heart of the American myth: that karma is real, we get exactly what we deserve, and success isn’t privilege, it is fully and completely earned. 

For her it was simple: Bebe Chow had been a poor mother; Linda McCullough had been a good one. One had followed the rules, and one had not. 

Except that, as Bill, who is a good lawyer, realizes, it isn’t that simple. Often, there isn’t a “right way” and a “wrong way.” There are just different ways. And society makes its choices about which ways to punish - often brutally. And those choices aren’t made in a vacuum. Circumstances limit our choices, and society’s rules are inextricably bound up with our history of racism and oppression of minorities. Which is why there is a racial and economic element to our views of “good” and “bad” parenting - and choices in general. 

The thing with Elena is, she believes she is a good person. And to a degree, she is. She certainly isn’t the Trumpian sort, openly racist and xenophobic, intending harm to others. She goes out of her way, in many ways - just like the integrationists of Shaker Heights - to make the world a better place. But she doesn’t “get” what it is like to be poor. Or an immigrant. Or someone faced with an impossible choice like Bebe. It has always been easy for her to follow the rules. And money has had a lot to do with that. Just like that money protects Lexie in a way that it does not protect Pearl, even though Lexie is the one who actually had an abortion, not Pearl. 

Recently, I read a fascinating article by the wonderful Morgan Guyton. It is mostly about theological issues (which matter to me), but which contained a line which seemed so very appropriate here. Guyton is a Progressive Christian (although I hate that term - I think “Christian” works better, because conservative Evangelicalism these days is really just anti-Christianity) so he is concerned with political liberals. But I think it applies doubly to conservatives who fancy themselves compassionate, while seeking to brutally punish anyone who fails to completely comply with complicated and cruel rules. (See: immigration) It gets to the heart of the difference between those who truly see the impoverished and vulnerable as not just equals, but the moral superiors of those with wealth; and those who condescend to occasionally help the less fortunate, but don’t actually wish to empathize. 

“I’m always listening for whether a particular theology sounds like solidarity with the marginalized or rich liberal angst.” 

This is ultimately Elena’s problem. She has a LOT of rich liberal angst. But she is fundamentally incapable of understanding her own privilege, let alone the lives of those without it. She has no framework to understand why a parent would give up a child - because she has no experience of starvation, and can’t find it in herself to put herself in Bebe’s shoes. She has no framework to understand Mia, because she never had to make a hard choice. Her education was paid for, and she had a clear path to “follow the rules. And that is why she becomes unspeakably cruel to Mia at the end. Never mind that Mia has basically saved Elena’s ass on multiple occasions (the abortion is just one example), or that Mia has even agreed to accept that “liberal angst” motivated charity that Elena offers, because it helps Pearl make friends. Mia didn’t follow the rules, and thus she is fair game for harsh punishment. Basically, Elena is fine with uprooting Pearl, forcing Mia to move away again, and ruin the friendships her children have with Mia and Pearl, because of her misplaced view of the rules. It is her privilege and liberal angst, not any genuine interior compassion which motivates her. The “little people,” Mia, Pearl, and Bebe, are disposable. 

One kind of hopes that when her family implodes in dramatic fashion that Elena will learn something. From my own experience, I am doubtful. But that too is life. It’s messy, and you make the best of what you have. 

This was definitely a thought provoking book, and one which stirred up some emotions I wasn’t expecting, in addition to hitting on issues directly connected with my legal practice. Ng is able to put her finger on some of the unspoken biases in our society (both the worship of individualism and the punishment of those who choose that path), and bring out the complexities that we keep trying to reduce to black and white. 

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.

Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

This has to be one of the hardest books I have ever read. Not because it is difficult, but because it is so horrifying - particularly in the difficult times we are in right now. The events in this book took place a little over 70 years ago - during the lifetimes of some of my parents’ generation. And, sadly, the last few years have proven that we haven’t moved forward all that much since then either.

On the one hand, this book is about great heroes. It is about the hope that people can change their minds and become better. But it is also about the unfortunate fact that the good people do not always win. And also that humans can be simply horrid: full of hate, prejudice, and easily incited to murder by whatever means they have at hand.

My older daughters have each had to read To Kill a Mockingbird for freshman English - they had already read it, so they had a head start. I remember my mother reading it to us. I read it for myself the first time in junior high, and again as an adult. It never gets easier; it is still one of the most moving and horrifying stories in the canon. It is precisely because it is all too true that makes it horrifying.

The events in Devil in the Grove likely inspired Harper Lee’s novel, although she certainly had her pick of judicial lynchings to choose from. This particular case is interesting in part because Thurgood Marshall played a role in it. As a result of his involvement, the FBI did a series of investigations into aspects of the case. Sadly, political realities kept the findings of these investigations secret for decades afterward, and the truly guilty parties went to their graves without paying any meaningful penalty for their roles in the murders. Gilbert King was able to access these files, and illuminate what really went down - information which Marshall lacked during the trials, and which could have changed the course of a number of lives.

The underlying story is one repeated thousands of times across the Jim Crow south: a white woman cries rape, some young black men are arrested, beaten into confessing, and either lynched, or given a sham trial and executed. Never mind any exculpatory evidence. Never mind rock solid alibis. Never mind due process. The honor of all white women must be avenged, and human sacrifice committed.

In the Groveland case, two of the men had indeed had brief contact with the woman and her semi-estranged husband. But their behavior afterward looked nothing like that of men who even suspected a charge of rape would be made. The other two men, believe it or not, could not possibly have committed a rape. In one case, he was clearly out of town long before it could have been done, while the other was...wait for it...in police custody when the rape was alleged to have occurred. But never mind, blood sacrifice was needed.

These facts were generally known at the time of trial. But there was more. The behavior of the alleged victim afterward was completely inconsistent with that of a rape victim. Multiple witnesses saw her and talked with her, and her appearance, story, and actions were at odds with her later story. Even more damning: she was given a medical exam, and no semen or signs of force were discovered. This fact was withheld from the defense, and the judge refused to let the doctor be called as a witness. (Just one of many obvious actions by the judge to guarantee a conviction. Seriously, as a lawyer, it is astounding that this sort of stuff happened routinely. I guess this is the sort of judge that Le Toupee thinks we should have…)

After the arrests, the three defendants were beaten nearly to death. Two of them confessed - including the one, a mere teen, who was in custody at the time of the alleged crime. The third never did confess, but the sheriff made sure the newspapers printed that all of them had confessed. (Yep, more tampering with justice.) The fourth defendant was gunned down by a posse.

And then, the KKK showed up - from other towns. A few unsuccessful attempts at gaining access to the prisoners to lynch them, they went and blew up and burned down most of the African American neighborhood. The sheriff stood by and watched it happen, and then refused to identify any of the perpetrators. In addition, the local head of the NAACP, Harry Moore, and his wife were murdered by a bomb put under their house. Again, no arrests were ever made.

Although Thurgood Marshall was involved in the preparation for the first trial, it was Franklin Williams and Alex Ackerman who actually tried the case. Both deserve props for outstanding work. Williams as a young black attorney taking a huge personal risk by even appearing in court in Florida, and Ackerman for essentially sacrificing his political career for the sake of justice.

Unsurprisingly, the verdict was guilty. However, in the case of the teen who was clearly not guilty, the jury recommended only life imprisonment. That’s as close to an exoneration as an African American could expect in Jim Crow Florida in the 1940s.

Marshall then appealed the case, barely keeping ahead of the prosecution’s efforts to have the defendants executed without delay. Eventually, the Supreme Court heard the case, and reversed it.

Prior to the second trial, however, the sheriff took the two defendants (only those two cases were appealed, for strategic reasons), drove them to a remote location, and shot them, claiming they tried to escape. One of them survived, however.

The second trial - now for just one remaining defendant - went about the same, despite Marshall’s personal involvement in the case. During the appeals of this second sham trial, Florida elected a new governor, one more eager to shed Florida’s reputation as a racist hellhole in order to attract investment from wealthy Yankees. The death sentence was commuted to life. And yet, despite this, while out on a temporary parole, this defendant was found dead under suspicious circumstances. It was rule “natural causes” and that basically ended the matter.

So yeah, a really sad story. The silver lining, to the extent there was one, was in the fact that this case played a key role in galvanizing the Civil Rights Movement. The open murder by the sheriff and the railroading of justice by a corrupt judge led to outrage in the North, and shined a light on the festering evil that thrived in places like Florida. Bad publicity eventually led to political pressure to change.

The other positive was that a few characters in this book - including Mabel Norris Reece, a journalist who originally was staunchly against the defendants - changed their minds as a result of seeing Southern “justice” in action. Sadly, many more stuck to their views even when it became obvious that the authorities had murdered innocent men.

If I had read this book a few years ago, I probably would have felt relief in the idea that things are a lot better now. And in some ways, yes they are. In other ways, though, things are much the same. Our whole discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement is nothing more or less than a continuation of this story. The casual murder of unarmed black men (and sometimes women) by police, with a weak “I was afraid” used to justify it, even in the face of video evidence to the contrary continues. Protestors are still demonized (including by the most powerful politician in America), and “ungrateful” is just another term for “uppity negro.”

For that matter, the KKK hasn’t gone away. Sure, it is unusual to see white robes and hoods in public. But the new white hood is the red MAGA hat. And the new euphemism is the “Blue Lives Matter” response to BLM. It’s still the same argument. Most discouraging was to read statement after statement dehumanizing blacks, and realize that while we don’t usually use the N-word anymore in public, the statements are largely unchanged. It isn’t even a shock anymore to see a Florida candidate warn the public about “monkeying it up” by electing an African American candidate. And of course the racist white guy won, because Florida hasn’t changed that much.

I do think, though, that the book does point to some ways to fight back against hate and the KKK. First, those who do not subscribe to these ideas need to stand up and say it out loud. We also need to keep exposing the evil. Over and over as often as necessary. As young(er) people, we need to remind our “racist uncles” that their words and behavior are not acceptable to us, and that they will not be coddled. And, of course, VOTE! One reason we have the KKK in the White House is that too few of us decent people showed up - particularly in the swing states.

While the entire book is exceedingly quotable, a few things stood out to me. First is the history of the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall. I was 15 when Marshall retired from the US Supreme Court. I remember watching the announcement with my dad, and his chuckle at his line, “What’s wrong with me? I’m old!” (See 3:20 in this clip from his press conference.) At the time, even though I was reasonably informed about law and politics, I didn’t really grasp just how much of a legal badass Marshall was. Once I got to law school, obviously, I saw him in a new light. Arguing (successfully) Brown v. Board of Education while he was with the NAACP was obviously a highlight, but he had a whole string of cases that chipped away at the foundation of Jim Crow. 

Likewise, the work done by the NAACP and its legal branch was singularly impressive. I jotted down the three criteria used to determine if they would get involved in a criminal case:

Marshall issued a memorandum that established three rules to be applied “to the types of criminal cases we accept…(1) That there is injustice because of race or color; (2) the man is innocent; (3) there is a possibility of establishing a precedent for the benefit of due process and equal protection in general and the protection of Negroes’ rights in particular.”

Rape cases presented a particular problem. King gives a few examples of contrasting cases. Often, when a consensual liaison between a white woman and a black man was discovered, she cried rape rather than face the scorn of her fellow whites. These charges were often impossible to defend against. Furthermore, as in the case of Joseph Spell and Eleanor Strubing, she actually abused her position to blackmail him into sex. (All too similar to Joseph and Potiphar’s wife…) In many states, a rape conviction meant a death sentence for a black man.

In contrast, even if a white man was convicted of raping a black child, he would get off with a fine or time served. Even worse if the white rapist was wealthy and/or powerful. An extended quote from The Mind of the South by W.J. Cash is interesting:

“[T]he actual danger of the Southern white woman’s being violated by the Negro has always been comparatively small...much less, for instance, than the chance that she would be struck by lightning,” it was “the most natural thing in the world for the South to see it as very great, to believe in it, fully and in all honesty, as a menace requiring the most desperate measures if it was to be held off.” In Cash’s estimation, the Southern rape complex “had nothing immediately to do with sex,” but rather with the feeling among Southerners that if blacks were allowed to advance beyond their severely circumscribed social station, they might “one day advance the whole way and lay claim to complete equality, including, specifically, the ever crucial right of marriage.”

This is why a rape accusation was so incendiary: the entire honor of all white women was at stake. As the crooked prosecutor in the Groveland case argued, (white) women valued their chastity more than life itself, and cited an apocryphal case of a woman throwing herself into the river rather than be raped. (Personally, given the choice between rape and death, I’d stay alive. Since I haven’t been raped or murdered, though, take that for what it is worth, I guess…)

It is not an accident that Le Toupee claimed that immigrants were “rapists.” This is deliberately loaded language aimed at dehumanizing minorities, and making racism into a “noble” defense of white chastity. And of course, has used such “desperate measures” as tearing children from their parents as punishment for seeking asylum. As I said, we have the KKK in the White House right now.

Those “desperate measures,” by the way, included flagrant misconduct. King tells of another of Marshall’s cases, where he and the defendant got the prosecutor to admit that he was literally present at the beating given to induce a confession. The prosecutor was literally shaking when Marshall was done with him. And yet. He still got a guilty verdict. The jury recommended a light sentence, though, which was as close as they could come to an acquittal. The greatest victory out of that case, though, was that the father of the (white) murder victim himself decided that the defendant was innocent and said so. And actually joined the NAACP.

Another thing which really struck me was the fact that the Civil Rights Movement has always been slurred by accusations of communism. Today’s Right does the same thing, of course, claiming everything is communism or socialism, whether or not it actually is. But it is a “conversation ender.” Accuse the other side of being communist, and that ends discussion. And thus it was in the 1940s too, except being accused of communism got you arrested or blackballed. (Ah, the halcyon days of McCarthyism…) I think this book actually explains pretty well why this happened. Under the name of “L. B. DeForest,” a young woman seeking to abolish the death penalty came to Lake County. She was also doing a bit of investigation for the NAACP in this case. What she heard was enlightening. Some church ladies offered their opinion of the case:

One of the ladies noted that “Negroes are o.k.,” but if they “step out of their place...they’ll burn.” Another said, “The Notherners spoil them and treat them like equals.”

I think this is ultimately the issue. “Communism” means, at an emotional level, that class and race get leveled. That prospect is, perhaps, the most terrifying. And also why racial equality is seen as “communism.” In that sense, nothing has changed. I myself have been accused of being a communist, which seems rich considering I have blogged extensively against communism and totalitarianism in general. But, if racial equality and public infrastructure that benefits all is communism, I guess I am one.

Speaking of the way things used to be - and still are - how about the connection between the KKK and violence against Jews? A few weeks ago, a Jewish center in Pittsburg got attacked by a White Supremacist gunman. Who was also racist against others. Well, same thing in the 1940s. The KKK gave equal attention to bombing Jewish targets along with the African American ones.

One other thing that was quite interesting was the way that certain historical figures came off. Douglas MacArthur has always been, shall we say, complex. On the one hand, he did some rather heroic things in war, and may have been right about Korea. (I still wonder if he had been allowed to march to Beijing, if we might have avoided Vietnam later.) But. But he was a thoroughgoing racist. Even after the Supreme Court in ordered the military desegregated (and president Truman concurred), MacArthur refused. Once he was relieved of command - for other reasons - the Army was desegregated in a few weeks. (A note here: I love air shows. One of the things I love about them is that our military men and women look a heck of a lot like America. Our finest young people are of all colors, and it makes me proud to be an American when I see them.)

Also not appearing particularly well was FDR, who seems to have been lukewarm at best to the idea of racial equality.

Eleanor Roosevelt, on the other hand: my goodness, what a magnificent woman. After Harry Moore’s murder - the first assassination of a civil rights leader - she came out with a prescient warning.

“That kind of violent incident will be spread all over every country in the world, and the harm it will do us among the people of the world is untold.” Indeed, stories in newspapers as far off as Asia and Africa reported the “violent incident,” and editorials in the world’s most influential newspapers condemned it.

Oh yes, this is so applicable to our own time. When even the most loathsome regimes can point to us and mock our own violence and hatred, we have a problem. (Hint: this is what you get when you elect a narcissist with a deep racist streak. Just saying…)

I’ll end with a quote from a pastor, Donald Harrington. I cannot help but think that if white pastors across our nation had had the courage to stand up and condemn the growing racism and xenophobia within their congregations, things would look different now. Anyway, here is a key part of his speech:

“Our whole country stands blackened and discredited in the eyes of the world because of Florida’s failure to protect the lives and liberties of all her citizens….I am ashamed of Florida, I am ashamed of the white race...I am ashamed of all the churches of Florida and elsewhere that have turned their eyes away from what has been going on in Lake County for these past years, and passed by on the other side while their fellow-Americans of a darker skin were being denied the most basic American and human rights and privileges. I weep for my country’s sacred honor.”

Amen, pastor Harrington. Amen. I too share that deep sense of shame at what so many of my race and religion have done to those who do not share their skin color. And how they justify racism, xenophobia, and hate by misusing the very name of God.

This book really should be required reading. It is horrifying, but it is all too true. The evils of racism continue in our society - where we really have never fully accepted the idea of true equality, where we value other people’s children like we do our own. We still live in a world where the KKK wields disproportionate power, and rogue sheriffs, prosecutors, and judges (see, respectively, Joe Arpaio, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, and Roy Moore) work to terrorize non-whites while carefully maintaining white supremacy. But we also have the power to fix this. We are indeed in the middle of an epic civil rights battle. It is time for a renewed Civil Rights Movement, dedicated to the premise that all are equal under the law, and are entitled to social, political, and economic equality. Thurgood Marshall and many others fought for nothing less. We owe it not just to our children, but everyone’s children, to leave them a world in which this is not merely possible, but reality.

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

This is my first experience of Zadie Smith. She is a British novelist, born to a Jamaican mother and a white father. From the first page, her British background was obvious. (It took me a minute to remember that “estates” are what we Americans call “apartment complexes.”) Although I certainly have read a lot of British literature over the years, I haven’t really read modern ones. (Unless Waugh counts as “modern”) Although I did read Black Swan Green a few years back, that one was rural. Certainly, I haven’t read any modern British literature with an urban setting. One of those weird gaps, I guess. 

 Zadie Smith

Anyway, Swing Time is set mostly in London and Africa, with a few episodes in New York and other big cities. While the novel is not autobiographical, the unnamed narrator is very similar to the author in biographical details. The black mother, white father, a love for tap dancing, and a complex set of half-siblings are the most obvious. The narrator’s childhood friend, Tracey, is also a bit of Ms. Smith. Although the colors of her parents are switched, she looks a lot like the narrator. Except she is actually talented at dancing, while the narrator is mediocre. While the narrator’s mom is literate and socially ambitious, her father is a plodder, content to work for the postal service. Tracey’s dad is not in the picture (and it is implied that when he does show up, he sexually abuses her.) Her mom is what we would call “white trash” here in the United States: vulgar, overweight, uneducated, tacky - and looks down on the narrator’s parents as much as they look down on her.

The book is written in such a way that you have to piece the timeline together as you go. It keeps switching between the narrator’s childhood and her adult life, and the prologue starts near the end of the story, and isn’t actually explained until near the end. It is a bit disorienting, and you really have to pay attention to narrative details or you miss how things tie together. I think this contributes to the feeling I had that the book was more of a series of episodes than a narrative with an arc and direction. This isn’t meant to be a criticism. If anything, life itself tends to be episodic rather than fit a neat arc. I was reminded a bit of David Copperfield, which also followed a character through his youth in a series of related, yet disconnected episodes. In a way, this very style is an assertion that life isn’t neat, people aren’t simple categories, and events take their own directions, not the ones dictated by artistic considerations.

The basic plot is as follows (spoilers, so skip if you prefer):

The narrator becomes friends with Tracey after they meet at a dance class. They don’t have that much in common, but are the only non-white kids there, and they at least share a love for dance. Later, they drift apart after Tracey gets into a dance-oriented school on scholarship, and the narrator takes a more academic route. They reconnect a few times, but find they have less in common than they thought. Tracey gets some professional dance roles, but never makes it big. Instead, she ends up a lot like her mother, with some kids with different fathers and no real direction to her life.

The narrator, on the other hand, disappoints her mother with mediocre results in school, and a low paying job at the fictional equivalent of MTV Britain. Then, she happens to meet Aimee, an Australian pop megastar (probably patterned after Madonna), who hires the narrator as a personal assistant. She spends the next decade plus at this job, before events cause a shattering break near the end of the book, and the narrator finds herself without a job, having essentially devoted all her time to Aimee. During their time together, Aimee decides to build a girls school in Africa (the place isn’t named, but is probably Gambia.) This turns out to be a bit of a failure because of Aimee’s failure to listen or understand the real needs of the community. As I said, it kind of meanders, just like the narrator tends to drift without a purpose.

The strong point of the book, on the other hand, was the well-drawn characters. The narrator is at the center, obviously. It is odd that her name is never given, even by the other characters. But perhaps not knowing makes it easier to imagine oneself in that place. The narrator’s parents were recognizable people - I’ve met a few like them. I suspect there might be a bit of Smith’s parents in them. They certainly explain how the narrator came to be who she is. The psychological interplay of the characters is quite true to life.

I also thought that Tracey and her family were intriguing. There are a lot of people like them in my part of the world too. I thought the author was perceptive about a couple of things. First, she gives a rather positive picture of a loving (if not always put together) single mother. Tracey’s home is challenging, but her mother is actually a better mother on balance than the narrator’s distant ice-queen mother. Poverty and occasionally questionable decision-making do not overwhelm what is essentially a happy home. In my work in juvenile dependency proceedings, I see the dynamic that Tracey and her mom face. Poverty leaves one with a low margin for error, and thus there is social worker involvement, and more judgment than assistance.

The other thing, though, that the author also gets right is a kind of defensive superiority complex - a defense mechanism against feelings of inadequacy. We all fight our insecurities in our own way, and Tracey’s mom does it by lording what she feels is her superiority over others. It is the flip side of the coin of the narrator’s mom, who goes full on Tiger Mom on the narrator.

There are a few great lines in the book that I want to mention. One is a description by the narrator of her time at the TV station. She doesn’t fit in culturally, both because of her race and because of her background. She is into the old dance musicals, not her own era of music.

In the great piles of glossy magazines, also freebies, left around the office, we now read that Britannia was cool -- or some version of it that struck even me as intensely uncool -- and after a while began to understand that it must be on precisely this optimistic wave that the company surfed. Optimism infused with nostalgia: the boys in our office looked like rebooted Mods -- with Kinks haircuts from thirty years earlier -- and the girls were Julie Christie bottle-blondes in short skirts with smudgy black eyes. Everybody rode a Vespa to work, everybody’s cubicle seemed to feature a picture of Michael Caine in Alfie or The Italian Job. It was nostalgia for an era and a culture that had meant nothing to me in the first place, and perhaps because of this I was, in the eyes of my colleagues, cool, by virtue of not being like them.

The narrator’s taste, throughout, is always toward an older period.

            But elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain.

Another great line comes from Fern, one of the guys who makes Aimee’s Africa project work as well as it does. He is a sympathetic character, as one of the genuinely good-intentioned people in the book. He is also more perceptive than most of the others.

“No one is more ingenious than the poor, wherever you find them. When you are poor every stage has to be thought through. Wealth is the opposite. With wealth you get to be thoughtless.”

This one is so true. Aimee’s biggest problem is her wealth, which allows her to both dictate her life, and assume that everyone else can do so too. In her view, differences in outcomes “were never structural or economic but always essentially differences of personality.” This attitude, too, permeates a lot of middle to upper class whites I know. It is darkly amusing when they complain that poor people can’t budget - when they themselves have far greater incomes and piles of debt. The margin for error is just greater for them…

There is another perceptive observation, this one by the narrator, about her experience in Africa, while visiting the site of a slaving prison.  

All paths lead back there, my mother had always told me, but now that I was here, in this storied corner of the continent, I experienced it not as an exceptional place but as an example of a general rule. Power had preyed on weakness here: all kinds of power -- local, racial, tribal, national, global, economic -- on all kinds of weakness, stopping at nothing, not even at the smallest girl child. But power does that everywhere. The world is saturated in blood. Every tribe has their blood-soaked legacy: here was mine.

Sad, but undeniably true. And true in our time, where children are sacrificed to power and tribalism.

One final quote is on the topic of the narrator’s mother. After a lifetime of trying to make her daughter into the sort of world-conquering superwoman that she envisioned, she is obviously disappointed.

I wondered if some similarly chilly epigraph existed for me: She was not the best daughter, but she was a perfectly adequate dinner date.

It’s the little bon mots like that which add sparkle to this book. Overall, I found that it was hard to put this book down. Good writing, human characters, and a tendency to bestow grace on even the most flawed people in the story.