An engaging book about antiracism

I recently finished reading an accessible and compelling book about antiracism theory and practice. In How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi invites readers into his personal journey from racist to antiracist thinking and acting. In the process, he challenges common misconceptions among both Whites and Blacks/people of color about the breadth and depth of racism.

What makes this book so engaging is its honest autobiographical nature. Kendi, who is Black, pulls no punches in identifying the way racism influenced him in his youth. He describes the step-by-painful-step process required for him to arrive at the understandings of racism and antiracism he has today. He ends by sharing his personal health threats that parallel the threat to human well-being that racism poses.

Kendi’s words helped me accept that no matter where I am on my own journey toward being “an antiracist,” it is okay to be there and it is also necessary for me to be ready to move to a more comprehensive knowledge of racism and a more public practice of antiracism.

How to Be an Antiracist is not an easy book, and it certainly has raised some controversy. But if you are struggling with even the vaguest sense that you want to know more about racism and how you can do something about it, it may move you in the right direction. None of us is perfect, and none of us ever will be…but we can still learn and grow morally and ethically. How to Be an Antiracist may encourage you do just that.

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Afterword…I’ve had a lot of thoughts about the days just prior to the inaugurations of President Biden and Vice President Harris, about that day itself, and about the first few days of the new administration. I suspect most Americans have been trying to absorb it all, and that is a good thing.

I do hope all of us will be careful to base our thinking upon fact and truth, and to resist any temptation to accept something as truth just because we like it or agree with it. I hope we will commit to not passing on as truth information that has not or cannot be tested and verified. Government of, by, and for the people absolutely depends upon our mutual integrity. Without that, democracy dies.

Eric comes home, Biden is inaugurated

There are two reasons I am looking forward to this new week.

First, my friend, Eric, is to be released from prison (on parole) on Tuesday morning at 8:30. I have known and been visiting Eric for some 20 years. He is more than ready to re-enter society and become a contributing member of it. He has a good job, a good place to live, and a good support system. I am thrilled to be able to talk and be with him on the outside. I am grateful to everyone in and outside of the corrections system who helped him get to this point, and give him enormous credit for all he has done to prepare for Tuesday morning. Continue, if you will, to keep Eric in your thoughts and your prayers.

Second, on Wednesday, Joe Biden will be inaugurated as President of the United States, and I am very happy about that. His election and inauguration bring to mind three personal memories about presidents and presidential inaugurations.

1. Sometime when I was quite young and Dwight Eisenhower was our president, our family attended a football game at the University of Iowa. During the game, the announcer said that it was Ike’s birthday, and wished him a Happy Birthday. Most of the crowd applauded and cheered, but there were a few audible boos mixed in. I remember my dad saying that the boos were inappropriate because, no matter how you felt about Ike, he was our president and deserving of our good wishes on his birthday. Dad “liked Ike,” so I suppose you could say that was an easy thing for him to say, but I think he really believed what he had said.

America was quite different then.

2. On January 20, 1965, I marched with my college band in the inaugural parade for Lyndon Johnson. (I did not witness a moment of the inauguration itself.) That evening, before we left downtown D.C. to begin our rail trip back to Iowa, I retrieved the sign pictured above from a light pole, maybe on Pennsylvania Avenue, maybe not. No one seemed to notice or mind then, and I hope it’s too long ago for me to be prosecuted for theft. Note that the sign only closed the street for 24 hours. Enough time in those days for security, I guess, and only a few years after Kennedy’s assassination.

America was quite different then.

3. On January 20, 1981, I attended Ronald Reagan’s inauguration. We lived in suburban D.C. at the time, and my parents were big Reagan fans. Dad was able to get tickets to the Inauguration, I believe through their congressman. They got tickets for Maxine and me, too, and even though I was by then in quite a different place then they politically, I was thrilled just to be able to attend with them. It could be the only chance in my life to experience the event itself in person. Seeing Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan up there together, and experiencing the continuity of our government, no matter how contested, is forever in my memory. I do not remember anything special about security, although surely we had to be checked in by someone, someplace.

America was quite different then.

We cannot go back to any earlier time, and our current divisions and battles cannot be wished away. We cannot and will not “come together” just because Joe Biden invites us to. But I do hope we might be able at least to keep a respectful distance apart this week if for no other reason than that we love our country more than we love our political parties or affiliations. Just for a few days, please. It’s the least, or perhaps the most, we can do.

American can be quite different than it ever has been, or than it is now—different, and much better for everyone.

Two political-type questions

Here are a couple of questions I have about where we are right now politically—

1) How do we know that the Secret Service, whose job it is to protect the president (and others), has not been compromised by Mr. Trump the way other law-enforcement bodies have apparently been compromised? Will some members of the Secret Service be themselves a threat to President Biden, if not by their actions, then by some intentional inaction?

2) If the political violence being perpetrated by the hard right continues into the early days of the Biden administration, will the new president be forced to consider imposing martial law? If so, is this violence part of a scheme to make him do that, so that the hard right can say, “See, we told you he’d take away our freedoms?”

These sound as if they come from some conspiracy theorist, which I am not. They seem like very real questions that should be addressed, based upon what we are learning about the planning that went into Wednesday’s events.

The wanna-be king in his raging…

I am appalled that our nation has reached the point where the sitting president, defeated in an election which was fair and free by all known measures, invites protesters to fill the streets of Washington while Congress in joint session meets to accept the results of the Electoral College. And, apparently, plans to speak to those protesters, thereby demonstrating his support of them.

Tomorrow, Electoral College report day, is also Epiphany, the day Christians mark the visit of the Wise Men to the infant Jesus. Their visit aroused the ire of the tyrant under whom the Jews were living, resulting in the brutal murder by the state of all children in the area under two years of age. Herod was frightened by the challenger to his authority, and he was furious.

As Epiphany approaches, I can think of no more fitting description of what we are going through than the following stanza of the ancient carol, "Lully, Lulla."

Herod the king, in his raging

Charge-ed he hath this day

His men of might in his own sight

All young children to slay.

I am praying that wisdom and the wise will prevail. I am praying that the sword of unfounded allegations will not slay our democracy.

Think about it

 

Here’s a provocative—dangerous even—question: What potential might be unleashed in a world where people have their needs met?

Author Anna Clark asks that question in her review of Catherine Coleman Flowers’s book, Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret (The NY Times Book Review, 12/27/20, p. 18). The book itself is about the largely unacknowledged problem of inadequate waste water disposal in many parts of America, particularly in rural areas.

How does that question sit with you?

I started writing some of my thoughts and questions about it, but soon decided I ought to allow it just to roll around in my consciousness for a while.

It is too easy to talk myself out of even considering it at all.

Then came yesterday’s gospel reading for New Year’s Day. It was Matthew 25:31-46…Jesus's Vision of the Last Judgment. It is his oft-citied vision of divine judgment upon “the nations”—not primarily upon individuals or even the church. I read it for the thousandth time with Anna Clark’s question in mind: What potential might be unleashed in a world where people have their needs met?

How would Jesus answer her? How will I?

New Times for a new year

 

As 2020 winds down and 2021 mercifully (I hope) gears up, Maxine and I have a new source of information and insight to enrich our lives. Rebecca and Benjamin gave us a one-year subscription to the Sunday print edition of The New York Times and to its daily digital edition.

My family was probably tired of me threatening to subscribe to the Times. Reading the emaciated Cleveland Plain Dealer often results in a What happened to REAL newspapers? outburst from my mouth. Getting the Times will ease my frustration when Facebook friends post links to its articles that I can’t read because I am not a subscriber. I think my life is about to become better.

My more conservative friends will no doubt fear my reading the Times will push me ever further over the edge they think I have been falling over for decades. My more liberal friends will wonder what took me so long. Most friends probably won’t care much either way.

I know this: getting to truth and fact in our world is damned difficult, and I believe the Times, like BBC News and NPR, remains a pretty reliable source of truth and fact. Not perfect, not without any bias, but pretty reliable. More likely to give it to me straight than CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or my daily emails from Conservative Direct. I must continue to be watchful, to read outside my comfort zone, and to try to think things through for myself based on as much information as I can absorb. It’s what’s expected of all of us in our democracy. It cannot survive on conspiracy theories, unfounded accusations and charges, and intentionally misleading “news.”

Al Kesselheim, senior wildlife biologist at Yellowstone National Park, has a great affinity for wolves. (Hang in with me on this.) One of his jobs at Yellowstone is to assure that its wild wolf population thrives. That job puts him in the crosshairs of many who fear and hate wolves, who believe we’d be better off if they were no more.

Kesselheim is interviewed in the January, 2021, issue of The Sun. Much of the interview is devoted to how he understands and interacts with people strongly opposed to his work. It is interesting reading in our current political context. A few sentences seemed particularly relevant to me:

…I’ve been an avid reader on the topic of human psychology, and the fact is that we are not good at logical, rational thinking. We’re emotional. We aren’t objective judges of reality. When something doesn’t conform to our picture of how we think things ought to be, we make it conform. Wolves aren’t bad if you look at them objectively, but they have such a bad reputation that most of us believe they are problematic. I just want wolves to be treated like other wildlife. It isn’t that hard.

I will try to keep his point about our human tendency to lack objectivity in mind as I read the New York Times, and hope you will keep it in mind as well when you read whatever it is you like to read. Maybe if enough of us discipline ourselves to do that, we will get through the new decade in better shape than we are in as we leave the old one.

Happy New Year!

Making the US mail great again

 

A gift Maxine ordered for me from Kohl's arrived in Indianapolis on Dec. 14th, was "in transit to the next facility" on the 18th, only to leave Indianapolis on the 28th, perhaps (dare I hope?) on its way to Willoughby, Ohio. Where has it been "in transit to" all that time? And if it has to go through the Cleveland Post Office (which I think it will), what hope is there for it?

Today's Plain Dealer reports that small businesses, already struggling, are being hounded for refunds for orders the Post Office failed to deliver for them. Have a heart, folks; it's probably not their fault, and they need your patience and understanding.

This is a huge issue, far beyond my late gift. This mess could have been predicted months ago. What planning did postal officials do to prepare for it? Who is running to Postal Service...oh, I think I know.

Just makin' the Post Office great again, I guess.