I remember listening to "Sounds of Silence" over and over on my incredibly portable turntable/radio combo on a rainy afternoon in the early '70's in our house in Washington DC. My Ninth Grade theology instructor encouraged us to read the words and contemplate their meaning for society...I think he had been at Woodstock. But I was listening to that song, stuck in traffic passing through Atlanta, when the line "silence like a cancer grows" leapt out at me and became the backbone for this column. I know I am late to the commentary game on Obama's speech about race and all the rancor surrounding the Reverend Wright story...as I scribe, a new controversy is erupting about how Obama feels small town Pennsylvanians are bitter rednecks who cuddle up with guns when they get disgruntled. But race is something that we do need to talk about in this country. The silence and the inability to speak openly about it has been a cancer growing in our society at different speeds since our very founding.
I was born in the year that the last veteran of the Civil War, a Confederate, died. (To be totally accurate, that claim may have been debunked, but I grew up with that thought and rather like the connection.) I was a history buff from an early age and took particular interest in the "War between the States," or just the "Waahr." A War in which almost 620,000 young men lost their lives, ostensibly to "free the slaves." Growing up overseas, for the most part, I was sheltered from the issues of race that were brewing in our country. I remember seeing images of race riots in Watts on the small black and white TV we owned and I have memories of the precautions my parents took when we were stateside in 1968 visiting Washington DC. Some of my earliest memories of being around black people were in my mother's hometown in Northwest Florida. I thought they were different and I knew that we generally didn't mingle with them, but I didn't think they were evil. I worked in a warehouse job in that same town and worked alongside black people for the first time in my life, when I had just graduated from high school and was getting ready to head off to Vanderbilt. Some were lazy and hid from tasks, like some of the older folk said they were. Some were downright machines and could lift and stow more palettes of 100 pound bags of feed in an hour than I could in an afternoon. But, you know what? There were white folks working that dock that split along the same lines. I didn't dislike blacks...I just disliked lazy people. When I got to Vanderbilt, the blacks all stuck together at their own table in Rand Cafeteria. A few, ventured into white society and were generally very popular, but most shied away. And white people dared not sit at their table. Our quarterback for the football team and I shared a last name and one on one we got along fine jokingly calling each other "Cuz." But when he was at "the table" I knew I dared not sit there; the one time I did, all conversation came to an abrupt halt.
In my Naval career I served with some incredible black men and some not so incredible...ditto the white folks, the Hispanics, the Orientals, the Jews, the....well, you get the point. Fast forward to a time about ten years ago when I got the call to serve jury duty. It was a murder trial and I really thought that in the voir dire process I would get the boot. I didn't and not only ended up on the jury, ended up the jury foreman. The case was pretty clean cut, they had a good confession. It was a black on black crime involving one party that had terrorized the murderer to the point that when he walked into a restaurant where the perp was eating lunch, said perp went out walked around the block, then went to his car to retrieve his pistole, entered the dining establishment and put half a clip into his nemesis. When the jury retired to "do justice," I found myself in a room with eleven other Americans, two of whom were black. I asked for a secret ballot just to get the flavor of where we were and how long it was going to take. The state was asking for life imprisonment on first degree murder. The vote came back 10-2 in favor of convicting. I confess, I was terrified that the two "nays" would be our black jurors and the whole discussion would devolve into a racial struggle. Explaining that we were going to have to sort it out, I asked if one of the "nays" would speak up. The black woman to my left raised her hand and then offered a very reasoned argument that, in her mind, she didn't see the pre-meditation necessary for first degree but was completely comfortable with second degree. I wrote that up on the white board in our deliberation room and we all agreed to visit that issue. I then asked for the other "nay" to give their argument...I was certain it would be the black gentleman to my right.
Nope, I got it dead wrong and one of the great moments in racial understanding unfolded. A showingly wealthy middle-aged white woman spoke up. "I just don't know which way to vote, because I don't understand black people," she said. "I mean, maybe it's their culture which I can't grasp, but it's not fair for me to stand in here and judge them."
Before I could catch my breath, the black gentleman on my right spoke out in disgust. "Lady, you don't have to be black...nor white...nor green or purple. One man killed another man, deliberately, there's nothing cultural about it!" The woman immediately changed her vote. It was a classic moment and it ties back to my theme here, which is this: there are good people and there are bad people. The great blogger, Bill Whittle, has a superlative view on this subject in a piece titled "Tribes," which after you get done with these last few paragraphs, I hope you will read.
Victor Frankl says there are "decent people and not decent people." And that's the nub of the matter and what offended me about Barack's now famous "race speech." It's not a cultural issue when a pastor of a church stands in front of his congregation and berates the country he lives in: "God damn America!" It is an issue of being wrong...of being bad, of not being decent. A country, I would add, that if he tried that stunt in about 90% of the other countries on our little blue planet, he would be locked up.
I was equally offended by Obama's view that "we have all had moments where our pastors, priests or rabbis said things we didn't agree with..." This is the old "everyone does it, it's no big deal" argument. I have been pretty diligent about church-going for a long time and no, I have never heard my priest berate my country. AND if I had, I would have gotten up and walked out. I have been challenged to make my country better, to do all the Christian things we should do - feed the hungry, clothe the poor. I have been lectured on the inequity of our nation's wealth and reflected on how to best take care of all. But I have never had bizarre theories about AIDS vaccines, cocaine and the Jews spewed at me. AND if I had, I would have gotten up and walked out. I have, on more than one occasion, debated a homilist about an issue they raised, but in general, in the churches I have attended the purpose of the service is to tend to our souls and not a brazen attempt to influence our votes.
The issue here is not the cultural nuance of the black liberation theology movement. The issue is judgment and core belief. Barack skillfully deflected these issues by blaming all white people for the mistreatment of blacks. I am sick and tired of black politicians and preachers hustling this issue and turning their constituencies into victims. Petty Officer Brooks and Seaman White, who were both black, were not victims of the culture - Brooks was a second-to-none sailor and White was dumb as a box of hammers...and I could pull examples of the same split with white sailors. If we are going to have a discussion of race, we are going to have to get over the past. I am blessed to be here in this country, period. If I dig deep enough in my geneological well, I can find some scrubby Highlander that was abused by the British...or a potato farmer or two in Ireland that damned near starved to death because of British abuse. But, you know what? I like the Brits...I'm over it. I can damn sure find some Yankees that didn't think to highly of my folks taking potshots at them at Stones River and Brice's Crossroads. Hey, my sister married a Yankee - we're over it. And this is not to make light at all of the unspeakable suffering of slavery; simply to say that none of us are victims in this country, unless we choose to be. And none of us should be exploited by that ill designed line of logic, no matter how silver-tongued the delivery. The question is "what do we do now?" Can we make an honest assessment of what has happened to the black family in almost fifty years of liberal patronization? The slavery of government subsidization to "victims" is as abhorrent as the cotton plantations of the mid-1800's.
The silence, the silence. What I just said would immediately be labeled RACIST! by the enablers of an Obama campaign. Geraldine Ferraro, spoke accurately when she said that Obama has only gotten this far because he is a black man. She was fired because, God forbid, we don't want to be labeled a RACIST! She said something else in that moment that was candid and honest, namely, that she never would have been on the VP ticket if her name had been "Gerard." But we can't talk about it.
John McCain was in Memphis this week and offered an apology for not voting for the Martin Luther King Birthday as a Holiday Bill. He was roundly booed and jeered. Once you are a RACIST! you can't even apologize! The cancer grows.
Perhaps, if Obama is nominated as the Democratic contender, we may finally have the opportunity to put race behind us, but we will not be able to do it if we can't speak openly. Both candidates should be the subject of a no-holds-barred scrutiny where we get to look at their intelligence, their judgment, their plans for our future. But no one should be above the fray because of their race. It is time that we have the opportunity to drown out the silence.
I was born in the year that the last veteran of the Civil War, a Confederate, died. (To be totally accurate, that claim may have been debunked, but I grew up with that thought and rather like the connection.) I was a history buff from an early age and took particular interest in the "War between the States," or just the "Waahr." A War in which almost 620,000 young men lost their lives, ostensibly to "free the slaves." Growing up overseas, for the most part, I was sheltered from the issues of race that were brewing in our country. I remember seeing images of race riots in Watts on the small black and white TV we owned and I have memories of the precautions my parents took when we were stateside in 1968 visiting Washington DC. Some of my earliest memories of being around black people were in my mother's hometown in Northwest Florida. I thought they were different and I knew that we generally didn't mingle with them, but I didn't think they were evil. I worked in a warehouse job in that same town and worked alongside black people for the first time in my life, when I had just graduated from high school and was getting ready to head off to Vanderbilt. Some were lazy and hid from tasks, like some of the older folk said they were. Some were downright machines and could lift and stow more palettes of 100 pound bags of feed in an hour than I could in an afternoon. But, you know what? There were white folks working that dock that split along the same lines. I didn't dislike blacks...I just disliked lazy people. When I got to Vanderbilt, the blacks all stuck together at their own table in Rand Cafeteria. A few, ventured into white society and were generally very popular, but most shied away. And white people dared not sit at their table. Our quarterback for the football team and I shared a last name and one on one we got along fine jokingly calling each other "Cuz." But when he was at "the table" I knew I dared not sit there; the one time I did, all conversation came to an abrupt halt.
In my Naval career I served with some incredible black men and some not so incredible...ditto the white folks, the Hispanics, the Orientals, the Jews, the....well, you get the point. Fast forward to a time about ten years ago when I got the call to serve jury duty. It was a murder trial and I really thought that in the voir dire process I would get the boot. I didn't and not only ended up on the jury, ended up the jury foreman. The case was pretty clean cut, they had a good confession. It was a black on black crime involving one party that had terrorized the murderer to the point that when he walked into a restaurant where the perp was eating lunch, said perp went out walked around the block, then went to his car to retrieve his pistole, entered the dining establishment and put half a clip into his nemesis. When the jury retired to "do justice," I found myself in a room with eleven other Americans, two of whom were black. I asked for a secret ballot just to get the flavor of where we were and how long it was going to take. The state was asking for life imprisonment on first degree murder. The vote came back 10-2 in favor of convicting. I confess, I was terrified that the two "nays" would be our black jurors and the whole discussion would devolve into a racial struggle. Explaining that we were going to have to sort it out, I asked if one of the "nays" would speak up. The black woman to my left raised her hand and then offered a very reasoned argument that, in her mind, she didn't see the pre-meditation necessary for first degree but was completely comfortable with second degree. I wrote that up on the white board in our deliberation room and we all agreed to visit that issue. I then asked for the other "nay" to give their argument...I was certain it would be the black gentleman to my right.
Nope, I got it dead wrong and one of the great moments in racial understanding unfolded. A showingly wealthy middle-aged white woman spoke up. "I just don't know which way to vote, because I don't understand black people," she said. "I mean, maybe it's their culture which I can't grasp, but it's not fair for me to stand in here and judge them."
Before I could catch my breath, the black gentleman on my right spoke out in disgust. "Lady, you don't have to be black...nor white...nor green or purple. One man killed another man, deliberately, there's nothing cultural about it!" The woman immediately changed her vote. It was a classic moment and it ties back to my theme here, which is this: there are good people and there are bad people. The great blogger, Bill Whittle, has a superlative view on this subject in a piece titled "Tribes," which after you get done with these last few paragraphs, I hope you will read.
Victor Frankl says there are "decent people and not decent people." And that's the nub of the matter and what offended me about Barack's now famous "race speech." It's not a cultural issue when a pastor of a church stands in front of his congregation and berates the country he lives in: "God damn America!" It is an issue of being wrong...of being bad, of not being decent. A country, I would add, that if he tried that stunt in about 90% of the other countries on our little blue planet, he would be locked up.
I was equally offended by Obama's view that "we have all had moments where our pastors, priests or rabbis said things we didn't agree with..." This is the old "everyone does it, it's no big deal" argument. I have been pretty diligent about church-going for a long time and no, I have never heard my priest berate my country. AND if I had, I would have gotten up and walked out. I have been challenged to make my country better, to do all the Christian things we should do - feed the hungry, clothe the poor. I have been lectured on the inequity of our nation's wealth and reflected on how to best take care of all. But I have never had bizarre theories about AIDS vaccines, cocaine and the Jews spewed at me. AND if I had, I would have gotten up and walked out. I have, on more than one occasion, debated a homilist about an issue they raised, but in general, in the churches I have attended the purpose of the service is to tend to our souls and not a brazen attempt to influence our votes.
The issue here is not the cultural nuance of the black liberation theology movement. The issue is judgment and core belief. Barack skillfully deflected these issues by blaming all white people for the mistreatment of blacks. I am sick and tired of black politicians and preachers hustling this issue and turning their constituencies into victims. Petty Officer Brooks and Seaman White, who were both black, were not victims of the culture - Brooks was a second-to-none sailor and White was dumb as a box of hammers...and I could pull examples of the same split with white sailors. If we are going to have a discussion of race, we are going to have to get over the past. I am blessed to be here in this country, period. If I dig deep enough in my geneological well, I can find some scrubby Highlander that was abused by the British...or a potato farmer or two in Ireland that damned near starved to death because of British abuse. But, you know what? I like the Brits...I'm over it. I can damn sure find some Yankees that didn't think to highly of my folks taking potshots at them at Stones River and Brice's Crossroads. Hey, my sister married a Yankee - we're over it. And this is not to make light at all of the unspeakable suffering of slavery; simply to say that none of us are victims in this country, unless we choose to be. And none of us should be exploited by that ill designed line of logic, no matter how silver-tongued the delivery. The question is "what do we do now?" Can we make an honest assessment of what has happened to the black family in almost fifty years of liberal patronization? The slavery of government subsidization to "victims" is as abhorrent as the cotton plantations of the mid-1800's.
The silence, the silence. What I just said would immediately be labeled RACIST! by the enablers of an Obama campaign. Geraldine Ferraro, spoke accurately when she said that Obama has only gotten this far because he is a black man. She was fired because, God forbid, we don't want to be labeled a RACIST! She said something else in that moment that was candid and honest, namely, that she never would have been on the VP ticket if her name had been "Gerard." But we can't talk about it.
John McCain was in Memphis this week and offered an apology for not voting for the Martin Luther King Birthday as a Holiday Bill. He was roundly booed and jeered. Once you are a RACIST! you can't even apologize! The cancer grows.
Perhaps, if Obama is nominated as the Democratic contender, we may finally have the opportunity to put race behind us, but we will not be able to do it if we can't speak openly. Both candidates should be the subject of a no-holds-barred scrutiny where we get to look at their intelligence, their judgment, their plans for our future. But no one should be above the fray because of their race. It is time that we have the opportunity to drown out the silence.