Sometimes right just prevails. Or maybe right prevails after people fight and sweat and protest and show up and take it to court and stand on their heads and many years pass, then right prevails. But to have two such epoch rights happen within 24 hours of each other is really something to get excited about. Yet, then we have the massacre in Charleston. And yesterday President Obama's eulogy for Clementa Pinkeney somehow squeezing some measure of hope out of the murder of 9 innocent people by a psychopath wrapped up in the Confederate flag. Don't ask me how he summoned the guts and pure damn eloquence to do it, but he did. And leading the people in attendance to "Amazing Grace"...wow, my peeps, it don't get too much more mind-blowing than that on a Friday afternoon. May we somehow find a way to dig down deep in our souls and confront the legacy of slavery in our country once and for all. It's killing this country. It's killing young African American men every other week it seems. We have a prison system that incarcerates in hugely out of whack percentages black and Latino men, which my friend, Joan, refers to as slavery, and she just may be right. President Obama referred to slavery as our country's original sin. I've heard it put that way previously, but to have the President of the United States say it in front of God and world...wow and mercy. So maybe the next right to prevail will be that. It will be some kind of national spiritual upheaval that makes us look reality in the eye. And do something about it. Like for instance, if we recognize that our police officers carry our projected and denied racial hatred on their shoulders and act it out for us in shootings of unarmed black men, and instead, recognize that racial hatred in ourselves, maybe we will start getting someplace, white people. No offense, my fellow white people. But really. We got to own it and stop pretending racism is something of the past. And I do not mean by that that I, you, we go around saying "I hate black people and Latinos and Asians and Native people". That ain't it, my white peoples, my tribe, my familiars. It is recognizing that we have benefited from institutionalized racism that is the legacy of slavery. Period. That legacy has driven a psychic and spiritual wedge between "us" and "them". And the "us's" are the ones that have to do something about it. Start with yourself and go from there.
The other thing is this sudden upset with the Confederate flag. As these things go, it is better than a sharp stick in the eye as a place to begin confronting our long history of racial hatred. A Bill Moyers posting says it better than I ever could. You may have seen it on Facebook or some other social media. The author is a guy who grew up in Mississippi and knows of which he speaks. I shall attempt to include the link here:
Why the Confederate Banner Must Come Down
That's it for now. Let's create a world worth living in.
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