As we move into this Substack thing where I get to talk with you directly, and hopefully as we build community and ‘comment’ with each other, it seems appropriate and even somewhat necessary to clarify what The Civil Conversations Project is about.
A misperception has emerged about what we do. We’ve done a fair bit of work with, among other organizations, the National Park Service, my career alma mater. Not long ago a friend wrote to me to say, “I am so glad that you are rooting out racism in the National Park Service!” We are not rooting out racism in the National Park Service. Or anywhere else. Racism is everywhere in this country. It’s built into our foundation. It’s in our institutions. It’s in the myths we tell ourselves and the world about who we as a country are. It was there when we were taught the myth of the Father Of Our Country having so much integrity even as a child that when his father screamed, “George, did you chop down that damned cherry tree?” and George replied, “Yes father, I did. I’m a great, white, American and the future Father of My Future Country and thus I cannot tell a lie.” Racism was there when it was ‘inadvertently’ skipped being taught that George and Martha lived large off the backs of some 300 slaves.
Racism is there when we claim that “all men are created equal.” It’s there when we claim that all of us have the rights of life and of liberty and of the equal pursuit of happiness.
It’s there when we hold our hand over our heart and pledge that America is a country that practices liberty and justice for us all.
It’s there when we sing our national anthem all the way through and pay tribute to slavery. And Racism is there when we pay tribute to a slave trader on our twenty dollar bill whom we cannot seem to replace with Harriet Tubman, an actual slave and hero.
When you pick up a paper and read the news, it’s clear beyond all doubt that the country is in crisis. If you had a friend who had suffered traumatic abuse as a child - and I assure you that you do – if your friend had never sought out therapy and dealt with the trauma, your friend would be sick. Your friend would have obvious manifestations of his or her sickness. You would urge your friend to get help because you love your friend and your friend would be in crisis.
The chaos that you read and see and feel…all of it is rooted in this disconnect between who we say we are and who we actually are. We’ve ignored our trauma for so long – 402 years to be precise – that we’ve become sick. And our sickness manifests as chaos.
And what exactly is our trauma? It’s this country’s long history of denial and of a double standard that we try so hard to pretend is not there. We tell ourselves and the entire world that America is a caste-free society where all Americans have an equal shot at the brass ring. We insist that all Americans have an equal shot at getting into a top college. We insist that justice is blind…color blind…and that the criminal justice system - from the streets to the courts to the prisons - is fair. We insist that wealth and poverty are determined by how hard you work, or don’t work. We insist that all races enjoy the same privilege.
We insist that slavery, which was with us for 157 years before the colonies claimed their freedom and became America, was benign and no big deal. We insist that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, the so-called ‘Civil Rights’ amendments somehow magically overturned and made right 246 years of enforced servitude. We insist that those centuries of slavery; 100 years of Jim Crow laws and customs; 100 years of restrictive Black Codes; a quarter century of government enforced housing discrimination; 50 years of the War on Drugs and ever-increasing incarceration; perpetually unequal schools, healthcare, life expectancies, and wealth; the theft of millions of acres of Black owned land and hundreds of thousands of Black owned homes; an entire generation of ‘Stop and Frisk’; and banking discrimination that goes on today, somehow all magically make no difference in this land of opportunity. Black Americans merely need to “Get over it”, “Pull themselves up by their bootstraps!”, “Make better decisions”, and “Work as hard as I did!” That’s our trauma. Not dealing with it has made us sick.
The Civil Conversations Project seeks to end this sickness…this entrenched racism against Black Americans by changing the false story that America tells itself about race. We believe in Americans. We know that Americans have been hoodwinked into believing this false narrative. We aim to change the way that America talks about race. We aim to inject truth into our national narrative. We intend to end racism that is so pervasive that it is both invisible (to white Americans) and has become institutionalized…a part of our national fabric. Through telling stories, writing, podcasting, filming, talking, and anything else, we aim to end this American sickness.
That’s what we do. My aim here in Substack is to provide information, links, and stories that stimulate thought, provoke, raise your awareness, and create community. The country is in a crises.
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Wayne