The new best present for the kid in your life.
Two days, two post. Another first. Maybe I’m lucky that I have a bit of a platform. An outlet where I can express myself. My sadness. My anger. My frustration. I got a note from a woman that she was curled up in a ball on the floor crying this morning. Not over only the massacre in Texas – our 213th in the first 145 days of this year – but in all that seems so wrong and unfair within our country. Another wrote, “I don’t know what to do with everything that I’m feeling right now. I hadn’t even processed the horror in Buffalo, and the terrible reflection I see in the mirror of the country I still love – and now this!”
The country I still love. Yesterday I listened to an emotional plea from Cory Booker. He was asking for nothing. Just expressing his anger and grief. But I was struck when he said, “America is breaking my heart. And if America isn’t breaking your heart, you just don’t love her enough.” Wow…because at least since the turmoil of our war in Vietnam, the standard response of anybody pointing out or complaining about anything in our country has been an angry and threatening, “Get out! America! Love it or leave it!” What could possibly be more of a useless response than that?
I’ve been careful as I’ve advocated for racial justice lest I be accused of not loving my country – me, a decorated Marine Corps door gunner, career park ranger, and now this. Being Black I have the extra burden of needing to be extra careful because the entire Black American race is judged by the actions of the Black person of the moment. We’re already thought to not love America. I can’t antagonize that. Because then people will hate us.
Look at Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, Muhammed Ali, Jackie Robinson, Tommie Smith, John Carlos and all the many Black athletes who dared protest some unfairness in America. “Shut up and dribble.” Laura Ingraham. “Get that son of a bitch off the field!” Donald Trump. And the catch-all, “You should be grateful for what America has given you!”
We love our children with all of their human imperfections, but we try to make then better. We love our students with all of their imperfections, and we try to make them better too. But try to make America better? “Love it or leave it!” When our forefathers penned the preamble to the constitution and beseeched us to create a more perfect union, that was a tacit acknowledgment that America is a work in progress. Clearly, we’re not done yet.
Yesterday I wrote about how so many of our politicians and talking heads have encouraged us to hate for so long that it’s kinda become second nature. We angrily oppose light rail because it might bring ‘those people’… people we hate…into our neighborhoods. We hate paying taxes, because they go towards supporting those lazy people who refuse to work. We feel angry when we see a homeless person looking at us in our SUV, wordlessly asking for money. If we’re walking our dog off-leash in Central Park and a Black bird watcher (the person, not the bird) asks us to obey the rules, we call the police, subtly asking them to come and kill him.
We all hate the high cost of housing, but we oppose affordable housing because we hate the type of people affordable housing might bring in. They might be what politicians have described as “rapist and murderers” from “shit-hole” countries.
Likewise we hate residential treatment centers in our neighborhoods not only because we hate the type of people those places might bring in, but we’ve been taught to be greedy, and those places might keep our house values from rising as astronomically quickly as they otherwise might. So what if our children and grandchildren will never, ever be able to afford a house. I got mine, it’s up to you to get yours. Remember those t-shirts with the saying, “He who dies with the most toys wins!”? That type of mindless consumerism leads to hate…hatred of those who stand in our way of acquiring what is rightfully ours by taking jobs away…by needing my tax money…by voting for politicians who might want to spend my tax dollars for frivolous things – like inner city (code word for Black people) infrastructure or free school lunches.
In their book The Spirit Level, researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett show that residents of equitable communities enjoy better health care, longer life expectancies, less violence, less incarceration, less obesity, fewer teen pregnancies, better mental health, and better opportunities for financial gain. Equitable communities – slavery notwithstanding - Isn’t that the America our founding ideals represent… the America we like to brag about…the America that we fantasize about when we say that we’re the best country on earth?
If hate is too strong of a word for you, replace it. Replace it with the word ‘ignorance’. Or with the word ‘discomfort’. But get used to it, because the hate that our politicians foment affects everything. It affects our democracy. It affects me. It affects you.
Already we have the typical pithy platitudes making the rounds right behind those ever-useful, “Thoughts and prayers.” One former FBI agent interviewed on the Fox News Channel suggested that parents, instead of buying their kids toys and games, should invest in “ballistic blankets.” What better present could a kid find under the Christmas tree?
A retired detective suggested on another Fox News show that the answer is to install “man traps” in all schools: “A series of interlocking doors at the school entrance that are triggered by a tripwire … and it traps the shooter like a rat.” I’d guess that you’d need smart doors, the kind that can differentiate between a murderer and a school teacher.
The Federalist ran an article headlined: “Tragedies Like The Texas Shooting Make A Somber Case For Homeschooling.” Wait….WHAT?
And from senators who are suffering from rectal-cranial inversion, we have these wonderful suggestions: “We need to return to God.” “Our nation needs to take a serious look at the state of mental health today.” And my personal favorite, “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Let’s not mention the deputy sheriff who remained outside during the Parkland school shootings seemingly due to his duty to go home that night. Or the many officers who waited outside Robb Elementary School two days ago. Or maybe we should arm toddlers and little kids because hell, they’re already engaged with the murderer.
Reject hate and all the carefully concealed rhetoric of hate. No, your neighbor is not concerned about the traffic that the proposed residential treatment facility will create. They’re concerned about a population of folks that they abhor. Call them out. Vote for the treatment center. No, it might not make your house more valuable. It will do better than that. It will make you more valuable. Even more so than the black-striped American law enforcement flag you have pasted to your SUV’s window.
Love America enough to have a broken heart over who we’ve become. And then love her enough to no longer ignore who we’ve become. We’re not better than that, President Biden. But we could be.
And now a shameless plug - if you just do not know what to do, or want to do even more, send money to those of us fighting on the front lines. We’ll put it to good use. We need it.