Your Voice Can Change The World
But there's a catch. You have to use it.
Note: This was written and sent on a few days before inauguration day. A week ago I discovered through a friend that due to a technology glitch, none of my posts since January 8th had been sent out. So if the sequence of events and dates seem kinda off, that’s why. My apologies. This is my last late post. Thanks for understanding.
I’ve been kind of hesitant to write anything at all the last couple of weeks. I’m often motivated by what’s relevant at the time. But the news has been mostly covering both the LA fires and the incoming Trump administration. The Civil Conversations Project exist to help Americans understand America’s Thing With Race, and how ubiquitous and harmful it is to all of America. A key ingredient of The Civil Conversations Project is to help you see the link between America’s Thing With Race and what’s happening out there in the real world. Are there links between the fires – or at least the rhetoric surrounding the fires – that ties them to resentment and discrimination? Sure…some, anyway.
This morning I learned that redlining – the federal program that literally drew a red line on maps around Black neighborhoods in the mid 20th century, or just colored them red, forbidding federally backed mortgages, insurance, or investment in the neighborhoods where Black Americans had been forced to live - played a role even in Altadena, creating Eaton, a cherished Black neighborhood on the other side of the tracks across from the ritzier White side. Losing your home is sad and disconcerting for everybody. I would know. I lost mine to a small wildland fire in Colorado in 2003. But the White residents of Altadena will move on to other White places or rebuild another White Altadena. But a rare, cozy, middle class Black neighborhood in a spectacular location is probably gone forever. The NY Times did a nice job today here reporting on Eaton.
A few years ago I wrote about redlining and housing discrimination in Portland OR, simultaneously “The most livable city” (and the Whitest city) in America. Read my full story here.
MAGA has been blaming the fires on everything except the main culprit – ultra dry conditions exacerbated by climate change. One of those things catching the blame is the extreme right’s newest boogie man, DEI…the program that in the minds of the extreme White right allows and even encourages under-qualified non-White, non-straight, non-men to have an advantage over straight White men. What other reason could explain any and all mishaps other than those dastardly programs that allow those people to be hired? Turns out the chief of the LAFD - an out, gay woman and 22 year veteran of the department – was, per MAGA, hired not for her expertise and character, but for her genitalia. Evidently if she’d really been hired for her skill and expertise, she’d have a small white penis. No houses or lives would have been lost.
The process of making jobs more accessible to qualified people, the process known these days as ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ is responsible for everything from the container ship ‘Dali’ ramming the Key Bridge in Baltimore to the escape port that flew off of a Boeing Jet to a Black woman running for president of the United States.
And then there’s the new incoming administration sucking up most of the oxygen. The world’s most powerful man and his side-kick, the world’s richest man, both blame the push for a more fair, just, equitable, and just society for a preponderance of the county’s problems…. probably the reason why America needs to be made great again. I really, really did not want to write about the 800 pound gorilla that was headlining everything including the BBC news that I occasionally turn to.
I struggled for quite a long while worrying and wondering. Should I write anything about the incoming president? Could I ignore the unignorable? What to say about our incoming president and race? I’ve been asking myself what is the one thing that stands out that defines him? Should I mention the 13,000 NYC apartments he refused to rent out to Black Americans until the Department of Justice stepped in …the department that was originally formed as a response to the Klu Klux Klan terrifying and lynching Black Americans by the thousands without consequence?
Maybe his bemoaning the immigrants from “shithole countries” which the entire world understood to mean countries of brown-skinned people, while wishing for immigrants from Norway. What one thing could I point to that would illustrate his racism? His quick endorsement by America’s most famous Klanner, David Duke, and the candidate’s delayed and ultimately half-assed repudiation of the endorsement? His full page ad as a private citizen calling for the death penalty for five Black NYC kids accused but not yet tried for the brutal rape of a white woman? Or his refusal to apologize after they’d suffered in prison and themselves been the victim of multiple rapes and who were finally exonerated and released from prison 13 years later? Maybe his endorsement of the “very fine people” who participated in the Charlottesville riot and who murdered Heather Heyer in 2017? Which of these would best display the racism of the incoming leader of the free world? Then this morning I read that Jason Aldean had been asked to perform at his inauguration, and Bingo! There it was!
Aldean, a star country singer, encompasses all that the president-elect loves and admires. He’s White. He’s male. He’s a racist. He’s rich. He’s famous. And he supports violence, even lynching, against those whose ideas, ideals, and dreams are viewed as being different from his own. I wrote about Jason and his racist song “Try That In A Small Town” – the kind of place that is typically exclusively White - in July 2023.
Ever since the president-elect became a viable candidate in 2015, when I’ve asked people how it is that they could vote for a racist, I’ve had people look down and kinda mumble, “I didn’t know that he’s a racist.” Or “I don’t think his racism is important”. So “not knowing” or “not really caring”, they said nothing and did nothing when they heard racist remarks. And now here we are…on the eve of once again making a racist oligarch the leader of the free world and the leader (and I used that word loosely) of the world’s longest and most successful democracy because so many people looked down, mumbled, and said nothing when they heard their friend and acquaintances say things, usually in America’s famous racial code talk – “Black on Black crime; All lives matter; He’s Black, but really smart; Welfare queen…” that were racist at their core.
It’s not known and doesn’t matter who first uttered the now famous quote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing.” But because so many good people, unwilling to offend, said or did nothing, here we are, inaugurating one of the modern era’s most racist politicians on a day that was set aside after 15 hard fought years of opposition, to honor the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, who not yet 40 years old, gave his life to fight the very thing that we absolutely know the president-elect embraces. In a few days, on Martin Luther King Day, we’ll inaugurate a racist.
I get that it can feel awkward and even antagonistic to speak up. But you know the expression about always doing what you’ve always done…
But speaking up doesn’t have to be a loud and angry rebuttal and in fact it should not be. A few weeks ago I was privy to one of those conversations. It did nothing to move the dial. Just a short, respectful, enlightening remark from you might plant a seed. A seed that might germinate someday. “You know Igor, that ‘Black on Black’ thing that you mentioned is kinda a myth and you probably don’t know this, but is also a bit of a racist trope. The truth is that Black on Black crime happens at almost exactly the same rate as White on White crime.”
Walk away. Maybe you’ve planted a seed.
“You know, Karen, that thing about the crime and danger in Black neighborhoods…you may not know, but you’re repeating a kind of a racist trope. The truth is that crime in poor White neighborhoods happens at about the same rate as crime in poor Black neighborhoods and conversely, crime in wealthy Black neighborhoods happens at about the same rate as crime in wealthy White neighborhoods. But because of redlining and discrimination, there are more poor Black neighborhoods than there are poor White neighborhoods and more wealthy White neighborhoods than wealthy Black neighborhoods.”
Walk away. Maybe you’ve planted a seed.
But to say anything that might move the needle… at least some work has to be done. By you. You will need more than just your good will and your emotions. A few months ago I wrote about that here. If you’ve been reading these posts every once in a while, you’ve acquired some knowledge. But being silently knowledgeable does not move the needle. If you are going to read just one thing about race in America, read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Case For Repartitions. It’ll take you an hour and you’ll learn a ton. You can move the needle. Greta Thunberg and Malala, not yet adults, spoke up and by speaking up they changed the world.
On Monday, inauguration day, the American flag will be flying at half-mast. Seems appropriate.
Thank you for your voice in the world right now. I'm still trying to process this nightmare. And I still believe that love and right action matters. As soon as my energy gets regulated, I will look for ways to use my voice. Right now, I am trying not to just choke on my grief for those who will be most impacted by this administration. Looking like all of us unless we're the oligarchy.