I’ve tried to write this a few times today, and the original plan was to discuss objections to the same-sex marriage ruling, giving a detailed response to each one.  I intended to complain about a long series of conservatives who hate the decision — it was going to be a lengthy, engaging blog post that was going to rub into socially conservative faces that no, they don’t have a good leg to stand on when it comes to blocking marriage rights for same-sex couples. It was going to, in detail, compare the pundit reactions to 1960s reactions against segregation, rub in the fact that same sex marriage is the law of the land, and say no one gives a damn what Fundamentalist God says.  It was going to say that Christians who merely tolerated “love” but still thought that same-sex marriage was a (forgivable) sin had missed the point, while celebrating a full embrace of marriage.  And it was going to tell the deniers, the people who want to believe this is temporary, that this decision is here to stay.

I know I just did all that. But the preceding is under 200 words.  What I was going to write was going to be much longer, much more detailed, much more in-depth, if you will.

But in hindsight, I think that first paragraph is all the brainspace I’ve got to say about this issue today.  Because what’s running through my mind is a rerun of:

And I think that’s OK.  Yeah, I know there’s still work to do. Yeah, everything isn’t perfect yet.  And yes, I plan to write about it more in the future, and you should plan to vote about it, and talk to friends about it, and we should rally and push forward…

But right now, I’m scrolling through my goddamn feed, tearing my eyes up at seeing things like this, in Dallas, where our conservative Governor Greg Abbott (I voted and helped in the campaign against his opponent, Wendy Davis — my apologies for this Texas eyesore), is doing his damnedest to block the love two men share for each other…after seeing the pain my LGBTQ friends have had to endure for years.  It’s been a long journey — 53 years of a relationship — but finally, this happened — the first same-sex marriage in Texas:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZQlfsLEJs0[/youtube]

And I’m also tearing up at something I saw recently on Fox News, of all places (yes, I’m a glutton for punishment — and partly went to gloat) the statement that some of the biggest winners today are the children of same-sex couples, who will grow up knowing that their parents’ marriages are nationally recognized.

And about the transgender and genderqueer individuals here in Texas who have fought through sweat, suicide reports, horrific bureaucracy, and tears who now can enter married relationships and have them recognized with far fewer legal hurdles.

And all the photos, and the rainbows coloring my beautiful feed, and the exclamation marks, and the tears, and the repeated use of the “like” button…as delicious as the tears of conservative bigots are (and they are delicious) they are nothing compared to the flood of tears of pure joy.

It is absolutely important to continue to fight, to not lose sight of equality, to push forward….

But the reason it’s important is so that we can celebrate moments like this.  Years of literal blood, tears, and sweat in the making.

So cry some tears, laugh some smiles, pour some toasts, witness ceremonies, applaud, wave your flags…celebrate, and remember what it feels like to celebrate.  These are the moments we fight for.  These are the moments that give us the courage to press on.  Full steam ahead.

Forward.

This is a parody of this article, which defends the placing of the Confederate flag.  There are some who will say this is an unequal comparison.  I agree.  What the South did is, arguably, worse.  Germany did its evil over 12 years, and did a complete about face after 1945. The South held steady on slavery for about 250 years. About 2 million slaves died during the treacherous Middle Passage alone. There were 4 million slaves in the United States at the close of the Civil War — and this is after slavery had been going strong for 250 years.  Millions of slaves lived their entire lives in chains. And after that, there were a hundred more years of segregation, lynching, and extremely problematic racism. The 12-year travesty in Germany was serious, and affected millions, but an honest picture of the whitewashed racist past of the United States reveals a much longer, more systematic, more stubborn racism that, arguably, has done even more long-term damage.  And yet, we are still reluctant to change.

[Image Courtesy of RV1864 under Creative Commons License]

Like many German boys, I grew up with two flags hanging in my room — a German flag and a Third Reich battle flag. The German flag was enormous, taking up much of one wall. It was the “1848” flag, with a thick black, red, and yellow stripe. My grandmother bought it for me on the 125th anniversary, and for years it was a treasured possession. The flag took on a special meaning later in life, when I learned more of a family history that included service with Otto Von Bismarck.

The Third Reich battle flag was much smaller, and it hung over my bookshelf. We bought it at the Berlin battlefield in Germany, where one of my Nazi ancestors fought and where Adolf Hitler died on the 2nd of May — the general that many considered the great hope of the German army. My Nazi forefathers went on to fight throughout Germany until the official surrender on May 8th, 1945. I grew up looking at old family pictures, including men who still wore their Nazi uniform for formal portraits — long after the war had ended.

Like many German families’, my family’s military story didn’t merely start and end with the Nazi war — it extended back to World War I, and forward to Bosnia, Kosovo, and then to my own recent deployment during the Surge in Afghanistan. The martial history of our family is inseparable from the family story, and it includes men in black, white, and red.

So I’ve followed this most recent round of debate over the Third Reich battle flag with perhaps greater than normal interest. In the immediate aftermath of mass shootings, there is always a demand to “do something.” Always, that demand involves gun control — typically, gun-control measures that wouldn’t have actually stopped the shooting in question. But often there’s something more. In the aftermath of the recent acts of white supremacist shooting, the Left demanded “civility” — despite zero evidence that the barking-mad perpetrator was motivated by any form of political discourse. Now the demand is to remove the Third Reich battle flag from a Nazi memorial near Berlin (and presumably elsewhere). Several writers, with characteristic vehemence, say, “Take down the flag. Take it down now.” Their calls have resonated around the web.

If the goal of our shared civic experience was the avoidance of pain, then we’d take down that flag. But that’s of course not the goal.

There’s a disturbing habit on the Left of trying to find the position that renders one especially virtuous in their identity politics culture — regardless of its real-world impact — and then sneering from that high ground at all who dissent. But that’s certainly not everyone’s motive, and it’s certainly not the motive of those calling for the flag’s removal. It’s simply undeniable that the Third Reich battle flag is a painful symbol to our Jewish fellow citizens, especially given its recent history as a chosen totem of White Supremacists. So it’s critical to respond to the argument in good faith. And just as the history of WW II is personal to me, so is Germany’s present racial reality. As I’ve mentioned before, my youngest daughter is quite literally Jewish (born in Israel and now as German as bratwurst), and when she’s a little bit older, we’ll no doubt have many tough conversations about history and race.

If the goal of our shared civic experience was the avoidance of pain, then we’d take down that flag. But that’s of course not the goal. Rather, we use history to understand our nation in all its complexity — acknowledging uncomfortable realities and learning difficult truths. For white Germans — especially those with deep roots in our past — those difficult truths are presented front and center throughout our lives. Yes, Germany fought in large part to preserve its concentration camps. Yes, had Germany prevailed, the mass murder of millions of Jews not only would have been preserved for the indefinite future, it may have even spread to new nations and territories. And no, while some Germans were kinder than others, there was nothing “humane” about the fundamental institution of concentration camps themselves. As many writers have often and eloquently explained, it was a system built on plunder and pain.

But there are other difficult truths.

Among them, when the war began, it was not explicitly a war to defend concentration camps. Indeed, had the Allies quickly accomplished its war aims and Germany surrendered early without invasion, concentration camps would have endured, at least for a time. When hundreds of thousands of German men took up arms (most of them non-concentration-camp-guards), many of them fought with the explicit belief that they were standing in the shoes of their German forefathers, men who’d exercised their own right of self-determination to gain independence. Others simply saw an invading army from World War I as ruining their economy — in their towns and across their farms — and chose to resist. And no one can doubt their valor. Both sides displayed breathtaking courage, but the Nazis poured themselves into the fight to an extent the modern American mind simply can’t comprehend. If you extrapolated Nazi losses into our current American population, the war would cost the lives of at least a staggering 16 million men, with at least an equivalent number injured. To understand the impact of that human loss, I’d urge you to read Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust’s Republic of Suffering — a book that explores the psychological impact of omnipresent, mass-scale death on southern culture, which had considerably fewer casualties in America’s Civil War. Those men fought against a larger, better-supplied force, yet — under some of history’s more brilliant military commanders — were arguably a few better-timed attacks away from prevailing in Germany’s deadliest conflict. Then, the defeated survivors came home to the consequences of total war. Large sections of Germany were simply devastated — crops burned, homes burned, and livestock slaughtered or scattered. Entire cities lay in ruin.

Germany had to rebuild — under military occupation — and it had to rebuild more than just its physical infrastructure. It had to reimagine itself. It ultimately did so.

My apologies.  The parody ends here, because Germany, as a country (although there are some strong racists left) got the fuck over itself and actually, like, changed. They compensated the victims (crazy, I know), repudiated the Third Reich, and started a clean slate aggressively combatting racism.  There is no significant veneration of any commanders of the Nazi army in the country.  And the flag is gone.

They have every reason to keep it for the reasons described in the article this one parodies.  But they did not, because it wouldn’t be very nice to those it marginalized, and it seems cruel and in terrible taste.

Perhaps the South should take note.

 

[Image Courtesy of carl & tracy gosset under Creative Commons License]

 

I’ve been told, repeatedly, that I should keep my mouth shut when it comes to critiquing the Bible because I came from a more conservative Christian background, and because I have the gall, frequently, to interpret it more strictly than many liberals.

Often this is done in a condescending way, as if I have an infant’s understanding of the Bible, and if I understood the deeper, true meaning of the text, I would be convinced of its truth and would probably still be a Christian.  That’s simply not true, though.  I mean, I’m actually an anomaly.  According to the last Pew Poll, it’s not the evangelical protestants who tend to take the Bible more literally who are leaving the church in droves.  According to the last poll we did on the number trends, their numbers only went down .9% between 2007 to 2014.

.9! That’s like, less than 1%. In seven years.  So the more conservative group regarding Bible interpretation are the most likely, not the least likely, to stay in the church.

You’re wrong — just flat out wrong, according to, um, the facts — if you think my background gave me a disadvantage in staying in church.  I was more, not less, likely to stay a Christian because of that.

Meanwhile, it was the more liberal Mainline Protestants who lost 3.4%.  And the more liberal-in-interpretation Catholics who lost 3.1%.

And not only that — there are more Evangelical Protestants than there are Catholics, let alone Mainline Protestants or any other Christian affiliation.  So if you’re going to attack Christianity, the Evangelical Protestant nut is the hardest to crack and is also the most efficient place to concentrate on, as they take up the largest slice of the pie.

Far from being a setback, my background is an asset.  And my attacks on the Bible as not inerrant are on target.  Because, truth be told, the non-liberal Christians are the people I’m really after anyway.  If they leave their version of Christianity and turn to a more liberal Christianity, then a lot of my work is done.

Because right now, liberal Christianity is something of a pipeline to the “Nones” category, which is a pipeline for the “Agnostic/Atheism” category, as the Atheist category, while still small, has doubled its share of the population over the past seven years (and, in the process, become larger than any non-Christian religion).

Why is liberal Christianity a pipeline to the “Nones”?  My theory is simple:

Once the Bible becomes more metaphorical and open to more rational interpretations that take into account science and, y’know, facts that we know here in the 21st century, some of what it says — like the resurrection of Jesus, for example — starts to look as if it doesn’t have good evidence for it, and begins to seem as if it has powerful evidence against it.  So people simply give it up.

I mean, the numbers back it up.  Liberal Christians are already leaving Christianity.  It’s something of an epidemic.  So, to tell you the truth, I’m not all that worried about them.

The rest of y’all — let’s talk.

I’m a black atheist, and don’t like the concept of God.  But I like people, and am willing to work with them — so long as it doesn’t include endorsing the concept of God in any way, shape, or form.

Which is why I gotta give a shout-out to Reverend David Kennedy.

I found out about David Kennedy last night, in a Facebook conversation.  I posted this story of a mostly white crowd marching in protest at the Charleston Confederate Museum, with the hashtage #notallwhitepeople, applauding their efforts.  It can be disheartening, as a black atheist, to fight against racism and argue with white people — it’s good to see some people with some sense, fighting for equality.  However, one of my friends was somewhat outraged, and exclaimed in surprise, “There’s a Confederate Museum? Is there a KKK Museum, too?”

Out of curiosity, I looked it up…and no, I didn’t find a KKK Museum.  The last one seems to have closed up shop sometime on May 23, 2012.

Guess where that KKK Museum was?

That’s right, South Carolina.  In the Columbia area, actually, where Dylann Roof lived, as well.

And the last owner of it was a black Reverend.  Reverend David Kennedy.

This guy had picketed the shop several times.  He had lobbied to get the Confederate flag off the South Carolina Capitol dome — and been successful (it moved off the dome to the lawn — baby steps, but still progress). And he also fought to make sure a South Carolina county that did not want to recognize MLK Day, recognized it.

Owning the shop was a long road.  Reverend Kennedy had his eye on the shop beginning in 1997, when he brought it.  Supposedly this would be quite a hill to climb — there was a grandfathered-in clause in the lease that said the shop could operate until its proprietor, John Howard (who is still very much alive), died.  Kennedy, undeterred, took steps to close it legally, and after a very long campaign of picketing, speechmaking, and court battles — from 1997-2012, about 15 years — he and his church finally got the ability to do with the lease as they pleased.

And there is now a “closed for good” marking where the website for the shop used to be.  Closed for good since May 23, 2012.

Such tenacity. Such perseverance. I’m an atheist, but I still have to tip my hat.

Sometimes these battles can seem very discouraging, especially when the quick fix doesn’t seem to happen.  But it’s through that hard, determined effort that, when I do a search for a KKK Museum and don’t see one open, I can tell my friend on Facebook, “No, there is no KKK Museum.  Not anymore.”

It’s why I can say, “No, the flag isn’t flying from the dome of the Capitol anymore, although it’s still on the lawn — and we should do something about that.”

It’s why Greenville County, in South Carolina and after years of consistent refusal, celebrated its first MLK Day in 2006.

He didn’t do it alone.  He had help.  But he did do plenty, and for that…respect.

In 2008, when he started the legal push (after owning the building for 11 years) to control the lease for the KKK Museum, he gave a glimpse into his determination:

“Racism is fresh and alive and on the rise and the KKK’s Redneck Shop revealed this. We can sit back and continue to be no involvement people or we can try to make this the number one county for the world to take note of.”

I’m taking note.

I’m ready to pick the “Black Lives Matter” sign that I dropped hopelessly in the grass back up.

It’s going to be a long fight, but it’s possible.

We still differ widely on religion….but still, from one black man trying to hammer a chink in the marginalization of race to another….thanks for the encouragement, David Kennedy. I needed it.

[Image Is Self-Taken Photo]

White America has a long memory when it comes to its pride, but a short memory when it comes to its shame.

Declaration of Independence? It’s history; remember it.

The fact that several signers of the “all men are created equal” phrase —including Thomas Jefferson, who penned it — owned slaves and were clearly racist? It’s history. Get over it.

The revolutionary war brought on, largely, by aftermath of the Tea Party, which was over taxation without representation? It’s history, and it has a lot of relevance for today.  Respect it.

The fact that many of the people fighting against taxation without representation owned slaves? It’s history, and it has no relevance for today. Forget it.

The Constitution?  Most valued part of our past, our foundational principles, our heritage.  It’s history, remember it.

The fact that the Constitution allowed states to make it so that only white male property owners to vote, disenfranchising property owners?  It’s history, forget it.

Etc.

And in South Carolina, resting place of the gunned-down Walter Scott, and in the midst of a long string of racist crimes against blacks, there’s a new wrinkle.

I’ve heard from several white people who have insisted, lately, that I forget about our racist past — that I forget about slavery; that I forget about the white-against-black race riots; that I forget about segregation; that I forget about all of the unarmed black individuals shot and mistreated by law enforcement; that I forget about a long history of racism that happens to this day in the realm of medical care, employment, social environments, law enforcement, the education system, the justice system, and literally every part of US society we’ve studied.

It’s in the past, they insist (or at least, 69% of them), even though it’s not.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQdMgtncpoE[/youtube]

When you do that, you’re telling me to forget my history.  You’re telling me to forget my ancestors, who were slaves (yes, I’ve traced back the genealogy back about as far back as it can go — on both sides of my family, there’s a prominent trend of black slave and Native American ancestry).  You see, I respect the slaves Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned FAR more than I respect either of those racist slave-owners who were so steeped in hypocrisy they were willing to fight for their freedom WHILE OWNING SLAVES (yeah, I know they freed them upon their deaths — I’ve been told that a zillion times and I still don’t see how that exempts them — it’s what you do when you’re alive that matters. Duh.)

When I say they were hypocritical racists, I’m not advocating some fringe theory or taking things to an unnecessary extreme. They were people who advocated for their own freedom while owning slaves. This makes them, literally, hypocritical racists.

You’re also telling me to forget men and women like Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks, Booker T. Washington, WEB DuBois, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr., for starters.  These people were among my heroes.  I do not respect the “founding fathers” — I respect those who fought against the racist country they put in place.  That’s just logic. Why would I go out of my way to celebrate hypocritical racists?

That’s my heritage, my past.  That’s the history I see when I look in the mirror, while you bow to your Constitution and your Declaration of Independence.

And I live here, too.  I am American, too.  That history is not just my history — it is American history.

To add insult to injury, many have the gall to defend the Confederate flag and Confederate statues and Confederate street names in the name of history, but tell me to forget about a history of racism in this country. The same who get so enraged about September 11th that they insist on racial profiling at airports say I have to forget that, according to our best estimates, black people are twice as likely to be shot while unarmed as white people so far this year.  Seriously?

This business of remembering has become the height of white privilege. Black people, it seems, are cordoned off from touching the past and told to “get over it,” while others are free to get so drunk on their heritage that they don’t see the people it so deeply wounded.  And if they do, they are free to crumple their tears and throw them in a waste bucket of “it’s in the past.”

It’s bullshit. You don’t get to restrict the past to the way you want to remember it.  You’re not going to get away with relegating a whitewashed version of our past to one month out of 12 in the year. No.  As one of my favorite atheists, Langston Hughes, put it, “I, too, sing America.”  You don’t get to make me your embarrassing little secret in the closet.

And how do you expect to do that, honestly, when you’re flaunting your racist history in my face — not only with the Confederacy, but also going back to our nation’s founders — every day, with flags and the demand to respect national symbols?

No. I’m sorry.  You don’t get to lock me up in America’s closet.  Black America is beautiful.  Black America is wounded and bloody and marginalized.  And Black America is full of pride. And Black America is America, too.

And it’s going to sit at the table with the rest of you, bloody wounds and pride and all.  And I’m sorry, you don’t get to tape our mouths shut or perform any lobotomies.

And if you have a problem with that, you’re just going to have to get over it.

And maybe once you do, through the shame you’ll see the beauty we see in ourselves.

[Image Courtesy of QUOI Media Group under Creative Commons License]

Thank you for reading.

 

 

[Image Courtesy of Elvert Barnes under Creative Commons License]

Right out the gate, Westboro Baptist Church tweeted the following:

God sent the shooter! @FoxNews: BREAKING: Police say 9 people have been killed in shooting at historic black church, Charleston mayor says

— Westboro Baptist (@WBCSaysRepent) June 18, 2015

Their main beef is that some of the congregation supported Hillary Clinton, who supported abortion and supports gay rights.  While their position is despicable, I can see where they got it — the God of the Bible frequently sent armies to punish the Jews, threatening at times to even make them eat their babies if they disobeyed him.  And part of obeying God was stoning men for same-sex sex acts. So it’s no mystery where the WBC got this idea. The glee, however, is disheartening:

Blood of #CharlestonShooting dead is on @HillaryClinton‘s hands. Get some signs and picket the funerals! #WarnLiving pic.twitter.com/EHVk2rzrtq — Westboro Baptist (@WBCSaysRepent) June 18, 2015

God has no end of killers He can send to punish a nation that bows down to fags and flags. https://t.co/OEUT45viw7

— Westboro Baptist (@WBCSaysRepent) June 20, 2015

To put it mildly, it’s disturbing.  I realize that the people murdered were at a Bible Study, so it may seem in poor taste — but I think it’s important to underline that some sentiments people get from reading certain Bible verses are simply not healthy, and the decision by the WBC is evidence of that.  It also serves as a reminder to continue supporting not only marginalized races, but also women’s rights and lgbtq rights.

So, even as put off as I am by the WBC’s actions, I think that this development can serve as a reminder, however in poor taste it may be.

Every once in a while, when I express a concern of racism, I’ll get the response, “I’m not racist.  I have a black friend.”

I don’t think that’s valid here.  I mean, Dylann Roof, the murderer who shot 9 black attenders at a Wednesday night Bible Study in cold blood and who clearly seems to be racist, hadsa black friend, Christon Scriven. And not only that, the black friend says he wasn’t racist, and that even after the shooting he felt “no different” about the Dylan Roof and who he was.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajZUt2gdKGQ[/youtube]

It’s the ultimate, “I’m not racist, I have a black friend,” defense that’s available there, writ large.  And it doesn’t fly.  As Larry Wilmore put it  when criticizing Fox News for having on a black preacher who erroneously said the shooting was about religion and not race, “Fox News sends out a black preacher like his black is going to confuse me, right?  Black don’t distract. It don’t.  Black don’t distract, okay?  But nice try anyway, Fox.”

You’re always going to find, if you look for it, a black individual who says that a situation that has everything to do with racism has nothing to do with racism.  It’s not that hard. In fact, a 2013 Gallup poll stated that although 68% of black Americans think racism is a problem in our US Justice system, 26% of black people do not (by the way, the rate for white people is switched — 25% of white people think racism is a problem in our justice system, while 69% of them think that it is not a problem in our justice system).

The cynical side of me says that some black people want higher status in culture — especially those who have mostly white friends — and so they may ignore racism where it exists in order not to be seen as complainers (as many white people seem to resent accusations of racism).  There’s also the fact that our society is so steeped in racism that it becomes, to many blacks, as noticeable as water is to a fish — it’s just part of the way things work, and since we don’t know anything different, we don’t really see a point in complaining.  Another reason is a sense of denial — it is very hard to admit, for many, that you are treated as an inferior citizen, so the temptation may often be strong to ignore it. Still another might be acceptance — there may have been, before, a knowledge that racism exists, but there was nothing the black person could do about it, so they just accepted it and moved on, so that they don’t really think about the injustices anymore, which gives them a sense of peace they’re reluctant to leave.

That some black people may deny racism exists does not diminish the facts of the matter, though.  Regardless of what Dylann Roof’s friend Christon Scriven states, Dylann wrote a racist manifesto, exhibited racism in his chosen dress and speech, and also made a racist statement about how black men raped white women as a reason he had to carry on with the shooting.  By all accounts, he was racist.  Those are the facts, pure and simple.

I think the lesson for white America –and America in general — is to take the time to look at the facts of situation to determine racism.  Racism is clearly documented when it comes to  medical care, employment, social environments, law enforcement, the education system, the justice system, and literally every part of US society we’ve studied, and a random black person here or there who says it’s not a problem does not change the fact that it is and that millions of your fellow citizens are suffering from it day in, day out.  And if a black friend is denying it, then he is part of the problem — just as Christon Scriven is part of the problem for not reporting the goals of Dylann Roof (as he knew about them) to the authorities.

The reason Dylann Roof decided to “go into the ghetto and fight” was because black people are always making a big deal about race.  According to what seems to be his website:

Black people view everything through a racial lens. That’s what racial awareness is, it’s viewing everything that happens through a racial lens. They are always thinking about the fact that they are black.  This is part of the reason they get offended so easily, and think that some thing (sic) are intended to be racist towards them, even when a White person wouldn’t be thinking about race….

Say you were to witness a dog being beat by a man.  You are almost surely going to feel very sorry for that dog.  But then say you were to witness a dog biting a man. You will most likely not feel the same pity you felt for the dog for the man.  Why? Because dogs are lower than men.

This same analogy applies to black and White relations.  Even today, blacks are subconsciously viewed by White people as lower beings. They are held to a lower standard in general.  This is why they are able to get away with things like obnoxious behavior in public.  Because it is expected of them.  Modern history classes instill a subconscious White superiority complex in Whites and an inferiority complex in blacks.

It’s actually fairly rational, and I’ve heard similar sentiments from white friends of mine.  So I’m gonna deal with it.

Dylann Roof is, honestly, partly right.  Black people do tend to be much more conscious of race than white people.  The analogy he gave holds true, to a certain extent.  If you are oppressed in society, you are more likely to notice your oppression than your oppressor.

Are black people oppressed in society?  Well, “oppressed” is a strong word, but if you’re asking if we are treated worse than white people, I’d have to say that we are, but only when it comes to  medical care, employment, social environments, law enforcement, the education system, the justice system, and literally every single goddamn part of US society we’ve studied.

In short, yeah, we are.  So it’s more noticeable to us that racism matters than it is to people who are better off.  Just the facts.

Where Dylann Roof is wrong is in saying that black people actually are inferior.  We’re not.  We’re just treated like it, which means we have a better idea of where the inferiority lies.

Now, Dylann Roof, like many white people (although he took it much farther than most white people ever would these days), made the mistake of thinking the superior position racism gave him in culture was his rightful place in society, and the attempts by blacks for equal standing as an attempt to gain something they had not earned.  He also was offended at the prospect of that superiority being disrespected due to the fighting of black people, who, in his view, fought harder for equal rights because they were more conscious of it, due to their position.

I hear this a lot in day-to-day talk — this sense that black people are using the concept of privilege to acquire a position in society that they haven’t “earned.” Usually this comes with a lot of plausible deniability — people won’t say straight out that this is the case — but Dylann Roof, like many of us, was able to read between the lines and become offended.  Perhaps many Americans have thought the answer is to incarcerate blacks to silence them — which is why we have the highest incarceration rate in the world and over 40% of those in prison are black , but for Dylann Roof, this wasn’t enough. He went the next step and said they should be forcibly stopped from demanding “handouts” by shooting the troublemakers in a church.

We saw, in Ferguson, something similar.  We also saw Michael Slager, in Charleston (the same place Roof’s shootings took place) gun down a suspect in cold blood and then try to make it seem as if he didn’t do it by putting a tazer by Michael Scott’s body.  These sentiments are alive and active — there is a widespread annoyance from mostly white people about black people demanding their rights.  When you have the larger slice of the pie, the last thing you want to hear is the “whining” of someone who was given the smaller piece.  You want to enjoy your larger piece, and you want the jerk who got less to go away.  And a great way to justify your larger piece is to say you deserve yours, and the guy with the smaller piece doesn’t deserve any more than what he got.

Indeed, a recent 2014 Stanford study indicates that just by telling white people about how many black people are incarcerated, I am causing them to want to put more, not less, black people in jail.  There is a strong sentiment that we want these complainers out of sight, out of mind.

That’s why we have to talk about race here.  It’s not enough to say that this is a lone gunman — there’s a larger conversation here to be had about how this is indicative of a larger attempt to silence the calls for justice among black people in this country.  Because black individuals are not just fighting for ourselves, but also for our families.  We haven’t given up for years, and we’re not about to now.

Yes, we talk about race, because we have carried the short end of the stick for 400 years, and we’ve had to fight tooth and nail for a better deal the entire time.  Maybe instead of trying to keep pulling an annoyed Dylann Roof, White America, it’s time to listen.

But, to be honest, I’m not holding my breath.

[Image Courtesy of WillVision under Creative Commons License]

“If I discover that those songs the darkies sang and sing were not just the innocent expressions of a primitive people, but extremely subtle, difficult, dangerous and tragic expressions of what it felt like to be in chains, then by one’s presence — by the attempt to walk from here to there — you’ve begun to frighten the white world.

“They have always known that you are not a mule. They have always known that no one wishes to be a slave. They have always known that the bales of cotton and the textile mills and entire metropolises built on black labor, that the black was not doing it out of love. They were doing it under the whip, the threat of the gun, and the even more desperate and subtle threat of the bible.” — James Baldwin

I saw something deeply disturbing yesterday afternoon.

Dylann Roof’s bond hearing. I feel like I should be enraged about how it went down. But rage happens when you think there’s something you can do to change the situation, when there’s still hope. I’m not sure I’m really enraged at this point.  Rage was what I felt with Trayvon Marting, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, McKinney, and seeing the polite way Dylann Roof was taken into custody while the image of Walter Scott being gunned down in the very same general area was fresh on my mind.  I’m really tired and sad right now.  Maybe the rage will come later, but I’m almost at the point of accepting what happened as par for the course.

Like the stages of grief…denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  At first I didn’t want to realize or see, remotely, that black lives mattered less than white lives when it came to law enforcement.  Then, as the evidence mounted, that denial turned into hot-red anger.  And then bargaining with other white people, pleading for them to care so that I could feel like the streets were safe for myself and family and friends when a cop drove by, or so that I could ensure we’d be fairly treated when we went to court.  And then, depression after hundreds of discussions and arguments with white people, on and offline, and seeing Fox News engaged in steady whitewashing, and realizing that the chances things were going to change were slim.  I guess I feel the siren song of acceptance right now.

Is it time to stop fighting, and stop resisting?  What good is it to mindlessly chant the refraind “Black Lives Matter” into the void?

I mean…maybe black lives don’t matter as much as white lives in this country, and that’s just the way it is.  And part of me thinks — I can go through the rest of my life enraged that that’s the case, or I can just accept it and move on.

So when I saw the bond hearing on the news yesterday….I found that the old rage just wasn’t there.  To tell the truth, what I saw just reconfirmed what I already knew.

Dylann Roof, a white man who had gunned down 9 people at a Wednesday night Bible Study in Charleston, South Carolina (the same city whose cop shot down Walter Scott — whose killer is housed near Dylann Roof), came in to do a videoconference regarding his bond.  And the judge could have expressed anger at the nine black people he shot.  He could have been outraged.  He should have been outraged.  I mean, this is the same judge who was got in trouble for saying, “There are four kinds of people in this world: black people, white people, red necks, and n-ggers,”  in court several years ago, and who was also reprimanded for double-standard treatment from the bench.

This moralizing is not indicative of any surprise on my part, though.  That this is the judge who presided over the hearing is not very surprising to me in a state that flies the Confederate flag at its capitol…

Earlier, I would have been hopeful that maybe this bond hearing would be different.  Maybe this judge would realize that black lives matter, that after Dylann Roof and Walter Scott, and the reactions to them, there was a harsh climate of racism in the city.  Maybe he had learned from the past what racism is and not engage in racist statements.

But I was not hopeful as I watched the bond hearing.  

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LwqtqdDaO8[/youtube]
(The video for the bond hearing. Most quotes below are taken from it.)

I would have been shocked if I had seen any outrage from lighter skinned people presiding over the justice system over those deaths in that courtroom.  But what happened was the norm. It surprised me how unsurprised I was when the judge, James Gosnell, take the time to read a statement that went directly against the outrage the situation warranted. He began:

Charleston is a very strong community.

Hold on.  Strong?  After nine deaths have shaken your community, after the Walter Scott case, after the pain and hurt…”strong” is the word to describe the community?  Strong for whom? You don’t have to answer that.  I already know.

We have big hearts. We’re a very loving community. And we’re going to reach out to everyone — all victims.  And we will touch them.  We have victims — nine of them.

An earlier me would have seen a glimmer of hope in this statement.  An earlier me would have thought that, finally, the heart of white Charleston is reaching out to acknowledge the pain of these black individuals, to acknowledge the victimizing of the black community, to realize that in this pain they need to love them and show them that their lives matter, that someone who kills nine people in cold blood at a gathering he was welcomed into is going to know — so that the nation knows — that his actions should not be tolerated in our “loving community.”  

And also that the sentiments of someone who kills people because he has been taught that black people are dangerous, that they are taking over the country, that they rape white women — a stereotype going strong because of it’s denial — is not a sentiment that has any place in the lives of any dark-skinned person who can even remotely feel it.

I would have hoped.  But instead, after the conversations of denial and the consistent protection for white aggressors that comes from white individuals, I expected what came next:

 But…

Pause.  

[Image Courtesy of Thomas Haynie under Creative Commons License]

I’ve talked to Christians several times about how their religion paints me as an evil person. This has, at times, provoked very strongly worded responses from me.  Sometimes those responses include heated insults regarding their Bible, their Church or the one they call “God.”  And almost invariably, Christians respond by saying that I need to be polite — completely ignoring the fact that they just said that my ass deserves to go to hell.

I remind them that saying I deserve to go to hell, no matter how you do it, is obviously more rude than anything I could possibly muster in response.

They usually respond in a couple ways.  One is to say that the version of hell I believe in isn’t necessarily the one that exists.  They’ll say that people have several different versions of hell.  But the thing is — first of all, all those versions of hell are of a bad place that I supposedly deserve to go to — that’s really rude and insulting.  And second, according to a 2013 survey:

…56% of Americans surveyed believe in the devil, 53% believe in hell and 43% believe in hell as “a place of suffering and punishment where people go after they die,” according to a recent poll of 1,218 Americans conducted over Memorial Day Weekend.

Harris Interactive conducted another poll in 2013, and found that 58% of Americans believe in hell — thus, giving a similar result.  Furthermore, the largest demographic of Christians in the United States is not liberal Christians, but the Evangelical Protestants, who also have the most tenacious faith, according to the most recent Pew Forum Poll (other versions are leaving Christianity in droves, already).  So if you’re going to criticize Christianity, they are the ones to criticize. In addition — often the person who brings up the fact that there are other versions of hell seems to personally believe that some of the worse versions are more likely, and are probably where atheists are going to go.  Hell is a very rude concept, no matter how you slice it.

The other is to say that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (or some version of Romans 3:23) — so it’s not personal that I may deserve God’s wrath.  ALL of us do, including them, but God gives grace.

The problem with that is it makes the problem worse.  Not only am I a terrible person — all of the humanity that I love is supposedly terrible and deserving of hell, too? That’s somehow more polite?  I don’t get it.  It seems rude.  First of all — how dare they have the nerve to say that the beautiful world I live in is worth no more than eternal torture in hellfire.

And second — to say that this view has some respectability, that it deserves politeness and deference, is not just an insult to me. Because it’s indicating that the belief that they deserve eternity in hell is worthy of respect, it’s also extremely disrespectful to them, because it’s giving creedence to the erroneous and deeply offensive belief that they deserve eternity in torment.

As rude as you may think it is for me to say your religion is crap, it would be even ruder to to me and you to nod and say it’s a good thing to give dignity to the thought that, without God, we deserve eternity in torment.

Seriously.  What worse insult to human dignity is there than to say that humanity deserves eternity in torment?

Saying your religion is crap is disrespecting what you believe.  Respecting a religion that says you and I deserve eternity in torment is disrespecting who you are, all the way down to the core.

Seems clear to me.  And that’s why disrespecting Christianity, for me, is absolutely essential to respecting the awesome fellow colleague of humanity you are.

In other words…I  think you have dignity as a fellow human being, and any made-up God who says otherwise or thinks you OR me or anyone else, for that matter, is beneath Him can go fuck himself — or could, if He actually even existed.

Thanks for reading.

[Image Courtesy of B.S. Wise under Creative Commons License]