Elegy in Black and White (Part 2)

My discovery 40 years ago (Part 1) that white people living in an urban ghetto exhibited many of the behaviors – addiction, crime, truancy, teenage pregnancy – associated with inner-city black life came as a revelation to me. I wasn’t alone in my ignorance. The Moynihan Report (1965) had declared, “the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling” and called for a new national goal: “the establishment of a stable Negro family structure.” Three years later, in the wake of US military tanks rumbling through the streets of America’s burning cities, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders concluded: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal,” giving the clear impression that whites had moved to the suburbs while blacks were locked in the ghetto. Meanwhile, voices from the right blamed African Americans – and initiative-robbing welfare programs – for their problems.

And so both sympathetic progressives and antagonistic conservatives came to filter “how class and family affect the poor . . . through a racial prism,” writes J.D. Vance in Hillbilly Elegy. That prism denigrated black culture, and it overlooked white poverty.

Many people have rediscovered white poverty and rural discontent since November 8^th, but the stereotype of black culture endures. “To many analysts, terms like ‘welfare queen’ conjure unfair images of the lazy black mom living on the dole,” notes Vance. “I have known many welfare queens; some were my neighbors, and all were white.”

Instead of focusing on the behaviors people exhibit, as I did in the first sentence, shouldn’t we address, instead, the problems they face? For we will never overcome our divisions until we recognize our common ground.

Elegy in Black and White (Part 1)

“I’m Ty,” he said as he launched himself from the top of the steps, a tiny human missile heading straight at me, standing on the floor below. It wasn’t the last time I would be startled by Ty’s combination of complete recklessness and complete trust. He was six. He had come, with his shy and far more timid twin brother, Troy, and about 12 others, to an after-school program I had started in an inner-city public housing project in Boston. The year was 1975, and Boston was under a federal court order to desegregate its public school system through a citywide busing program that was met by often-violent resistance in many of the city’s still solidly ethnic neighborhoods.

Ty and Troy lived with their mother in one of those dreary brick-and-concrete housing projects that had been built with good intentions but ended up cut off from the communities around them, insular and menacing to outsiders. I always believed it was lucky for me as well as Ty that I caught him that first afternoon.

He was a great kid, but it was hard to feel optimistic about the future he faced in a place of violence and drugs and all the other pathologies we had been taught to associate with life in an urban ghetto: teenage pregnancies and single-parent families, truancy, vandalism, unemployment, crime.

In one way only did Ty’s neighborhood defy the stereotype: it was entirely white. And not just white, but still predominantly Irish and Catholic, bulwarks I had thought against the disintegration afflicting black families on the other side of the city – families whose children Ty’s neighbors hurled epithets at as the buses rolled through their streets, accompanied by phalanxes of motorcycle cops, while police sharpshooters stood sentinel on the high-school roof.

Clearly, the person who had the most to learn in my after-school program was me.

And so it begins

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?” ("Who will guard the guards themselves?") Juvenal. It was a holiday, the first one of the year, and who knew these guys would be at work, or even in town? But there they were in a presumably smokeless room deep in the caverns of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. filleting the Congressional Ethics Office, the independent agency set up to, well, monitor Congressional ethics.

By a vote of 119-74, with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in opposition, House Republicans approved Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte’s proposal to replace the ethics office with the “Office of Congressional Complaint Review,” which will answer to the House Ethics Committee.

If you find all that confusing, said Goodlatte, don’t worry. "The amendment builds upon and strengthens the existing Office of Congressional Ethics by maintaining its primary area of focus of accepting and reviewing complaints from the public and referring them, if appropriate, to the Committee on Ethics."

Never mind that the Committee on Ethics is controlled by the members – that is to say, by the people the original office was set up to investigate.

It seems ominous that, with all the issues we face, the first act of the new Congressional majority is to gut its own ethical guidelines. But the more important issue is how they twist the language to sow confusion rather than clarity.

''Political language,” wrote George Orwell many years ago, “is designed to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.''

Out Among the Stars (Johnny Cash)

Ninety-two years ago yesterday, Edwin Hubble announced the discovery of V1, the first star anyone had ever seen in a galaxy beyond the Milky Way. Called “the most important star in the history of cosmology,” it turned our world upside down. Piers Sellers died on Dec. 23^rd at the age of 61. Vera Rubin died two days later. She was 88. Both were scientists who spent a lot of time out among the stars, an experience that made them feel humble about humankind’s place in the vast cosmos, stunned by the beauty of the earth and, and yet ever hopeful.

Sellers, a naturalized American citizen who made three trips to the Atlantis space shuttle, died less than a year after being diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He spent much of that year trying to awaken people to the reality of global warming.

Still, he said of his short life and looming death, “I’ve no complaints. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. . . .I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future.”

Rubin was an astronomer who looked out from the earth as far into space as she could see. She saw so far she reached the limit of her sight; and that was when she realized that most of what was out there – literally millions of other galaxies – was invisible to her. “I’m sorry I know so little,” she once said. “I’m sorry we all know so little. But that’s kind of the fun, isn’t it?”

Far from being the center of the universe, we are infinitesimal, fleeting blips on a vast cosmic screen. And yet, for Rubin and Sellers, that fact is not a reason for despair, but for hope, even fun. In these times of strutting egomania, perhaps realizing how small we really are is the first step toward wisdom.

“Each one of you can change the world,” Rubin told the 1996 graduating class at Berkeley, “for you are made of star stuff, and you are connected to the universe.”

Happy New Year.

What Would Jesus Say?

This is the time of year when I always used to say, “Merry Christmas.” I never thought of those as fighting words, but as part of my heritage, even though I am a lapsed Christian. It is my family’s way of greeting the season that celebrates the renewal of life and, yes, peace on earth – which in our tradition is embodied in the image of a small child born to a 14-year-old virgin in a stable in Bethlehem in Judea. I was offering my tradition to others, not to be offensive but to be open, offering it in the spirit of Scrooge’s nephew in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol:

"But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time . . . as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

But that was before I learned about the War on Christmas and the ensuing call to arms that has weaponized “Merry Christmas” and admonished us to shut our hearts against those fellow-passengers to the grave who have different traditions and different beliefs. I hesitate now to say “Merry Christmas,” lest it be misunderstood as part of that cultural war being waged in the name of the prince of peace.

But I can’t suppress my exuberance. Children arrive today from distant parts. We’ll go and cut down a (Christmas) tree, and in three days we will open stockings by the fire.

And so I say with Tiny Tim, “God bless us, every one!”

The Fourth Estate

In 1976 the Gallup Poll reported that 72% of Americans trusted the press. It hasn’t come close to that level since, and its approval ratings now stand at 32%, and 14% among Republicans, the lowest ever. It’s worth noting that its highest ratings came in the wake of tough reporting on Vietnam and Watergate, which made it reviled – and also feared – by powerful people. They accused it of bias, tried to discredit its stories and attacked the motivations of its reporters and editors. Perhaps no one hated the press more than Richard Nixon, who believed that “the elite, East Coast liberals of the media” only told one side of the story. He often appealed directly to the public, and after his speech on Vietnam brought a flood of support from the “silent majority,” he gloated, “The press corps is dying.” Yet the public continued to trust the press and admire its work, and young people flocked to news careers. Obviously, things have changed – most importantly, I would argue, the plummeting advertising revenues that once enabled the press to fund investigative reporting and withstand attacks on its credibility. Its ability to operate as a public trust depended on its ability to prosper as a private enterprise. That is now in doubt.

But one thing hasn’t changed: the attacks from those who would discredit it, often the powerful and those with something to hide. And it’s worth remembering that the press was trusted most, not when it tried to be “balanced,” but when it got the story right.

The Issue isn't Being Fair, it's Seeking the Truth

This response from a former newspaper editor and publisher is part of a series on the First Amendment and the role of the news media in America. Oxford Dictionaries recently named "post-truth" its 2016 word of the year.

I mention that because I believe a major step toward improving news organizations is to get away from the idea of fairness as we have known it and replace it with a commitment to tell the truth about the issues that mean the most to the community and audiences a news operation serves.

The goal of most news organizations now is to accurately and fairly present the opposing sides of an issue. Making sure a story is "fair" is both a goal and a shield. But being satisfied with getting comments from "both sides" is undermining our news organizations, promoting falsehoods, and distorting the truth.

Say what you will about John Stewart and John Oliver being comedians, they get/got to the truth on important issues – which is why, I believe, they are popular and respected, especially among millennials.

Because thinking we are doing our job by doing the usual – "the democrats say this, the republicans say that," – is so easy and deeply ingrained, journalists need training to acquire the skills to get to the truth – developing sources, cultivating experts who can provide context and understanding, and following news threads wherever they lead.

Being all things to all people is no longer possible – if it ever was. The goal must be truth, not fairness in the traditional newspaper sense, and being obsessive about getting to the truth is the road we need to travel.

The Other Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. This is the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one that comes before the second amendment we hear so much about. Like all 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights, it is composed of a single sentence, and it is one of the most extraordinary sentences I have ever read, prohibiting the federal government from regulating the private beliefs of its people. The rights may seem unrelated, but to me those 45 words follow a simple and straight line: the government may not tell me what to believe; it may not interfere with how I express my beliefs; and it may not stop me from joining peaceably with other people to protest government activities which I think threaten those beliefs. It protects my thoughts, my voice and my body. This is the foundation of our democracy. If there is an “American Exceptionalism,” it is embodied in the first amendment.

The fact that “the press” is in there is not accidental, and yet so often these days we treat it as a remote, often adversarial, body, rather than the extension of our speech that the framers intended.

The press is under fire in a lot of places: In Turkey, for example, the government has jailed 120 journalists since July, closed 150 news organizations, and pressed for deep-pocketed loyalists to buy what’s left. Things aren’t so dire in this country, but the threats to a free press are pervasive. Some of them are self-inflicted. Some are economic, as revenues at traditional news outlets continue to decline. Some stem from the digital revolution (almost two-thirds of Americans get all or some of their news from social media). Some are because the press has become politicians' favorite whipping boy.

This is dangerous, and I have reached out to people I know in the news business to see if we can talk about what the issues are and ways we might address them. I will be writing about this in future posts, and I hope you will join the conversation in the weeks and months ahead.

At Last, Chris Christie Gets a Job Offer

After months of disappointment, the New Jersey governor is said to finally be in line for a top administration job. According to unidentified sources, Donald Trump will appoint New Jersey Governor Chris Christie his official food taster, a position President Franklin Pierce discontinued in the 1850s. “Nobody died,” Pierce said at the time, “and my food got cold.”

The position was apparently rediscovered by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who recommended Christie, the man who sent his father to prison a decade ago.

It represents a stunning turnaround for Christie, following a series of stinging defeats that had caused many to write him off. Last summer Trump offered the New Jersey governor the vice presidential spot on his ticket, only to take it back and give it to Mike Pence. Trump later named Christie to lead his transition team, but last week he summarily sacked him and handed that job too over to Pence. This time Christie seems safe. Pence said he has no interest in the position. “My plate’s full.”

Christie was thrilled, saying “I get to sit beside Mr. Trump at every meal.” He vehemently denied he had ever called the president-elect an “Indian giver” and compared his job’s importance to that of the Minister of Public Enlightenment, a portfolio that recently went to Stephen K. Bannon.

“Mr. Trump makes all his decisions in his gut,” Christie said, “and let me assure the American people that nothing is getting into Mr. Trump's gut that hasn’t gone through mine first.”

A Tribute to Our Children

Wednesday morning’s headline came like a punch to the solar plexus. For my children, though, and many of their friends and children of my friends, the election results came as more than a momentary loss of breath. They were devastated. “I’m terrified and so deeply sad,” a young friend texted me.

They had recoiled from Trump’s 18 months of bigotry and bullying tone, from his ugly threats and innuendo, and his victory could not erase that history. And there was, I think, something more: this seemingly endless campaign barely spoke to issues that concerned them. The air was so filled with immediate grievances that the future was ignored.

All politicians pay lip service to the future, but only the young have to worry about it. The solvency of social security in 50 years matters far more to them than to me, as do the cost of college and the size of the national debt. And then there is the state of the earth and its relentless warming, which is very real to my children – but which for Trump and the entire Republican Party is a subject of derision.

Now that Trump is president-elect, what are we to make of his rhetorical bile? Was it campaign tactics or is this the character of the man? There is simply no good answer to that question, but yesterday’s meeting with President Obama gives me hope of an orderly transition and a resilient system.

Most of all, though, I take heart from my children and their friends. They are seeing that the arc of their lives is not so orderly and preordained that they can live removed from the world. And each is resolved to become more involved in the public space – and to build and share a commons with people with whom, on the surface, they may seem to have little in common.

The Long Drive Home

Well, I didn’t do much good in Pennsylvania. When I arrived last week, the now-disparaged polls had Hillary up by four points. When I left yesterday, Trump had carried the state. Note to Democratic Party: Don’t send Blaines to swing states (I use the plural because my sister and brother-in-law went too). Meanwhile, while I was in Pennsylvania, my own district in northern Maine cast its single electoral vote for Donald Trump. Food for thought for eleven hours in the car. The voters spoke. The system wasn’t rigged. And Donald Trump is president-elect of the United States. He appealed to millions of people who don’t like where this country is headed, and he gave voice, he says, to “the forgotten men and women” of America. That’s a good thing. We should listen. As the saying goes, we really should get out more.

But over the last few months I have also met people who are not so much forgotten as invisible, who keep getting sent back to the end of the line, which, if campaign rhetoric is to be believed, may soon be forming in Mexico for some of them. And somehow the state of America – our broken borders and seething cities, our crumbling morals and crushing debt – is their fault.

We need to look for common ground, not scapegoats.

“What happens,” Langston Hughes asked 65 years ago, “to a dream deferred?”

After a campaign with so much ugliness, I drove home listening only to music, or to nothing at all, to silence. No news, no analysis, no talking heads. Near the end of the long drive, the radio played 12 German Dances by Franz Schubert. I’d never heard them before. Truth be known, I’m tone deaf. But they were beautiful.

And where there is that kind of beauty, there is surely hope.

Notes from the Field

Sometimes I think God sent Donald Trump to help me get comfortable with my mortality. He has poisoned the civic discourse in ways from which we won’t soon recover. But I’ll be shuffling off this mortal coil far sooner than the younger people who will have to clean up his mess.

That’s just one statistically irrelevant thought from my last few days canvassing in the field.

Another is that many people like me – old, white and male – don’t like Hillary Clinton very much, and they’re not very civil about it. “She should be in prison” has become their reflexive refrain. If you call them on the phone, they just hang up. You get kind of tired of old white men after a while.

Especially compared with my conversations with immigrants, often voting for the first time. They’re excited to be citizens, to be Americans, and to vote – although several were afraid of being challenged at the polls.

This didn’t seem a future to fear. It seemed the future that has always defined America at its best, a future I’d actually like to hang around for.

What a contrast to those who can’t get past our imperfect choices, as if we have ever had anything else in politics – “I’m voting for Donald Duck,” a man said yesterday. Great.

Finally, those who will vote for a third party might consider what the Libertarian vice-presidential candidate told CNN yesterday:

“I do see a big difference between the two other candidates,” said Bill Weld. “Trump . . . is totally unfit to be president, [while Clinton is] is a perfectly reputable, professional, responsible candidate for president of the United States and deserves to be treated as such. . . . Frankly, I think Mrs. Clinton has been receiving a pretty raw deal.”

In the last few days I’ve seen the past and I’ve seen the future. I like the future better.