Identity Politics

We hear a lot about “identity politics” these days, and most of it is bad. The basic image is of ever-more strident and intolerant groups who are interested only in airing their grievances, establishing their victimhood, furthering their agendas, and shouting down anyone who disagrees – all at the expense of the greater good. But instead of looking at identity politics as an effort to destroy the social fabric of America, what if we looked at it as part of a slow and often painful journey toward including people in the story that America tells about itself – the story of American Exceptionalism? It’s a story that left a lot of people out.

How are Native Americans supposed to resonate to westward expansion? African-Americans to the sanctity of property? Women to equality? Muslims to the melting pot? And working-class people to the wonders of globalization? When they demand that their voices be heard in America’s story, these people are insisting we expand our definition of community to live up to our own ideals.

As I learned in my travels through the Rust Belt last summer, and from reading J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, Amy Goldstein’s forthcoming Janesville, and Chris Arnade’s odyssey across America, we are at last confronting the hardships white working-class people have faced in the last 25 years and the alienation many feel from much of today’s America.

They are an integral part of our story – but only to expand our idea of America, not as a wedge issue to divide us. For to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., the arc of our history bends toward inclusion. It’s been a long journey from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to today’s diversity, and we aren’t going back.

A Mission Statement for America, Part 2

Please join me in this ongoing effort to create a working mission statement for America that may help us to hang together lest, as Benjamin Franklin noted, “we shall all hang separately.” (Note to Oval Office: Franklin: a great American, invented electricity, currently dead.) At the end of yesterday’s post, I wrote of four times in our history when leaders articulated a common story to unite us. At least three things bind their stories together: (1) the community (later nation) faced a severe crisis; (2) The stories were aspirational – that is, they tried to inspire future actions, rather than glorify, or even justify, past behaviors; and (3) the later ones built on the ones that had gone before – and sought to expand the community to include those who had previously been left out. As such, they were building blocks in the ongoing project of constructing a nation.

1630: John Winthrop and his small band of Puritans aboard the Arbella faced a frightening and, to them, hostile wilderness, having left behind everything they had ever known, except each other. They had not come to practice religious toleration but to escape it, and they ill-treated almost everyone they encountered, annihilating the Native Americans, hanging the occasional Quaker who wandered into their Massachusetts Bay Colony, banishing Antinomians and all other heretics from their midst, and generally trying to build as exclusive, intolerant and holy a community as they could. Mostly they failed, although one runs into their spiritual descendants from time to time.

1776: When the Framers looked out across America a century and a half later, the Puritan community had been superseded by all kinds of people clamoring for a place: Protestants of almost infinite denominations; Catholics; Jews; Deists; even Black freedman . . .but of Native Americans, slaves, women, and even most non-property owners, there were none. But the Declaration of Independence was also a declaration of war, and so the framers, at least rhetorically, opened their arms to “all men.”

1863: In response to this nation’s greatest crisis, Abraham Lincoln expanded the definition of its community beyond what anyone had ever imagined – extending it to four million slaves who had until then been the property of fewer than 400,000 families. Yet again the job was not complete. Many of the generals who had led the Union army went on to exterminate the Plains Indians; women were nowhere to be found in the new definition; nor were the great waves of immigrants coming to stoke the furnaces of our massive industrial growth.

1963: As Freedom Riders launched a surging movement for simple justice against Jim Crow and American apartheid, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech at Lincoln’s Memorial pushed boundaries further than they had ever been pushed before – even in the face of intractable resistance from those who sought not to broaden, but to constrict, America’s community.*

A floodgate had opened, as others kept coming forward to demand their place in the definition of America, including the gay community, the disabled, and working class whites.

Next up: Identity Politics

*“In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth,” said Alabama Governor George Wallace, also in 1963, “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.”

A Mission Statement for America

A New Series. America has not been this dangerously divided in many years, and the myths that in the past have held us together and shaped our identity as a people are no longer working. Instead, we have become an angry country where, in the words of W.B. Yeats, “everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned” and our public discourse is passionate, poisoned and dangerously illiterate.

It seems a good time to try to rebuild a national myth – or at least come up with a mission statement – that could help unify us. It's not a new idea: Here are four examples from our history:

• In 1630 John Winthrop admonished his Puritan followers that “we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, . . . we must be knit together, in this work, as one man.”
• A century and a half later, the framers looked out over a far different America and wrote these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
• At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln pointed to “the great task remaining before us – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
• And a century later, Martin Luther King, Jr., said beneath Lincoln’s monument: “When we let [freedom] ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Each of these statements builds on the ones that came before, and each came as the community faced a time of crisis and great fear. As I will try to show in my next post, each sought to reiterate the essence of the American experience – of “American exceptionalism,” if you will – and, more importantly, to expand the definition of our American community to include those who had been left out.

In these days of the great unraveling, we need to restate who we are as a people and build a more inclusive community.

“As We Go Marching On” *

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can get you to commit atrocities." Voltaire  It’s been noted that I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a big fan of Donald Trump and that I have at times used this space to express my biased views.

True.

The responses from those who disagree have fallen into two categories:

1. Trump is doing what he said he would do. You may not like it. But he won.

All three sentences are correct.

2. Those who vent their sour grapes – with their unbalanced editorials and angry protest marches – are actually playing into Trump’s narrative, reinforcing his message, and firing up his base.

I believe that also is true.

#1. Not fair. The first objection is based on fairness, as quaint as that may seem in these times. Trump won, get over it and give the man a chance. The peaceful transition of power is how a democracy functions, so we all need to play by the rules.

But an election is not a coronation, and the latest one has not yet repealed the people’s first-amendment right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (as a proponent of non-violence, I stress “peaceably”).

#2: Not smart. The second objection is based on stupidity. Trump’s opponents continue to pursue a losing strategy, and it’s backfiring.

But that may simply be buying into Trump’s narrative – repeated over and over and over again – that he won a crushing victory by tapping not just into Americans’ anger but into America’s soul. And therefore we should all just shut up.

The resistance may well be firing up his hard core. But it may also be (1) shrinking his broader support, which was never a majority in the first place; and (2) getting the attention of people who aren’t part of anybody’s base, including business leaders and Republican members of Congress.

If the opposition doesn’t keep drawing lines, then soon there may not be any lines.

* From:  "Marching Song of the First Arkansas Colored Regiment" 

Bubbles

OK, I admit it. I live in a bubble. And you live in a bubble.

We all live in bubbles.

Even those who criticize us for living in bubbles live in bubbles.

And those who say that people who live in bubbles can’t understand the “real” America, they live in bubbles, too.

So, let’s acknowledge our mutual bubbleness – the reality that most of us spend much of our time with people who are like us, people who share our views and reaffirm our values and with whom we can relax and be ourselves.

Problems arise, however, when we mistake our bubble for the whole world – which is why it’s good to get out of our bubble from time to time. To make an effort to climb – or at least look – over what Arlie Russell Hochschild calls the “empathy wall” in Strangers in Their Own Land and try to understand people who are different from us. Maybe even to celebrate those differences, delighting in the vast diversity that is America.

That recognition of “the other” was at the heart of many of the responses to the Giving Very Small post: “With most of us living in our respective, rather narrow, community ‘bubble,’” wrote one reader, “a real interaction with someone outside of our comfort zone is remarkably valuable to all concerned.”

This is true because, by definition, the more narrow your bubble, the more constricted your life.

Donald Trump lives in an alarmingly narrow bubble, and he spent last week signaling his intention to impose his insular views on all of America. We must not let that happen.

I could care less about the size of Trump’s hands. But his tiny bubble scares the hell out of me.

It’s always ourselves we find in the sea*

“What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue,” Ayn Rand (1964). This is the second in a series of responses to my recent post, Giving Very Small, reflections on hunger and homelessness in American cities not as detached statistics but as human encounters.

• You now prompt me to do the same. Now there are three of us throwing starfish back into the surf.

• My wife and I often carried the apples we grew to people on the street, only to notice that a lot of them threw the fruit into the gutter. You can't trade what they wanted for apples. So then we started bringing food to the food shelter.

• Those connections, those acts of kindness, are the best way forward.

• I have often wondered the same thing myself, but also have hesitated, as NYC is so full of grifters posing as AIDS victims, military vets, etc. Maybe a handful of bills and taking a chance is the way to go.

• Recently, I have found myself frequently annoyed by members of the young punk crowd with their little cardboard signs that say things like "Why lie? I need a beer."  I feel like saying, "You know, there are people on the street who really do need help."

• One summer in San Francisco, with lots of homeless and/or street people asking for money, I was uncomfortable and conflicted. My friend, a woman of color from Memphis, did not give them any money or even consider doing so. She said that nearly all these people know where the community help organizations are located – the soup kitchens and shelters and drug/alcohol advising centers – that San Francisco has significant numbers of them and has put lots of resources into such programs. She believes that giving the people we pass money does not help them with the larger issues they are facing.

• Is it about being a lapsed Episcopalian? Or was it Your "Giving Small" post that made me roll down my window for the elderly man I'd passed many times without five bucks for the look on his face? I'll pass that way again. Count on it.

* e.e. cummings, “maggie and milly and molly and may” (1956)

Giving Very Small

It’s an old tale. One morning after a big storm, a wise man walks along a beach covered with starfish. He watches as a small boy bends to pick up a starfish and throw it into the ocean. “What are you doing,” he asks?

“Throwing starfish into the ocean,” the boy replies. “If I don’t, they will die when the sun gets high.”

“But there are tens of thousands of starfish,” says the man. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to make much of a difference.”

The boy picks up another starfish and throws it into the sea. “It made a difference to that one,” he says.

(Cited in Amy Goldstein’s forthcoming Janesville, An American Story, p. 51)

These days, as I walk through the city I pass so many homeless people, often slumped on the sidewalk with a small, sad sign in black magic marker, a note to catch someone’s attention. But there are so many, I’m overwhelmed. How do I choose? What difference can my “spare change” possibly make to this immense tragedy? I look away, not just from their signs but from their faces. I pass by, embarrassed.

I decided to change that. My New Year’s resolution was to take with me each day a certain number of dollar bills and give them away until they are gone. I still have to choose, of course, but not in exactly the same way. Now I have a goal and I have a limit. I don't need to judge worthiness or compare hardships. I only have to give the money away, and since it’s not much money, it’s hardly a sacrifice on my part.

The day after I made the resolution, I got a note from my brother, Walker. It included an article he wrote in which he described his efforts to give something to someone every day, no matter how inconsequential the gift may seem.

Walker is a Buddhist, so I suspect this may come more naturally to him; whereas I am a lapsed Episcopalian, and a more tight-fisted bunch is hard to imagine. (Believe me, I’ve thought about how to make these gifts tax-deductible, although I haven’t yet asked anyone for a receipt.)

The reactions vary. Most are grateful, as much it sometimes seems for the recognition as the small amount of money; a few hardly notice. Because each small gift won’t alleviate the recipient’s distress – nor will they collectively make a dent in the city's poverty – I suppose you could argue they’re little more than random acts of selfishness.

But each transaction is an interaction with another being, someone I do not know, yet may pass by every day. It’s an exchange, and in that moment when I don’t look away – a moment I hope transcends both selfishness and charity – I imagine two people a little happier and a city a little more human.

Read Walker’s article. We could make this a movement.

The Gift Outright

Fifty-six years ago, on a cold and windy day in Washington, eighty-six-year-old Robert Frost stood to read “Dedication,” a poem he had written for the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. Squinting into the bright sun, he found himself unable to read the faint type in front of him, and so instead he recited an earlier poem from memory. “The Gift Outright” is a far better poem, more succinct and more complex in its depiction of America. It’s a poem worth pondering, especially today, about the connection between Americans and their land – not just about the repository of vast resources to be exploited for great wealth, but about the still-unfolding story of ourselves as a people. What’s missing, as in so many of our stories, is the remembrance that the land the Europeans found was not empty, was not “unstoried, artless, unenhanced,” but filled with people we displaced and often worked by people we enslaved.

Maybe that’s because we possessed the land before we gave ourselves to it, because we mistook a gift to be shared for a possession to be hoarded, even defining an entire people as private property.

It is said these days that people only want to read the news they agree with. We have always approached our history the same way, leaving out the things we don’t want to remember. But we will only, I believe, appreciate the gift that is America when we embrace all of its messy, deplorable, inspiring story. Then perhaps we will find “salvation in surrender.”

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land’s.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England’s, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become.

Beyond Legitimacy

Few people have more justification to question the legitimacy – not merely of Donald Trump’s presidency, but of our entire political system – than John Lewis. Born to sharecroppers in the violent, apartheid world of rural Alabama, he later had his head split open on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a former Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan.

Only six years apart in age, Lewis (76) and Trump (70) are now forever linked. Yet how different have been the trajectories of their lives. One a bullhorn bellowing from outside the ropes, looking out for himself and encouraging violence by others on others; the other a man pledged to non-violence, beaten senseless for insisting his country live up to its “self-evident” truths long denied to his people.

Until November, Lewis seemed to point the way forward for America, toward increasing inclusiveness and greater justice. Now our future seems less clear, as the man who underwrote eight years of malicious attacks on our current president’s legitimacy prepares to succeed him in office.

It’s time to accept the reality of the election and move ahead. That does not mean we must put aside our principles or give up our hopes. Rather, we must learn how to come together under a president who is intent on keeping us divided.

In this quest I take heart from something Van Jones said last month, that “Trump is much worse than anybody in this country is willing to accept, but a lot of his voters are much better.”