We all practice identity politics. Some of us just don't know it.

By R. T. Andrews

Sundays are for many of us a day of rest and reflection, even though in this quarantine the days sometimes seem indistinguishable — what do weekends mean when our homes are our workplaces and our Friday and Saturday night rituals are on hiatus?

Paul Robeson's Here I Stand was part memoir, part manifesto.

Lately, I have had some thought-provoking exchanges that speak to our current chaotic condition. And when I say “our” I refer variously, simultaneously, and collectively, to shared statuses, or identities I bear as human, global citizen, American, and black man.

Many of you are talking, I'm sure about the same subjects, even though far fewer of us are visiting barber shops and salons these days. 

Right-thinking talking heads — “right” addresses their political vantage, not the merits of their contentions — often demean much of today’s political agitation as stemming from “identity politics”. They suggest that our common status as Americans trumps everything, and want to dismiss as parochial, peevish, or unimportant any concerns or issues some of us wrestle with because we are black, brown, pregnant, gay, transgender, differently abled, immigrants, or just garden variety capitalist fodder.

Most people who advance that proposition in this country are white, relatively well-off and Republican, or long for the accouterments of white privilege. One of the privileges of being white is the freedom to be ignorant of the history of this land and its people. Or perhaps to put it more charitably, white Americans have the luxury of being selective and sanguine about U.S. [and world] history, for example, to accept without inquiry the myth of American exceptionalism.

The twin health crises of Covid-19 and racism have upset that applecart for millions of white Americans. As to the covid crisis, it is impossible to ignore or dismiss or reconcile America’s wealth, 'greatness' and world leadership with the fact that our five percent of the world’s population has more than 25% of the world’s coronavirus infections. 

The world is aghast at how badly the U.S. has mismanaged this situation. Even the most cynical of us would have had difficulty imagining only three months ago that foreign countries of all political stripes would be banning travel by U.S. citizens. In a manner reminiscent of the fate of Nazi occupiers of a tiny town as depicted in Steinbeck’s novella, The Moon is Down [1942], a Trump administration that rode into office on the propaganda of building a wall to keep others out, has fostered conditions that have resulted in the U.S. citizens being presently exiled from the world community.

I’m reluctant to call the public health menace that is racism a “crisis”. Dictionary definitions of crisis suggest there is a timing element, a turning point or a stage in a sequence of events. America’s racism is less a crisis than a foundational element. Our challenge is finding a way either to remove it from our DNA or finding ways to bring it under control, perhaps like insulin for our diabetes.

I offer here a pair of short videos that speak to both our July 4th and our DNA. The first is a series of excerpts delivered by the descendants of Frederick Douglass from one of his greatest speeches, “What to the Slave is your Fourth of July”?

The second video is a re-enactment of testimony by the renowned activist and protean talent Paul Robeson delivered in June 1956 before the House Committee on Un-American Activities [HUAC]. It is a testament to knowing who you are. It’s going to send me back for a fresh inoculation of Here I Stand in preparation for the continuing struggle.

Have a Soulful Sunday!

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