Past as Prologue

             It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy,
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution.
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfillment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning.…
—T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages



Today is the halfway mark of African American History Month. Last February, there was spirited debate among many Americans, some of whom — in the wake of the Barack Obama’s election as president — questioned the need for continuing an annual four-week Black History observance.
Most of the discussion, though entertaining, was silly, as if the perfect convergence of circumstances resulting in Obama’s victory proved that we had entered a post-racial era in America.
We Americans tend to be spectacularly ahistoric. This trait has worked to our advantage as the nation was built. We focused on the practical as our nation was built. We explored, we cleared, we built, we invented, our eyes focused always on the possibilities of the present or the promise of the future.
The country had no history to study at first. We were once the world’s newest nation, in a hurry to achieve our manifest destiny in the most bountiful and expansive land known to civilized man. History was what Americans left behind in Europe, where folks were mired in a past of religious, royal and feudal castles and tunnels. We had frontiers to tame.
Our most energetic tamers were often people who disdained tradition. They blazed new paths. When they encountered failure, they shrugged it off, moved west, and started anew.
Having subdued much of the continent until there was no more west, we moved overseas, proselytizing, conquering, annexing. The first President Roosevelt established and pursued an expansionist policy with a clear eye. We became an imperial nation as a matter of presumed birthright, though our national fable of exceptionalism still blinds most contemporary Americans to that reality. But you could look it up.
We are not casting blame or pointing fingers here. Readers of this column have probably already supplied some missing pieces in our two-paragraph condensation of U. S. foreign and domestic policy: the all but complete eradication of Native Americans; the dispatch of Mexican Americans back to earlier points of origin; and the theft of Africans from their original homelands, cultures, languages, families, and histories.
Whether we understand it or not, our past catches up with us. As the Eliot passage suggests, if we look back at where we have been and what we have done, we often see a pattern different from what we thought we were doing at the time.

[Real Deal Confession: I wouldn’t know any other T.S. Eliot passage from a hieroglyphic. I know this one as a frontispiece to the memoirs of former Under Secretary of State George W. Ball.]
Acting locally, if we understand the pattern of our past as a community, it can help us make better decisions moving forward. It can help us to make sense of otherwise incomprehensible situations, such as the current plan of Cleveland schools ceo Eugene Sanders to close nearly a score of schools, many of which had recently received hundreds of thousands of dollars in renovation and repair expenditures, or last year’s near-unanimous opposition of black political leaders to the new form of county government.

We have a tendency here in Cuyahoga to reduce all discourse on public policy issues to personality-driven motivations. But while it is true that for many public officials, as for most people in general, where they stand depends upon where they sit, it is also true that human motivation is seldom linear, and that governing is complex. It may be helpful to keep this in mind as we begin to assess chief executive and council candidates for our new county government.

Teachable Moment in Harry Reid’s Candid Comments

Perhaps the best thing to come out of the hypocritical and out-sized attacks upon U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may be the sober realization of just how far the country is from entering a post-racial era.

Appraising Barack Obama’s electoral chances a private conversation during the presidential campaign, Reid is reported to have essentially acknowledged what has been confirmed countless times by social science research: light-skinned African Americans who speak what is widely accepted as standard American English are less likely to be negatively prejudged by white Americans by surface criteria and thus stand a better chance of success in society.

For stating what is basically a matter of fact documented by historians, social scientists, and the life experiences of most African Americans, In short order, Reid was vilified as a racist and called upon to relinquish his post as majority leader. The story dominated the Sunday talk shows and has been pretty much been pontificated to death by pundits of every stripe.

The partisan attacks are understandable to the degree that they are in large measure related to the understated and under-rated way that Reid has deftly guided much of President Obama’s agenda through the Senate. But these have gained no traction in the wake of Reid’s quick apology for his remark and the “no problem” acceptance of his apology by President Obama, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and other representatives of the supposedly offended group.

The Republican assault upon Reid is simultaneously comical and offensive, with both reactions arising from the transparent hypocrisy of those who choose to acknowledge race only when it can be used as a wedge to divide or distract.

What this latest dust up does reveal however, is just how far away we are as a nation from having honest dialogue about the past, present, and future of race in America. Jeremiah Wright, Henry Louis Gates, Eric Holder, Harry Reid: each of these names is now part of a recurring pattern where an heartfelt observation about America’s racial record or its structural consequences results in lots of heat but little light.

Pain, fear, and mistrust combine to turn most public attempts at racial understanding into grandstanding. We have no common vocabulary to talk about race. I wish that instead of apologizing, Senator Reid had instead elaborated. It could have been like one of those moments when Jesse Jackson talked about a heightened level of apprehension on possible engagement with a congregation of young black men. Who didn’t identify with that unexpected moment of candor?

Too often, the anguish of the nation’s festering racial wounds gets a brutal sanitization. If we can’t put a Band-Aid on the cancer, we just shut the door and hold our noses. [Greater Clevelanders, think Imperial Avenue].

Reid’s apology just added to the confusion. What was he apologizing for? For being politically incorrect in his politically correct observation? Who was he apologizing to? Was he apologizing to dark-skinned black people for the prejudices that white people carry that limit opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and political success? Was he apologizing to all black people for a private comment that may now lead to the outing of intra-racial color prejudice? Was he apologizing because that outing may give comfort to white people who can perversely find justification for their prejudices in the prejudice of others? Or maybe he was apologizing to white people for his having dared to acknowledge that they really aren’t as color-blind as they like to pretend?

I read a lot of online commentary and watched a lot of the television coverage of Reid’s statement in an attempt to get some kind of grasp on these issues. Much of what I read and heard was singularly unimpressive. But I did encounter one or two commentators who offered a special vantage. Jonathan Walton offered this observation:

“If anyone should be offended it should be the critical mass of Americans, of all racial, ethnic and political perspectives, who are so informed by the logic of white supremacy that they fail to interrogate the correlations between dark skin tone and negativity or lightness and positive attributes.”

And this:

“There is one major problem that I do have with Senator Reid’s statement, however. For him to contend that President Obama has “no Negro dialect” reveals a parochial comprehension of the breadth and artistic beauty of black vernacular culture. President Obama is most lauded for his gifted rhetorical ability. His persuasive use of narrative, rhythmic timing, and common employment of alliteration and assonance are all creative staples of the African American homiletic tradition.” http://www.religiondispatches.org/blog/mediaculture/2181/


Speaking of black preachers, next week the nation observes Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Perhaps instead of recalling King’s wonderful rhetoric and soaring phrases, we might reflect on how much listening he must have done before he could articulate a vision so compelling that it helped to galvanize a national movement. Perhaps we could honor his memory this year by listening to others with his spirit of understanding and reconciliation, and then by following up, as he did, with some action.