I’d like to talk about disgust. You know, that feeling that makes you go “Eww” or makes your skin crawl when you see something. We have all had it. Most of us start out with that feeling about bodily liquids for example, but as any parent of a newborn knows, you have to power through it. Nurses and other caretakers have had to learn to ignore it or work through it in order to do their jobs. I have it myself and for example cannot watch blood coming out my arm during a blood test. Others can be triggered by many other things.

I live in Texas these days where the legislature concerns itself with things like drag shows and LGBT issues instead of doing something that would actually help the citizens of Texas. The concern with drag shows has been especially enlightening since dressing up as a different gender has been such a common occurrence in our society. Even entertainers from Milton Berle to Flip Wilson, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot, Tom Hanks in Bosom Buddies, have appeared in drag in mainstream media, in movies and television. Some of the very legislators who now rail loudest about drag shows have at some time in the past dressed in drag themselves. Of course, they do so because they see some political advantage in so doing. They don’t see themselves as hypocrites because they draw a distinction between a straight person occasionally dressing in drag and a homosexual or transvestite dressing in drag. It is these non-gender conforming people who create that eww feeling of disgust in the politicians and they hope in their constituents. It is the same with the legislators’ interest in banning or limiting gender conversion therapies, medicines and surgeries. Surely this is an issue for individuals, parents, psychotherapists, and doctors to decide, not politicians. Again, it is that eww feeling of disgust toward people who challenge existing gender categories that the politicians have (or at least pretend to have) and hope that enough people who hold such a feeling will vote for them. National polls and even state polls indicate that only a minority of people feel this way enough to think that the rights of others should be curtailed. Politicians argue that they are upholding community standards that have gone to hell in the nation beyond Texas as such standards have in their view “declined.” They applaud the imaginary good old days when men were men, women knew their place, and the government (and its laws) viewed LGBT people as immoral. They cite ancient religious texts, Chrisian evangelical churches, and even the Catholic Church as supporting their views on LGBT people. They argue that it will “Make America Great Again.”

The question to ask is not whether it is right to have this eww feeling about LGBT people, but is it right to base public policy on our eww feelings? Decades of conservative policy has argued that it is not right for the government to interfere in personal matters like this no matter how one feels about them. The current Republican party has thrown this conservative tenet out the window. The obsession with abortion and transgender medicine has argued that it is indeed the duty of the government to interfere in such personal matters in the name of moral standards that are held by politicians and (they presume) by the people who will re-elect them. As a black person I cannot help but think of this without comparing it to the racial history of this country. During slavery, Jim Crow, and racial segregation, many felt that black folks were less than human in fact animalistic in their behavior. Many still do. This created that eww feeling when thinking of blacks voting, black males having sex with white women (though curiously not the reverse,) black behavior which did not show the proper subservience, and recognition of white superiority. The result was not only legislation restricting black rights, but violence against black folk. I am not saying that the curtailment of LGBT rights will inevitably go down the same road, however I do note that violence against LGBT people has increased over the last few years as has violence against black folks, non-Christians, and Asian people.

Most of the proposed legislation has not reached the law stage yet. I not only think this proposed legislation is wrong, curtails LGBT rights, and expands the reach of government, it is actually dangerous and harms many innocent people.

The Isley brothers have a song, “Fight the Power,” which has the line “When I roll with the punches I get knocked on the ground – by all this bullshit going down.” Yet rolling with the punches is what black folk have been good at throughout their history. From being rounded up by slave traders in Africa, surviving the long oversea voyage across the Atlantic, years of slavery and Jim Crow, black folk have continually been forced to make the best of bad situations. I would paraphrase the song to “you have to roll with the punches or you’ll get knocked to the ground, by all the bullshit going down.” This brings me to the recent Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade. I want to be clear on this: I think it is not only a warped opinion, but that it is a misreading of the Constitution. Clarence in his written opinion states that rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution like the right to have an abortion, the right to same sex marriage, and even the right to use contraception are not mentioned in the Constitution and therefore are not protected by it. However, the ninth amendment (part of the bill of rights) says “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Thus, it is quite proper to add rights not enumerated by the founders who lived in an 18th century agrarian society to those protected by the Constitution. The right to privacy for example. The Supreme Court has over the years taken on this task and defined what those rights should be. The right to abortion has just been one of them. This edition of the court has deemed it not to be, even though several justices in their Senate hearings said they consider it settled law and precedent. And the punches keep on coming as the court sides with prayer by high school coaches, concealed carry guns that you do not have to have a reason to  carry, police who have not Mirandized suspects and on and on with the Court’s conservative majority.

That’s where we are. The question is what do we do about it now? Sure national opinion polls show a majority of people favor a woman’s right to choose over the right to life of an unborn fetus. This is meaningless. The Court has ruled that the choice to protect women’s rights to choose, should and will be decided by the legislatures of the states and maybe the federal one. This means that we need to roll with the punch and elect more people that will vote for woman’s rights. That is why the national opinion polls are meaningless. The only poll that counts is the election poll. If the great majority of people who hold this position are in blue states, the anti-abortion folks may still control red states. Even if more people support abortion in the red states, they need to get out and vote accordingly. Even in a state as red as Texas, in a recent UT pool 39% of respondents say abortion should always be a matter of choice, and 78% say abortion should be available in specific cases of rape or incest. Only 15% say abortion should never be allowed. Unsurprisingly there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans. Among the Democrats polled 67% said that abortion should always be allowed and only 15% of Republicans agreed. However, 42% of Republicans agreed that abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest and 15% believed that there were cases outside of rape in which abortion should be allowed.

Since the ruling my email inbox has been flooded with requests for money from politicians and women’s rights groups. They are right that the battle needs to move to the political battleground. Of course I don’t donate to every candidate or cause that asks me. How do I choose? First of all I never donate to the Democratic National Committee or its subsidiaries. I do not like its preference for centrist candidates when we actually need progressive ones to win back the working class. Secondly they use money inefficiently spending it on candidates who have little chance of winning but who have been good fundraisers or who face big name opponents. I try to direct any of my few dollars to candidates who are at least within hailing distance of their opponents. I also direct some money to organizations who are working against the voter suppression activities that the Republicans have passed. That means groups like Fair Fight in Georgia or Rideshare2vote. If any of these candidates are going to have a chance it will be because the turnout is so high they will have difficulty stealing the election. I am too old and infirm to participate in demonstrations these days, but they are valuable for networking and lifting one’s spirits by finding like minded people. They need to be followed up by voting and voter registration to be effective though.

All in all there are many things we can do to roll with this punch by the bullshit going down. Get involved. Even if the opposition candidates to these sob’s are not perfect it is important to stop the attack on our rights first. We must make the best of a bad situation. We cannot let despair drive us to inaction. Let it drive us to the voting booth.

Recently the media have been full of the narrative that there is a split in the Republican Party between Trump supporters and its supporters in the corporate world.  Though Trump was far from the choice of the business community, he promised the deregulation, tax cuts, and other policies that they wanted. They therefore held their noses and supported him once he became the standard bearer for the party. Trump’s ability to appeal to his supporters as a populist while at the same time working for the 1%, is uncanny. His claims that he actually won the election and there was massive voter fraud, did not in themselves frighten the “corporate” Republicans, it was just Trump being Trump. They were wiling to accept it as they had been willing to accept his other idiosyncrasies like the narcissism, racism, nativism and lack of empathy for others his populous supporters ate up. The insurrection of January 6 shook their belief that these idiosyncrasies were harmless and exposed the threat to the Republic that they represented. Even though it has been uncovered that Republican deep pockets financed the rally that led to the insurrection, many of the “corporate” supporters of Trump and other Republicans quickly backtracked and cut off the money supply to those claiming election fraud. Just as among elected Republicans however, only a fraction actually denounced Trump and his attempted coup. The damage to Trump’s control over the Republican Party has been minimal. As long as he has that control the business part of the Republican Party will eventually, with less fanfare, continue to support it.

Moreover the Trump supporters still remain in control of the party. They believed Trump and other politicians that the election was stolen from them. It did not matter how many courts had thrown out Trump’s accusations of fraud, that no real evidence of massive fraud was ever found, that it certainly is strange that Democrats down ballot did not seem to win if there had been fraud, or that Trump had asked Republican campaign officials to “find” more votes for him. All of this was just evidence of how strong the “deep state” truly was. One Trump supporter asked how Biden could have won when he didn’t know one person who had voted for him. Now that the Senate has refused to convict him, he will still be eligible for the 2024 campaign. The did not convict him even though he sent a mob to kill some of them e.g. Pence, McConnell, That is how much they see their maintenance of power dependent on Trump and his followers. He certainly has the stockpile of money contributed to keep him in office.

The success of the Republicans in the recent elections and in the country at large belie the wishful thinking among the aristocratic Republicans like Bush, Romney and the Lincoln project that the party has been damaged. Remember the Republicans were able to maintain 50 Senate seats, make gains in the House of Representative, and still control the legislatures and governorships of a majority of states. There is no movement for red areas of the country to change their political allegiance. Just because some people saw the light and did not vote for Trump, does not mean that there has been a revolution for the Democratic party. Unless the Democrats do something bold to win back the disaffected people who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, they will lose the Senate in 2022 and the 2024 presidential election will be up for grabs with or without Trump. One strategy for the Democrats would be the Stacey Abrams approach: to do grassroots organizing that increases the Democratic voting base, the passage of a Voting Rights Act to battle against Republican voter suppression and institute measures to make voting easier e.g. expanded mail in voting, making Election day a holiday etc.

The conditions that produced Trump are still there. The lack of faith in the electoral system, the feeling that politicians ignore them, the conditions that impoverish them, and the feeling that they have lost control over their lives, persist. They accept the scapegoats that have been presented to them: immigrants, people of color, Muslims. They feel these things so strongly that they consider themselves “patriots” when they try to overthrown a democratically elect government to install an authoritarian loser. Worse they may elect someone who is more competent at the things Trump attempted. They do not realize that that Trump worked to promote the interests of the people they should hate and who have been keeping them in dire straits. He really cares only about the power his supporters can give him and not about them as human beings at all. They will remain the lifeblood of the Republican Party.

It’s only been a few days since we had a new president, but things are becoming clear. Instead of the damned lies, empty promises, revenge fantasies, and paranoid delusions that so appealed to Trump supporters, we are getting a different type of presidency. In the first few public appearances as president we are getting painful realities or truths from Biden. We are getting scientists in control and being the public face of pandemic efforts rather than politicians trying to cover their asses. We are getting  transparency and clear explanations of executive orders. Most of all we are getting actions to help common people instead of helping cronies, corporations and the 1%. Let me be clear; as bold as these steps may appear I wish they were bolder. The centrist weight of Democratic politics and the slim majority in the Senate will hamper getting needed legislation passed. However as one CNN commentator put it “the adults are now in the room.” Instead of inexperienced loyalists put in place as rewards or to shore up Trump’s support, we are getting people who actual know how to do the hard work of administering government programs. Instead of syncophants we are getting doers. Instead of people who feel that they should tear down their departments because there ought to be less government, people who wanted to eliminate controls on big business and line their own pockets, we are getting administrators who actually believe the purpose of government is to help people. Trump administrators were not very good at performing their jobs. The Biden administration is. We were saved by the incompetence of the Trump administration, but we will be saved by the competence of the Biden administration.

Biden has said he will begin to address the problems and the realities that common people face rather than take actions that a conservative ideology recommends. He has started with the Covid 19 pandemic while the Trump administration simply threw up its hands at the end and just hoped the pandemic would go away. Trump and the 1% thought they could protect themselves through excellent medical care, experimental drugs, and escaping to protected hideaways. They pretended that the disease did not exist by going maskless and having large indoor events. The result has been prolonging and deepening the crisis. Biden’s team on the other hand has masked up, eschewed large gatherings, taken direct actions to ramp up production of personal protective equipment, testing, and vaccine production. Yes, all these things were going on to a limited extent under Trump, but it was left in the hands of private companies and states without guidance as to how they were to be administered. The result has been a confused, chaotic, and ineffectual rollout. Biden seeks to use the power of the federal government to speed up and smooth out the roll out.

Biden is next taking actions to help those who have been hurt by the pandemic. I don’t know what those are yet, but I have hope that they will at the least help more people than the Trump administration did. Truly “weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning” as the Bible says.

Trump may still win the election. After all tens of millions still support him. Why? It seems to me that it is a cult. People support him because they see him as a beacon of light that will protect them against the impinging forces of darkness that threaten them. For the true believer facts, logical arguments, and pointing out his contradictions do nothing. Many cannot even explain them away or even need to. Their faith in him is blind. He is against the same things they are against and that is enough. Future historians will have much to say about this era and I doubt all of it will be kind. I’d like to get ahead of the game and offer my historical post mortem of this era now rather than later. What happened was this…

1. Many Americans were fed up with a political system that failed to meet their needs. Trump appeared as an outsider who would upset the applecart of those smug Washington politicians. He had a persona created by and for reality television as a successful businessman who would make the tough and decisive choices to avoid the bullshit and move us forward. It turns out that the “reality” was that he is a failed businessman, narcissistic, lacking empathy, who had little understanding of the law, the U.S. political system, its history, and the Constitution. Rather than “draining the swamp” as he had promised in his election campaign, he hired cronies and sycophants who proceeded to undo their government departments and loot them for personal enrichment. People were hired and fired for their loyalty not their ability. Trump enriched himself and his class at the expense of the rest of the country. A pandemic swept down on the country and his incompetence was exposed. His concern was not to save lives but to minimize the effect of Covid 19 to avoid panicking the stock market. Most of these people came to regret the choice they had made and voted against him as soon as they could.
2. Many people dissatisfied with the choice of candidates they were given simply did not vote. Over 90 million eligible voters did not vote in the 2016 election. That’s over 40% of the electorate. In the electoral college system in key states that was enough to swing the election Trump’s way even if he did not win the most voters. For people dissatisfied with Trump this brought about a surge of voting in the 2020 and a questioning of the electoral college system.
3. For those believing in the authoritarian strain in government described by political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weller (among others) Trump was the ideal candidate. His strongman persona resonated with an American brand of authoritarianism which held that the president should not be hindered by things like the Congress, the court system, and a free press. All of these should be tailored to support him. Trump’s idea of a leader was the same: strong willed, free to enact his beliefs, and resenting those who hindered him. Trump did not understand the difference between being president and being a CEO. Neither Trump nor his authoritarian supporters understood that the American system was created in reaction to such a leader and that Congress, that court system and that free press were designed  precisely as limits on the president’s powers. The Republicans in the Congress allowed and enabled him to undo the checks that the framers of the Constitution had intended. Seeing his popularity they became convinced that the only way to stay in power was to support him by protecting him from impeachment, loading the courts with sympathetic judges, and voting down policies rather than reaching compromises. They were Trump’s enablers.
4. Racists, white supremacists, and domestic terrorists listened with glee to Trump’s dog whistles supporting their causes. His refusals to condemn them emboldened them to publicly proclaim their beliefs and take measures to enact them. Racist acts and domestic terrorist plots sky rocketed during his regime. One plot uncovered by the FBI planned to abduct the governor of Michigan and start a civil war. Anti racism groups like Black Lives Matter and anti-fascism groups demonstrated in the streets against the rise of police brutality or misconduct, racism and fascism.

All of this happened and is not some dystopian dream or fiction. I am optimistic that his reign will end in 2020, but regardless of whether it does, its effects will go on for years unless the next regime works to curtail them. The last four years should be a warning to always maintain vigilance lest the dark side of Americanism slips its bonds. It is always there.

Of course all lives matter, nobody in Black Lives Matter has said differently. The simple phrase has become, however, something that people hide behind to avoid addressing the uncomfortable realities of racism in American society. I would like to reclaim that phrase. Oppressed groups have long reclaimed the words that are used to oppress them e.g. nigger, bitch, faggot, queer. I want to use it to show that police militarization and brutality are not just black issues. All people of color, no matter how respectable they think they are, are subject to this brutality. The statistics for police violence against native Americans and Latino Americans are proportionately way higher than incidents of police violence against whites. Whites have long seen the police as protectors and well off whites call on police more than twice as often as member of minority groups to protect their persons or property. The recent Amy Cooper incident wherein a white women purposely lied to police about a black man simply to get her way, is only the latest incident in which whites use the police structure against nonwhites. By now it is probably not even the most recent. White women fraudulently claiming to be attacked, disrespected or raped has led to lynchings, imprisonment, beatings and murders of black people for hundreds of years. The current internet memes of “Karen” (that is white women) calling police to complain about black folk simply going about their business, are all too common. White males have not only used the police to enforce white superiority, but as the black man Ahmaud Arbery shot dead while jogging in southeast Georgia shows, they have taken vigilante actions themselves.

Note however that whites themselves have been the victims of police brutality too. White LGBTQ groups have long been the target of police violence. The police violence  (using rubber bullets, tear gas, and shields as battering rams,) has most recently been turned against white protestors. Rural and poor whites even have a mythology about fleeing the police exemplified by the “Dukes of Hazzard” for example. While a disproportionate number people of color are killed by the police, the police still kill more whites than blacks each year. The whites safest against police violence are those who show up at state capitals armed to the teeth. Ninety five percent of police killings of whites occur in neighborhoods where people earn less than $100,000 annually. There is thus a class bias in police killings. There is also a regional bias: people in Oklahoma had 6 times more police killings than Georgia in 2015 for example. Police killings have actually decreased in big cities and increased in suburban and rural areas. In 2019 there were only 27 days in the year on which the police didn’t kill someone. Let that one sink in for a minute. Whites who mock George Floyd are most likely not police supporters but racists who are willing to support things against their own interests to bolster their beliefs of black inferiority and white superiority.

Yet, only 1% of police are even indicted for police killings. The decrease in police killings in the big cities show that methods can be introduced to improve the situation. Shining the media’s light on the police can help the situation only if the people we elect to positions of power decide to do something. “Logical” police want to end police brutality because it prevents community support and makes their jobs harder. Tragically, entrenched police culture, police unions, wimpy civilian oversight, and timid politicians make reform difficult. If you truly believe that “All Lives Matter,” then you should work to end police brutality. If you, like the president, believe that police should meet the public with force, then brutality will happen and you don’t truly believe that all lives matter. You are lying to yourself. It is that simple.

James Baldwin said “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” I keep this in mind as riots break out throughout the country in response to police killings of brothers.  Maybe we should ask not why they continue to happen though nothing changes, but why they don’t happen more often? The differential fatality rates of Covid 19 among racial groups has laid bare the results of racism in the health care system. The underlying racial (yeah I know there are other ways of looking at this) economic and social inequality is staring us in the face. When you add the stress of police brutality and killings, the “Karens” who try to use the inherent racism in the system to get their way, and the obvious different treatment of white and black protestors, is it any wonder that black communities explode like raisins in the sun? 

I have read many of the impassioned pleas from parents of black children with sorrow in my heart. Every black person killed by police was somebody’s child. Many were somebody’s loved one or parent. We all have given “the talk” to our children, not the one about the birds and the bees, but the one about what to do if you are stopped by police. We also realize that this is not protection against the wrong policeman at the wrong time in the wrong place. We do it not because we think it will keep them safe, but because we think it’s all we can do and we must do something. If nothing else moves you I beg you to see the problem as a parent. There is no excuse you will accept for a policeman killing your child. 

When will it stop? Not until whites stop ignoring the racism in our society and do something about it. Oh, people of color have things to do too, we must keep reminding you of the need to do it whether we are in elected office, on the streets, or in the ears and eyes of those in power. However, given the white dominated power structure and what will be our minority status in that power structure, white folks will determine how it plays out. In short, white people must end racism. Right now that couldn’t seem further away. We have a white supremacist would-be dictator in the White House, put there by racists and those willing to tolerate or even ignore his racism, his ignorance (of basic science, the Constitution, the law and the American system of government,) his corruption, his childish behavior, and his narcissism. His reign too shall pass whether in November or four years from now and we will still be stuck with the problem of racism. There will always be  sizeable numbers of people who consciously or subconsciously believe in white supremacy. There will always be people who do not realize that they benefit from racism and think themselves non-racist.

 Whites must realize that racism not only limits people of color, it does not protect white folk as they think it does. We have seen that many white people (certainly not all) are more likely to do things out of self interest, not ethics or altruism. Trump rode into power on the backs of whites who feel that the “system” is more concerned with people of color than it is with them. The protections accorded racist white policemen are because too many whites feel that such behavior keeps them safe. Racism will end not when whites realize white superiority is a myth (many never will), but when they realize that it is in their self interest to do so. It is not cynicism to say so. Yes, during that golden age of the civil rights movement enough whites and people in power realized that segregation and second class citizenship was wrong, but if you look at the long history of America you understand that this was an aberration. Racism never went away. There were enough people who believed in the tenets of racism to limit how much progress was actually made.

We have both the necessity and the opportunity to do it again. I am calling for a new civil rights movement that does not let the American conscience ignore the problems of racism any longer and beats back the forces of racism. I am calling for frequent peaceful demonstrations, letting politicians know that they will not get our vote unless they are anti-racists (i.e. working against racism not just claiming they aren’t racists,) and the calling out of racist acts no matter how small and accepted. BLACK LIVES MATTER. We must make sure everyone believes they do.

 

I have read many of the tributes marking David Driskell’s death and they rightfully mention his enormous achievements.  However as one who met him I just wanted to remind folks that he was a wonderful man too. Over the course of my career I have had dinner with many of the the celebrity African Americans who came to my campus to speak. I just saw it as part of the job. Some impressed, some did not. One I will always remember was an unofficial private dinner arranged through an art historian colleague who was a great friend of David Driskell. She, my wife and I had dinner at his Maine summer home and studio with him and his wife. As a young man he had come to the Skowhegan art colony in Maine, liked the state so much that he became a part time Maine resident. He was the most sociable of people. We had a delightful, wide ranging conversation about life, academia, art and so many other things. His wife and mine hit it off so well that Mrs. Driskell would afterwards call my wife to go on shopping expeditions or just to talk. He regaled us with tales about how there were so few African Americans in Maine in his early days there, that turnpike toll-keepers many miles away could direct visitors to his house. As we talked it became clear how different our paths to academia had been. I had ridden an early wave of predominantly white institutions seeking to broaden their diversity by inviting African Americans into their parlors. He had come up in an era of strict segregation in which gaining a quality education and later academic employment was a much harder battle. He had moved around the HBCU circuit fighting for “Negro” art to become accepted by the white art world. Now of course it is recognized as part of the American art canvass. He was only about 20 years my elder so this massive shift had occurred just yesterday as historical time goes. As a pioneer he had gotten to know many of the African American artists of the 40’s 50’s and later, who were like him struggling to secure respect and recognition for their art. He had formed a strong personal bond between him and those I knew only from their work and the scholarship (including much of his own) devoted to them. At one point in our conversation he invited me out to his studio to show me something that illustrated a point we had been discussing. As he sifted through some completed canvases propped haphazardly in a corner, one struck my eye. When I mentioned it to him he stopped to pull it out of pile and said “that’s just something Jake gave to me.” “Jake” was Jacob Lawrence and the piece was an unknown Lawrence painting that any museum would give its eye teeth to have. I hope it eventually made its way into some collection or exhibit, but to David it was just part of the things picked up along the way.

I have always seen myself as incredibly lucky. Oh I worked hard and diligently, but that evening it came into focus how much harder it had been for David to achieve what he did. He was unpretentious about it; just shrugging it off as what you had to do in those days. To me it just magnifies his achievements and shows how special he was. Rest in peace David. You created generations of scholars, inspired dozens of artists, and made many, many friends along the way.