AIRPLANE THOUGHTS EN ROUTE TO THE SCENE OF A CRIME, 5 DECEMBER 2014 “The white policeman … finds himself at the very center of the revolution now occurring in the world. He is not prepared for it — naturally, nobody is — and, what is possibly much more to the point, he is exposed, as few white people are, to the anguish of the black people around him … ” —James Baldwin Baldwin is in the air these days, this incredible voice from the recent past which is all too present with us this hard, hard American year. When things are this rough, we go to the top shelf of the medicine cabinet of human wisdom, and reach for the strong stuff. Baldwin’s voice is one of the precious few that feels adequate to this moment. When I confront the quote above I think “Can’t you just let us rest for a moment? Must we challenge our own tired, flinty little hearts to embrace everyone on both sides of this raging, accusatory conflagration? Please, Mr. Baldwin, this is a lot to ask.” And then I read it through again, and again, and I understand that he is speaking for my heart better than I can. Yesterday I turned also to Sam Cooke. ”It’s been a long, long time comin’, but I know, I know, a change is gonna come.” Thanks to Joe Henry for sharing that song yesterday, along with his brief and heartbreaking comment: “We sing it loudest when it is hardest to believe.” And here’s another voice that leaps to mind: Aeschylus. “Even in our sleep, pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” I first encountered that quote in the text of a speech the soon-to-be-martyred Bobby Kennedy gave in a black church in Indianapolis on the 4th of April, 1968, on the terrible occasion of Doctor King’s assassination. Cities burned, then as now. Kennedy’s police detail didn’t want to go with him. He went anyway. Cities burned, but Kennedy was a part of whatever grace it was that helped to spare Indianapolis. And because I can hear some of you out there sharpening the knives of your judgement, I can hear you saying ”Martin Luther King was a moral genius, Michael Brown and Eric Garner were criminals!” Would you, please, I say this in love, PLEASE pause to consider that Michael Brown didn’t, in the end, live long enough to be arrested and tried? Also, would you please consider this, from the Talmud: “He who saves one life has saved an entire world.” And then turn that around: he who destroys one life has destroyed an entire world. Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and, in my city, Dontre Hamilton and Laylah Petersen (and ten other children under thirteen who have been shot this year)… their lives were lives. Their lives matter. And if we feel a common pride in having harpooned a comet, or having unraveled the language of DNA, or having brought into the universe Georgia O’Keefe and John Coltrane and all the greats, and cures for cancer and the eradication of polio (and I think we ought to feel just that) then we must feel a common shame at having destroyed these particular lives. And at having scarred the lives of their families, and their communities, and the lives of their killers. Black lives matter. Again, I immediately hear the gritting of teeth and the retort “ALL lives matter.” Of course they do. But if this is your reaction, again, I implore you, I entreat you, to turn your attention away from your own irritation or indignation. Just, please, please listen for a moment more. The phrase is not “Black lives matter more.” And it’s not “All white people act like black lives don’t matter”, and it’s certainly not “White people are terrible.” The phrase is: Black lives matter. Instead of immediately deciding that this phrase is about you and your reaction to it, can you just … create a little space, a little open space in your heart, and consider WHY someone might say that? Is it possible, please, please: is it possible that he, or she (let’s just pick he, let’s make it particular to one individual voice) it is possible that he has said it because he genuinely feels that black lives do not matter? And is it possible, is it possible, that he feels this way based on his experiences? And that those experiences are real to him, and that his feelings about those experiences arise from a capacity for true understanding, and from a need, which he shares with you and with every precious life under the sun, to make sense of his experiences? If you have created this space, if you’re really listening, let’s hear it again, OK? Thank you, so much. Here we go. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. It seems to me that to be human in this moment is a matter of ferocious responsibility. I’m pulling for us all. PS I’m talking but I am listening too, hard as I can. I am listening. If you’d like to listen with me, perhaps we could start with Baldwin, and Aeschylus, and Cooke, and move from there to some strong present-day voices: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Shirley Sherrod, Cornell West, Kiese Laymon, Fania Davis, Tavis Smiley, Jamilah Lemieux. Cory Booker. Barack Obama. (Yes, him.) Eric Holder. Michelle Obama. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Chris Rock. Meshell Ndegeocello. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. And perhaps, our friends, and, perhaps, some strangers with whom we disagree.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 17:42:00 +0000
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