Impasse

Time for a little honesty. For weeks now I have been thinking that I need to address the social unrest of the summer directly through these pages. I haven’t until now because frankly I am struggling with a sense of despair that comes in waves. I first have to say that due to the fact that I taught at Prairie View A&M University for the prior six years, my reaction to yet another and another and another senseless killing of a Black person mirrors to a degree the reaction that I know many of my PVAMU students would have to those events. This is in no way to say that I will ever be inside of their experiences, it is simply to say that I can’t help but view these events through their lens as expressed through their own voices. Of course there is deep despair there, but the moment the “White Outrage” sets in what often bubbles up to the surface is “Give me a break.” As in, “Oh, NOW you are outraged?! Really??!!” And it isn’t because they don’t appreciate being seen, it’s just more than a little irritating when these things have been going on since practically the beginning of time… o.k., at least from the first inklings of Western patriarchal culture. And more importantly because these are still quite literally everyday events in their lives. Every day, all day.

I hope that us Whites finally get it this time. I’m not convinced that we will. Outrage has a tendency to run its course pretty quickly. Blacks know this. They’ve seen it all before. I remember once being surprised about the nonchalance of my students to this event or that. Take for instance the election of Donald Trump. I figured they would be mortified. But in fact what they were was generally indifferent. Don’t blame them. They have a legitimate reason to be so. History has told them that it really doesn’t matter who the President is. It is all the same to them. It had hardly even mattered that there had been a Black president, because systemic racism and implicit bias were still their everyday reality and they still had to fear for their lives. This isn’t to discount the historical significance of a Black breaking through the presidential boundary or of Obama’s legacy. Yet it is a legitimate question to ask if there has ever really been significant change on the racial front in this country. Slavery simply changes forms from physical to legal to mental to emotional, from possession to exclusion to incarceration, always becoming more sophisticated in the move from apparent and external to hidden and internal. 

So I wrestle with all of this, wondering what on earth I can really say. I get extraordinarily angry every time I see a Confederate flag. Really??! I live in Vermont. I live in rural Vermont, that is.  I have for some time now been considering starting a one woman organization entitled “Southern Woman Against the Misappropriation of the Confederate Flag.” I figure I’ll go around collecting flags: “Excuse me, but as a Southerner, I take great offense to you flying the flag of my homeland, which I am quite certain that you know nothing about. If you want to fly that flag, then you are going to have to sign up for my one year (or however long it takes) course on Southern history. In the meantime, hand it over. I’ll give the flag back to you to burn once you realize what an ignorant asshole you are being.” You see…I am angry. 

The annual arrival of Vice President Mike Pence to upset our little haven on Lake Hortonia for Labor Day Weekend didn’t help my cause. Our first impulse was… where can we get a flag???!!! Of course we weren’t talking about a Confederate flag. We were instantly in the market for rainbow and Black Lives Matter flags. Note to all: flags are very difficult to come by at the last minute in Vermont. We spent half an afternoon searching online and even asking to borrow from friends, all to no avail. It ruined our entire day. Pence’s presence ruined our entire weekend. If this sounds irrational to you, perhaps you don’t realize that Pence has a belief system and policy history that says that neither I or my wife should even exist, much less be married. Now how would you feel if somebody who believes that you shouldn’t exist and has used his political power to eradicate your existence showed up in your backyard? For me, beyond flag waving, I wanted to paddle my kayak over to his boat and chew him out upside down and sideways before telling him that he is no more welcome in my world than I am in his. Take that, asshole. You see… I am angry.

But I didn’t. I don’t generally do any of these things that flare up out of my anger. The thing is, I really don’t want to be angry. I don’t want to feel hopeless. I don’t want to be disgusted with humanity. I don’t want to get tense when confronted with viewpoints that I find reprehensible. I don’t want to be judgmental. I don’t want to hate. I don’t want my day to be ruined every time I see you or your flag. I especially don’t want to live in the world that “othering” creates. No thank you. I don’t want to accidentally become “my enemy” in an effort to overcome “my enemy”. More than anything these days, I want no part of it. 

Yet the battle lines have been drawn. Seems the only thing left to do is to decide whether you believe this or that, and whether you want to live in this country or that. We have been here before as a country, not to mention throughout the history of humanity. For each side, always, it is unthinkable to go the route of the other. For me, even as a Southerner, I can in no way fathom the world that would have ensued if the South had won the Civil War. Of course if that had happened we would have ended up with two separate countries, and I would like to think that my family never would have immigrated from the north (the remaining United States) down to Houston (the Confederacy). Thankfully the South didn’t win, but has anything really changed? Just about anyone I talk to these days- on both sides of the proverbial aisle- feels that we are headed for another civil war. And it is even harder now because the divide is no longer territorial. It’s everywhere… even here in one of the most progressive states in the Union. 

So now what? Vote. Yes, for sure. But also realize that no matter who wins we will remain very much divided. The real question that we need to be asking ourselves is how do we heal the divide? It starts within. It starts by meeting our anger with love. This is hard work. The hardest. While I deeply respect fellow tiger Michelle Obama, I have to admit that I have a hard time swallowing her advice that “when they go low, we go high.” That just doesn’t seem to be working. But here is what I do know. If I confronted the Confederate flag wavers or Mike Pence or anybody else who sees things entirely different than I do with anger, it wouldn’t help one iota. In fact, all that does is entrench both sides in our own perspectives, our own fears, our own suffering… in short in everything that caused the divide in the first place. 

And yet, I know that somehow we must participate in bringing about the world that we envision. We must stand into and live into our higher potential if we hope to get there. But let’s keep this real. I am angry. Remember? When my anger is seething beneath the surface, what I am doing these days is noticing it. I acknowledge it. I witness it. In doing so, what comes into my awareness is that I do not really want to feel this way about humanity or about life. It’s painful to stay stuck in a place that is much less than Who We Really Are. After my tirade plays itself out in my head, I then ask myself how I could show up differently. I am a fighter, after all. I believe in fighting for our evolution and for the better world that we are capable of and that we deserve as Divine beings. 

But if all of our fighting just results in more fighting, then what? This is when I remember that there is a better way to fight. In fact, the only effective way to fight is not to fight at all. This is the ultimate goal of martial arts training, as represented by the high arts such as Tai Chi. Much more than non-violence, the secret to this higher wisdom is non-resistance. The best way to defend ourselves is to not defend ourselves at all. I know that sounds crazy. But the truth is that when we don’t give a punch a hard place to land, the punch can’t land. As a result, the puncher ends up throwing him or herself to the ground under the thrust of their own attack. The attack lands in its proper place… upon the attacker. Upon reflection of such a turn of events, the attacker must come to the proper conclusion: “I am only hurting myself.” 

This is in no way to suggest that this is easy. That is why they call it mastery. And as I’ve said before, we are a long way from mastery as a species. It is infinitely harder to apply to a collective situation. It is extraordinarily difficult when people are losing their lives to the people in power. I am not here to suggest that I have some magical or easy answer. I don’t. All I know is that somehow we each have to at least start to come to the realization that when we judge, hate, slight, oppress, attack, slander, exclude, or in any way diminish an “other” as if they were anything less than God, we are only hurting ourselves. Keep it up and we may well witness the Fall of Rome. Then again, the old story has to die in order for a new one to be born. Here’s hoping that our next story recognizes the Divine in each and every human being, in each and every species, and indeed in all things in existence or not.