Understanding & Hope in the wake of El Paso and Dayton Shootings

This has been a hard week to choose the words, links, articles to share for a blog. I imagine so many of us are feeling overwhelmed by the coverage of the loss, the disbelief, and anger—not to mention feeling all those things. I don’t want to add to that. 

But I don’t want to be silent either. So, I’m dedicating this week’s brief to the issue of white supremacy, which has been on my mind anyway since, with the help of friends, I’ve already begun slipping copies of Reaper Moon, my novel meant to be a counter to white supremacy and white nationalism, into free lending libraries across the country. We hope to have one thousand free copies out there in this fashion over the next few months. It will be available on all online retailers the first week of September (this year). 

There is so much hurt out there this week. As a counter, I really wanted to be thorough and lean into the spiritual in this post. I’ll share examples of understanding and hope that have provided me some solace. 

First: Understanding. From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who knew firsthand about facing down race supremacists and how they emerge from an ecosystem of hurt and hate—a collective failure on the part of society to love. Bonhoeffer writes in Letters, Papers from Prison that the individual “supremacist” (or in his words “fool”) substitutes slogans for critical thinking while being exploited himself:  

“The fact that the fool is often stubborn must not mislead us into thinking that he is independent. One feels that when talking to him, one is dealing with slogans, catchwords and the like, which have taken hold of him. He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very nature is being misused and exploited. Having thus become a passive instrument, the fool will be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil . . . reasoning is no use; facts that contradict prejudices can simply be disbelieved.” 

(I’m struck here by the themes of blindness—raised so often by Daniel Hill[1] in his anti-racism work—as well as this notion of alternative facts, a phenomenon from the past reminding us that this work is cyclical and, likely, never completed but rather constant). 

Secondly: Hope, from Christain Picciolini. Picciolini puts these concepts of transformation, reconciliation, and redemption into practice. He is a former white supremacist who works to get people OUT of the movement. This interview[2] with him is fascinating for its parallels with what Bonhoeffer wrote 75 years ago. When asked what sways people to leave these movements, Picciolini says that it is: 

“Certainly not facts. It’s very emotional. I try to take [white supremacists & neo nazis] through an emotional journey where they come to the conclusion that they’ve changed, and it’s not me telling them that they’ve changed. What I’ve found least effective is me telling them that they’re wrong, or me telling them that they need to think a certain way. Typically these people are pretty idealistic, although they’re lost, typically pretty bruised emotionally, and they have very low self-esteem . . . folks in these movements, they have their own set of facts. Two plus two equals five, so you can’t argue that two plus two equals four, even though we know that that’s the case. You have to take them through situations where they challenge themselves . . . it’s not an easy process; it’s a very, very long process.” 

Picciolini is very much against using the term “lone wolf.” He emphasizes that we need to see these people in their context (if we don’t understand someone, it’s because we don’t understand their context). He points out how supremacists are caught up in a movement they turned to as a result of loneliness and alienation. What he emphasizes is that for many supremacists, there is trauma, hurt, and deep self-hate in their stories that led them down this destructive path. They lacked positive communities in their past and must be steered towards them in the present and future. Picciolini’s approach truly sees the human even in folks who struggle to see it in others. It’s a deeply spiritual path and really, probably the best antidote to hate. As Dorothy Day once said, “Love and more love is the only solution.”  

And while it also might be controversial to say, I believe all these approaches, Bonhoeffer’s, Picciolini’s, Day’s require a certain amount of personal engagement, personal effort, and sacrifice even when it’s with people and ideas we find offensive. It is sort of the burden we’re left with to advocate for change. While I’m always one to encourage advocates to step back into the embrace of community, seeking spaces where we can recharge, I’m also struck at how this continuing engagement is the opposite of the disengagement and implied exclusion driving in the demarcation of “safe spaces” on places like college campuses—exactly the places where young people should be learning about the variety of perspectives in the world. . .even if only to fight them. While I believe we do need these spaces of safety, I don’t know if retreating from the conflict of the world in a permanent fashion will make it any “safer” for those who don’t have the privilege to retreat. 

Unfortunately, if there is one thing I’m learning, the price of fighting hate, racism, injustice is to engage it. That takes energy and engaging can leave us bruised. But if love is to be our antidote, we must remember the first ingredient of love is paying attention.[3] As Bonhoeffer, Picciolini, and Day show, the power of their approach comes from close examination and personal encounters with injustice, with flawed social structures, and with people spouting deplorable ideologies. To dismantle these things, we have to understand them. Not fair. Not easy. Not something we can do without self care and occasional retreats, but that is indeed the nature of the work. 

Be well. Be Blessed. Take care of yourselves and continue to do good work.

__________________________

[1] https://pastordanielhill.com/

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/conversation-christian-picciolini/595543/

[3] Thich Nhat Hanh

Allies Stand in the Gap

Racism is alive and well in the United States. Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise.

One of this week’s news story is a sober reminder of why dismantling racism remains a priority, even in 2019.

From the May 29th edition of the Washington Post:

“Franklin and Jessica Richardson had planned for a relaxing Memorial Day weekend. They would spend Sunday picnicking on the sandy shores of Oktibbeha County Lake, a popular fishing destination on the outskirts of Starkville, Miss . . . Instead, within minutes of their arrival, the young black couple were facing down a white campground manager who pulled out a gun and told them to leave . . . The experience was made all the more harrowing — and somewhat ironic — by the fact that Franklin, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, had recently returned from a nine-month deployment in the Middle East, “It’s kind of crazy,” [Franklin Richardson said] “You go over there and don’t have a gun pointed at you, and you come back home and the first thing that happens is you have a gun pointed at you.”[1]

This is a raw example of blatant racism. It is illustrative of the constant threat violence our black brothers and sisters must always be vigilant for. The comparison to the US as being more dangerous than a war zone for African Americans a poignant and powerful.

It is also a challenge to those of us who consider ourselves allies. Caught in such a situation, there is little moral obligation upon our black brothers and sisters but to preserve their lives and flee. But what of the rest of us? For me, as despicable and repulsive as I find that white woman, as evil as I find her words, I can’t help but feel my knee-jerk instinct to shun her, to label her, to alienate her as a “racist” is only a marginal improvement over her own hate.

Do I answer hate with my own hate? Or something different? What actually would engender change?

In keeping with examples from activists such as Deeyah Khan,[2] I wonder if I might be called to swallow my indignation and at least try to engage first. Ask this woman she holds such views, why she might do such a thing. Instead of shunning her and immediately walking away, are those of us with privilege are we called to engage? To plant a seed of change?

I’d venture an emphatic YES.

It’s the harder choice, certainly. I don’t want to talk to this cruel and ignorant woman. I would never require such of my friends of color. They would be staring down the barrel of a gun. But for those of us don't have the gun pointed at us, I feel our principles require us to engage, to inquire, to speak up, on behalf of those who do. Even if it means engaging with a woman who, on the surface, comes off as morally repugnant. If I don’t, then all my “Black Lives Matter,” T-Shirts and bracelets really are just empty, trendy, virtue signaling.

And maybe I’m not going to run into this exact woman, but I think I’m safe in saying most of us have some neighbor, some relative who, although they might not chase our black friends off with a loaded gun, may harbor some archaic notions on race. I’m not saying we have to make it our life’s mission to change their minds, but I think love and commitment to justice, manifests in the difficult conversations where we confront these attitudes in whatever way will allow the most productive conversation. Maybe that is with righteous indignation (but probably not). More likely, its through humble inquiry, which takes mountains of restraint and patience. The cost to us is might be some energy, some time, and definitely some discomfort.

Where as to people of color like the Richardson’s, the cost could have been their lives.

The work continues.

____________________________________________

[1] A black couple were having a picnic. Then a white campground manager pulled out her gun.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeyah_Khan

Deeyah Khan: SHERO for our time. A message of engagement, resistance, and LOVE for Valentines Day.

When I was working for CARE in the early 2000s our CEO Dr. Helene Gayle presented us with a revised mission. Yes, we at CARE would still be a poverty fighting organization but Dr. Gayle introduced a new focus for how we would do this: an emphasis on empowering women and girls.

I was sold on day one. My own experience living and working in depressed neighborhoods in the US as well as East Africa aligned with the same facts that had influenced Dr. Gayle’s vision. Poverty, violence, illness, lack of opportunities, lack of rights, and legal protections disproportionately affect women and girls—often women and girls of color, too. Trying to address poverty while ignoring the additional barriers and vulnerabilities that half the world’s population experience because of their gender is futile.

While traveling in my career to 34 countries, I have witnessed some the abuse and indignities women suffer—my country of the US is no exception. Often the deeply entrenched chauvinism and patriarchy that benefits men like me is at the root of this. I’ve also witnessed, despite these odds, how it is frequently women who are the sheros of their families and communities. Research has shown that female caregivers are consistently more dependable stewards of social support funds than their male counterparts who are, sadly, more likely to drink or gamble money—earned and donated—away.

But at CARE, as we worked to promote and empower women, I frequently was worried that we were still only addressing half the problem. I wondered how we could make lasting change for women if we didn’t engage the men in their societies. Women’s and men’s self-concepts needed to evolve. If we didn’t do something about the deeply entrenched chauvinism and patriarchy that warps the thinking of boys so that they grow up into men who think they are entitled, who think they are better, than their female counterparts would the future be any different?

Men are half the problem and (conversely) half the solution. We need different roles to offer them, different models of masculinity.

By now the term “toxic masculinity” has entered the mainstream. In recent years I’ve been somewhat encouraged by the increasing number of books, research, and documentary films examining this phenomenon. Toxic masculinity has been a valuable way to encapsulate the beliefs and practices that men feel obliged to follow, even if these behaviors only end up being pernicious to them and those around them. The Netflix documentary, The Mask You Live In[1] is one of my favorite summaries of the challenges facing boys and young men today who are trying to chart a different course. It is also encouraging to see so many fathers, mentors, and coaches who are teaching their sons that being a man is not measured by physical strength, sexual conquest, or material wealth, but rather by our capacity to love and be loved.

Another important angle in all of this is how toxic masculinity is also in a mutually reinforcing cycle with racism and white supremacy as many commentators have pointed out.[2]

After years of asking myself, “What does it mean to be a good man?” or “What makes a good man?” I realized my own question was all wrong and reflected my own ingrained biases. I realized that the virtues I was seeking out to apply to “good men” don’t belong to only men, women, or nongendered individuals. They belong to everyone. The question is not, what makes a good man/woman. The question should be: What makes a good person? A good human.

Period.

But we have such a long way to go. Recently, after watching a smattering of commercials during a break in an NFL game (I’ve boycotted watching actual NFL games so far this year) I was reminded just how prevalent motifs of toxic masculinity are. Aside from football itself,[3] the commercials between brain-jarring plays included fast food ads with slovenly dopey men enslaved to their appetites for bacon cheeseburgers, breathless previews for pay-per-view boxing matches, and one car ad where a man is so busy playing computer games on a VR headset he doesn’t even notice his girlfriend moving out of their apartment until she slams the door and he takes off the headset to see all the furniture gone.

Enter Deeyah Khan, a shero for our time. She is a documentary film maker with a courageous approach to the issues of hate, violence, religious extremism, and white supremacy. Tired of avoiding it, avoiding the men who wanted to exterminate her and people like her, Khan decided to engage them through her art, setting out to interview them on camera. The results are two films, one focused on white supremacists and the other of Muslim extremists: White Right: Meeting the Enemy and Jihad: A Story of the Others. Both are available on Netflix.

I don’t have enough words to describe Khan’s courage to do this, as she was often threatened with violence from the men she encountered, either because she was a woman of color, or because she was a Muslim woman who resisted subjugation. Here is the link to a powerful interview with her by Vox.[4]

Now even Khan herself says that she does not recommend this approach for everyone. For members of targeted communities, doing what Khan did was risky, physically, emotionally, and psychically. Khan is the first person to say engagement, teaching others, trying to influence others, even win hearts, is something one should only engage in if they have the capacity to. It can be exhausting. So she (and I) definitely give a pass to members of oppressed communities who don’t want to spend their energy doing this type of work (especially when just BEING feels like an act of defiance). But Khan, for her part, was tired with non-engagement and in her own words she “just wanted to try something, different.”

There are parts of the interview I could only do a disservice to if I paraphrased further so I’m including Khan’s words verbatim below. Click the link in the footnotes for the full interview. It’s worth a read.

On how we can only drive out hate with love, Khan says we must:

“. . .not become hysterical, [the key is] not to dance to [extremists’] instructions, it’s to not behave how they want us to behave. They want us to become really afraid; they want us to become divided; they want us to join their ‘us and them’ thing. On a larger scale, I think we have to resist that. It’s an argument for celebrating and nurturing our diversity and nurturing our multicultural society, and our pluralism.”

Khan on what happened to one of the white supremacists (Ken) she interviewed a number of times:

“. . .he actually became friends with the pastor of a mostly black church who lived in his apartment complex. The pastor invited him and his fiancée to his church, and Ken basically stood in front of everyone there and said, “I used to be in the Klan, now I’m in a neo-Nazi organization, these are the views I hold ...”

And after he was done, people came up to him and hugged him and said, “Look, we detest what you stand for, but it takes a lot of courage for somebody like you to come in here and share what you have shared.”

That was the last straw for [Ken], where he realized that the people he hated so deeply are showing him nothing but kindness and compassion and an open heart, and are showing it to him even though he doesn’t deserve it. His whole ideology fell apart.

Mind. Blown.

Khan is definitely a shero for our time. I’m in awe. I don’t know if I have been living up to her example of courage, perseverance, radical love, and patient engagement, but I recognize two really valuable lessons here:

Lesson One: Khan’s is an example I want to emulate. I will fall short, but I’ll try.

Lesson Two: Love Wins.

[1] http://therepresentationproject.org/film/the-mask-you-live-in-film/

[2] https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/una-mullaly-toxic-masculinity-the-common-thread-in-american-hate-1.3190602

[3] American Football itself, especially the NFL, could be its own case study in toxic masculinity as well as institutional and interpersonal racism. It’s no wonder that the commercials align so closely with this, the irony being, that the men in the commercials—the obese an dreaming of cheeseburgers and the man addicted to videogames—are complicit in their own loser-dom, which (paradoxically) doesn’t seem to phase the men watching.

[4] https://www.vox.com/world/2019/1/14/18151799/extremism-white-supremacy-jihadism-deeyah-khan