Equity – Environment – Economic Justice

I love long German words and I first saw this one in a New Yorker article and in an op-ed in the Washington Post. It means “the process of coming to terms with the past”. In other words, there are no statues of Nazis in Germany. They have done the hard work of truthfully evaluating their history.

There is a classic monologue in the opening episode of The Newsroom where Will McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels, responds to the question of why America is the greatest country in the world. This rant explains the fundamental difference between the right and the left. Conservatives believe the myth of America’s star-spangled greatness and are OK with the status quo. Liberals believe that America still needs to live up to its ideals and want to bend the arc of history towards justice.

Our country is in the middle of a debate about critical race theory. The opponents of CRT have no problem suppressing honest teaching about slavery and yet moan about statues of Confederate soldiers being removed. In my opinion, that is hypocritical race theory or “klansplaining”. To become a more perfect union, our country needs to take a hard look at our original sin of racism, as well as the oppression of Native Americans as our country expanded, and the exploitation of immigrant labor as our country was built. Yes, we need to teach about the Founding Fathers, the American experiment, and our moments of greatness. But Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States also needs to be in the classroom.

I fear that the culture war could easily become a civil war. But to move beyond our current situation, America needs a bit of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung. I miss the days when we could all agree that Nazis are bad.

I’ve never been a fan of the National Anthem. At a ball game, I politely stand and remove my hat and try not to roll my eyes. But my dislike of it has intensified since the Former Guy turned it into a wedge issue. And I support the athletes who kneel in protest because the rights of people take precedence over objects and symbols.

But my reasons for replacing it are mostly musical:

1. A national song should be able to be sung by everyone and the Star-Spangled Banner is not suitable for unison singing. There is not one key that all voice ranges can sing it in, Play it in B flat and low voices complain that it is too high; play it in A flat and it is too low for high voices (although more folks will complain about notes that are too high than notes that are too low).
2. Frankly, it’s not a good marriage of words and music. Trained singers struggle with it and performers take too much artistic license when they sing it. For every Whitney Houston, there is a Roseanne Barr.
3. It’s not by an American composer. It is the British drinking song of the Anacreon Society. “And there, with good Fellows, we’ll learn to intwine The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine”.
4. There are other songs that are more singable and better expressions of love of country.

Congress designated “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the National Anthem in 1931. Musical experts lobbied for “America the Beautiful” without success. While “The Star-Spangled Banner” commemorates an obscure moment in American history, the subsequent verses of “America the Beautiful” provide a mini history of our country. It describes both the natural beauty of America and honors its people.

Yesterday, this video with some new verses came across my news feed. Repeal and replace “The Star-Spangled Banner” … this should be the new national anthem. ❤️

Here are the additional verses by Jesse Palidofsky and John Morris:

O beautiful thy immigrants
Who hail from every land
Their hope and heart and diligence
Like gifts from God’s own hand
America! America!
Thy grace shall yet remain
To greet the poor who reach thy shore
With open arms again

O beautiful O Mother Earth
All nestle at your breast
Just as we sing with love and pride
So all nations are blessed
America! America! 
Alone cannot abide
God give thee pause to mend thy flaws
With Truth thy only guide

O beautiful thy working folk
Built cities, tilled thy soil
Proud Africans in bloody chains
The wealth built from their toil
America! America!
God shed much grace on thee
So spread the love sent from above
From sea to shining sea
Ring sisterhood! Ring brotherhood!
From sea to shining sea“

One political slogan that harmed the Democratic Party during the last election year was Defund the Police. I understood was advocates of police reform were saying, that some of the money in police budgets should be redirected toward social workers and mental health workers. But some folks, urged on by Trump’s law and order rhetoric, interpreted the slogan as abolish the police.

I regularly have to remind myself the most cops are good cops and they have a difficult and dangerous job. In many cities, there has been an upswing in gun violence, partly due to the stresses of the pandemic, but also do to the sheer number of guns in circulation. And I understand the additional stress that law enforcement is under coupled with the hatred towards police.

“…you can truly grieve for every officer who has been lost in the line of duty in this country and still be troubled by cases of police overreach. Those two ideas are not mutually exclusive. You can have great regard for law enforcement and still want them to be held to high standards.” – Jon Stewart

http://www.thewrap.com/jon-stewart-fesses-up-to-one-factual-error-in-his-police-shootings-report-then-curses-out-fox-news-video/

I have a problem with the thin blue line flag. For starters, it’s a violation of the flag code, a modification of the flag almost as egregious as an American flag with Trump’s picture on it. Leave the Stars and Stripes alone! To me, it’s a symbolic middle finger and people who display it or have a decal of it on their car are saying that they are OK with police brutality and extrajudicial killings of people of color. Just look at the color scheme: black and blue, colors associated with bruises and injuries.

I also don’t like the use of tear gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets towards peaceful demonstrators. And it irks me that law enforcement treats right-wing domestic terrorists with kid gloves and that some officers support groups such as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters.

So I like to use the slogan Reimagine the Police when it comes to police reform. Most cops are good cops who protect and serve, but there are more than a few bad cops. And when a person is unnecessarily killed by the police, they are often not charged because they were following procedure. In essence, they are being trained to be bad cops.

So if you want me to Back the Blue, take a good look at how law enforcement is trained and hold them accountable because Black Lives Matter.

I just read an opinion column in the New York Times by David Brooks about lookism, the advantages that good-looking people have in our society. The people who are thin, have symmetrical facial features, nice teeth, etc. have a distinct advantage when it comes to success in life. And it tends to be a subconscious bias to prefer “beautiful” people.

As I explore diversity, equity, and inclusion, this is another ism to add to the list that includes sexism, racism, ageism, and ableism. I have an artistic temperament and find myself drawn to what society perceives as beautiful and need to remind myself that beauty is only skin deep and it is what’s in people’s hearts that counts.

But until I read the article, I did not realize that it is a problem. But it also reminded me of the importance of first impressions and how it is human nature to make judgments based on looks. But awareness of the problem is the first step at looking at people differently.

In the Republican response To President Biden’s speech, Senator Tim Scott made the statement that “America is not a racist country. “ Say what?!

Now Senator Scott is not one of the extreme members of his party. And his comment was greeted with inappropriate name calling in social media. My immediate reaction was a desire to see him debate an expert like Ibram X Kendi. But I’ve given his statement a little thought.

Racism has been called America’s original sin. We’ve had 245 years of slavery followed by a century of Jim Crow segregation. And since the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of the 1960s, the struggle has not been easy.

Not to mention how Native Americans were conquered and oppressed as our nation expanded. And the treatment of other groups of non-white immigrants.

Racism was a factor in the election of the Former Guy and Asian Americans have been being attacked as of late. There seems to be overt racism in law enforcement and a disproportionate number of black people in prison. In my opinion, the Black Lives Matter movement is justified.

On the other hand, not all Americans are racist. As a thought experiment, I wonder what the results would be if the entire country took the Harvard Implicit Association Test. Although there are plenty of racists and bigots, most people do not fall into that category.

Having grown up in a small town in the 1960s, I picked some racist attitudes from my family and community. It wasn’t until I moved into an urban environment and become exposed to a lot of different people that I realized my attitude was wrong, so I consider myself a recovering racist.

Our Founders owned slaves and wrote the three-fifths compromise into the Constitution. This mistake was later corrected by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and a century later by legislation during the civil rights era. So our laws are no longer inherently racist.

There is a philosophical difference between the left and the right in this country. Conservatives believe that there already is equality of opportunity (if a person works hard enough). Liberals believe that we still have not achieved our ideals.

So after giving Senator Scott’s statement a little thought, I have concluded that we are a country of recovering racists. America is not a racist country in theory. In practice, not so much.

At a conference session on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, I learned that we need to be allies of those on the autism spectrum.

Since I am physically clumsy, socially awkward, and have my share of personality quirks, I wondered if I was on the spectrum. So I took the Autism Spectrum Quotient test that was in Wired magazine. It was developed by Simon Baron-Cohen (yes, he is related to actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen) and learned that I was just under the threshold. So I followed through with this screening was evaluated. Although I have several of the features, I did not meet the diagnostic criteria.

However, I do feel I fit into a category that author John Elder Robison, who has written several books on his experience as someone on the spectrum, has described as proto-Aspergers. (Note: his books were written before Asperger’s syndrome was redefined in the DSM-V.) The following passage describes where I think I fit on the edge of the spectrum.

These are people with plenty of Asperger quirks but not too many disabilities. They’re different and eccentric, but most of them Blend into society a bit more smoothly than most of we full-blooded Aspergians do. There are quite a few proto-Aspergians out there — perhaps as much as five percent of the population. Lots of engineers, scientists, geeks, and common nerds are in this category … many are blessed with above-average intelligence, and most are pretty functional.

John Elder Robison, “Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian

People who are not on the autism spectrum are described by the term neurotypical. And the opposite of neurotypical is neurodiverse (or neurodivergent). In addition to the autism spectrum, those with ADHD, dyslexia, and various other different abilities are considered part of this community.

As you can see from the graphic above, neurodiversity covers a broad range of conditions, which are not necessarily disabilities but different ways that people are wired. So as allies, we need to both appreciate the gifts of the high-functioning members of the neurodiverse community as well as advocate for accommodations for those who need them.