Juneteenth: Celebrate the Moral Moment

I keep reading that most African American families have been celebrating Juneteenth all of their lives. I don’t know if that’s true. Dating back to 1866, Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Although I don’t know if it’s true that most African Americans have always celebrated, I’m ready for ALL American families to celebrate it now.

I had never heard of Juneteenth as a child. Sometime in the 1990s, Dad wrote a letter to all of his offspring when we were adults to tell us that he had been reflecting on our childhood. He had decided that the primary “race” we had grown up with was “Army brat,” not “African American.” It was a thought worth considering. Carl, Marcia, Keith, and I had all been born into the Army, and we lived that life almost until adulthood; I was 17 when Dad retired from the Army. And the Army absolutely has its culture, customs, institutions, expectations, and relationships, which are probably not quite what you would imagine unless you lived them. We were shaped by Army life. And because we lived our late childhood and teen lives in Hawaii, we gained other powerful influences that affect us to this day.

But I think Dad overstated. Because despite the potter’s wheel of the Army and the influence of Hawaii, we were always Black. And especially as Army brat teens in Hawaii, we celebrated our Blackness. We were active at Trinity Missionary Baptist Church,  the only predominantly Black  church on the island at the time. We had our house parties and our Young, Gifted, and Black variety shows. We planned with the Soul Society at Leilehua High School.

But I had never heard of Juneteenth. In my teen years the holiday was over 100 years old and had not reached my African American family. Black history was not absent from my schooling. Nearly every biographical report I ever wrote for school was about a Black man. But I only knew a few. I was aware of Crispus Attucks, who, as the precursor to too many 20^th century movies and television shows, was the first American to die in the nation’s fight for independence. I was fascinated by the Civil War and its immediate aftermath, but I only knew a few names and dates. I was enamored with Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, because I was taught about them. They were the safe Blacks. I eventually learned who Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass were. They were slightly more radical.

I learned erroneously that the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. In truth it was more symbolic than effective. And although Abraham Lincoln remains a (flawed) hero for me, I didn’t know until college that his stated aim was not to free slaves, but to preserve the Union. And I knew about General Lee’s surrender to General Grant at Appomattox Court House. But I never learned of General Gordon Granger’s visit to Galveston, Texas, 2 ½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation. By then the war was over, and the general had the honor of announcing the news to the farthest reaches of the nation in Galveston.

A year later, June 19^th 1866, Juneteenth was celebrated, and it has been continually celebrated in the nation since then. This year I learned that Franklin, Tennessee, has an annual Juneteenth celebration. Franklin, Tennessee, y’all! The Franklin mayor has issued the proclamation, and the town has released relevant videos all week. Because of the quarantine, the videos replace the usual gatherings with stories, histories, games, food, music, and door prizes organized by the African American Heritage Society. I have written in the past about my own experiences as a Black man visiting Franklin, so these events and actions encourage me.

The end of slavery is not a solely African American event. It’s an ALL American event. As my friend wrote on this occasion a year ago, Dr. Timothy Padgett, a white Evangelical historian, 

“That [slavery,]  this repulsive institution, was overthrown when all the financial and philosophical pressures of the day, not to mention a literal army, pushed in the other direction is a testament to the efforts of all those, famous and unknown, who prayed and hoped and wrote and spoke and bled and died for that day. If this liberation of 3.5 million human beings from inhuman degradation isn’t worth celebrating in the Land of Liberty and the church of Christ, then I don’t know what is.”

Emancipation Day, Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Liberation Day, Juneteenth is truly a celebration of African Americans’ freedom from slavery. But it is also freedom of white Americans from slavery. This day commemorates the pivotal moral moment in United States history. On that day we did not arrive as a moral nation. We still have not. But that day signified for all “who prayed and hoped and wrote and spoke and bled and died” a repentance, a turning point, which has been—and can continue to be—a seedbed for justice for an ethical society. Apathy continues. Active opposition continues. In newer and newer forms. But that day gives us hope. It’s time for us all to celebrate.

He “Did Not Comply with Simple Commands,” So…

Note: If you are interested in a simple action step, it's at the end.

Maybe you’ve seen the video or read the story. Travis Miller and his work partner, Kevin, didn’t die. They were the two black furniture delivery workers who were driving out of a gated community after making a delivery. They were in a delivery truck marked with the company name. They were wearing company uniforms. Did I mention that they were LEAVING the gated community? As they were about to exit through the gate, a car pulled up to prevent their exit. The white driver of the car later identified himself as David Stewart. He got out of his car and began asking questions, which Travis did not feel compelled to answer. “What are you doing here? Why are you in here? Where are you coming from?  All you have to do is just tell me where you’re going.”

In short time, another white man arrived to reinforce the interrogation. The second white man walked up to the truck and initiated this exchange:

Second White Man: Hey man, what’s going on?

Travis Miller: I’m trying to leave.

SM: Why?

TM: What do you mean?

SM: What were you in here for?

TM: None of your business

SM: Yeah it is. Of course it is. I live in here.

TM: Did I deliver to your house?

SM: You didn’t deliver anything… that I know of.

TM: Cause it’s none of your business, that’s why.

SM: I’m just asking why you’re in here.

TM: You’re asking questions. You don’t need to ask questions. All you need to do is have your buddy move his car so I can leave and go about my business.

SM: So did you make a wrong turn into the neighborhood?

TM: How do I make a wrong turn into a gated neighborhood? I have to have a gate code in order to get in, right? That’s common sense, right. So if I’m in here, I had a gate code, right?

SM: How did you get a gate code?

TM: That’s none of your business, yet again.

SM: It sure as hell is!

TM: It sure as hell isn’t.

SM: You’re in the wrong, dude.

TM: I’m not in the wrong. I don’t know who… What’s your name?

David Stewart: This is our street. This is a private street.

TM: Uh huh. Just so you know, more than you two guys live on this street. And you’re not the only ones with gate codes.

…

SM: You’re in the wrong, dude

TM: I’m in the wrong? Show me your badge, then.

And, of course these men in white skin believed they had already shown that badge. After about an hour, the man who received the delivery arrived. And wearing that same white skin badge, he had Travis and Kevin released.

Travis and Kevin were unnecessarily inconvenienced for an hour. They didn’t die, like Ahmaud Arbery. I am relieved that no one has invaded my social digital space with justification for the February killing of Arbery—the killing that most of us didn’t hear about until May. Regardless of political ideology, religious affiliation, race or ethnicity , those who have spoken within my hearing have spoken of disgust, sadness, and anger. And sympathy.

I have seen and heard the other responses out there. And I have given reaction. One white man prefaced his remarks with “Having served with Blacks, having Black friends, and living years rehabbing a house in an all-Black neighborhood,” before telling other commenters which Black YouTubers they should be watching to get a “balanced perspective” of the hunting and killing of a black man out jogging. But no-one in my actual circle has dared to say anything close to those sentiments.

Still my relief comes with not a small dose of surprise because this unanimity of perspective is far from what I’ve experienced in other incidents like this. Of note, this incident reminds me eerily of the killing of Trayvon Martin back in 2014. At that time all of my usual suspect friends felt a similar disgust, sadness, and anger when the story broke and again when the killer was acquitted. In addition, a number of usually quiet friends joined the usual suspects. But a disturbingly loud other contingent opted to give the benefit of doubt to the living adult killer rather than the dead teenaged victim. These were bright, kind people whom I respect.

While they might sympathize with Trayvon Martin’s family, they empathized with George Zimmerman. With the initial information we all had, they seemed to ask, “What would I do if I were George?” or “What must have been his circumstances that he would take a life?” At least with the killing of Ahmaud, we have seen some video. Eventually. And we can make out what happened in the blank spaces. We could do the same with the earlier case. But there is no video, and of the two people who know what happened, only the instigator is alive. Only the instigator ignored police instruction. All we know afterwards is a black boy who had committed no crime was killed by a man on a mission. And each of us can interpret that blank time as if we were looking at a Rorschach ink blot. We fill in with our assumptions.

But not this time. This time the killers reveal themselves as clichés. We can caricature the killers, Gregory and Travis McMichael, and call them Big Man and Bubba. With a shotgun and a pickup truck. Hunting down prey who allegedly “matched the description” and "did not comply with simple commands." No-one in my actual circle of friends, including virtual “friends” has tried to justify their actions or sympathize with their plight. In fact, many of my white friends are baffled that this could happen in the 21^st century.

I am not baffled. I am not surprised. And it’s not just Big Man and Bubba. It’s also not just rural Georgia and suburban Florida. And it’s not just some guy whose claim to authority is that he had been in proximity of Black folks. The assurance is so strong that in both of these fatal incidents the killers ignored the questioning or direct instructions of experienced dispatchers. The killers "knew" they had standing. It's in the air, and it’s in our systems. It is the hunch of white superiority, and you don’t have to openly profess it to somehow believe it. You don’t need a shotgun, a pickup truck, or a tiki torch to sense it.  I am trying out the term “unconscious whiteness.” I don’t think I stole that from anyone. But people more learned than me help explain it.

Dr. Jennifer Eberhard, author of Biased, and Dr. Jonathan Kahn, author of Race on the Brain, don’t seem to agree about which is more important, implicit bias or systemic racism. Dr. Eberhard insists that all of us are subject to biases that we aren’t even conscious of, although she admits the additional existence of systemic racism. Dr. Kahn thinks that too much attention to unconscious bias obscures the reality of systemic racism. Which of them is right? The killing of Ahmaud Arbery shouts the answer: It’s both! And add explicit bias to the contenders.

Big Man and Bubba saw a black man running and either believed he was up to no good or decided they could make a good case that he was up to no good. They and their erstwhile videographer, William “Roddie” Bryan, who has now also been arrested for felony murder, are so deluded in their thinking that the they believed releasing the video would exonerate them. That’s some entitled thinking. And it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. They were confident. They knew the system. They knew the people. And the system backed them for more than two months. And we all know that their confidence may still be rewarded down the road.

But there is a particular mindset revealed in Georgia and in Florida. And Travis and Kevin were subject to it in Oklahoma. It is the implicit or explicit belief that the neighborhoods where white people live are theirs to police. It doesn’t even matter if other people also live there. Trayvon Martin’s black daddy lived in the neighborhood where the boy was killed. To these white citizens, the right to defend does not end at their front porch or their property. In fact their rights don’t end with defense. They believe their whiteness deputizes them to follow a hunch and begin a hunt. And Georgia, Florida, and Oklahoma have encoded those extended rights with Stand Your Ground, Make My Day and “citizen’s arrest.” The laws might be written with limits; that doesn’t mean those limits will be enforced. The laws give license to any citizen to use lethal force in following a hunch. Did I say “any citizen”? We can pretend that these laws are meant to protect ANY citizen. But we know it’s not true. The incident that includes the murder of Breonna Taylor and the arrest of Kenneth Walker is just one example of the inequities. But that incident deserves its own discussion at another time.

My suspicion and my fear today  is that, although none of my white friends would go grab the shotgun to pursue Running Black Man or Walking Black Boy, many of them relate to the impulse.  Many of them understand the fear and the “right” and “obligation” to defend themselves and their families from a possible threat. Many would “understand” why two black men driving a marked delivery truck out of a gated community look threatening and should be questioned. I don’t know how many of my white friends feel deputized by their whiteness. But I am not surprised by the actions in these cases.

In neither of the fatal  cases was there a threat of violence until the killers instigated it. In fact, in neither of these incidents was there a witness to a crime—because in neither case was a crime committed by the victims. In both of these cases, the killers were the only ones armed. Neither victim was a threat in any way. They were simply perceived as such. Running. Walking. While Black.

So what can you do? I’ve walked around the answer to that question for years of talking about race. And I’ve hinted at one first step. For Dr. Taharee A. Jackson, it’s one step out of several. She’s right. But let’s start with at least this one. Jackson says,

One of the single greatest acts of racial justice that you, as a White person, could commit is to name your White identity and to claim your racialized experiences.

She explains:

One of the most pernicious aspects of racism and white identity is that they are meant to be invisible. As a White person, your White identity and the structures that maintain White racial dominance are not meant to be discussed, uncovered, identified, or questioned.

This is why you are not even named as White in books. You are so often the main characters that we just assume you are unless otherwise indicated.

I hint at this in my TEDx Talk, What I Am Learning from My White Grandchildren. The point is:  Whiteness has substance. And all of these perpetrators know it. And they use that substance as a badge of authority. But the substance of whiteness is not legitimately authoritative. It’s worth pondering why so many think it is.

Sacrificing Everything. Without Even Trying.

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Taya Kyle, widow of “American Sniper,” Chris Kyle, delivered a solid, sane, and mostly logical critique of the recent Nike ad featuring NFL ex-quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Her critique is right on the money (accidental pun claimed). To the point: Kaepernick, the devout Christian, has not sacrificed “everything.” He has sacrificed, but the loss is nowhere close to “everything.”

She elaborates, saying that men like Pat Tilman, the devout atheist who left the NFL to enlist in the armed forces and then was killed (by “friendly” fire), sacrificed everything. She mentions other “warriors” who have lost their lives because of what they believe in.

She likens Kaepernick’s “sacrifice” of his career to her own career “sacrifice” in order to stay home with her children. I find it an awkward comparison, but her point is still made.

The argument is solid and important. Nike has perhaps overplayed by using the word “everything.” By so doing they have commercialized, sanitized, and sensationalized a legitimate cause.

But it would be absolutely wrong to let Nike’s marketing decision and Taya Kyle’s critique distract from that legitimate cause. We cannot forget that cause. We cannot forget that Kaepernick’s protest is also about lost lives. Taya Kyle ignores those lives.

A black boy with a toy is shot in the park. A black man is shot for open-carrying in an open-carry state. A black man is shot in the back. A black teen is shot in the back. A black man is killed by a policewoman invading the teen’s apartment. A black school-worker is shot while co-operating with the police during a routine traffic stop. A black woman mysteriously dies in police custody.

These people did not actively “sacrifice everything.” They did not calculate the risk and select sacrifice, like Kaepernick did, like Tilman did, and like so many others have done. They did not have the chance. No, they were simply going about their lives being black. And their lives were taken. They did lose EVERYTHING. For no reason. That is what the protest is about.

Raising White Kids: A Reflection

“By the way, what color are [the children]?

“White.” She sounded startled. “Does it matter?”

“Yes, he said. “I have to know what color to get the doll.”

One of my favorite holiday traditions is to read aloud short stories from Katherine Paterson’s (Bridge to Terabithia, Jacob Have I Loved, The Great Gilly Hopkins) family Christmas book, Angels & Other Strangers (HarperCollins, 2006). The story “Maggie’s Gift” features Mr. McGee whose loneliness overcomes his crankiness when he agrees to take in an eight-year-old girl and her five-year-old brother, who have to vacate their children’s home on Christmas Eve.

I have read the story aloud on many occasions, most commonly to an audience of middle schoolers who I persuade to pretend they are first and second graders. This past holiday season my audience was five of my white grandchildren, including a real live first grader and second grader, along with a kindergartener, fourth grader and three-year-old. This time when I reached the passage quoted above, I had to pause the reading.

I blame Jennifer Harvey, whose new book, Raising White Kids:Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America (Abingdon, 2018), was looming in my mind. Harvey encourages parents of white children to take advantage of these moments to promote what she calls “race consciousness.” Harvey, a Drake University professor and mother of two white children, outlines in her book a rationale and process for promoting race consciousness in white children. For her, race conscious parenting involves “noticing and naming race early and often.”

I paused the holiday reading to explain to my white grandchildren, “When this story was written, most people believed that white people should have only white baby dolls and black people or brown people should have black or brown dolls.” I was secretly amused that I needed to explain this particular distinction between now and then.

Ten-year-old- Chelsea picked up the narrative. “Yeah, in those days black people and white people weren’t allowed to be together. Like if you were white and you wanted to marry someone who was black, you couldn’t.” She walked us through all the forbidden racial marriage scenarios she could think of. Then she said, “But Martin Luther King came, and he changed all that.”

Seven-year-old Elliott shouted, “Oh, Oh, I know him!” Chelsea continued, “Martin Luther King said that you can marry whoever you want. The color doesn’t matter. It’s like chocolate ice cream and vanilla. You can mix them together, and then you have caramel!” This was not the time to demonstrate how bad that analogy was; her loving and lovely sentiment came through.

Zoey chimed in, “My baby doll is brown.” “I know,” I said, “and I remember what you named her.” I know because the day she brought the baby girl home from Dollar General, she introduced us.

Zoey: Peepaw, this is my baby, and she’s like you. I named her “Moana.”  I’ll call her “my baby,” but you call her “Moana.” She’s like you. I was gonna get the white one, but it was too much.

Peepaw: Was the white one the same kind of doll?

Zoey: Yeah, but this one was almost free. The white one was ten dollars.

Zoey and Moana; Cayce and Firetruck

Once again, I chose not to engage our first grader in a discussion of why the brown doll was “almost free.” Our “race conscious” conversations don’t have to be inclusive of every possible concern. We can circle back at another time. And if we are paying attention, new opportunities will present themselves.

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When I picked up Zoey and Chelsea from school one early January afternoon, I don’t think Zoey remembered Chelsea’s holiday-season synopsis of racial reconciliation. Zoey got in the car and proclaimed, “Peepaw, we learned about Martin… King… Luke…what is it?” “His name is Martin Luther King, Junior!” Chelsea corrected. “What did you learn about him?” I asked. Zoey told us about how white people didn’t let black people do things, like sit down on a bus or go to the same schools or play together. She told us that Martin Luther King changed all that. But then somebody killed him.

After she reported what she had learned, she had some questions. She wanted to know who killed him. She wanted to know why white people didn’t like him. I assured her that while some white people didn’t like him, many white people liked him and worked with him. Zoey's response, “Well I’m a white person, and I would like him.”