I THINK THEREFORE I AM. I THINK.

A somewhat famous (and infamous) former resident of Washington D.C. once observed that, “perception is reality.” That phrase has now become so ubiquitous, logic dictates that it must have been originated by a scientist or philosopher or someone of more lasting importance than a mere political hack. But the truth is, this quote was coined by none other than Lee Atwater, Republican strategist extraordinaire. The man responsible for the fact that Michael Dukakis is better remembered for having paroled Willie Horton than he is for having been a presidential candidate. Atwater was a brilliant, abrasive, ruthless master of his domain. He shepherded not one, but two Republicans into high office, and ushered in a new style of campaigning, (for better or worse) which has ultimately became known as the Republican “dirty tricks” strategy. This pithy saying, his legacy.

Perception is reality. A simple, yet complex statement. What a person believes to be true, is, for that person, true. Or, as Larry David had George Costanza opine during the sixth season of Seinfeld: “It’s not a lie, if you believe it.”

The internet is on overload today with depictions of racial unrest in Baltimore, Chicago and Detroit. The story, all too familiar.  A young African American male dies under suspicious circumstances after being held in police custody in Washington D.C’s sister city, Baltimore. Thousands, feeling hopeless and desperate, take to the streets. Some in peaceful protest. Others in full riot mode. The city itself, reduced to a metaphor for a political experiment gone wrong. This country. This UNITED States. This melting pot. This haven for the disenfranchised. This harbinger of hope. Reporters do what reporters do. Question the various participants and bystanders. Each weaves a varied tale of what he believes is happening around him, accessing his own unique perception and ability to communicate that perception. Then the rest of us read, watch and listen to the information mosaic and form individual perspectives. 

Perception is reality. 

An African American woman tells a story of her feelings of uneasiness in her dealings with the Baltimore police. A caucasian man calls for peace. An African American man expresses disgust with the violence, then pleads for the rioters to stop destroying his neighborhood. An Asian woman expresses fear for her child. A Latino woman cries, speechless. All of them drawing from his or her own experience in an attempt to frame the issues which he finds most relevant. Most in agreement with the mantra that violence is not the answer. 

Except for when it is the answer.

Such is the schizophrenic nature of our United States. A country founded on the idea of both protest (refusal to pay tea taxes to King George) and riot (dumping said tea into the Boston harbor). A country with a quick and itchy trigger finger, always poised to duke it out with whatever enemy is in sight. And if there are none in sight, move the scope until you find one.  At times, the war is on terrorism. Sometimes, poverty. Most of the time, drugs. Whatever the cause, Americans are always primed and ready for battle. This spirit is what got us here. Brought us prosperity. Allowed us to build a dynasty which demonstrates that it is possible to be both fair and free. We are fighters. Rebels. Mavericks. We founded this country on the idea that all people are created equal. That we don’t have to listen to a bunch of aristocratic, inbred, entitled royal tyrants. Not us. We are different. We are special.

Except for when we are not different. Or special.

Of course America, like all societies, is largely a product of lore. Tales of conquest, victory and accomplishment passed down from generation to generation along with the corresponding moral imperative commanding the next generation to value the things that have brought the rewards which make the tales worth telling in the fist place. I mean, what good is it to have scammed the Louisiana Purchase from France, if your children and grandchildren don’t have any interest in land? It’s not enough to tell them about how great you are. You have to make certain that they continue to believe in your greatness long after you are gone. So what to do... Hmm...Yes! That’s it!  Create a bunch of schools and other institutions designed to indoctrinate all of your descendants with your increasingly stale point of view, and then make everyone go to these places all day for like, eight hours or more, to ensure that your perspective cannot be escaped! It goes without saying that churches and other religious institutions are already in the brainwashing business. But wait. You are all about freedom. You can’t MAKE people go to church. Hmm...what to do...ok. Got it! You use the foundations of religion in the formation of your government. You create symbols. Christians have the cross. Jews have the star. You make a flag. And then throw in a bald eagle. And tell everyone that this flag, and this bald eagle are SACRED. Why are they sacred? Not sure. Umm...because they represent something that you believe is important. Ok. Let’s go with that. They are not, in actuality, important. Their coveted status is a vanguard of a CONCEPT of freedom. They, themselves have ZERO to do with freedom. And BY THE WAY if anyone kills a bald eagle, he risks that very same freedom. Ditto burning a flag. Because, you know, these symbols mean a lot to Americans like you. White European men who had the means and education to stand up to the King. And these symbols need to mean a lot to everyone else, too! If those people cannot get in line, if they cannot value the Louisiana Purchase, and understand that there are seemingly endless opportunities to use slave labor there, then those people are not YOUR kind of people. I mean, they technically are your kind of people. But you know what I mean. Where is the gratitude? How about a little something, you know, for the effort? 

And then, as quickly as Americans became rebels, we became despots. Not different. Not special. 

Such is the nature of life. Create something you care about. A family. An idea. A business. A structure. Then do whatever you have to to protect the thing you care about. This is the normal course of human survival. The problem comes in when peoples modes of survival are in conflict with each other. In this country, we have an internal contradiction in our colonial history which undercuts much of the logic our founding fathers employed in their attempts to preserve their system: We owned slaves. Black slaves. Who were brought here against their will and treated as less than human. Easily identifiable by the dark color of their skin. And it was the work of those slaves which was the very foundation of what we now know as the tobacco industry. The textile industry. The food industry. Giant conglomerates that dictate through money and influence much of the politics of not only the states from which they originate, but also in the federal arena. This country was formed in 1776. Until the Voting Rights Act of 1968, African Americans were effectively unable to build any lasting wealth. They were excluded from sharing in the profits from the very industries their ancestors labor produced, as well as all other industries. Of course white women didn’t fare much better, but the prevailing wisdom was that white women could marry white men (if their fathers were on board) and obtain de facto wealth that way. Not ACTUAL wealth. But, you know, the ladies would just squander it all on shoes and purses anyway instead of building a huge army and promoting the use of tobacco to minors and getting people addicted to various substances in which the government has a financial interest. 

But I digress.

The fact remains that the African American population in this country has not had actual access to wealth until the last fifty years. At this point, the country has moved in a direction that is decidedly European (and now somewhat Hispanic) WITHOUT them. African Americans don’t have the numbers to have a statistical impact. Nor the money to effectively lobby. Nor a foothold in the business world in any meaningful enough way for that world to reflect their values or way of life. The standard white American response for decades has been: THEY are just lazy. THEY don’t want to work. THOSE PEOPLE just want handouts. But when you take a moment to think about what is actually being said, it becomes clear that these pejoratives are not what they appear to be. 

LAZY. Meaning that white people don’t believe that African American’s have a work ethic that measures up to a white standard. A standard that kills more American men a year from heart disease than all other causes of death combined.

DON’T WANT TO WORK. Meaning that African American’s either aren’t suited for, or don’t have an interest in the jobs being afforded them. Because everyone loves the concept of low pay FOREVER with zero possibility of advancement to the highest level of the economy. 

JUST WANT HANDOUTS. Sort of like the inheritance and nepotism which is the backbone of white corporate America. Those kinds of handouts. Yes. No one wants those... in other words, your entitlement is getting in the way of my entitlement. 

To be clear. There is a system in place. An offshoot of an earlier colonial based system, which reflects mainly white, male European values. There is some variance from the original system. Important variance. Namely elections and three branches of government. But the people who created the system are white, European males. This system is pretty good. But the economics, and everything else that follows, is undeniably European in origin. Now let's say you are NOT European. In fact, your ancestors came here as non humans. You are in the system. But you are not OF the system. The system does not reflect your cultural values. It is based on efficiency, ruthlessness, and profit at the expense of others in the name of morality. You don’t have much of an interest in a system which reflects neither your values nor your skill set. I mean, WHO DOES??? And to top it off, the same people who claimed to not want royalty, keep electing these white families, like the Kennedys, the Bushs and the Clintons. You occasionally get some kind of representation, but there is no generational power, no transfer of wealth, no ability to succeed at the highest levels en masse. I mean, Oprah doesn’t even have kids! Who is she giving her dynasty to? If she was a dude, like Joe Kennedy, she would knock up her wife every year so that she could keep her estate alive. But you are African American. You don’t HAVE any Joe Kennedys. I mean, you do. But when your Joe Kennedys have a litter of children, everyone says it’s because you don’t know any better. 

Nonetheless, let's say you are here. You have to make the best of it. Your schools are bad because the school system is based on things that don’t translate well into your community. There are no jobs because most corporations have moved their operations to more profitable venues. The unions put in place to help secure jobs you might have been able to get were all run by white guys who pocketed huge sums of money and drove prices so high, that companies bounced as soon as they could. You tried slinging a little rock for money on the side, because everyone you know is so miserable, drugs are the only thing that makes their lives tolerable. Only you find that no one thinks it’s cool when a black guy sells weed or has possible gang connections. You are no Tony Montana, my friend. I mean, it was one thing for Frank Fricking SInatra to have mob ties. But we can’t have that degenerate Jay-Z ghettoing up Washington by fist bumping the Obama’s in the Oval Office. 

Hmm... so what do you do when you are disenfranchised as a group? When you feel unrepresented. What possible example could you look to, maybe in your own country’s history, where people did something to get attention because they felt repressed and unable to wield meaningful power in a situation...some kind of riot, like dumping tea into a harbor. Or firing shots at your oppressor, like the shots fired at Lexington and Concord. Or forming smaller groups within your larger group and planning your next move, like the militias of the Revolutionary War. You protest. You riot. You fight. You have to be willing to accept the fact that you may lose. And when you lose, you have to pay the penalty. 

But if the penalty isn’t that much worse than your reality, where is the risk?

The perception of white people who make the kinds of statements outlined above, as I understand it, is that this system is a good system and if you can’t conform, then, certainly, there is something wrong with you. They did it. Their ancestors did it. Get with the program. That is their reality. And, by the way, if you can’t get in line, they will use force in the form of police, to get you in line. The perception of black people who are offended by this argument, as I understand it, is that this system does not reflect their values. It does not reflect anything about them, actually. It’s not even their system. It was created without their input nor consent. Their inability to get on board is not a character flaw. That is their reality. And if you can’t accept their reality, they will use force in the form of riots, to get your attention. 

Ultimately, this becomes a legitimacy of power argument, which becomes difficult when America’s colonial origin is factored in; murder and outright theft of land from Native Americans and anyone else who was in the way. I do not advocate violence, nor destruction of property. What I do advocate, is reason. Objectivity. Certainly, if rioters break the law, they must suffer the penalty. That said, it seems disingenuous for Americans to wring our hands in disbelief when we all know our own history. We all got here because a group of people took what was then an unlawful stand against a system under which they felt unrepresented. When we see this behavior, replicated in our fellow citizens, why do we not extend that same kind of rationale to their cause? And ask ourselves why? Not why they don’t fit into our system, but why our system can’t seem to expand in a way which represents a more broad spectrum of life experiences and talents? 

Simply shrugging this off and continuing to claim that the American economic market doesn’t value certain cultures is not working. If that is the case, then the market has become, for us as a country, inefficient. The market is excluding a group of people whose lives matter. We are excluding them. In aggregate, their suffering, their desperation, their inability to lead lives of dignity because of poor education and economic access is making all of our lives expensive in countless ways, both quantifiable and unquantifiable. Welfare doesn’t work. The police state doesn’t work. The draconian drug policies we now have don't work. What will work, is a solution that promotes human dignity. A system that holds true to the spirit of the constitution, if not the letter. Moments like this are a powerful fulcrum for empathetic American’s to stop the blame game, and seek to understand why this particular group of people is so disenfranchised. Why their perception is so different from yours. It is NOT the time to say...if they have the NAACP, why can’t we have the NAAWP? The answer is: this entire culture is the NAAWP. Even the NAACP is a subset of the NAAWP. 

That is both perception. And reality. 

BB

STRANGEST BEDFELLOWS

My boyfriend and I have this nerd thing we do where we visit Presidential libraries whenever we travel to cities where they are available. Last year, on this very weekend, we went to the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. In modern life, Americans are so obsessed with the buzzword “Watergate” that most do not know any or all of Nixon’s many accomplishments, including his domestic agenda, in many ways a virtual left wing dream by todays standards. Nixon was, after all, from California. He created the Environmental Protection Agency. He signed Title IV into law. He ended the draft. His 1974 health care proposal was exponentially more comprehensive than any that have been proposed since. Had it passed, Nixon would have forced employers to offer healthcare to employees, and provided subsidies for companies who could not afford to do so. He proposed the Family Assistance Program, which would have guaranteed welfare to any American living below a certain income level. He imposed a tax on the wealthy. He opened relations with China. 

He gave us federal race-based job quotas. That’s right. Nixon is largely responsible for affirmative action.

This library is so full of important historical events, it takes several hours to move through it effectively. Despite my long time penchant for foreign policy, (and the large amount of square footage devoted to the Nixon/Kissinger era), the piece of presidential memorabilia which both engaged me at the time and stuck with me this entire year, was not, as I had anticipated, related to China. Nor Vietnam. Nor the space program. Nor Watergate. It was, in fact, a wall display containing letters written to Nixon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during Nixon’s tenure as Eisenhower’s vice-president. 

What struck me most about the type-written, hand signed letters, was Dr. King’s easy eloquence. His obvious understanding that in order to affect change, one has to be both of the system and above the system. King is articulate. Precise. Insistent. Respectful. His prose, every bit as formal and official as any government leader. But there is just something about his STYLE. In these letters, he does what all charismatic leaders do. King makes Nixon part of HIS agenda.  He offers Nixon a chance to be part of something bigger than merely the vice-presidency of the most powerful country in the world. He offers Nixon a chance to be part of the human experience. A chance to be a man of lasting consequence on the humanitarian stage. Not merely another out of touch white guy sending young men off to war, answering to banks and dictating monetary policies. 

Much to the dismay of all the partisan haters out there, Nixon’s presidential record on civil rights speaks for itself. His effective use of “The Philadelphia Plan” strong armed unions into allowing African-Americans access to the higher paying, skilled trades from which they had always been excluded. It was Nixon, not Kennedy nor Johnson, who signed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act into law in 1972 giving the requisite teeth to the EEOC by allowing race (and other discriminatory practices) to be the basis for federal employment law suits. Nixon shied away from using the term “quotas.” He did, however, require federal contractors to demonstrate that they were utilizing affirmative action, effectively making it the law. 

Much ink has been spilled over both the constitutionality and fairness of affirmative action. I am not attempting to weigh in on that issue. What I find more interesting, is that Dr. King was not only a tireless advocate for the continued improvement of opportunities for African-Americans in all areas of life, but that he also made such an effective use of the system. Reading these letters demonstrated to me was that King was a man who not only asked questions, but also had answers. He believed in something bigger than the process. Something bigger than himself. As a Christian minister, he had reverence for the same basic Quaker values that had guided Nixon in his youth. He appealed to Nixon on every relevant level. As an elected official. A husband. A man. And a moral leader. To people who only know Nixon as a cartoonish paranoid, desperate and scared of his own shadow, this kind of appeal may seem laughable. But such is the desire of the media. There is no question that Nixon’s actions surrounding Watergate were both illegal and immoral. Self-serving. And perhaps that cowardly legacy is deserved. But a closer look at Nixon’s presidency reveals a series of decisions in the arena of civil rights which are decidedly progressive and morally courageous for their time. Whether or not affirmative action has run its course at this point, it seems absurd to deny the fact that at during King’s life, SOMETHING had to be done. Was it perfect? No. Is it fair? On it’s face? Probably not. But it was an attempt to further the necessary integration of African-Americans into all relevant strata of society. And let’s face it. No policy could be more misguided than one allowing enslavement of another person. Any well intended movement in the direction away from that may not hold all the answers. But it also should not be vilified. 

As with all instances of revolution, the second and third waves of the civil rights movements are no more impressive, on the whole, than the American presidents from Van Buren through Buchanan. The lore of Washington, Jefferson and even Andrew Jackson looms large in American history until Lincoln came along some twenty years later. Then Teddy Roosevelt got a little traction forty years after that. Then we get to FDR. JFK. Reagan. A handful of transcendent leaders spaced out over two hundred years. Civil rights is no different. Fifty years into its conception, King and Malcom X, the architects of change, still reign supreme in the public mind, eclipsing guys like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who come off as disingenuous carpet baggers by comparison. This is to be expected. One merely needs to read King’s writing or listen to to a speech to understand why he will forever be the voice of this movement. Al Sharpton is not Dr. King, nor does he need to be. And by the same token, Bill Clinton is not Richard Nixon. Thanks to the media, Bubba's prurient misuse of the Oval Office, equally contemptuous of the constituency and rife with entitlement and cover up, made him seem like the cool kid you never got to sit with at lunch as opposed to Nixon’s now permanent persona as the kid most likely to shoot up the school if you look at him the wrong way. But lets be clear. In the arena of civil rights, there can be no contest. Nixon is the clear progressive.  It was King’s dream. But he needed to persuade guys like Nixon to stop turning it into a nightmare. 

Today serves as a day of reflection about the sacrifices made to ensure equality in our country. When we celebrate Independence Day, we look at the framers of our Constitution and revere them as genius, typically shaking our heads at the current state of Washington by comparison. When we celebrate President’s Day, we declare Lincoln a master of justice, and lament the fact that we have no leaders in todays world who share his god-like qualities. This day is no different. Dr. King was a man of his times, for all times. His vision profound and transformational. The problem with our collective mentality, is that we spend so much time looking back we can’t seem to move forward. The reason that the second and third waves of political movements are basically ineffective, is that the movement is no longer a movement. The tactics that worked against the British didn’t work against the Confederacy. The tactics that worked against the Confederacy didn’t work against men like Nixon. Revolutionaries become revolutionaries because they did things DIFFERENTLY.  Americans love people who fight injustice, whether it is Batman or Nelson Mandela. I don’t think any one of these guys, from Jefferson to Lincoln to King did the things he did so that we could, as a nation, spend our time arguing over whether Jon Stewart or Bill O’Reilly is more representative of the common man. (Spoiler Alert: Neither represents any man, common or otherwise, but they both represent despicable billion dollar conglomerates. Unless you are on board with the Citizens United decision, you probably need to let go of your delusion that Jon Stewart is a liberal. You’re welcome.)

There is a saying that Buddhists like to co-opt: “Leap and the net will appear.” The same can be said of the conditions which create visionaries like Dr. King. Great people rise to greatness when necessary. They distinguish themselves from others through their extraordinary perspectives. Martin Luther King is the voice of the American civil rights movement, and he will always be that voice. His ability to work within the system in order to convince white leaders to listen to his cause, while simultaneously maintaining the perception of being an outlier is unmatched in American history. The idea that Al Sharpton, or anyone can replace King, is ludicrous. No one can replace him. Which tells you one thing and one thing only.

There needs to be a new movement. 

BB