"JUNETEENTH AND THE MEANING OF AMERICA"

 “JUNETEENTH AND THE MEANING OF AMERICA”

The recent federal recognition of Juneteenth as a national holiday was a pleasant surprise, and as we approach the July 4 holiday, it is worthwhile considering the meaning of those two national holidays.  What does Juneteenth mean in the panorama of America?  What does it mean in dialogue with July 4th? First, a slight but important note – while “America” has come to mean North America, it originally referred to the “New World” of European explorers. It was named after an Italian merchant and explorer who understood that Columbus was mistaken in thinking that he had discovered a route to India.  For now, however, I’ll use “America” as the word for the USA.

The recognition of Juneteenth means that in one small way the equality of Black people is acknowledged, while at the same time acknowledging the terrible legacies of slavery and neo-slavery in our history.  It is no coincidence that many state legislatures are seeking to limit the teaching of the history of racism in our shared history.  They know that it is deep and profound, and once we go down that road, it will be difficult to go back.  The recognition of Juneteenth is a start on that road.  Many of us will celebrate the birth of our nation on this July 4 weekend, but the recognition of Juneteenth reminds us that one of the powerful seeds of our nation goes back into the 1500’s and especially 1619, when the first record of African people being brought here as slaves was found.  The 1619 Project of the New York Times is a reminder that the seeds of our nation are found in that year rather than in 1776.

The recognition of Juneteenth is a reminder of two of the most powerful forces in American history, forces that are opposed to one another.  One is the idea of equality, and the other is the idea of slavery and the white supremacy that undergirds it.  These have been warring ideas in American history, and over these next two weeks, I’ll take a brief look at each of them.  Today – the idea of equality.  Next week - the idea of slavery and white supremacy.  The idea of equality – the vision that all human beings are created with equal dignity – is a powerful one in American history.  It was born in Europe, but it found its deepest expression in the colonies of America.  This idea of equality is one of the great and unexpected gifts of the American experience.  It is a revolutionary idea, and it calls out to all structures -  class structures, racial categories,  gender categories – that their time is winding down, that a new way of looking sat ourselves and at one another is emerging in the world.  That way is the idea of equality, the idea that we are all created with equal dignity.  That way is the idea that the institutional and structural foundations of society should be reformed to reflect this radical idea.

There is no small irony that those who developed this idea of “equality” in American history meant it only for white males of property.  They meant it only to stand against the old, class structures of Europe, but this idea of equality is so strong that they could not contain it.  The very people who were enslaved as the living contradiction of equality – they heard this idea, and they believed that it applied to them.  The people whose land was stolen from them by Europeans in the very name of equality – they heard this idea and believed that it applied to them.  Women, long since seen as property of the white males – they heard it and believed that it applied to them.  People who loved people of the same gender, long penalized and persecuted because of whom they loved – they heard that it applied to them.  This list could go on and on, because the idea of equality undercuts so many repressive and oppressive categories of the world. It will continue to call out to people who are not yet recognized as people, as equal siblings in the world.

The idea of equality is so strong and so radical that the European founders immediately began to qualify it after it appeared in the Declaration of Independence in July, 1776.  The battle over it in the Constitution was huge and dramatic, and as we know, the idea of equality was erased from the Constitution, with Africans and Indigenous peoples being recognized as only 60% human.  It is why those on the right wing love the “originalist” theory of the Constitution – they know that it was “originally” meant for white men.  Even the primary author of the Declaration of Independence backed off from it, as he needed the woman held as his slave, Sally Hemmings, to be available to him on many levels.  

Yet, to use Maya Angelou’s powerful phrase, still the idea of equality rises.  It can’t be held back or controlled – it has arrived.  We white men hope to curtail its teaching in our schools and in our culture, but still it rises.  As we gather this weekend to celebrate this idea of equality, let us remember this dialogue between Juneteenth and July 4.  Let us remember these two weeks between June 19 and July 4, and may our future celebrations remember the tension and the possibilities between them.

"ON FATHERS"

 “ON FATHERS”

This time last year I was beginning a manuscript on my mother and me and her raising me as a single mom in the land of white, male supremacy in the 1940’s and 1950’s.  She went on this journey because my father abandoned my family when I was a small baby, and I never met him again until I was 24, and then only for a brief moment.  I have just completed that manuscript, and I am now looking for a publisher – the tentative title is “Mother and Me:  A Memoir of Agency, Race, and Gender.”  All this is to say that I have no trouble with Mother’s Day, though I understand why so many people do.  My problem comes with Father’s Day.

I grew up feeling a deep sense of anxiety about my father’s absence in my life, but a bigger problem for me was the sense of abandonment.  My father never contacted me, never came to see me.  Our meeting in 1971 was accidental, but that is a story for another time.  As a boy, I was always wondering why my father never contacted me, why he never acknowledged me.  I internalized a sense that his absence and his refusal to contact me was my responsibility:  I was simply not good enough to be acknowledged as his son.  Fortunately for me, my mother and other people filled in the breech, and I began to hear that while my father might not acknowledge me, God and many others did.  I am grateful especially to my mother for stepping into the gap, and I am grateful to all those men and women who stepped up to help me hear that I was somebody.  On this Father’s Day, I say “Thank You!”

Because I was unsure of my status as a father’s son, I was hesitant, even scared, of becoming a father.  Caroline wanted to have children, but I was much more hesitant.  How could I be a good father when I had no models of being a father? How could I do it when my feelings for my own father were so ambivalent:  longing for him, knowing that he was never coming, hating him for his abandonment, blaming myself for his absence.  She reminded me that because of my mother’s dedication to me, because of my own work in therapy, and because of so many people who had stepped up to father me, that I had become a fine man: strong, compassionate, loving, responsible.  And, of course, I enjoyed the activity which led to the creation of children!  So, we set out on the adventure of trying to get pregnant.  We were one of the early pioneers in women’s waiting until later to have children.  After many fits and starts, we had our first child David in 1980 when Caroline 33 years old.  Then Susan came along 30 months later.

And, what gifts they have been to us!  I have learned so much about fathering from being a father.  In a great surprise to me, I have also received gifts as a son by being a father to our children.  It is a great irony to me that I have received some of the blessings that I needed as a son from fathering our children, and I am so grateful to Caroline, David, and Susan for enabling that in my journey.  I have learned that while I had a biological father, it took a whole village, including my own children, to bring me the blessings that I needed as a son abandoned by my biological father. 

So, in this time of celebrating fathers, I’ll offer some humble advice about the gift and the task of fathering.  First, I was raised by a loving and powerful single woman, but fathers are absolutely necessary in the raising of children.  This is not a slap at my mother or at any of those many women (single or otherwise) who are raising children without a father around.  This is a reflection of a son with a powerful and good mother, who still experienced that large absence.  To all those biological fathers who have stayed and raised and loved their children, I say “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”  Thank you for showing children what a man is meant to be:  loving, nurturing, protecting, challenging, simply being present.

    Second,  to all those biological fathers out there, be sure that you complete the biological process of fathering and become a “daddy” to your children.  For most of my youngish life, my perception was that my father simply chose not to contact me.  While I still think that is the case, in working on the memoir on my mother, I have to come to understand that my mother may not have been inviting to my father, that he may have wanted to come to see me but was hesitant because of my mother.  I don’t know what the truth is, but as the son on the receiving end of an absent father, if you are divorced or absent from your children, make sure that they know that you love them, no matter how complex it is or how big the obstacles are.

    Finally, to all those adults, whatever your status may be, please step into the breech with the children in your families and communities.  Even in nuclear families that seem to do well, it takes a village to raise our children, to be fathers and mothers to so many children who feel abandoned and lost because of the destructive forces in this world.  I had many fathers and mothers who stepped into the breech, so on this Father’s Day, let us give thanks for our fathers who loved us, let us be part of that village of people who helped to raise us.  Let us step into the breech.  It made so much difference my life, and I have tried to pass it forward.  Let us all seek to be fathers one to the other.

"JUNETEENTH"

“JUNETEENTH”

On one level, it is odd that there is no nationally recognized day that celebrates the end of slavery in the USA.  Such a huge event in American history, and there is no universally recognized day for it.  Part of that lack is the fact that slavery did not really end until the Voting Rights Act was signed into law on August 6, 1965.  Between the 13th Amendment which officially banished slavery in USA (except for those in prison, a HUGE exception) and the Voting Rights Act, neo-slavery filled in for white supremacy.  This latter period is often called “Jim Crow,” but that title does not allow the full depth of the depravity of racism and white supremacy to be revealed.  Indeed, calling the period from 1870 to 1965 “Jim Crow” allows us to obscure the real history of oppression in that period.  Neo-Slavery is a much better name for that period.

On June 19, many folk will celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation on “Juneteenth,” the name given to the event in Texas, where news of the Proclamation  and the Union defeat of the Confederacy did not reach African-Americans held in slavery in Texas until June 19, 1865.  At that time, U.S. General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with 2,000 federal troops and made this General Order #3:

    “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

            Juneteenth has become the most recognized national celebration of the end of legal slavery in the country.  Many other dates could qualify, and some are celebrated:  watch night services in African-American churches on December 31 of each year, similar  to the ones in 1862, right before the Proclamation took effect;  January 31, when the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery passed Congress;  December 6, when the states ratified the 13th Amendment. Yet, Juneteenth has held on for many reasons. 

            Perhaps the biggest reason that Juneteenth has held on is that it expresses both celebration and ambivalence.  Celebration that there was finally some recognition of the humanity and equality of people of African descent.  Ambivalence because there was so much reluctance to get this news to the people of Texas.  The racism, that would eviscerate the Union victory over the next 40 years after the Civil War,  could be seen in the last sentence of Order #3 – though African-Americans had built the wealth of much of America, they were still seen as being “in idleness.”  The order arrived over 2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and two months after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox.  As WEB Dubois put it:  “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

We are now in a time when white supremacy is seeking to re-assert its traditional hold on American consciousness.  The passage of so many state laws seeking to limit and to confine the vote is a direct response of white supremacy to growing numbers of voters of color.  The desire to suppress the teaching of “critical race theory” comes from the hearts of the white mentality that destroyed Reconstruction and re-established Neo-Slavery.  This is a dangerous time in our history, as the forces of oppression and white supremacy are re-gathering strength.  But, there are so many witnesses to a different way!

            So, on June 19,  celebrate Juneteenth, and celebrate all those witnesses who have worked for equality and justice for all.  Find a way to celebrate the great American vision of the fundamental equality of all people.  Find a way to acknowledge how deeply white supremacy still has a hold on our hearts and vision.  Find a way to work against that captivity, as did Frederick Douglass and Abby Kelley and William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Tubman and Ida Wells and Anne Braden and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and many others have done.  As June Jordan put it in her powerful “Poem For South African Women:  “we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

 

"SOLUTIONS???"

 “SOLUTIONS???”

If there is to be a non-violent and lasting peace with justice in Israel and Palestine, at least three steps must be met.  First, the right of Israel to exist as a state must be acknowledged, not as a Zionist state, but as a nation among nations.   The Oslo agreements of 1993 acknowledged the rights of both Israel and Palestine to exist as nations, so on one level, this step has been established.  Since then, both sides have waffled and added conditions, with Israel putting up its infamous wall, annexing more territory, and seeking to make Palestinian Israelis lose political rights.  Palestinian and other Arab leaders have insisted that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders in order to be recognized as a state.  Given the ashes of the horrific Holocaust and the terrible “Nakba” still swirling, it seems fundamental that all leaders, including Palestinian and other Arabs, must recognize the right of Israel to exist.  

Second, the state of Palestine must be established, and political and geographic boundaries must be formed.  This “two-state” solution has been on the table for a long while, but the complications listed above have prevented any movement towards that state.  Indeed, with the rightward shift of Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has increasingly taken Palestinian territory.  While his leadership in Israel may be coming to an end this weekend (he is a survivor, however, so he should not be counted out just yet), his successor is further to the right than he is.  Yet the coalition seeking to oust Netanyahu knows the weariness of Israelis with the continuing state of war and terrorism in which the state lives.  

Many believe that the “two-state” solution is “old news,” that its time has passed.  While this may be true, there are no other viable solutions on the page.  Almost 25% of Israel’s population of 9+ million are Arabs and Palestinians, and unless Israel wants to move towards a genocidic step similar to our dealings with Native Americans and to suppress both the citizenship and the voting rights of people of Arab descent,  there must be a move towards a nation and a state of Palestine.  The current split in leadership for Palestinians makes such a step difficult, but in reality, the Israeli leadership is just as split.  It is imperative that the Biden administration join with Arab leaders from nations like Egypt and Jordan to move towards a joint accord  which hammers out boundaries and sovereignty for both nations.

The third step - and most difficult of the three steps, if that can be imagined – is that Jerusalem must become an international holy city, or at least the territory where the Wailing Wall and the Temple of the Dome are located.  The power of the United Nations has been greatly diminished, but these sacred territories of the three great monotheistic religions must be honored and preserved in a non-sectarian way.  The whole city of Jerusalem should be made into an international city, but I do not think that the political will is there yet.  Perhaps a start would be to make the territory of the Wall and the Dome to be an international territory, under the guardianship and governance of the United Nations.  Again, this would take the leadership of the Biden Administration to put this sort of unimaginable agreement into place.  

These are the minimal three steps to be taken if there is to be a just peace in Israel and Palestine.  While I am a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, I am pessimistic that there is the political will to develop these three steps.  We saw our political will and influence for peacemaking diminish on this issue in the Trump presidency, and it will take a persistent and insistent effort by the Biden administration to move towards these three steps.  The only alternative, however, is what we have just seen:  endless violence and terrorism, severe oppression of Arab people, and the whole world held in captivity to this issue.  Let us hope that the peacemakers are arising in Israel and Palestine – there are no viable alternatives except stunning violence and oppression.