Massacre In South Carolina: The Confederate Flag Still Flies

Today I’m not going to stick to the topic of this blog.  Instead, I want to talk about something that, I’m sure, you’ve heard about by now:  the massacre inside the Emanuel AfricanMethodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina .

One of the cruelest ironies is that members of a Bible study group—including the church's pastor, who also happens to be a  South Carolina State senator—in one of America’s oldest historically black churches were gunned down by a young white man who sat with them on the eve of Juneteenth— a few days after the 800^th anniversary of King John issuing Magna Carta.

And the Confederate Flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

A century and a half after slaves in South Carolina and Texas and other states got word that they were free men and women, a young man hadn’t gotten the message that the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees all citizens, regardless of their skin color, the rights enumerated in the first ten amendments (a.k.a. the Bill of Rights).  Heck, he didn’t even get the message thatthere’s no such country as Rhodesia anymore.  He was simply acting from the same sort of ignorance, the same sort of hate, that left earlier generations of young African Americans hanging from trees or at the bottoms of rivers.

And the Confederate Flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

More than a century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation, in the state in which the opening shot of the US Civil War was fired, a young man entered a Bible Study group and waited for the “right” moment to shoot someone nearly as young as he is, people old enough to be his parents, grand-parents and great-grandparents.  He shattered the peace and sanctity they found in what, for many generations of African-Americans—and, perhaps, for those members of the Bible Study group—has been their closest-knit, if not their only, sanctuary.

And the Confederate flag flies in front of the State Capitiol.   

From the church's website.

A pastor was killed along with a deacon and laypeople.  Families lost sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers; friends lost friends and people lost spouses and other loved ones.  They loved and were loved; they raised families and were raised by families.  And they contributed to the lives of their communities through their professional and volunteer work, and the loves and interests they shared with those around them.

And the Confederate flag flies in front of the State Capitol.

Dylann Storm Roof, in an instant, ended the lives of Rev. (and Sen.) Clementa Pickney, Mira Thompson, Daniel Simmons Sr., Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, De Payne Middleton, Ethel Lance and her cousin Susie Jackson. All of them, one hundred and fifty years after Juneteenth.

And a Confederate flag in front of the State Capitol hasn't even been loweredto half-mast.

Have I Crossed The Mason-Dixon Line Without Realizing It?

Yesterday I pedaled out to Somerville (NJ), in part to see the bike races.  I also wanted to just spend a day away from any obligations I normally have:  I could rationalize it to myself because Millie told me that she wanted to be alone and not to talk to anyone.  (Our mutual friend Joanne told me that Millie told her the same thing.)

But I also wanted to revisit an old ritual:  At one point in my life, I was pedaling out to Somerville every year, whether from Rutgers (half an hour, at most) or Inwood, Manhattan (about four hours).  I also wanted to see a place that had, and hadn’t changed during those years.

The first time I rode out there—on a non-race day—was some time in the late 1970’s, when I was a Rutgers student.  Then, Somerville had a certain kind of charm:  It seemed more like a Southern town than one in west-central New Jersey.  It had—as it has now—a pretty residential area full of houses with wooden porches framed by lacy wooden columns of carved vines or flutey stone colonnades.  And in the center of town, diagonally across from the courthouse (The town is the county seat.) is the Hotel Somerset, said to be the oldest continually-operating hostellerie in the nation.  The first time I saw it, I thought no one had stayed in it or eaten in its restaurant.  It still looks that way today, even though people actually do spend the night—or longer—there.

But I started to notice something disturbing about the town.  When I got there, I wondered whether I’d passed over the Mason-Dixon line somewhere in Middlesex Boro or Bound Brook.  At some point, I noticed that the pretty historic residential area housed only white residents.  I thought even I might have been too dark to live there.  All of the people of color—very few in number during my first visit, more numerous now—live in a tightly-bounded area of town south of the hotel, along East Main Street and   --which, interestingly, ends right by the race’s grandstand.

I wonder whether anyone else who came to see the races noticed--or knows that Somerville is the town in which Paul Robeson went to high school.

What If I Were A Black Trans Woman?

I do not believe that I am boasting or exaggerating when I say that I encounter more black men than most white women of my age and level of (formal) education.

Of course, that is largely a consequence of living in a large urban area in the United States and doing the kinds of work I do.  But I can also say, in all honesty, that I try to be an open-minded person who is a good listener.  I guess some of the black men (and women) I meet sense that, which may be a reason why some of them will tell me, a complete stranger, about their experiences and feeling.

I had one such encounter last week.  I'd ridden my bicycle to the Borough of Manhattan Community College.  I was astounded to find an indoor parking facility in Fitterman Hall that rivals the emenities found in many gyms in the surrounding neighborhood, where Robert De Niro and other celebrities live.

As I was locking my bike to the rack, a black man, whom I guessed to be about ten years younger than me, wheeled in his machine.  We exchanged greetings and small talk about the weather, the changes in the neighborhood and other things.  

"Can I ask you something?"

I was wondering whether, at this late date, he'd "read" me or , perhaps, seen me somewhere before.  In spite of my anxiety, I said, "Sure."

"Did the guard ask you for ID?"

"No."

"Well, he stopped me and asked for it.  And I'm a student here--I come here every day."

"Was he a new guard?"

"No, he's seen me before."

"That doesn't sound good."

"Maybe it shouldn't bother me."

"Don't apologize.  If I were in your shoes, I'd probably be upset, too."

"Why do you think he stopped me?"

"And he didn't stop me?  Well, I can think of one thing."

You probably know what that thing is:  He is black and rather young-looking.  On the other hand, I'm a white woman in late middle age.  I told him as much.

"So you feel the same way?," he wondered.

"Listen, I've heard plenty of DWB (Driving While Black) stories.  If even a fraction of them are true, I have reason to be upset, and you have reason to be outraged."

"The worst thing of all," he explained, "is that the guard is black."

"Talk about internalized racism!"

"Yes.  We even get it from our own!"

At that moment, I realized that in some ways I am very fortunate:  I rarely, if ever, am looked at with suspicion.  As I once joked to somebody, "Security people look at me and think, 'Grandma doesn't have a bomb in her bag'."

I didn't mention any of that to the man I encountered in the bike parking room.  He thanked me for listening and "understanding," as he said.  What he probably doesn't know is--as I've mentioned in other posts--some experiences I had during my transition helped me to understand the bigotry and hostility people of color face.

The more likely one is to face prejudice and other forms of hatred, the more likely one is to become a victim of violence or other kinds of crime.  In other posts, I've talked about the dangers trans people face every day:  We are sixteen times as likely as anyone else, and twenty times as likely to experience a violent assault.  We are also far more likely than other people to encounter harassment, and even violence, at the hands of police officers.

So I can only imagine what my life would be like if I were a trans woman of color.  When I think of the times I've been harrassed by police officers--once on the street, the other time in my local precinct station--I imagine how much worse those encounters could have been were I Black, Hispanic or even Asian.

What I didn't tell the black man I met last week at BMCC is that, because I've had the experiences I've described, I was able to give him at least some of the "understanding" for which he thanked me.  I gave him my e-mail address "in case you want to talk," as I told him.  Whether or not I can help him, I can at least sympathize.  I think he knows that, even if he doesn't know why.

David Brooks Homophobia--And Racism And Classism

Sure, let gays get married.  Let them suffer like the rest of us.

I don't know who said it first.  But, even as a trans woman who was married (albeit briefly) as a man, I always thought it was funny.

That's more than can be said for the editorial David Brooks wrote in today's New York Times.  

Once upon a time, one could actually raise one's IQ a few points from a steady diet of the Times.  Even its most partisan editorials were usually well-reasoned and were relatively well-written.  Sometimes they envinced righteous indignation, especially if they were written by Sydney Schanberg.  Others were provocative; sometimes they were ironic or even funny, in good ways.

Then Schanberg got fired for criticizing real estate developers who were among the newspaper's biggest advertisers, and other columnists like William Safire and Russell Baker died or simply moved on.

Now we have the likes of Brooks who, it seems, is seen as a pundit because, well, he has a column in the Times and he's on all of those Sunday morning political shows.  The thing is, he writes like Dave Barry with a lobotomy and his reasoning skills make Rush Limbaugh seem like Rene Descartes.  

What I really can't stand about him, though, is his smug condescension. He's one of those people who's always going to do you the favor of telling you what's best for you because you, being you, can't possibly know.  At least he is consistent:  He has the same attitude toward anyone who's not white, heterosexual, male and a Baby Boomer still living in the 1950's.

Of course, a man like that, by definition, cannot have a sense of irony.  The problem is, he writes as if he has it, or is capable of acquiring it.  To wit:

But last week saw a setback for the forces of maximum freedom.  A representative of millions of gays and lesbians went to the Supreme Court and asked the court to help put limits on their freedom of choice.  They asked for marriage.

Now, in one way, I would agree with him:  If I were to get married again, I would be placing restrictions on myself.  I would agree to commit my life to that person and, at times, reign in certain desires for the sake of the relationship and the happiness of the person to whom I would be married. Perhaps I would have to do a few things I don't particularly care to do, and spend time with a few people I really would prefer not to know.  But I would make such choices for a larger freedom: that to pursue my own happiness.

But in a society in which no one is considered a full-fledged citizen unless he or she has the right to marry the person of his or her choice, having the right--the freedom of choice--of marriage is one of the greatest freedoms of all.  Just ask any person of my parents' age or older who wanted to marry someone of a different race or religion.  Or, for that matter, ask any African-American who was living in Virginia in 1967 or earlier.  Restrictions on marriage are inevitably aimed at people whom a society considers to be less than full citizens, which of course means people who are not of the "majority" race, culture, sexual inclination or gender expression--and who are, socially and economically, below the middle class.

Plus, the idea that gays and lesbians "asked the court to help put limits on their freedom of choice" is preposterous, not only because those who do not have freedoms don't normally ask for fewer of them, but because they were not asking for their right not to marry.  What makes that statement even more absurd--and outright insulting--is the implication that without "those limits on their freedom of choice", crystal meth-addled gays would hop from bed to bed without making any kind of serious commitments.  (His argument, if it might be called that, quickly deteriorates into a rant about black fathers who abandon their families and unemployed people who buy wide-screen TVs on credit, never mind that guys at places like Shearson-Lehman ran up balances sheets that were in the red for more than all of the wealth that ever existed in the history of the human race.)  Granted, there are LGBT people who are irresponsible and dysfunctional, but there are also plenty of straight people who are no different.   Plus, when you look at the divorce rates for straight people, do you really think gays and lesbians will do any worse?

More to the point, though, people who want to marry people of their own gender would, if allowed to do so, gain all sorts of other freedoms.  They could live openly as couples.  They could adopt kids (or have surrogates conceive or give birth to them).  They could do all of the things heterosexual couples do:  Take advantage of tax benefits, get mortgages and buy homes in both of their names, pass on their estates to each other or the kids they adopt and visit each other, unrestricted, in a hospital or nursing home.  They would be free to care for each other in the same ways heterosexuals commit themselves to caring for each other.  Heck, they can even decide which one is the "male" or "female" in the couple, or to break free of such roles altogether.

That drives people like David Brooks crazy.  And he sounds even crazier when he tries to seem logical.    The operative word, of course, is "tries":  He is no more capable of the reasoning he thinks he can mimic than he is of having babies.  What that means, of course, is that when can't pass off his resentment over other people sharing his privilege as some sort of noblesse oblige.  That might actually be his saving grace.