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 The incoming Biden-Harris administration reflects the diversity of Americans. |
 “I did my brother a grievous wrong, and I will never forgive him!” When I first read that statement years ago in Utne Magazine, I was baffled. If I did my brother wrong, wouldn’t it be me that needed forgiveness? Reading on, I saw the meaning which I think it is incredibly relevant to America today: When you’ve acted inhumanly to your fellow members of the human race, you can repent it OR you can keep insisting that THEY MUST HAVE DESERVED IT. Otherwise you, an upstanding member of society, could never have acted that way. So you have to keep piling coals of fire upon your brother’s head to justify your actions and avoid being repulsed by yourself. Today we are seeing a culmination of 400 years of misplaced blame in America. “We have to take our country back!” is a macabre example, considering that the people uttering those words descend from those who massacred millions of indigenous people that were here long before Europeans invaded. “They’re going to take our jobs and give them to the lazy Blacks!” is another common mantra. Disrespect reigns for anyone not white, such as that expressed even by someone as privileged as a member of the board of the Naval Academy Alumni Association, who unwittingly broadcast himself saying hateful slurs. As a Black woman who has learned America’s history at the pivotal places where it happened in the National Park System, I confess I sometimes feel a little smug. Because it requires an astounding lack of knowledge about our country’s history to claim that it was once “white” and a colossal level of self-deception to pretend that non-white Americans are lazy. Could it be that revulsion to their ancestors’ actions at events such as the massacre at Sand Creek force today’s racists to maintain their antipathy towards their non-white brothers and sisters? Could the need to be able to stomach or excuse the actions of their forebears propel them to claim a shallow ‘superiority?’ Because it is stomach churning: “… in late autumn of 1864, about 1,000 Cheyenne and Arapaho lived in tepees here, at the edge of what was then reservation land. Their chiefs had recently sought peace in talks with white officials and believed they would be unmolested at their isolated camp. “When hundreds of blue-clad cavalrymen suddenly appeared at dawn on November 29, a Cheyenne chief raised the Stars and Stripes above his lodge. Others in the village waved white flags. The troops replied by opening fire with carbines and cannon, killing at least 150 Indians, most of them women, children and the elderly. Before departing, the troops burned the village and mutilated the dead, carrying off body parts as trophies. . .” I need not document the industriousness of African Americans in farming, building, metalwork, defense and even saving America’s economy. and instead refer you to some of those parks that commemorate that history at the places where it happened, African American Heritage. Americans of every race and ethnicity contributed to the development of our country and can find sites in the National Park System where their contributions were pivotal to getting us where we are today. The humanity of white Americans is similarly on display. I’m not a psychologist (though I could play one on TV.) But I believe it’s important to investigate all the potential triggers that are leading our white brothers and sisters to act out in such a paroxysm of rage. A few cautions I might share from the System which protects the “natural, cultural and historic” treasures of our great Republic: A civil war is no joke, as the graves at these national parks attest, and the suffering recorded at sites such as Andersonville National Historic Site place them off my list, (although my life goal is to visit all 400-plus units in the system.) 750, 000 dead and untold numbers injured. For what purpose would the losing side want to repeat that in 2021?! I read about a tribe in Africa where, when a member has transgressed, the elders take them out into the village square. There, the villagers sing and dance around them, reminding them how good they are and that they are a vital part of the community. When the transgressor has repented, the tribe takes him back into the village. I wish we could do that for these American transgressors. Because a house divided against itself cannot stand. I’d tell them, “Your brothers and sisters who’ve been so terribly wronged don’t hold it against you. We just want to move on as humans together on a level playing field, to make real what we Americans committed to centuries ago, ‘with Liberty and Justice for all.’ ” How about it? There’s a brighter day in view and I embrace it wholeheartedly. |
Words We Speak 