We were sitting over dinner in our home with Rajmohan Gandhi (visiting Richmond to keynote our annual Metropolitan Richmond Day forum), two African American neighbors of thirty years, and several young IofC staffers. The conversation naturally turned to the presidential election.
Some years ago our black neighbors chose to join a nearly all-white mainline church. They reasoned that since race is a human construct, “you can’t talk about a black church or a white church.” They both became respected elders and served on the presbytery. They encouraged the church’s outreach to the poorer sections of Richmond and supported the church’s music minister in launching the city’s first multiracial chorus.
Yet, the church is solidly conservative and many members are Republicans. In the run-up to the elections, conversation became difficult, even with those to whom they had become personally very close.
“How can you vote for a party that disrespects me?” our neighbor asked a white friend. The response was awkward: “We love you but …..”
The widespread disconnect between personal faith and public policy became a topic of discussion around our dinner table. I was reminded of an observation by a local business leader with a passion for early childhood education that Americans send millions of dollars to help survivors of tsunamis, “but we have a social tsunami right here.”
White evangelicals were genuinely shocked to discover that their strident opposition to abortion and gay marriage did not result in support among the vast majority of minorities, young voters and women. Many saw the GOP platform as being extreme and a threat on a wide range of issues from immigration to climate change and economic fairness. They felt insulted by many of the public statements during the campaign.
Not one leading Republican had the guts to stand up against the outrageous and racially charged allegations that the president was not US born. It is inconceivable that such allegations would have been leveled at a white candidate.
Not one leading evangelical went out of his or her way to correct the astonishing belief among a majority of Republicans that Obama was either a Muslim or at least not a real Christian.
It was tragic to see Billy Graham lend his prestige to the dubious claims that God favored one side in the election. It was far cry from the Graham of 1993 who wrote in Christianity Today that “racial and ethnic hostility is the foremost social problem facing our world today.” (William Parnell wrote in the same issue that “a first step is the sincere repentance by white evangelicals.”)
Sadly, the Republican candidate did not express outrage that a party with a proud history of ending slavery and supporting civil rights legislation would blatantly attempt to suppress black and Latino votes.
I am a registered Democrat but this is not a partisan blog. I believe strongly in the need for a healthy two-party, or multi-party democracy. I also respect the deeply held convictions of many conservatives on difficult social questions as well as on a range of economic issues. Few can doubt that without a renewed commitment to fundamental values of integrity and responsibility and stronger family units no amount of government intervention will lift communities out of poverty. Nor should liberals make the mistake of assuming that all conservatives or white evangelicals are monolithic in their views. Many are deeply committed to social justice.
Speaking to a diverse Richmond audience the day after the dinner conversation, Gandhi quoted Martin Luther King in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" in which he spoke of the Black quest for civil rights in these terms.
[W]hen these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream, and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.
“Standing up for dignity and equality is at the core of the American Dream, King was saying. And the lunch counters he was speaking of have a direct meaning today when poverty is a sharp reality for a large number of Americans.”
Who are the Republicans who will call out the best in the party’s tradition to meet the challenge of a new America?
Our dinner group noted the attempt by the militant left to control the British trade union movement in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. It led to massive industrial disputes in key industries and deeply wounded the economy.
An important factor in turning the tide was a new willingness by moderate union leaders to take responsibility and stand up for their convictions in the face of intimidation. This in turn helped to change the direction of the Labor Party, making the leadership of a Tony Blair possible.
Throughout those decades, Initiative of Change was engaged in a sustained effort to support new thinking and courageous leadership in the labor movement.
Some similar action by Republican moderates is needed now in the U.S. for a party that has been hijacked by extreme and irrational forces and a Tea Party movement which major moneyed interests are cynically supporting and manipulating for their own benefit.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch (hardly a bastion of liberal thought) editorialized, “The future belongs to the party best able to cross the ethnic and gender lines. It does not rest with a movement personified by the snarling visage of Rush Limbaugh.” But as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat writes, “the temptation of the party’s elite will be to fasten on the demographic explanation because playing identity politics seems less painful that overhauling the Republican economic message.”
The country awaits a few good men and women with the courage to stand up, reclaim their party and return it to its true values.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Notes to the occupant of the White House
By the time most of you read this the United States will have chosen the occupant of the White House for the next four years. Half the country will be pleased; the other half deeply disappointed. But everyone will be glad not to see another political ad for a long time!
Whether Democrat or Republican, the president will be confronted with daunting and unavoidable challenges and choices. And he will have to find a way to bridge partisan divides to address any of them.
Hurricane Sandy brutally exposed the vulnerability of a city that is the commercial heart of this country. Other coastal cities are also at risk. The president will have to face up to the implications of increasingly extreme weather patterns, whatever their cause. Doing nothing and hoping for the best is not an option.
Much of our infrastructure from bridges to power grids to gas lines is decaying or unable to meet the needs of the future. With interest rates at record lows, now is the time to act. The longer we wait the more costly the rebuilding will be.
The economy will probably continue to improve and millions of jobs will be created whoever is in the White House. But the underlying structural problem is lack of workforce readiness for the global economy. And millions of people who are working simply do not earn enough to make ends meet. We need to develop a high skill, high wage economy. That means major investment in education on a level we have not seen in decades.
We have an aging population. Ten thousand people reach retirement every day. Immigration is helping to mitigate the problem. But our president will need to have the courage to tell older Americans the truth about changes that are needed in Social Security and Medicare if we are to maintain a viable program for the next generation and not bankrupt the country.
Overseas, our president can stand firm for our values while also affirming that it is a mark of a nation’s strength, not weakness, to admit mistakes. Donald Shriver’s Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough to Remember its Misdeeds should be studied by every American political leader.
On the eve of this election, I re-read A Call to Community that was launched at the National Press Club in 1996 by Initiatives of Change and its partners with the support of Democrat and Republican leaders. Its concluding lines are just as relevant today:
To build this new American community, we must empower individuals to take charge of their lives and take care of their communities…This approach calls us to a new concept of partnership and responsibility. It means:
Whether Democrat or Republican, the president will be confronted with daunting and unavoidable challenges and choices. And he will have to find a way to bridge partisan divides to address any of them.
Hurricane Sandy brutally exposed the vulnerability of a city that is the commercial heart of this country. Other coastal cities are also at risk. The president will have to face up to the implications of increasingly extreme weather patterns, whatever their cause. Doing nothing and hoping for the best is not an option.
Much of our infrastructure from bridges to power grids to gas lines is decaying or unable to meet the needs of the future. With interest rates at record lows, now is the time to act. The longer we wait the more costly the rebuilding will be.
The economy will probably continue to improve and millions of jobs will be created whoever is in the White House. But the underlying structural problem is lack of workforce readiness for the global economy. And millions of people who are working simply do not earn enough to make ends meet. We need to develop a high skill, high wage economy. That means major investment in education on a level we have not seen in decades.
We have an aging population. Ten thousand people reach retirement every day. Immigration is helping to mitigate the problem. But our president will need to have the courage to tell older Americans the truth about changes that are needed in Social Security and Medicare if we are to maintain a viable program for the next generation and not bankrupt the country.
Overseas, our president can stand firm for our values while also affirming that it is a mark of a nation’s strength, not weakness, to admit mistakes. Donald Shriver’s Honest Patriots: Loving a Country Enough to Remember its Misdeeds should be studied by every American political leader.
On the eve of this election, I re-read A Call to Community that was launched at the National Press Club in 1996 by Initiatives of Change and its partners with the support of Democrat and Republican leaders. Its concluding lines are just as relevant today:
To build this new American community, we must empower individuals to take charge of their lives and take care of their communities…This approach calls us to a new concept of partnership and responsibility. It means:
- Listening carefully and respectfully to each other and to the whole community
- Bringing people together, not in confrontation but in trust, to tackle urgent needs
- Searching for solutions, focusing on what is right rather than who is right
- Building lasting relationships outside our comfort zone
- Honoring each person, appealing to the best qualities in everyone, and refusing to stereotype
- Holding ourselves, communities and institutions accountable where change is needed
- Recognizing that the energy for fundamental change requires a moral and spiritual transformation in the human spirit
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Learning the language of others
“We can’t be friends with them because they don’t speak our language,” an Afghan soldier told a reporter in discussing tense relations with US troops. I was struck by this remark because it could be applied to the breakdown of public conversation in America today.
Whatever the outcome of the presidential election, one thing is certain: the victor will be faced with governing a country growing ever more divided around social and cultural issues and more unequal than any other society in the developed world. Both Republican and Democrat campaigns have played to our fears and insecurities; they have not called on our best instincts.
The vast majority of Americans expose themselves only to media outlets that confirm their own biases and prejudices. Rich and poor live insulated lives. According to some surveys racial prejudice has actually increased since 2008. Most striking is the growing demographic evidence that Americans are choosing to live in regions where the population tends to reflect similar political views and moral priorities.
I am very aware of how easily my own “hot buttons” get pushed by certain people. It’s as if they are speaking a foreign language. “How can they be so stupid?” I ask. “What planet are they living on, what century are they living in?” Yet I know that many of the people whose views I abhor often feel equally bewildered and threatened by the agendas of the other side.
It will take inspired and courageous political leadership to transcend this dangerous trend toward fragmentation. But each one of us can make a start by refusing to indulge in stereotyping and taking whatever steps we can to learn the language of others. We can remain true to our own beliefs while recognizing that none of us are keepers of the whole truth and that we can gain new insights even if they are difficult to hear.
In The World at the Turning, Charles Piguet and Michel Sentis write: “We have learned in thirty years of working with Buddhists, Hindus, North American Indians, Africans of all beliefs, militant communists, young revolutionaries, powerful capitalists, peasants, politicians, trade union leaders, that hope is not confined to any one temple…The intimate experiences of the heart and spirit are a reality which can be communicated and which every other human being can respond to…This reality has to be stripped of the intellectual and religious verbalizing we normally clothe it in: words, like grand garments on a wasted body, can hide internal poverty. We need to rediscover the one universal language – a life lived out.”
As hurricane Sandy bears down on the east coast we can be sure that Americans of all stripes will band together to protect their neighbors and their communities. Perhaps the storm will cool some of the emotions generated by the election.
Everyone is needed to build a future of hope and possibility: liberals and conservatives, people of all racial, ethnic and economic backgrounds, and people of many faiths. Can we as Americans discover a new language of a life lived out?
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Kosher Gospel in Richmond, Virginia
The Richmond Folk Festival gets better every year. On a crystal clear weekend, with the sun sparkling on the James River, about 200,000 people enjoyed an amazingly eclectic range of culture ranging from Ethiopian Azmari music and dance to Argentine tango and traditional New Orleans jazz, and from demonstrations of the Chinese jaw harp and the Iraqi oud, to Irish and Cape Breton fiddling.
We arrived at the festival on the first day as Rosanne Cash (daughter of Johnny Cash) rocked an enthusiastic crowd of mostly white baby boomers. (She has a red-hot band and her lead guitarist and husband, songwriter John Leventhal, is a terrific musician). As the day wore on the crowd became noticeably younger and more diverse. A colleague who recently arrived in Richmond remarked on the number of interracial couples – a surprise to her in a city known as the Confederate capital and proponent of segregation.
The festival stages and booths surround the American Civil War Center housed in the old Tredegar Iron Works, on the banks of the James River, that once produced cannon for the Southern army during the Civil War. Without the industrial muscle of Tredegar, the South could not have sustained the long, brutal struggle, a war instigated by slave states to maintain a system of perpetual bondage and to enable the growth of a slave nation as America expanded west.
We took a Romanian friend to visit the Center. Diana Damsa is a dialogue facilitator and member of a group addressing the need to heal the wounds created by historical divisions in Eastern Europe. She is on an internship in Richmond to study this city’s efforts to deal with its past and to build trust and cooperation. The Tredegar museum is unique in telling the story of the bitter conflict from three perspectives – Union, Confederate and African American. It is a sobering experience to try to imagine the suffering caused by competing and deeply-held concepts of liberty and group identity.
Emerging from Tredegar into the happy, sometimes raucous celebration of our multicultural world, I was struck by how far we have come in overcoming old ideas about race and ethnicity. An unexpected and delightful discovery of the weekend was the music of Joshua Nelson, a black Jew known as the Prince of Kosher Gospel. Nelson takes traditional Jewish liturgical songs and infuses them with the energy of gospel music.
Yes, there is still a long way to go. Yes, racism still lurks beneath the surface and makes its presence felt in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. As we walked to the festival we passed a table selling pictures of Obama. A man in front of me put his finger to the president’s head and said to his family, “I would like to put a bullet right there.” (He was joking – I think – but it still sends chills down your spine.)
But the fact that Richmond, Virginia, can host such a wonderful folk festival underscores that yesterday is not today. The ghosts of the past are fading. Richmond and America are far better places and will continue to get better.
We arrived at the festival on the first day as Rosanne Cash (daughter of Johnny Cash) rocked an enthusiastic crowd of mostly white baby boomers. (She has a red-hot band and her lead guitarist and husband, songwriter John Leventhal, is a terrific musician). As the day wore on the crowd became noticeably younger and more diverse. A colleague who recently arrived in Richmond remarked on the number of interracial couples – a surprise to her in a city known as the Confederate capital and proponent of segregation.
The festival stages and booths surround the American Civil War Center housed in the old Tredegar Iron Works, on the banks of the James River, that once produced cannon for the Southern army during the Civil War. Without the industrial muscle of Tredegar, the South could not have sustained the long, brutal struggle, a war instigated by slave states to maintain a system of perpetual bondage and to enable the growth of a slave nation as America expanded west.
We took a Romanian friend to visit the Center. Diana Damsa is a dialogue facilitator and member of a group addressing the need to heal the wounds created by historical divisions in Eastern Europe. She is on an internship in Richmond to study this city’s efforts to deal with its past and to build trust and cooperation. The Tredegar museum is unique in telling the story of the bitter conflict from three perspectives – Union, Confederate and African American. It is a sobering experience to try to imagine the suffering caused by competing and deeply-held concepts of liberty and group identity.
Emerging from Tredegar into the happy, sometimes raucous celebration of our multicultural world, I was struck by how far we have come in overcoming old ideas about race and ethnicity. An unexpected and delightful discovery of the weekend was the music of Joshua Nelson, a black Jew known as the Prince of Kosher Gospel. Nelson takes traditional Jewish liturgical songs and infuses them with the energy of gospel music.
Yes, there is still a long way to go. Yes, racism still lurks beneath the surface and makes its presence felt in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. As we walked to the festival we passed a table selling pictures of Obama. A man in front of me put his finger to the president’s head and said to his family, “I would like to put a bullet right there.” (He was joking – I think – but it still sends chills down your spine.)
But the fact that Richmond, Virginia, can host such a wonderful folk festival underscores that yesterday is not today. The ghosts of the past are fading. Richmond and America are far better places and will continue to get better.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Emancipation and the American Dream
One hundred and fifty years ago this month, Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. On September 22, 1862, he released a preliminary document promising to free slaves in any southern state still in rebellion on January 1, 1863.
A few days earlier at the battle of Antietam 23,000 men had been killed or wounded in the bloodiest day of battle in American history. Lincoln had always abhorred slavery but his primary goal was to preserve the Union. By the summer of 1862 he had concluded that freeing slaves was an essential step in defeating the Confederacy. Antietam was inconclusive but it was victory enough to give Lincoln the confidence to announce his proclamation.
Today’s historians are focusing increasingly on slavery and emancipation as the central story of the Civil War. However, it is important to remember that well before Lincoln’s proclamation many slaves had already freed themselves. As Dr. Edward Ayers, a noted historian of the South and president of the University of Richmond, told a Richmond audience last year, when Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, African Americans “seized the opportunity to make themselves free.” Three enslaved men escaped to the Union army at Fortress Monroe. “As soon as word spread, thousands of men and women took this first opportunity to begin their journey to freedom.”
Many black Americans joined the Union forces. They fought at considerable risk. They knew that if they were captured, they faced possible execution.
By 1863, two hundred thousand African Americans were fighting for the United States. By 1865, a regiment of black soldiers marched into Richmond as Confederate soldiers fled leaving much of the city in flames. Emancipation was something they fought and died for; it was not handed to them on a plate.
In seminars and symposiums scholars are revisiting this historic moment. But what does Emancipation mean for America today? What are the obstacles to creating communities of hope and opportunity for everyone? From what do we still need to free ourselves, individually and as a nation?
"Central to the American Dream,” says Rajmohan Gandhi, a grandson and biographer of Mahatma Gandhi, who teaches at the University of Illinois, “is the creation of a new history by defeating poverty, illness and pain.” How one wishes that leaders of both our political parties could embrace such a vision! Poverty has scarcely been mentioned by either presidential candidate. Meanwhile the yawning gap between the very rich and the working poor continues to widen.
Whites are suffering along with minorities. Life expectancy for the poorest and least-educated whites has fallen by four years since 1990 and by five years for women. The five-year decline for white women rivals the catastrophic seven-year drop for Russian men in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, said Michael Marmot, director of the Institute of Health Equity in a report in the New York Times.
Gandhi will come to Richmond, Virginia, on November 9 to discuss “emancipation in our times.” He will find a city that has made dramatic strides in its ability to tell its history honestly, but a metropolitan region that has as yet failed to muster the vision and courage to address the inequities in education, housing and public transportation that are the result of a history of slavery and segregation.
Metropolitan cities across the country face huge challenges. Meeting those challenges demands leaders who will look beyond the demands of their own group.
Prof. John Witt of Yale calls the Emancipation Proclamation “the greatest moral triumph in modern political history.” One hundred and fifty years after Lincoln’s bold action, who will have the courage to risk political fortune, speak truth to this country and create a new history?
A few days earlier at the battle of Antietam 23,000 men had been killed or wounded in the bloodiest day of battle in American history. Lincoln had always abhorred slavery but his primary goal was to preserve the Union. By the summer of 1862 he had concluded that freeing slaves was an essential step in defeating the Confederacy. Antietam was inconclusive but it was victory enough to give Lincoln the confidence to announce his proclamation.
Today’s historians are focusing increasingly on slavery and emancipation as the central story of the Civil War. However, it is important to remember that well before Lincoln’s proclamation many slaves had already freed themselves. As Dr. Edward Ayers, a noted historian of the South and president of the University of Richmond, told a Richmond audience last year, when Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, African Americans “seized the opportunity to make themselves free.” Three enslaved men escaped to the Union army at Fortress Monroe. “As soon as word spread, thousands of men and women took this first opportunity to begin their journey to freedom.”
Many black Americans joined the Union forces. They fought at considerable risk. They knew that if they were captured, they faced possible execution.
By 1863, two hundred thousand African Americans were fighting for the United States. By 1865, a regiment of black soldiers marched into Richmond as Confederate soldiers fled leaving much of the city in flames. Emancipation was something they fought and died for; it was not handed to them on a plate.
In seminars and symposiums scholars are revisiting this historic moment. But what does Emancipation mean for America today? What are the obstacles to creating communities of hope and opportunity for everyone? From what do we still need to free ourselves, individually and as a nation?
"Central to the American Dream,” says Rajmohan Gandhi, a grandson and biographer of Mahatma Gandhi, who teaches at the University of Illinois, “is the creation of a new history by defeating poverty, illness and pain.” How one wishes that leaders of both our political parties could embrace such a vision! Poverty has scarcely been mentioned by either presidential candidate. Meanwhile the yawning gap between the very rich and the working poor continues to widen.
Whites are suffering along with minorities. Life expectancy for the poorest and least-educated whites has fallen by four years since 1990 and by five years for women. The five-year decline for white women rivals the catastrophic seven-year drop for Russian men in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, said Michael Marmot, director of the Institute of Health Equity in a report in the New York Times.
Gandhi will come to Richmond, Virginia, on November 9 to discuss “emancipation in our times.” He will find a city that has made dramatic strides in its ability to tell its history honestly, but a metropolitan region that has as yet failed to muster the vision and courage to address the inequities in education, housing and public transportation that are the result of a history of slavery and segregation.
Metropolitan cities across the country face huge challenges. Meeting those challenges demands leaders who will look beyond the demands of their own group.
Prof. John Witt of Yale calls the Emancipation Proclamation “the greatest moral triumph in modern political history.” One hundred and fifty years after Lincoln’s bold action, who will have the courage to risk political fortune, speak truth to this country and create a new history?
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