Resistance Is Necessary

Today, the Supreme Court voted to end a section of my dream for America — Affirmative Action, and raced-based help in college admissions. One may, I suppose, see this as bringing the pendulum back to center if you’re a conservative or Republican (and I don’t take those things as the same, but here they might be). It’s a sucky place to be, because we are less balanced as a country than we’ve been in a while. While President Biden seems to acknowledge “it’s not normal” on MSNBC’s “Deadline White House”, he believes that we will right the ship. I sure hope he’s right. To me, it seems the more we know, the less the Supreme Court understands.

When Affirmative Action first came in, I understood it to be a help up for people who might not normally get the chance to go to college, or get a job, or buy a house. That was the late 1960’s and it seemed like a good idea. Then, in 1978, the Bakke decision came in and said, “Hey, I’m White. Where’s my help up?”. People began to think of “reverse racism”, which meant that people were denied college placement because they were White. I don’t know Mr. Bacce or his situation, but I don’t think he couldn’t go elsewhere to college, couldn’t get a good job, or couldn’t live where he wanted. In fact, if he knew lawyers and could afford them, I suspect he could do anything he wanted except apparently get into that school.

White folks thought, “They’ve had 10 years or so to fix things. Racism must be over by now. Let’s see what happens”. Around the same time, I think, Proposition 8 came in in California and the “patriots” who started it weren’t going to pay any more property taxes to support State spending for things like fire departments, police, or education. They weren’t gonna take it anymore! Whether we knew it or not, these two things marked the beginning of the end for a caring America — the American Dream I thought we were signing on to. The late 1970’s/early 1980’s were about “Where’s mine?” for White America.

Bakke was “I want to go to that school”. Prop 8 was “I don’t want to pay for anybody else’s school”. Even then, there was some unconscious-to-Whites connection between education, class, and race. I bet that it wasn’t all-that-unconscious a connection for many folks — especially anyone who couldn’t get a place to live or a good school or a job — not people who knew or could afford lawyers, just regular folks who believed in loving each other and sharing things. “This land was your land/this land was my land… This land was made for you and me” or so we thought. Then, fear and the sense that there wasn’t enough to share made a dog-eat-dog hierarchical society where White Men could and should rule everything.

Since those days of love and sharing, the greed and inequality have gotten worse until a crook led our nation and people loved him for it. Along the way, fear caught hold of those who oppress’ hearts. They worry, “What if they did to us, what we did to them?. What if (in theological terms) there is no grace, there is no mercy, there is no redemption for our actions”? That’s when, in psychological terms, “projection’ starts. That’s why Jim Jordan runs a committee on “The Weaponization of Government” and it never finds anything.

America’s pendulum has begun to swing back among the regular, not-particularly-partisan folks, while swinging the other way in the government and courts. We get poison rulings based on the poisonous fruit that was put on the Supreme Court. Some people still love crime and corruption and they think no one will notice. We’ve already noticed. The money, the red, the lust for power, the exclusion, all yield nothing once the well of ideas has dried up. These things eat themselves over time until there’s nothing left. If you limit yourself to only the ideas of old, White, straight, men, you will — over the course of time — run out of ideas. That’s why the Trump Republicans have no platform and had none in the last election other than Donald Trump’s will-to-power. In case no one has mentioned it, that leaves only one person — Donald Trump, but it could be any narcissist — maybe Elon Musk, or Ron Desantis. White, male, heterosexual, Christian Supremacy is a dead end. All the resources going to one person and expecting all the ideas from that one person does not work. The world is too big and too complicated for one person to run it — even if they think they could.

So here’s what’s happened in the meantime: We’ve learned about Trayvon Martin and George Floyd and so many others. We’ve learned about “the talk”. We’ve learned about Juneteenth. We’ve learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre. We’ve learned about “Urban Renewal” splitting communities with the “progress” of highways. All of these things explain what we’ve missed and why things are the way they are. They urge a political analysis that is angry and with every right to be. But these things have always been wrong. Killing one person because they’re Black or killing a town full of them, or stealing from them at some time when when we had other, more moral, choices is, was, and will always be wrong. We White folks have always known that in our heart of hearts.

The “-isms” have always led to death and destruction and they’re all interconnected. The idea that Blacks should lose their rights and women and trans folks and everyone else isn’t next in line is lunacy. The idea that my part of the human race has chosen to not care for others — or, worse yet, do evil to them — doesn’t make me want to love or care for those who have been hurt any less. It makes me want to share even more of what I have. If you beat someone up, and I have the choice who to pay attention to after that, you or the person who’s been beaten, you’re going to lose.

It makes me believe in equity and equality and openness to ideas even more. It’s almost like Jesus was on to something, believing that we are all neighbors. It’s almost like Paul might be onto something with the repentance and forgiveness thing. It’s almost like caring for each other works better than what we’ve been doing that got us here. Let’s try sharing the planet because sharing with each other, believing in each other, respecting each other, might actually work.

Let’s try it… because this is not the America I signed up for.

Resisting with Peace,

John