Fully Present Post 50

Let’s begin with the basic definition of reparation. When one party has harmed another, it’s healthy for both parties if the perpetrator acknowledges and apologizes for the harm inflicted and to then offer to somehow repair the damage inflicted upon the harmed party. That’s the meaning of reparation. It’s to acknowledge and make amends, allowing for healing and restoration. The U.S. has paid reparations to native Americans, former slave owners, and Japanese Americans. However, African Americans had their promise of 40 acres and a mule revoked soon after President Lincoln was assassinated. The issue of reparations is once again a topic of discussion.

In the United States, it is impossible to deny that African Americans who are the descendants of slaves have suffered tremendous harm throughout the history of this nation. Some people (like me) believe African Americans are owed something for the 243 years of legalized slavery followed by Jim Crow segregation and legalized discrimination in addition to targeted oppression and destruction of Black lives and livelihoods in almost every sector of American life. At its inception 65% of African Americans were locked out of receiving Social Security benefits as farm workers and domestics and African American veterans were denied GI benefits that subsidized college and housing after WWII. At every turn, U.S. policies denied African Americans the right to equitable pursuits of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is no wonder that African Americans today have one tenth the net worth of their white counterparts. Even college educated blacks earn less on average than white persons with only a high school diploma.

There are those who argue that nothing is owed because they were not personally responsible for slavery since they were not alive and had nothing to do with the systemic racism that continues to harm black people in general and African Americans in particular. Some even contend that systemic racism is a myth that should be banished from our vocabulary.

I will address those people later. But for the purpose of reparations, I make a distinction between black people and African Americans. “Black people” is an all-encompassing term for people with black heritage while African American refers specially to black people who are the descendants of United States slaves. I make the distinction because of a divergent history of trauma and harm suffered at the hands of the American government and its citizens. Many black immigrants were not subjected to the pre-civil rights era trauma caused by legalized terror, blatant discrimination, and ridicule heaped upon African Americans. However, it cannot be denied that their black skin today subjects them to lingering systemic racism, covert discrimination and physical danger. For this reason, I contend that all black people in this nation are “owed” reparations, with the greatest amount to be reserved for African Americans.

Some would say that the U.S. has already paid reparations in the form of Affirmative Action. And to some extent, I would agree. Affirmative Action certainly opened the door to opportunities that had been previously closed. However, one requirement of Affirmative Action is that the candidate for college admission or a certain job has to meet the “qualifications” to be given preferential treatment for selection. Only a few African Americans who could actually meet the qualifications because they lacked access to the academic rigor, mentorships, and experiences necessary to gain those requisite qualifications. It is often argued that the greatest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action were white women and Asian Americans.

In previous posts, I detailed my personal journey through K-12 and how academic expectations and opportunities in this country are distributed along economic, ethnic, and racial lines. As author Jonathan Kozol reports, children in low-income areas are offered considerably fewer academic resources than others and absent parental advocacy and participation in those schools, the children receive an inferior education. The top 10% of those students may “qualify” for college admission when grades are given priority over SAT scores, but many of them will struggle to catch up academically and socially during their first years of college.

Not surprisingly, the very vocal opposers of Affirmative Action call it “reverse discrimination” citing the struggle of these students as a failure of Affirmative Action and a disservice to the students, most of whom are black or brown and poor. These short-sighted naysayers will argue that Affirmative Action weakens workforce competency and dumbs down higher education by including these sub-par individuals into spaces they really don’t belong. In reality, the actual failure is the systemic racism that denies these workers and students access to the living conditions, K-12 education and experiences that would adequately prepare them for well-paid jobs and college coursework. I know this from my own career in education.

In my experience, most of these college students will make it to graduation if they receive adequate moral and financial support and if they are willing to spend extra hours studying. They won’t have the highest grades at graduation because of their initial struggle, but they will eventually catch up and thrive. For example, I mentored a black male student who wanted to become a doctor. He was a top student athlete at his urban high school and was admitted to our university as a biochemistry major because he was pre-med. I recall his dismay when he first encountered the periodic table and realized that all his classmates were already more than familiar with it, having had the opportunity at their high schools to take chemistry and even AP chemistry courses. His high school didn’t offer chemistry and he had never been in a lab. This student quit the football team to concentrate on catching up. Today he is a physicians’ assistant. The opponents of Affirmative Action are decrying the access points but ignoring the possible upward mobility of people who are given opportunities because of it. Most will thrive in their jobs and classrooms when given the opportunity along with accompanying support.

Affirmative Action was reparations for people like me, who because of my family situation and my mother’s advocacy were able to take advantage of it. For me, it was an open door that I was prepared to enter. Other people like my student, who despite the failures of his K-12 education was able to show enough promise and to study hard enough to overcome the hurdles that poverty and an inferior K-12 education placed before him. However, Affirmative Action does very little for most African Americans because the vast majority lack the fortitude or funds to persist in college or worse, they lack the opportunity to gain the necessary qualifications for admission. Affirmative Action alone is nowhere near adequate reparations for African Americans.

Instead, I am advocating for reparations in the form of a substantial investment in predominantly black pre-K-12 schools. These schools need everything from highly qualified teachers, state of the art school facilities, and school resources comparable to schools in high property tax areas. Second, I would offer paid college or trade school tuition and books to every African American student. And I would forgive the student loan debt of those earning less than $75,000 per year. Third, I would offer interest free government loans to black business owners to establish and expand businesses within predominately black communities as well as subsidies to major retailers to open much needed shopping centers in black communities that lack them. Fourth, I would offer a $40,000 cash payment to African Americans above the age of fifty with a bonus of $20,000 payable to the children or grandchildren of WWII veterans who were denied GI Bill benefits; a $30,000 cash payment to African Americans from age 41 to 50; a $20,000 cash payment to African Americans from age 20 to 40; and a $1,000 cash payment up to $20,000 for black Americans who have lived in the U.S. for each year of citizenship up to 20 years. Fifth, reparations must be made to former prison inmates who were either over-sentenced or wrongly accused. Those who served out their sentences should have their voting rights restored. Those who were exonerated should be compensated at a rate of $50,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment and provided free job training or college tuition and fees. And those whose sentences are deemed to be excessive compared to non-black inmates for similar crimes should have their sentences reduced and if the excess time has already been served, they should be compensated for their extra years of incarceration at a rate of $40,000 per year, payable to survivors if the situation warrants. And finally, sixth, every African American living today should receive free healthcare as reparation for government sanctioned environmental toxins, illicit drug infestation, and a history of inhumane medical experimentation on African American bodies.

As a reasonable person, I dismiss the argument that nothing is owed. The fact is that every white person in this country benefited from the mistreatment of African Americans in one way or another. Even though white Americans living today were not personally responsible for the original sin of slavery nor the terrorism, discrimination, systemic inequality and bigotry that followed it, it should be evident that a great portion of the infrastructure, medical breakthroughs, generational wealth, and social status they enjoy today can be attributed to it. Reparations is the right thing to do. It will make amends for the damage this nation has done to the lives and livelihoods of blacks and African Americans in its quest to build wealth and dominate on the world stage. And most certainly, reparations will help improve our collective lives as it will ultimately address our mental health crisis along with the poverty and the crime that plague this nation.

Instead of hiding from our history (because it makes people uncomfortable), we should acknowledge the wrongs of the past and make amends so that we can heal and prosper together. Reparations is a way forward toward healing and unity of an entire nation, with truth as the path toward freedom and release from the chains that bind us to our past failures. It would be a better lesson for our children to learn that the nation hurt African American people, but it apologized and made amends by repairing the damage.

When I look in the mirror, I see more than my milk chocolate skin color. I see the joys and traumas, the victories and defeats, and the pride and challenges of my life and the lives of generations that preceded me. I also see a woman with an easy smile, a heart full of love and compassion, empathy, creativity, and far too many worries. I see a woman who struggles with weight, hypertension, bad eyesight, and kidney disease. I see a mother and grandmother who is passionate about making the lives of the next generation better than her own. I see a human being who is concerned that mankind continues to fail black people and worse, that black people too often continue to fail ourselves. I see a woman who is tired but determined.

I learned early on that people and governments will disappoint me and that the only person I can rely on is myself. But at times, even I disappoint myself. I know as well as anyone that emotions often get in the way of doing what is good, right, and best for myself. For example, how many times have I sought comfort inside a bowl of potato chips? Too many times. However, I still consider myself one of the lucky ones.

Despite my shortcomings, I managed to get a good education, survive childbirth, retire from a good career, be happily married, be financially well off, and to live long enough to see my grandchildren. I didn’t need to be perfect to achieve this, just good enough and lucky enough to escape a few traps, dodge a few bullets, and circumvent a few pitfalls strategically laid to ensnare African Americans.

It’s disheartening to know that seventy percent of African Americans households are making less than $75,000 per year and are therefore not living as well as most Americans. According to Pew, 40% of African American households earn less than $30,000 per year. And having a household net worth over 1 million dollars puts me in the top 2% of black families while 20% of us live below the poverty level lets me know outside forces are actively at work. I fully recognize that a large part of my success can be attributed to pure luck (since God is no respecter of persons), but another part can be attributed to an alternative mindset I adopted, abandoning some aspects of black culture. I weaved together these desperate cultural attributes from my multicultural experience growing up and formed new habits that served me well. That’s what I want to talk about first.

I learned from my church friends to love God, to love others, to forgive, to walk humbly, to do justice, to be generous, and that faith without works is dead. From my alcoholic father, I learned to avoid alcohol and mind-altering substances, but I also learned the virtues of hard work, entrepreneurial endeavors, and to only buy property where the property values will rise. I learned from my mother that the pursuit of personal interests and talents was a worthwhile financial investment and to insist upon opportunities to prove the naysayers wrong. I learned from my Asian friends that competition can drive personal achievement upwards, and that competence has real world value. I learned from white people to value time and the efficient use of it and to watch my back. I learned from my Jewish friends to be frugal and to invest money and that investing is far better than spending. I learned from my Latino friends to value family relationships. I learned from my AKA sorority sisters that Black Girl Magic is real and that I’m not alone in wanting to improve black communities. I learned from my black friends and family to lean into color, creativity, and confidence. I learned from my international students that culture is a powerful driving force in human behavior, but that aspects of a culture can be rejected, revised, and eventually changed. Watching their transformation gave me hope.

As I was introduced to attributes from other cultures, I questioned some of the black cultural cues I absorbed growing up. For example, prior to attending school with a lot of Asians, high grades were easy to achieve because expectations were low, and the academic rigor was even lower. It was at the Asian elementary school that I came to understand that too much time spent playing sports, dancing, and listening to music jeopardized my academic achievement. Admittedly, my favorite past time before going to that school was watching television, listening to music, singing in the church choir, learning the newest dances, and playing sports. But I didn’t want to look stupid among my new classmates, so I had to change how I was spending my time. I wanted to compete academically, so I eventually spent less time singing, dancing, watching television and playing sports and a lot more time reading and studying. Surprisingly, I found that I enjoyed the acquisition of knowledge. I loved learning and the reward of high grades. I never abandoned the fun things, but they were no longer my biggest priority. However, among black family and friends, I became a lot less hip. I was known for (and not really appreciated) for my school smarts.

I learned from my father that home values increase more rapidly in white neighborhoods and that the free public schools are as good as the private schools in poor neighborhoods, so that is where we purchased homes. Since the fourth grade, I’ve only lived in white neighborhoods, and I think experiencing white culture (including being banned from the white neighborhood school) has helped me appreciate the vibrancy of black creativity and cuisine while also learning to navigate white spaces while fully understanding my “outsider” status.

Other encounters eventually shaped other aspects of my life as well. Spending time with my Jewish friends taught me that building wealth came from spending as little as possible on worthwhile products and investing as much as possible. Eventually, my investment growth outpaced my monthly income from my job. Latino encounters taught me to accept and enjoy the diversity of personalities within my family, to invest in family members, and not to cut ties with family members so easily. Growing up, I saw how easily ties were cut among black family and friends for offenses that went unforgiven. I saw jealously instead of financial investment in each other’s ideas. Beyond my family’s unique culture of investing in each other’s endeavors, I saw that pooling resources was like pulling teeth because there was too little trust in each other. I often asked my black college students if they could ask extended family to help them study abroad or pay for books and they said, “no”. The first time I studied abroad, the funds came from multiple extended family members. My mother helped me start a business and purchase my first house. I in turn helped my children with their endeavors and they in turn are willing and able to invest in each other without hesitation.

My point is that although African Americans in this country face very real problems with systemic racism, a few aspects of our culture work against our progress as a people. For example, our emphasis on sports and entertainment above academics, especially among our young males limits our educational and job prospects. Our obsession with fancy hair, fancy cars and expensive trendy clothes hampers our ability to purchase property and invest in the market. And finally, our lack of trust and loyalty to each other and the insane willingness to step on each other and even kill each other to preserve face or to get ahead is destroying us from within and ruining our collective reputation. I can say from the experience of my extended family that living in a black neighborhood is more dangerous, more expensive, less healthy, and more oppressive than living as a black family among whites. These are aspects of our culture that are within our power to change. However, other issues are harder to address.

For example, we are more prone to hypertension because of our genetics. Slave traders licked the faces of potential slaves to select the saltiest prospects because they were more likely to survive the middle passage. Those are the ancestors of most African Americans and account for our higher incidence of hypertension. However, our limited access to healthy foods, exposure to toxins, and inadequate healthcare have a lot to do with our poor health outcomes as well.

I have little faith in the government to improve our situation. In fact, Republican leaders are moving towards making things worse for us across the spectrum, including the removal of our historic contributions to this nation. In red states in the South where most of us reside (56%) the rollback of abortion rights will most negatively affect black women. We already have the highest abortion rates, but we also have the highest maternal mortality rates. Black women are three times more likely to die from complications in pregnancy and childbirth than white women. And of those born, the challenges they will face are enormous. But we are not helpless against these forces.

I advise my African American brothers and sisters to do the following: 1) Value, support and maintain relationships with each other by quickly forgiving forgivable trespasses; 2) Support leaders who uplift us by contributing to their campaigns and voting; 3) Stop wasting money and start saving and investing; 4) Move, eat better, avoid substances, and exercise; 5) Prioritize education in academic or trades; 6) Use birth control; 7) Work hard and seek promotion and better pay; 8) Know and understand your detractors; 9) Contribute to the community; 10) Keep the faith while doing the work.

People without boots have a difficult time pulling themselves up by them. I suggest we start putting on the boots we can find in our schools, among successful family members, and inside the few social programs remaining. And with a little luck and a few cultural tweaks, we can then start pulling ourselves up.

When it comes down to it, any able-bodied human in their right mind would choose to leave home if the living conditions were unbearable. The migrants at our Southern border made a choice that we ourselves would likely make if our circumstances at home were as dire as theirs. We all need a safe place to live. We all need shelter and enough to eat. We all want an opportunity to work and advance in this life.

Humans have been migrating since the beginning of mankind for a variety of reasons. First, there are survival reasons like the need to flee 1) the violence of war or gangs, 2) starvation from draught, famine or inflation, 3) natural disasters, 4) a lack of jobs or opportunity, 5) racial, religious, or political persecution. Then there are those, like my ancestors, who were forced to migrate for the exploitation of their labor. And finally, there are a few fortunate people who migrate by choice. These adventurous folks usually have enough wealth, social status, education, or talent that puts them ahead of the line for immigration in most countries. They aren’t the subject of our current immigration debate and in truth, borders mean very little to them because they are welcomed everywhere.

The romantic narrative of the U.S. is that we are a nation of immigrants. But in reality, we are a nation that tries hard to ignore the land theft and genocide of the indigenous people who already lived here, the enslavement of black people, and the exclusion of non-white and non-Christian people from fair immigration policies. We have never been a welcoming nation to immigrants from everywhere, despite the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”.

It’s inaccurate to say that our immigration system is broken. Certainly, it is under-funded. However, the disfunction is working as it was intended. Our system has always been designed to severely limit the legal entry of poor people of color. Lawmakers keep illegal immigration in place so that cheap labor remains available because taxes are being collected from them, labor complaints are few, and most social benefits can be denied. One could argue that the need for cheap labor drives the continuous under-funding public schools in poor areas.

Let’s face it, the U.S. economy has always thrived on cheap labor. Post-slavery and post-civil rights, our government leaders silently welcomed the able-bodied and highly ambitious people of color who illegally crossed our borders. They wrestled jobs away from poor blacks with their cheaper labor and fewer complaints about working conditions. Our government allowed drug trafficking because the drugs were primarily limited to poor black and brown communities while boosting the economy of our Southern neighbors and providing a reason to imprison a large population of poor people of color, ensuring they couldn’t vote and would be forever doomed as cheap labor. The situation was manageable and suited its intended purposes just fine.

But things changed when white folks started demanding greater quantities of drugs and started dying from them. Interesting, but not at all surprising how drug addiction stopped being criminal and became a public health issue as soon as a growing number of whites were affected. With money to be made, other countries entered the drug supply chain and conditions South of the border deteriorated to the extent that people started doing what desperate people do. They leave their homes in order to survive.

The Statue of Liberty seems like an open invitation, and they are coming. However, the white nationalists don’t want them here in numbers beyond their ability to exploit their cheap labor. They fail to see all humans as fully human with value and so their empathy level is as low as ever. To their core, they believe the lie that white skin is somehow superior and more deserving of life and opportunity in this nation. They forgot that their ancestors were migrants, too, who fled all kinds of disasters or came seeking opportunity. What makes them better than the migrants showing up at our Southern border any different from those who showed up at Ellis Island? Nothing except the color of their skin. And Republican leaders rely on their bigotry to force their true agenda.

Remember when they convinced their constituents to be afraid of Muslim terrorists and their “Sharia Law” taking over our government? Then they introduced fear of Asians whom they blame for bringing Covid-19. These days, they stoke fears of being overrun by brown immigrants, fleeing violence and poverty. Trump and his MAGA news outlets successfully convinced his followers that those southern migrants were to be feared as rapists and drug traffickers coming to kill them and take over the nation. He later said the quiet part out loud when he said he preferred people from white nations to immigrate and not those from “shit hole” countries. Funny, but that has always been the case. Think of how easily this country turned on a dime on behalf of Ukraine migrants.

I spent my career in higher education working in the segment of our immigration system that deals with foreign students coming to the U.S. and sometimes staying beyond their degree to work, marry, and become U.S. permanent residents and then citizens. Those with a lot of money would literally buy themselves a green card by setting up a business. Those with coveted degrees in science and technology would work themselves into eventual citizenship. Those who married a U.S. citizen for actual love got to stay provided they married a citizen with enough money. The students who came here from around the world are generally among the wealthiest and most privileged in their home country. The poorest rarely find their way here to study but when they do come, it takes a tremendous amount of effort to sustain them. Preference was always given to the wealthy.

I look at our immigration system and I realize that Congress has little to no will to improve upon a system that lets in just enough poor desperate people to provide cheap labor to industries that need it. A small amount will be legally admitted, but most will be undocumented and that is by design. Congress has the authority to drastically increase the number of guest workers allowed into the country, but it refuses because wages and working conditions will have to improve and prices will increase. These improvements will impact industries like agriculture, meat processing, hospitality, construction, and garment making. These are jobs Americans typically no longer want to do. And DeSantis in Florida is finding that out.

That said, what’s happening in Florida scares me. DeSantis knows that certain industries need cheap labor and forcing undocumented immigrants to leave his state has created a crisis that he will need to address. My fear is that he has just opened the door for him to exploit the labor of prisoners as the 13th Amendment allows. Most of the prison population in this country are black and brown people. Sound familiar? I’m curious to see if he goes the route of legalized slavery. It would not surprise me as crops rot in the fields and construction halts.

Other red states who are anti-immigrant are lowering the child labor standards to fill their need for cheap labor. Their obvious targets are the children from poor areas with failing schools and few opportunities. Without an education, these children will become part of the permanent cheap labor force and so will the children they will be forced to give birth to.

You see, lawmakers know that the anti-abortion laws don’t affect wealthy women who can afford contraception and easily obtain an abortion by traveling. But it does force the poorest women among us to give birth. The white children can be adopted, but we all know that black and brown babies are far less desirable among those who can afford to adopt. They will be raised by poor mothers or become wards of the state. Pro-life Republican leaders are really about providing industry with homegrown cheap labor to exploit while simultaneously closing our borders to drugs and brown people.

As long as white people keep thinking they are superior and Americans keep demanding illicit drugs and the rest of us insist on buying cheap goods and services provided by exploited cheap labor whether from undocumented immigrants, homegrown cheap labor, or perhaps a return to slave labor, absolutely nothing will change in our economic system that thrives on human labor exploitation.

Before I continue with my family’s story, I’ll take a moment to wish all the mothers, mother’s to be, and grandmothers a very happy Mother’s Day. I hope your family expresses their love and appreciation for all you do. And if they don’t, I encourage you to give yourself a pat on the back and treat yourself to time off or a special treat. You deserve the recognition.

Now I’ll continue our journey as blacks in America.

Our family had moved from Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley foothills to escape the growing dangers from multiple directions. My brothers transferred from the affluent, primarily Jewish high school they attended in Los Angeles to the less affluent, but overwhelmingly white high school available in the area. I, on the other hand was given a choice between the white junior high (middle school) in the same neighborhood as my brothers’ high school or the predominately black junior high in a different neighbor. My mother left the decision to me and was considerate enough to allow me to tour both schools.

So, after walking around both schools during a quiet summer afternoon when no one was around except for a few administrators, I chose the predominately black middle school (grades to 7th-9th) back in those days. I didn’t choose it because the campus was nicer; it was decidedly inferior, but because I had never been to a school where most of the kids looked like me. Up to this point in my life, I had been one of the only black girls among Mexican, white, Asian, and Jewish children. The only time I got to interact with black kids was on rare play dates with my few black classmates and at church or family gatherings, so I thought this was going to be a great experience.

I was in the eighth grade. Had I been paying attention, I would have realized something was amiss when the counselor said that they would place me in the highest academic track, considering the school I was transferring from. I distinctly remember asking myself why they had an academic track at the junior high level? They didn’t have that kind of thing at my previous junior high. My previous school was filled with wealthy white, primarily Jewish kids and only a small handful of my Asian friends from elementary school. I loved the beautiful brick buildings and the academic rigor as well as the exposure to yet another culture that valued academic challenge as much as I did. That was my mindset.

In fact, as far as I could tell, all of our black family and friends valued education and so I assumed it was part of our culture as well. I soon learned that other players had somehow stripped education from our grasp and poisoned our collective academic aspirations. We valued education, but it was often denied to us.

When school started that fall, I was shocked to see that each of my classes were filled with the only white kids in the school and small handful of other black kids. I didn’t know enough to question why only a small number of black kids were receiving the best education they had to offer. Looking back, it didn’t seem to be a lack of desire among the kids for academic rigor, but rather a lack of expectation on the part of the white teachers and administrators in charge to provide it. My black friends were creative, intelligent, and ambitious. And sadly, I came to realize much later that black children and often their parents were not even aware that they were being offered a below standard K-12 education. I was a lucky kid who slipped through the cracks of a prescribed oppression scheme.

Interestingly, it was at this middle school that I, along with the other black kids in my class were tested for the gifted program. Were we such an anomaly? I didn’t think so. Or were we an experiment? Only two of us passed the test and we were given the distinction as being a “state-identified gifted student”, a designation that would later become the weapon my mother needed to fight for my academic placement at the white high school I would attend the following year.

I was proud of my mother’s boldness when she marched over to the high school and demanded that administrators enroll me in honors courses as well as the German language class that I had requested but was flatly told was probably too difficult for me. Armed with my straight A report card and a certification that I was state identified as “gifted” she also reminded them that they were being paid extra to have me at their school. I got my classes.

However, the message was clear to me that as a black person, I had to be more qualified than my white peers to gain access to white spaces and to gain any sort of recognition for my work. Thankfully, I thrived academically and made my family proud. And I earned an “A” in German for the entire six semesters. You’d think that with my stellar grades and extracurricular activities and awards that I’d have an easy time selecting among the best colleges and universities in the country, but that wasn’t the case. I was Ivy League material, but never even heard of the Ivy Leagues.

My one and only visit to the college guidance counselor proved futile. The counselor hardly looked at me and offered me zero guidance on my college choices. I only really knew of the local universities our gifted program toured, and so I ultimately ended up following the footsteps of my older brother who attended the University of Southern California. It was the only school I applied to, and I was accepted with a full tuition scholarship. Affirmative Action was in place to provide people of my skin color the opportunity to attend top schools if qualified and I was definitely qualified. Some still think Affirmative Action takes spaces away from qualified white students when legacy admissions have long been a form of Affirmative Action for white students, and no one bats an eye.

I understood that a few turns of luck and my mother’s advocacy made it possible for me to be qualified. The K-12 educational system was designed to track black children out of higher education at every stage with inferior schools, substandard curriculum, and low expectations. For most black children, especially if they are poor, the system was not set up to provide them with adequate college preparation. Affirmative Action was of no use to most of them. However, it cracked open the doors for the exceptionally lucky few like me, but literally opened the flood gates of higher education and job opportunities for the academically prepared Asian students and white females.

As black people finally realize just how rigged the system has been against us, we are finally taking steps to increase our numbers in higher education, corporate America, and politics. The diversity, equity and inclusion policies found in medicine, education, and corporate America, designed to mitigate the actual harms of racism and white supremacy are under attack before their full benefits can be realized. The pre-Civil Rights racism and white supremacy that severely limited black opportunity, ravaged black communities, introduced drugs, denied access to the building blocks of generational wealth, underfunded schools, and destroyed black families with police brutality and incarceration were neither benign nor unfortunate policies of our historical pass. We are just digging out from their effects but there are some who want to drag us back.

It’s very clear to me that people need context for understanding that programs like Affirmative Action, and laws like the Voting Rights Act and fair housing and police reform and educational equity and the push for sentencing reform are not a form of reverse discrimination. Nor do they pretend that racism and discrimination never existed, and that the U.S. has always lived up to its ideal of a colorblind society as some would have us believe. The lingering white supremacists among us want to erase this context along with the history of discrimination in America as they work to pass policies that stop black and brown economic and social progress. They seek to introduce a false narrative that America is now and forever has been a fair country where hard work and ingenuity will make anyone rich.

I’ll conclude my family story here. Of course, I continued the challenge of being black in America as I raised my own children. I had to be just as bold of as my mother and on this Mother’s Day, I want to express my sincere love and gratitude to my late mother, Juanita Joni Ball, for raising me and being my biggest source of inspiration and my greatest advocate.

I’ll pick up where I left off last Sunday.

Our reunited family eventually moved into an even bigger house in a predominately white and Asian neighborhood. We were the first black family on the street. Interestingly, my two brothers and I had no problems fitting in with the neighborhood kids whether they were Asian or white. We had a lot of fun together. However, our acceptance ended at the school gates that fall. I never questioned why all the Asian kids on our street attended private schools. In retrospect, I now understand why. After the first week of school at the all-white elementary school, we were asked to leave and to attend the integrated school in a nearby neighborhood. This wasn’t the South; this was Los Angeles in the late-1960’s.

Although the Asian kids on our block didn’t attend the integrated school where we were sent, the students at the new school were predominately Asian. I was one of four black girls in the entire school but that wasn’t a new situation for me. From pre-school through 3rd grade, there was only one other black girl (Sheila) attending the predominately Mexican-American elementary school close to L.A. County Hospital where our mother worked. I adjusted fine.

It turned out that the Asian school was more academically competitive than the white school, but it was also much more poorly resourced than the ascetically beautiful whites only school. There were only bungalows for buildings, no gymnasium, no fancy playground, and no daily hot meals served in a nice cafeteria. Instead, we had a covered patio and a hot dog day every Thursday (plain or mustard). Despite the obvious economic disparities between the two schools, I thought school was great. I was challenged academically, and I developed wonderful friendships with children from different cultures, primarily first-generation children of Japanese immigrants. Much like my experiences with the Mexican-American children, I sampled their food and visited their homes after school to play. My multicultural upbringing taught me that beneath the cultural differences, we are essentially the same as human beings. While I was thriving at school, our home was descending into mayhem.

I never asked about the pressures that lead my father to drink heavily. But I suspect that the 1965 Los Angeles riots must have been difficult for him since he had worked so hard helping to establish a thriving business community there. My dad gradually descended into darkness and anger as he drank his Vodka and orange juice into the evening. Some days he brought home candy bars and games; other days, he brought home frustration and violence. I recall lying in bed some nights, waiting to see which father would enter our home. Sometimes, my mother knew he had been drinking and she would sneak us out the back door as he entered. We would spend time at a drive-in movie theater sleeping until she was certain he had fallen asleep, and it was then safe to return to our beds.

The backdrop of our family troubles was a turbulent in society where black frustration with discrimination in education, employment, housing, banking, and over-policing lead to unrest. It felt as though we were prohibited from prospering at every turn and that angered me too. But I didn’t understand why we were burning down our own stuff. In our outrage against injustice, we were destroying our own communities and our own futures. I realize now that my elders understood how ruthless and violent whites were towards us given little provocation, so destroying white neighborhoods was off limits. We had endured the Watts Riot in 1965. The same summer I was staying to Detroit, the 1967 Detroit riot broke out. I recall sitting in the living room with the lights off during part of that riot. My grandfather sat with his gun in his lap, determined to kill anyone who threatened his home and family. I wondered then whom he was afraid of. Was he afraid of other black people or the police? The answer was both. And that turned out to be the reality of black people like me for years to come. I’m afraid of desperate black people and fearful of insecure and entitled white people. Both are dangerous.

My overly-pressured, hardworking, but unpredictable alcoholic father was also threat. And so was the overtly friendly and wealthy white television producer who lived next door. This horrible man knew he could get away with sexually assaulting a ten-year-old black girl with impunity because he knew that my dad would be the one to go to prison for defending me. So, I said nothing and refused further entry with my brothers into his “fun” home. The deprived and depraved black gang members who stole leather coats from my two brothers were a threat. And the police who viewed all young black males as criminals were a threat. I was in middle school and my brothers were in high school when my grandparents decided to help my mother separate from my father for the second time. They provided her with a means to escape him and the now dangerous city.

We moved to the foothills of the San Fernando Valley, away from everything since the old neighborhood was changing and violence at the nearby high school was becoming a problem. Many of our neighbors had moved away (white flight). The black neighborhoods where we attended church and where our close friends and family all lived had become especially dangerous as desperation and lack of opportunity turned to criminality. Selling drugs, using drugs, and stealing from each other along with the pressure to join a gang for personal protection, economic opportunity, and excitement had become prevalent. My mother was right to move us out of Los Angeles so that we could be safe, build equity in a home, and obtain a decent public education. But getting the education we deserved turned out to be a battle of its own.

There was no question that my brothers would attend the all-white high school in our school district because it was the only high school. But I was given a choice between an all-white or a primarily black middle school. Having never attended a school where almost everyone looked like me, I chose the black middle school. That was an eye-opener on a variety of levels and deserves more attention that I can devote right now. So, I will continue the story in my next blog post.

My hope is that reading my story will help readers see the effects of systemic racism. The decisions lawmakers made to exclude black veterans from the G.I. Bill, to allow red-lining of neighborhoods, to allow the infusion of drugs into black neighborhoods, to ignore the reluctance of banks to loan money to black people, to permit the unfair hiring practices of businesses, the underwriting of targeted efforts within the criminal justice system to incarcerate black people while the media vigorously reported on it, and the blatant suppression of the vote, made it all the more difficult for black Americans to climb the social economic ladder. And now, just as we are beginning to climb up, there are those who want to push us back down.

People need context for understanding Affirmative Action and the Voting Rights Act and fair housing and police reform and educational equity and the push for sentencing reform. The formation of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs didn’t suddenly materialize as a means to harm white people. The agenda of DEI is to disrupt a system designed to make white people winners at the expense of others. The lingering white supremacists among us want to erase the context under which DEI was formed along with the history of discrimination in America so they can pass policies that stop black and brown economic and social progress. The goal is a permanent underclass to provide cheap (if not free) labor. The Republican Party in particular seeks to introduce a false narrative that America is now and has forever been a fair country where hard work and ingenuity will make anyone rich and those who fail, have done so because of a personal character flaw.

In this post, I decided to share a bit of my family history to illustrate how an average family is affected by racism in this country. New laws and policymaking that lack historical context makes for really bad laws and policy decisions and people of good will who lack this understanding will make harmful voting choices. The faith, living conditions, economic status, attitudes, and prospects of black people living today were largely influenced by past discriminatory laws and policies that were rooted in racism and white supremacy.

I was born in Detroit, Michigan. My grandparents, both maternal and paternal, were hardworking family-oriented people who left Mississippi during the period known as “The Great Migration”. Like many other blacks, they left the South to seek manufacturing jobs and better life opportunities while also fleeing the racial tensions and oppression of the Jim Crow laws. Both sides of my family found jobs in the automobile industry, allowing them to purchase homes in the safety of segregated black neighborhoods and to obtain an education for their children. For a time, both families enjoyed a stable black middle-class lifestyle in a thriving black community, complete with music recitals, a black-owned and operated newspaper, Sunday morning church services, annual family reunions, access to higher education including membership in Black Fraternal organizations.

My parents met in college. My dad was an Alpha Phi Alpha and my mom was a little sister. My mom’s best friend and several aunts on my dad’s side were members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated (where I also enjoy membership). Things were going well for my parents and their respective families who were gainfully employed and living a segregated but peaceful middle-class lifestyle in Detroit. However, conditions were horrible in the South and continued to drive black people north. As more people poured in, things started to change in the North as job opportunities shrank, access to home ownership became more difficult (due to red-lining and discriminatory bank policies), basic civil rights were denied, and aggressive policing took over. Frustrated, angry, and desperate people tend to break laws in order to survive. In response to oppressive laws and policies, the Civil Rights Movement was taking wings, finding sympathy and support from blacks in the north who were now in distress on all sides. This was the situation my two brothers and I were born into.

Shortly after I was born, my father decided to move our family of five to Los Angeles in search of safety and opportunity. My father was an ambitious and highly intelligent black man. It could not have been easy for him to have his opportunities both in business and in life continually limited because of the color of his skin. Shortly after arriving, he left us in Los Angeles in a housing project while he pursued a law degree and accounting certification in Texas. Meanwhile, my mother went to work at the Los Angeles County Hospital, my brothers spent two years back in Detroit, and my grandfather traveled to California to watch after me until a Mexican family started caring for me.

When my dad returned to Los Angeles, he provided professional expertise to many black entrepreneurs in South Central Los Angeles as they built their businesses in the black section of L.A. Yes, California was also red-lined and segregated. For a time, we lived really well. We were well-connected, well-dressed, well-housed, and well-fed. For reasons still unknown to me, my parents separated for the first time when I was about six. We moved into a lovely house in Culver City and lived there until my mother made the mistake of marrying a man who was abusive to my brothers. That marriage didn’t last long. In the summer when I turned eight, my mother sent me to Detroit to stay with my grandparents.

When I returned, my mother and father were inexplicably back together and we were living in his beautiful home with a swimming pool. No one explained anything about what transpired while I was away, and I knew enough not to ask. That “culture of silence” surrounding trauma, sickness, and loss remains as a detrimental cultural legacy to this day. I was twenty-six years old when I finally asked what happened that summer. My mother’s response was short and lacked the clarity I desired. She clearly did not want to talk about it. I’m sad about the culture of silence, but I believe there are reasons for it that probably don’t serve us in the end.

I once thought it was a form of denial. But now I believe it is a kind of emotional defense mechanism to help us endure the hardships constantly coming our way. Perhaps to talk about the plethora of bad happenings to acknowledge pain, weakness, helplessness, or worse, a lack of faith. Perhaps there is a belief that wounds can’t healed if they are talked about. Perhaps we feel an obligation to spare others the emotional cost that accompanies sympathy and empathy because we are well aware that they are suffering their own trauma. Being black in America means there is plenty of trauma to go around.

There are the everyday indignities that black skin invites, both intentional and unintentional. There are blatant actions of discrimination at school or at work to contend with. There is the fear of violence from all directions including law enforcement. And then there are normal human problems to deal with on top of it all. With all that trauma, perhaps it is both inconsiderate and counter-productive to talk about painful incidents. That is the mindset I grew up with and to this day, I have friends and family who suffer in silence and die without anyone knowing what ailed them. For too long and for too many black folks, trauma is endured, but rarely shared, and probably accounts for the facade of the strong black woman who secretly suffers from high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, and any number of other ailments.

This post is becoming incredibly long, and I have so much more to tell. I will continue the story next Sunday. Until then, for my black readers especially, I want us to start talking. I know many of us take our burdens to the Lord and leave them there. But that deprives others of our experience and creates a false narrative about what our lives are really like. This silence doesn’t help political allies, nor does it help the children who come after us to understand our concerns, warnings, and admonitions we thus upon them.

Beyond telling our stories, I encourage therapy or at least journaling to ease the emotional burden of dealing with the everyday microaggressions, the injustice of discrimination, the many losses, the violence, the scars, the family secrets, and the numerous other traumas we were taught to handle in silence. I hope this post is shared with family and friends of every race because we have a big battle before us, and we all need to understand what is at stake and to be strong enough to fight.

It was both appalling and heartbreaking when an 84-year-old white man shot a 16-year-old black kid, not once, but twice, claiming that he became fearful when the kid mistakenly rang his doorbell several nights ago. As a black mother, I’m the one who has reason to be fearful for my college-educated, professional, and law-abiding 38-year-old son who has a target on his back because of his skin color. My daughter summed up that fear when she confessed on social media that she felt relieved that her mixed-race son could easily pass for white. As a mother and grandmother, I am keenly aware that it is my generation and the children we raised who continue to fail our children and our country. We haven’t overcome our racism. Racism is bigotry armed with power. Bigotry is hatred toward members of a particular identity group. The difference is the power to affect the lives and livelihoods of the hated individuals or groups. Racism has that power. White supremacists have always used lawmaking and guns as the power that undergirds their bigotry.

I live with racism and the effects of racism every day. It is the generational trauma and the trauma of today that saddens, angers, and ultimately ignites my passion to fight. It is accurate to say that dealing with the racism in our society affects my decisions and my daily behavior. Sometimes I smile to ease the discomfort of insecure white people in power. I can easily sense their discomfort. Sometimes I’m overly nice to receive the service I deserve as a human being from white service providers such as medical staff, policemen, or restaurant servers. And sometimes, like last week, I simply give my regards to the white woman following me around the Hallmark store in the Thousand Oaks Mall and then leave without purchasing a damned thing. I’ll take my purchasing power elsewhere. Those of us who follow the rules to climb the social-economic ladder by obtaining an education, working hard, and obeying the laws, are treated in accordance with a false narrative that our black skin makes us lessor Americans, inferior employees, and criminals who can sing, dance, and play sports. To some we are either entertainment or a threat.

Like with any other people who share a skin color, there are a few criminals among us. And frankly, I wish they would stop doing stupid ass stuff! In truth, individuals of all skin colors do stupid ass stuff! The difference with us is that the media highlights loudly and on repeat the misdeeds of black people that undermines our worth. Feeding into the problem is a historical law enforcement system designed to over-police black people whether they reside in black, white or mixed neighborhoods. It’s a vicious cycle of attack that we refuse to acknowledge and therefore can’t seem to break out of. The American psyche is so polluted with the false notion that black people are inherently dangerous criminals that the justice system treats us more harshly from start to finish and the media reinforces the stereotype. It follows that police handcuff five-year-old black children, man-handle black women, and shoot unarmed black men. How can we be surprised then, when an 84-year-old consumer of Fox News shoots to kill a young black male for ringing his doorbell?

We happen to live in a white area. I’ve mentioned before how my brother complained of being stopped by police when he came to visit me. I’ve also mentioned the racial profiling my students of color endured at the University. But I think it’s important to illustrate how over policing works for black people on a personal level.

One morning I was on my way to work at 6am. I spotted a police car a block from my house and confidently drove past him, checking my speed as a reflex to ensure I wasn’t speeding. As a rule, I don’t make a habit of speeding, but police cars make me nervous, so I always double check. Next thing I knew, the police car was behind me with flashing lights, and I promptly pulled over. The officer came up to the car and addressed me by name (which was strange). He asked if I knew what the speed limit was. I quoted it to him (35 miles/hour) and he informed me that it had been changed the prior week. He then asked me for my license and registration. I was shocked and still recall my exact response: “You’re not giving me a ticket, are you? Shouldn’t this be a warning? After all, there is no speed limit sign anywhere in sight and it was just changed. And besides that, you can’t say I’m a danger to anyone since there is literally no one on the street besides you and me.” And that is how I got my first of two speeding tickets. The second was just as egregious.

The magnitude of the unfairness was highlighted when I told my white male boss what had happened, and he told me that he too had been stopped over the weekend for driving 85 miles/hour on his way to the golf course, but he only received a warning to slow down. This is what over-policing looks like. Black people are more often stopped, cited, prosecuted and then sentenced more harshly for the same crimes as whites. We all need to ask ourselves what would have happened if Kyle Rittenhouse (the white teenager with a gun) had walked down those same streets during a Black Lives Matter protest if he was black? I wager he would be dead instead of the protester he killed.

At times, I thought that we as black people desperately needed to hire a really good public relations firm to clean up our image. But then we had Oprah and the Obamas and a host of really great black role models in the spotlight, and I thought maybe things would change. However, their success and popularity only challenged white supremacy and fueled white insecurity. It allowed deeply racists white folks to say racism ended because the nation gave black folks an opportunity. They could say with a straight face that the problem with black people is that they are generally too lazy, too uneducated, too promiscuous, and too violent as a culture to progress and to be held in high regard. White people in power point to Oprah and the Obamas as exceptions to the rule and continue to discriminate, disparage, and disregard our dignity as human beings, pointing to black on black crime as an example of our normal state. There is a segment of white society that has never accepted the equality of black people as Americans deserving of equal opportunity and respect and they are willing to fight to keep white superiority and rule.

It’s become clear that the racism problem is again at the forefront. The vocal denial of the problem by lawmakers and the actual attempts to rollback diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts in schools, particularly in red states is an extension of white nationalism that didn’t end with the Civil War. I think it is up to us as progressive Americans to acknowledge the problems, share our stories, boldly teach the history, and make sure that banned books land squarely in the hands school children everywhere.

Our civil liberties are continuously under attack by white male Republican lawmakers and a few white female lawmakers who are determined to drag the nation backwards to a time when women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ folks were second class citizens with limited rights and limited visibility. This time, instead of using their erroneous genetic arguments of inferiority as justification, they point to their religious beliefs coupled with a false historical narrative that this is a Christian nation. In fact, the opposite is true and is codified in the establishment clause of the Constitution which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Added to this, these white Republican lawmakers have embarked on efforts to erase the “uncomfortable” history of legal discrimination from classroom curriculum.

That said, I am almost certain that the major funding behind these efforts is coming from wealthy white supremacists and not necessarily from religious people, particularly Evangelical Christians or Christian Nationalists. I think the religious right are being used as an easily manipulated army of voters to hide the actual intentions of the few wealthy white supremacists who purchased Republican political puppets to work on their behalf to preserve and increase their personal wealth. They need the cogs of capitalism which depend on cheap labor, docile workers, benign regulations, and voracious consumers to continue to line their pockets at the expense of everyday people.

These few uber rich men have bought and paid for lawmakers to do their bidding. I guess money really is the root of all evil. These men have successfully orchestrated a culture war to keep the religious right voting for their political puppets. But in this war, real people are being demoralized and harmed and if the war is lost, many will be completely stripped of their freedoms, sense of safety, along with access to clean air and water. They are waging this culture war to activate the misguided whims, drummed up grievances, and fabricated fears of the uneducated white Christian voters they rely on to keep their lawmakers in power. They have convinced white Christian evangelicals and white nationalists that they will once again reign supreme over those “other” people who live differently, think differently, and express themselves differently than they do. They have unleashed the mean-spirit of once decent people who are now boldly racist, homophobic and misogynistic white folks who abhor words like woke, multiculturalism, diversity, inclusion, and equity.

So, what do we do? Deny Florida, the epicenter of these laws, our tourist dollars. In a more coordinated effort, I’d ask young progressives to remain in or move into gerrymandered districts to overcome the Republican strongholds there. I’m sure the rents are cheap and teaching jobs are abundant. Absent mass courage to infiltrate enemy strongholds, the first and most obvious thing we can do is vote in every election from now on and make sure that our families and friends are aware of the ballot issues before they vote, too. Second, we can support civil rights organizations and law firms that are overwhelmed by lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality of many of the laws being passed in red states. Third, we can support journalism by paying for a subscription to newspapers that do investigative journalism to enable them to uncover corruption beneath this war and to follow the money. Fourth, we can support the campaigns of decent candidates. Fifth, we can engage in peaceful protests, boycotts, give testimony, and write letters to petition our government. And sixth, if all else fails, we can engage in civil disobedience like Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks. Unlawful laws must be broken to be challenged in court so they can be found to be unlawful and overturned.

The laws that lack commonsense and fairness like gerrymandering, 6-week abortion bans, permit-free open carry gun laws, anti-trans laws, book-bans, anti-woke laws, don’t say “gay” laws, and the criminalization of teachers, doctors, and women, are ultimately meant to demoralize and silence the opposition. They seek complete control over the lives of progressives, but instead they will lose control over their own lives. In fact, they are already beginning to experience the results of their laws. In particular, the abortion bans are already having adverse effects on the lives of many-mostly poor people.

Women, no matter their Party, are already being prosecuted for abortions and “suspicious” miscarriages in red states. Babies are already being born dead because doctors are too afraid to abort fetuses that are not viable. More women will die from self-abortions, complications in pregnancy, and miscarriage. We will likely see a rise in the number of special needs babies that drain the medical system and later the school system if they survive. According to multiple news reports, OBGYN doctors are leaving red states and birthing centers are closing, creating OBGYN deserts. Not surprisingly, the number of men seeking vasectomies is also on the rise. In the coming years, red states will experience a greater number of children born into poverty or left as wards of the state. And that’s just because of abortion bans.

And who will teach the children? New reports indicate that teachers are fleeing positions in red states due to low pay and teaching restrictions. And these days they have to dodge bullets as well. Some are trying to arm teachers. The teaching shortage in Floria more than doubled over the last year and they are recruiting veterans with neither degrees nor credentials to teach. Really? The refusal of Republicans to do anything significant to curb gun violence has left us all vulnerable. Their answer to gun violence is more guns and ending permits to openly carry weapons in the streets. This, despite the fact that we have experienced more mass shooting in 2023 than we’ve had days of the year so far. The reason for this insane gun situation is clearly attributed to the large sums of money donated to Republican lawmakers by the gun lobby. However, at some point, commerce will suffer as people will be too afraid to leave their homes. Certainly, avoiding trips to permit free open-carry states like Floria that depend on tourism is an option. Personally, I’m boycotting Florida for now for this and a myriad of other ridiculous laws introduced by Governor DeSantis.

The Republicans are not offering freedom to everyone. They are offering culture wars, deregulation of environmental protections, more gun violence, voter suppression and the freedom to discriminate and to oppress the vulnerable among us. They do this to stay in power on behalf of wealthy white supremacists’ men. And it is up to all of us to stop them.

Some people think anger a bad emotion to be avoided at all costs. I don’t. To be slow to anger is certainly a virtue, however, an even greater virtue to channel righteous anger into activities that drive positive social changes. As a follower of Jesus, I see His example of turning over the tables of immoral money changes in the temple, calling them “thieves” as a call to action in the face of social injustice. In this moment, there are so many things to be angry about. This week, after yet another school shooting and Margarie Taylor Green’s false claim on 60 Minutes that democrats are the Party of pedophiles, I pulled out my laptop while students in Tennessee crowded their State House to protest.

While we may have a 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the Constitution does not specify which arms. It is left up to our representatives who make the laws to decide this question. We must take seriously that lawmakers represent us and that we have the right to vote them into office and to petition them regarding our desires. And so, I sent the following letter to the Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy.

April 6, 2023

Dear Speaker McCarthy,

Once again, I must write a letter to you to express my disappointment with our legislative body.  The Constitution guarantees us the right to keep and bear arms, however, it does not specify what kind of arms a reasonable person should be able to keep and bear.  Can I keep a nuclear bomb or a rocket launcher?  Arms that have no value except to kill as many people as quickly  as possible have shown themselves to be contrary to the public health and welfare of the American people. 

Isn’t it the job of Congress to pass laws in service to our safety, liberty, and welfare?  I call upon you and the Republican Party to ban these high powered semi-automatic weapons.  It is not enough that they are fun to shoot or that they make for great family Christmas photos.  Americans are being killed daily and our children have become targets.  Registration of guns is a necessary first step.  But an outright ban of these particularly dangerous weapons is what is really called for.  Please do your job!  Your legislative failures will have consequences.  I predict that this upcoming generation will vote all of you out of office the first chance they get.  They are the actual “pro-lifers”.  They care about the climate and the lives of women and about transgender youth. 

The answer to a bad person with a gun is not a good person with a gun.  Law enforcement will not know who the good person is.  And Uvalde taught us that the courage of good people with guns cannot be relied upon to protect anyone.

On another note, you really need to chastise Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Allowing her to call the President of the United States and all democrats pedophiles deserves a strong reprimand if not expulsion.  Her rhetoric is reckless and dangerous and has no place in our Congress.

Sincerely,

Dr. Juanita Hall

Voting citizen of the United States

My hope in sharing this letter with readers is to inspire action motivated by righteous anger. It’s not enough to punch a wall, go for a run, or to seethe in silence. That may consume the energy of anger by displacing it, but it does nothing to drive the changes we need in our society. As I was writing this letter, my daughter called me on the telephone and asked what I was doing. I explained the contents of my letter and I was shocked that she wasn’t really aware of the shooting nor of the comments by the congresswoman. I realized that there are plenty of people who are avoiding the news because they don’t want to be angered. Ignorance is bliss until all hell breaks out and you wake up to find yourself without rights and subject to legalized discrimination.

Our representative democracy is under attack by a white Christian nationalist movement and that should anger any decent human being. The key is to allow that righteous anger to motivate us to raise our voices in protest, utilize our talents, cast our votes, donate to frontline fighters, and use our creative tools to demand change. If we are quiet in this moment, we will soon find ourselves living under the rule of fascists.

It’s going to take all of us working together to improve our quality of life and to defend our Constitutional freedoms. In addition to writing letters or protesting and voting, we can fight by financially supporting organizations like the Florida NAACP Legal Defense Fund who are fighting a plethora of civil rights lawsuits in Florida, including the fascist “anti-woke” laws Ron DeSantis is passing through the state legislature. We can fight by donating to organizations like Sandi Hook Promise and March for our Lives as they continue fighting for much needed gun control.

Anger is truly a virtue when it drives us to do something positive with it.

It is easy to forget that leaders are human beings who have strengths and weaknesses, prejudices and preferences, and both insights and blind spots. They are neither perfect nor all-knowing, but they are accountable to those of us who to pay attention. Even as a school kid, I made it my business to pay attention to the decisions and behaviors of my classroom elected officers. Early on I realized that they were representing me and that the decisions they made on my behalf impacted my daily school life. And so, I was diligent about making my wishes known. Being an introvert, I never sought leadership roles that required constant interaction with others. Instead, I preferred to whisper my concerns, approval or disapproval directly into the ear of the leader. I learned back then just how powerful my whispers were because very few of my peers bothered to provide the leader with any input or feedback; they simply went with the flow. But I realized early on that without input and feedback, leaders are left to their limited understanding, gut feelings, and personal whims on issues that affect others.

So, I am grateful to live in a country where we have a constitutional right to petition our government. Writing, calling, or speaking directly to leaders about issues of concern continues to be my preferred form of activism and advocacy. I’ve experienced the power of a letter or a speech before a city council. In the past few years, writing letters or sending emails have become a major past time because consequential decisions are being made by elected leaders who are ignoring the rule of law and who are ignoring the important principle of a separation of church and state. If people who are paying attention say nothing and do nothing, then our nation will be run by lawless men who behave like an American version of the Taliban.

This week, I wrote several letters to lawmakers. One of them is Congressman Bryon Donalds, a black Republican from Florida who went on television after the most recent school shooting to say it was time to grieve, not to discuss taking any action to prevent more gun violence. He also claims in interviews and on his website that systemic racism may have existed a hundred years ago, but it doesn’t exist today. Here is my slightly edited letter to him:

March 29, 2023

Dear Rep. Bryon Donalds,

First, I want to say that I was once a rare African American Republican because I believe in hard work. I am a grandmother who has a lot of life experience. I eventually changed parties when Republican friends started bringing a new political agenda into our church, claiming that the U.S. was a “Christian” nation, villainizing my University education, asserting that they were “colorblind”, and asserting that abortion was murder.  Previously, we had believed like the Jews, that life began with breath like when God breathed into Adam and he then became a “living soul”.  We believed that this body is just a temporary tent formed in the womb. We didn’t lament miscarriage as God killing a person.  Suddenly, unborn fetuses became babies who needed protection and abortion was murder.  It made no sense that a heartbeat determined personhood, especially because a heart can literally be transferred from one person to another.  And even today, it makes no less sense to me since embryos can be frozen.

That said, I am writing to you because I saw your pathetic deflection on television, using hollow respect for grieving families to avoid addressing the outrageous everyday problem of gun violence in this country.  Personally, I’ve stopped going to the movies because of it. I’ve stopped going to concerts and large gatherings.  I look for the quickest escape route when I go to the grocery store, the nail salon, or a restaurant. I eye people suspiciously in case they might be the next mass shooter.  When I was working, we had mass shooter trainings on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, we loss a student during a mass shooting at a local nightclub.  None of us have ever recovered from that trauma because these are daily realities somewhere in the country. We are the only nation in the world that is forcing its population to live in this kind of daily terror.  The job of government is to protect its people and you and your colleagues are failing us.  The right to bear arms is not a license to threaten the entire population.  It can and must be regulated with gun safety training, licenses, and background checks.    

You say you joined the Republican Party because you believe in liberty.  All I see is a Party that wants to take away liberties like fair access to voting, a woman’s right to choose, the rights of LGBTQ+ citizens to pursue happiness and freedom of speech.  Your party is banning books and drag shows and science and history, and sex education.  Your Party is stealing personal liberties from anyone who is not white and doesn’t believe a certain brand of Christianity.  The only “groomers” I see are in the Republican Party which I now consider the American “Taliban”.

As for systemic racism which you claim no longer exists, I can tell you that you are wrong.  It continues to exist.  Look at the criminal justice system.  I live in a predominately white suburb.  Every time my brothers came to visit me, they were stopped and searched by the police. My black and brown students experienced the same thing at the University where I worked to the point that I regularly met with the police department about it.   That is systematic racism.  As a child, we moved to a predominately white neighborhood and were uninvited from attending the well-resourced white elementary school that had a cafeteria with hot meals, beautiful buildings, and great playground equipment.  We were forced to attend the school with other children of color that had no cafeteria (only a Thursday “hotdog” day), bungalows, and a playground absent any fancy equipment.  Financing a house took a lot of work.  It wasn’t until we were refinancing our house that my white banking friend (who was a bank executive) explained to me that banks routinely require more documentation and look at closer at black applicants.  That, sir, is systemic racism.  A few years ago, I had a white provost say to me in casual conversation that he could hire a black English professor from Harvard and pay him less because he was black.  I had to inform him that that was illegal and he looked genuinely surprised. Ironically, it turned out that this exact thing was happening to my husband for years.  That situation was only rectified when his boss retired and a new boss saw the disparity, apologized and then immediately boosted his salary and provided a bonus to help make up for years of underpayment.  I inadvertently witnessed a similar situation when I noticed that a Latina employee with a master’s degree and more experience was being paid $10,000 less than a white employee in a similar position who only had a bachelor’s degree and less experience. The Vice President immediately gave that underpaid employee a huge raise and she never knew exactly why. In my years of work experience, home buying, and raising kids in white schools, I have personally witnessed systemic racism in the treatment, education, and compensation of people of color. With each house I sold, I knew enough to remove all traces of our “blackness” when we sold our home so we could get top market value.  Like my mother before me, I had to insist that my children were put into college preparatory courses despite their high-test scores and excellent grades.  They are all successful college graduates today, but it wasn’t without pushing against a system that was set against their progress.

You really need to reconsider your decision to become a Republican.  Perhaps being an independent might be more suitable as your Party seems to offer nothing beneficial to the American people these days.

Sincerely,

Dr. Juanita Hall

Voting citizen of the United States

American descendant of slaves

I believe that most leaders have a desire to serve. As citizens who rely on them to make good decisions on our behalf, we have a responsibility to provide input and constructive feedback. However, our greatest responsibility is to refuse to elect people who covet positions to feed their pathological need for power and fame.