THURSDAY
June 18, 2020
PUBLISHED BY PHI BETA KAPPA
America Upside Down
Our country is in the midst of a paradigm shift
By E. Ethelbert Miller | June 15, 2020
Ella
(Flickr/cuboctahedron)
Social historian
Vincent Harding often felt it was best to describe black history as being much
like a river, flowing toward freedom and the delta of democracy. The challenge
we face today is how to navigate this river. Our inability to do this too often
leads us to compare historical incidents and movements to one another. We see a
protest or a riot and we immediately compare it to the 1960s. Why should one be
surprised by police brutality in the black community? Hasn’t there always been
one historical moment flowing into the next?
Is This the History
of Air?
I can’t breathe” he said.
I can’t breathe” he said.
But there was no
air.
Only the absence of
trees
and rope. The
swaying
of history over
another
black
body.
I wrote this poem
in 2014, after Eric Garner (a horticulturist) was killed in New York City by
the police. I could have written it in 2020. Not much has changed. It’s
as if God has returned, and we can’t find the fig leaf or the lie. Maybe
somewhere there is conjuring being done, forcing a president to hold a Bible
upside down.
The first month of
this year should have warned us that the unexpected was going to happen. Many
people around the world couldn’t believe it when Kobe Bryant died. January
26th. A sad day, a death in the global family. It didn’t get any better when
COVID-19 appeared. Suddenly the entire world collapsed as if it had been
unplugged from the Internet.
So much death these
last few months, too many jobs lost and never coming back. We have become
people of masks and gloves. There was no more basketball after Kobe. Could we
have predicted our predicament? Could the COVID-19 pandemic have been avoided?
It’s difficult to place blame, but one can point fingers. The
Trump White House has been a tsunami, sweeping away the achievements and
priorities of the previous administration. In many ways, it was the initial
crack of a door that has since opened onto a global paradigm shift. The
government of Brazil has become a sad replica of our own as a result of its
conservative leadership.
Racism will always
seek a vacuum. Recent weeks and months have revealed the extent to which people
of color are at heightened risk of contracting COVID-19. It has been difficult
to hide our discontent and anger at the Trump administration for that, too. It
is just one of the many ways we have been held hostage by the Trump base—as if
our nation decided to forget democracy in favor of being ruled by a small
minority and its king.
If the United
States has been turned upside down and the paradigm has shifted, we must
recognize that black people and the Black Lives Matter movement are
responsible—responsible for encouraging a new generation of white people who
are moving beyond mere dialogue on race matters and trying to do something
concrete. We are all now engaged in policy, even while continuing to protest.
This requires a different type of muscle to navigate the river of
possibilities. There are boulders before us and jagged rocks.
As a writer, my
first concern is always with language and how we compose a narrative. Too often
there is no time to workshop politics like poetry. The result is that we take a
slogan on a poster and try to define it as policy. When I heard “Defund the
Police,” it made as little sense to me as when I heard calls for abolishing
police departments. Really? I remember talking to some inmates in a prison many
years ago. I reminded them of the need to change their consciousness when they
return to their communities. We have to understand that we live in a world in
which police are needed. How many of us can recall the debate about whether
police should be permitted to wear cargo pants? Try being a police officer and
placing all the equipment you need around just your waist. Do we now replace
our police force with RoboCops as a way of getting around police unions?
Shifting money from
police departments to other needs and concerns won’t easily happen. The money
won’t be spent; it will sit or be wasted. Just look at the Pentagon. How much
waste each year? Even so, propose to cut the defense budget, and listen to the
howls of protest. Will we spend the money on something else? No. Instead, we
keep increasing the budget. Why? Because slogans too easily become shields. Someone
shouts, “Support Our Troops,” and you can’t get people to think about anything
else. This is where we are with “Defund the Police.” It makes perfect sense
when one reads the small print, such as what comes when you change credit
cards. But no one has time to read the small print anymore. We want change
without the complexity of change. We want our posters to speak like a tweet.
But how do we
ensure that the more perfect union our nation is supposed to aspire to doesn’t
end in divorce? How do we police tenderness into our lives? How do we end the
police brutality against black people and also stop the stones thrown at the
hearts of police? How did we become so black and blue, so separated, so
occupied? How do we rise from all this kneeling? How do we walk together? Tell
me there will be joy in the morning and another black mother will not have to
weep. Tell me it’s time we defund her crying and stop this
river of tears.
E. Ethelbert Miller is a poet,
teacher, and literary activist in Washington, D.C. He is a frequent contributor to Re-Markings, India (www.re-markings.com). He has co-edited with Nibir K. Ghosh Charles Johnson: Embracing the World (2011, Authorspress, New Delhi, India).
