It requires patience, a willingness to recognize in the Other a human being. It isn't necessary to worship a divine being or to regularly attend services at a church, a mosque, or a synagogue. Many have historically perceived in the Other's denomination a threat or a danger to the stability, if not existence, of their difference.
Fascism is cruelty. Why is there a willingness, even a determination on the part of one generation to pass on to the next a sensation of enjoyment-- when maiming or killing another? Why are Americans thrilled by the opportunity to dehumanize others and destroy what others have created? How, over the generations since enslavement, are there Americans still perceiving the right to inflict pain or death on others as somehow a way to feel "exceptional"? Superior?
After Bloody Sunday, Joseph reminds us, Johnson called for the nation to consider the "'long-suffering men and women,'" Black men and women, once enslaved and still unfree from tyranny of Jim Crow laws that restricted their economic, social, and political mobility. The stakes, writes Joseph, couldn't be higher as Johnson recognized because it was all about democracy. As I've stated before, fascism was already familiar to Black Americans in Jim Crow South as well as those Blacks in the segregated North. Blacks could receive a knock at the door in the middle of the night by hooded white men. A home could be set ablaze. Black American's little girl could be "dirtied," as Toni Morrison's Sethe explained, and there would be no recourse.
Terror and cruelty thrived together to create, as Johnson understood, a tragedy. A "sullied" dream, at best, for those rejecting the idea that America was anything but a good and welcoming country. A beacon for the poor and huddled masses-- of European descent-- that is. It was, as Johnson understood, all about the "'destiny of democracy.'"
In 1965, "'white spectators, watching the proceedings from businesses that lined the road, cheered as if viewing a sporting event,'" writes Joseph, watched police batons on that infamous Edmund Pettus Bridge land on the heads of Black people. This bridge, named after a KKK Grand Dragon, should have been re-named the John Lewis Bridge. The batons, dogs, and fire holes were intended by anti-democratic terrorists to express white anger against a people thought to be less than human. Think about the nightly news featuring whole Vietnamese villages under attack. And the US government believed itself to be a democracy.
Maybe the US was never a democracy, except when Black Americans decided that enough was enough. The sun was too hot or their backs too sore after bending all day in the fields. One too many days of humiliating bowing. One too many minutes standing in the back of the bus. One too many hours caring for the little girl who will go on to point a finger in your face and talk about how unfortunate you for not possessing white skin.
Everything we ever accomplished seems suspect now that Trump isn't concealing his willingness on behalf of the Oligarchs to offer the US up to the altar of tyranny. The removal of anything that smacks of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will have Black Americans running-- backward! Barefooted! So, the fascists believe. Blacks will be too busy trying to regain footing and direction to notice the dismantling of citizen rights and anything else regarding our civil and human rights.
Black Americans are still irritating white America, kicking up its collective white anger. Just this morning I went to a leading pharmacy to have pictures printed when I encountered a young white woman who gave me a quick glance and, without looking at me, asked what did I want? I noted that she wouldn't have been my ideal clerk, but I tried to explain that I didn't know much about printing from my cellphone.
I had come by over the weekend, and wonderful older also white woman was much more patient with me had the excuse, I guess, of not having children. Seventy-one! Another excuse. This younger woman couldn't care about my predicament. She was in a hurry.
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