“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer – a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.“ Frederick Douglass
Every year on this day I make an assessment, from my own perspective, of how much these words still apply to the USA we live in. This year, I think we could substitute African Americans, women, or any group that isn’t cis-gendered white men, and not be talking out of turn.
I am often disappointed in our country these days. We have many things we can be proud of and many more that need work. I am proud of our willingness to stand up for Ukraine, even though we are ignoring wars and humanitarian crises in other parts of the world. Our treatment of Ukrainian refugees is responsive and timely, refugees from black and brown countries not so much. I am proud of the advances we’ve made in dealing with Covid, although it took more than a million deaths for some of our people to take it seriously. Why can we successfully sell breakfast cereal, liquor, cars, insurance, hell, anything but can’t seem to sell the covid vaccine?
I am furious but not at all surprised at the current supreme court docket and decisions. Why don’t people know that the SC takes the cases they want to hear? They have been building this conservative majority for years. Remember when Thurgood Marshall was replaced by Clarence Thomas? (BTW, if he thinks that we ought to look at other rights like marriage equality and birth control, then let’s hope that he remembers Loving v Virginia which allowed him to marry his wife.) That may not have been the beginning, but I remember it as a major shift. We allowed this coup to happen, and it has been in process for the past few decades. Democrats know how to build coalitions, or at least they used to, but don’t know how to tout their accomplishments or talk about the issues affecting those who don’t live in big cities. Progressives fail to understand that we might have the vision, but leadership is leading WITH followers, not marching alone on an empty street. We rally AFTER the damage is done. We don’t plan ahead. We don’t recruit good candidates and train young people to step up. So we get Bobbert and Cawthorn and that idiot from Georgia, and Gohmert from Texas (furniture if I ever saw any; this is a category that Texas Monthly reserves for useless members. Go HERE for an interesting article that, although focusing on Texas, speaks to our national situation as well.) How did we sink so low?
From Texas Monthly, “With their dreams dashed, Democrats in the lower chamber turned to what they do best: infighting. In the Senate, Democrats continued to adopt the position of penitent irrelevance. Many years could elapse before the state’s minority party has a shot at real power again, and it’s certainly acting like it.” This sounds like national politics, not just Texas.
We have allowed patriotism to be taken over, and the flag converted into board shorts and some bastardized versions on red ball caps. My nightmare is the guy in the capitol carrying the confederate battle flag on January 6.
White identity is now more important than Christian faith. In an article from the July edition of Sojourners magazine, Michael Emerson writes, “In the U.S. today, an entire religion has developed around the worship of the dominance, centrality, privilege, and assumed universality of being white. “White is right,” so this religion postulates, and it has developed a particular set of beliefs, practices (such as a highly selective use of biblical scriptures), and organizations to support, defend, and teach its “faith.”
We can make predictions based on the theory and test them empirically. Let me offer one example. We selected three Bible verses that speak about empowering minority ethnic groups (Acts 6:1-7), welcoming foreigners (Deuteronomy 24:14), and confessing the sins of your own group (Nehemiah 1:6). We asked those who told us they believe the Bible should always be used to determine right and wrong if they agreed with the verses and analyzed their responses by racial group. For African American and Hispanic Christians, the majority strongly agreed with the verses. But for white church-attenders, only one-third strongly agreed. These white churchgoers differed from other Christians in that the majority took issue with the Bible.
We went further by including a fourth verse as a control, one that referred only to individual piety: the injunction not to use unwholesome words (Ephesians 4:29). Here all groups—no matter their racial category—strongly agreed with the Bible verse imploring Christians not to use unwholesome words. White practicing Christians agreed with the Bible exactly as other Christians when the verse did not ask about showing favor to groups other than their own.
We found this pattern over and over again: White practicing Christians differed from Christians of other racial groups and from non-Christian whites whenever the topic was race. For example, white practicing Christians are twice as likely as other whites to say “being white” is important to them and twice as likely as other whites to say they feel the need to defend their race. Through extensive statistical analyses, we found that two-thirds of practicing white Christians are following, in effect, a religion of whiteness. They repeatedly placed being white ahead of being Christian; the findings were not explained away by political affiliation, location, age, education, income, gender, or other factors.”
How did we sink so low?
We went from Ronald Reagan, a B-grade actor who wasn’t an intellectual heavyweight but who could follow a (dreadful) script to the most recent iteration, an entitled, lying reality TV star who cheated his way through life and apparently had others doing the work (but getting none of the credit) for his few accomplishments (college degrees, books, etc.).
How did we sink so low?
I am through venting and am willing to be grateful for the good we do have, and thankful for our blessings. We have the House Select Committee, and I am truly grateful for their work. They are writing the history, something we failed to do after the Civil War which led to the “Lost Cause” narrative which exists more than 150 years later. We have individuals who step up to the plate, meeting needs and supporting those most in need. We still have a somewhat free press and freedom of speech. We are losing the line between state and religion, and I expect to one day see a de jure theocracy in the USA, not just de facto as we have now.
On that note, y’all have a happy holiday.
Wild Cooking Woman 7/4/22