Few individuals have plumbed the depths of their rage, hatred, terror, jealousy, and despair or the scope of their wisdom and power of their compassion, yet these currents run beneath the surface of #awareness in each of us, like great rivers on the floor of an ocean.
Gary Zukav, Jan.5, 2018
I remember a friend who shared how her husband died, shooting himself in their joint residence. I did not have the words to comfort her, only my living presence. Only to discover that some of my friends are really angels on earth, as one said, “Take her to my concert tonight, it is a benefit for the Suicide Prevention Association.”
I was dumbfounded, as I simply had one question to the heavens – how do I bring comfort to her when I have no idea on how to help her? At the concert, the organizer revealed her angst at having a “permanent shadow” accompany her family at all times.
I remembered Ernest Hemingway and how his surviving families must have felt, carrying that shadow wherever they went.
Only to learn recently that Phil Graham, also committed suicide in his home in Glen Welby. He was the former publisher and president of The Washington Post, who run the paper for 17 years, and who said: “Journalism is the first draft of history” in 1957. How did his wife, Katharine Graham pick up the pieces, to leave behind her rage, and to emerge the person of grace and strength, and one who with a strategic vision for her country, America?
Women Coming of Age
I watched The Post (a movie) and I could not quite adjust my feelings towards how indecisive Katharine Graham (owner/publisher of The Washington Post) was yet, meticulously adept in asking questions of her inner circle, but clueless in realizing that she has the authority to make the final decision. She was depicted as ambivalent and evasive of conflict, which she admits in her personal memoirs.
Until portions of the Pentagon Papers was delivered to Washington Post’s assignment editor and thousands of pages were given by Daniel Ellsberg, to Washington Post!
She made a crucial strategic decision, of publishing the Pentagon Papers, which catapulted the Washington Post into a credible source of news, facts, evidence and true to its mission as a newspaper. The Washington Post became a key resource for national news.
Russ Wiggins wrote a personal note to the staff: “Philip L. Graham has left in our daily care and custody an honest and a conscientious newspaper which I know that all of you are eager to maintain as a daily memorial to his own genius and integrity. And now we must take up the duties he laid upon us, with a heavy heart, but nonetheless with a high hope that we may succeed in doing what he would have us do.”
I am presently reading Katharine’s Pulitzer Prize winning memoirs and how she evolved from being supportive of Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson’s actions in Vietnam and later, developed her personal opposition towards the war, given her eldest son’s personal letters to her, while deployed as a soldier in Vietnam. He wrote about the senseless violence towards an ill-defined cause and really did not quite advance the national security interests of the United States.
The Post continued to report on the Vietnam War, and the 500,000 US soldiers deployed there. It then grew its editorial department in 1966-1969, when Post added 50 positions and its budget grew from $2.25 million to $7 million in 1969.
Katharine is depicted in the film, The Post, as nervously taking a stand to publish the Pentagon Papers and closely monitoring the backlash and at the same time, experienced the solidarity of the newspapers around the US, who followed The Washington Post’s lead and published the “verboten” Pentagon Papers. Katharine rationalized her decision in keeping with the newspaper’s mission and putting the nation’s interests before the papers.
It peeked my curiosity to keep reading about Katharine Graham and how she evolved to strengthen her resolve, her convictions, and even her own stance, amidst being surrounded, influenced, criticized meanly, and strongly pressured by strong men around her, including Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson.
The Impact of a Woman’s Decision: The Washington Post and New York Times’ US Supreme Court Decision
It is a life that she allowed other folks to guide her, but also her own inner convictions to stand by her own decisions. For example, it took tremendous courage for her to set a precedent of publishing the Pentagon Papers, then, joined in a lawsuit with the New York Times, and wait nervously for the US Supreme Court’s decision, 6-3, written by US Supreme Court Justice Black, excerpted here in part:
“In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.
“And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.
“The Government’s case here is based on premises entirely different from those that guided the Framers of the First Amendment. The Solicitor General has carefully and emphatically stated:
“Now, Mr. Justice [BLACK], your construction of . . . [the First Amendment] is well known, and I certainly respect it. You say that no law means no law, and that should be obvious. I can only [p718] say, Mr. Justice, that to me it is equally obvious that “no law” does not mean “no law,” and I would seek to persuade the Court that that is true. . . . [T]here are other parts of the Constitution that grant powers and responsibilities to the Executive, and . . . the First Amendment was not intended to make it impossible for the Executive to function or to protect the security of the United States.[n3]
“And the Government argues in its brief that, in spite of the First Amendment,[t]he authority of the Executive Department to protect the nation against publication of information whose disclosure would endanger the national security stems from two interrelated sources: the constitutional power of the President over the conduct of foreign affairs and his authority as Commander-in-Chief.[n4]
“In other words, we are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment’s emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging freedom of the press in the name of “national security.” The Government does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts should take it upon themselves to “make” a law abridging freedom of the press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security, even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law.[n5]See concurring opinion of MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, [p719]post at 721-722. To find that the President has “inherent power” to halt the publication of news by resort to the courts would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make “secure.” No one can read the history of the adoption of the First Amendment without being convinced beyond any doubt that it was injunctions like those sought here that Madison and his collaborators intended to outlaw in this Nation for all time.
“The word “security” is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic. The Framers of the First Amendment, fully aware of both the need to defend a new nation and the abuses of the English and Colonial governments, sought to give this new society strength and security by providing that freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly should not be abridged. This thought was eloquently expressed in 1937 by Mr. Chief Justice Hughes — great man and great Chief Justice that he was — when the Court held a man could not be punished for attending a meeting run by Communists.”
“The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free [p720] assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government.[n6]“
Would you, as sworn US citizens, register and vote, and guide by your votes, our elected leaders to sustain its adherence to truth, uncensored news publications, and responsible use of power at any levels (executive, legislative, judicial) or would you blindly succumb to protecting your perceived economic station in life and by your vote, improperly believe to protect that status? How would you act as guardians of this US-based democracy with integrity and adherence to truth and social justice?
Katharine Graham was not trained to be a CEO nor trained to be a publisher. She watched from the sidelines, and did not have an opportunity to hold a fulltime job, until her husband died.
Yet she made the most visible, credibility-sustaining decisions for her newspaper, The Washington Post, displaying her personal courage, “the scope of her wisdom and power of compassion,” love for this country’s democratic freedoms, and by that national exposé, initiated a national debate to purge our nation from its involvement in an unjust war in Vietnam, which to the end, had 58,220 US military fatal casualties, between 200,000 to 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers dead and 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong casualties. By far, the most casualties were incurred in World War II, battle deaths and civilians of all countries to have been 56.4 million. (Source: Britannica.com)
In examining your own lives, have you faced choices where you placed truth above lies, love of country first over your pocketbook, harmony over personal grudges and deep anger?
What legacy are we building by our personal actions?
To this day, Katharine Graham’s personal decision of courage and commitment to mission of truthful news information inspire me and I dare say, a multitude of women on how to use feminine power in the workplace – to uplift truth!
Why America’s non-racist, humane culture must be solidified
[Editor’s note: Following the latest shootings in the United States, this column has been updated and republished]
Our homes were bombed and our jobs were threatened. Some of us were expelled from college or run out of town. Peaceful, nonviolent protesters were trampled by horses, struck with bull whips, beaten with nightsticks, arrested and taken to jail. Some were shot and even killed, but we buried our dead and kept on coming. We knew we would not stop; we would never turn back until we tore down the walls of legalized segregation. We didn’t have a cell phone. We didn’t have a website. We didn’t have a computer or even a fax machine, but we used what we had. We had ourselves, so we put our bodies on the line to make a difference in our society. We were just ordinary people with an extraordinary vision, imbued with the discipline and philosophy of nonviolence. We were convinced that if we adhered to the way of nonviolence as taught by Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, we could produce an all-inclusive world society — a Beloved Community — based on simple justice that values the dignity and worth of every human being.
Congressman John Lewis, Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968, High Museum of Art, Atlanta
I still remember the tears and the anguish I felt when I saw the exhibit, “Breach of Peace: Photographs of Freedom Riders,” by Eric Etheridge on April 2010 at the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles.
Included were photographs taken by Joseph Postiglione (1922-1995), an American born in Italy. He took photos of young black men and women inside a burning Greyhound bus on May 14, 1961.
That day, May 14, 1961, was a quiet Mother’s Day in Anniston, Alabama, described by the companion Road to Freedom book: “A Greyhound bus travelling from Atlanta to Birmingham, carrying fourteen passengers (including reporter Moses Newson, covering the Freedom Rides fro the Baltimore Afro-American) pulled in to the terminal, where the station doors had been locked shut. The bus was immediately set upon by a mob led by a local Klansman named William Chappell, its tires slashed and windows smashed. There were no police in sight. When law enforcement finally arrived (after approximately twenty minutes), they gave the bus a cursory inspection for damage and ordered the driver, O.T. Jones of Birmingham, to leave the terminal, escorting him to the town limits, where the vehicle was left to the mercy of the following mob. The bus limped along the highway for about six miles before being forced off the road on the outskirts of Bynum by a convoy of cars and trucks that had grown to forty or fifty in number. The bus was stormed by the mob, the passengers were trapped inside, and the bus was firebombed. It was a scene of carnage. Postiglione captured the drama in a shocking series of pictures that until recently was known only through a handful of photographs that he made available to the news services. Two pictures were sold to AP and UPI and seven were reproduced the following day in the Anniston Star.”
What happened next? A young 12-year-old girl Janie Miller offered water to these passengers, even as she was taunted by the Klansmen to stop. Her kindness was met by more threats, until her family had to leave and seek refuge elsewhere. When the black bus riders went to the local hospital, doctors refused to treat them.
“They were eventually rescued in the dead of night by a squadron of cars sent by Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, pastor of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.”
I was more horrified when the exhibit’s photos showed dogs intentionally unleashed on African Americans, Clorox bleach intentionally poured into the swimming pool while an African American woman swam, and fire hoses collectively unleashed to brutalize these American citizens.
Many African Americans sacrificed their lives to obtain human and voting rights for us, folks of color. After all, only Caucasians were deemed American citizens until a series of case law broadened that definition. Blacks were lynched and hanged on trees pursuing freedom. Homemade bombs were commonly set off in black homes and churches by the Ku Klux Klan.
On Sept. 15, 1963, four girls were killed: Addie Mae Collins, 14 years old; Denise McNair, 11 years old; Carole Robertson, 14 years old and Cynthia Wesley, 14 year old and 14 injured in a bomb blast at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, as reported by CNN.com. Inside the church were some 200 church members with some attending Sunday school classes before the 11am service.
The bombing of the Baptist Church was the third in 11 days. Alabama George Wallace sent out 500 National Guardsmen and 300 state troopers to this city joined the next day by 500 police officers and 150 sheriffs’ deputies.
It was not until May 16, 2000, when a grand jury indicted Bobby Frank Cherry and Thomas Blanton with eight counts each of first-degree murder. Cherry was found guilty after two years and was sentenced to four life terms. On Nov. 8, 2004, he died in prison.
The images of the Skirball Museum disturbed me and to this day, I vividly remember them. A week after seeing that exhibit, I went to the California’s African American Museum. There, I saw a facsimile of a boat that carried the slaves, packed like sardines in the lower deck of the ships. I went inside to feel what it was like and saw the chains and the dog collars used.
It was a feeling of horror — the same feelings triggered when I saw another exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum. There, different colors of sand were on display, symbolizing the different internment camps in the West, where over 127,000 Americans of Japanese descent were imprisoned during World War II.
Their crime? Nothing. Their common feature: all were American citizens of Japanese ancestry, suspected of being WWII enemies. In fact, the 442nd Infantry Regiment became the most decorated platoon of the war, with eight Presidential Unit Citations and 21 Medal of Honors. With a theme of “Go for Broke,” the fighting unit was almost entirely comprised of American soldiers of Japanese descent who proudly and valiantly served.
Back then, Voting Rights were not recognized for all Americans, and for a long time, only white Americans were considered citizens. A 1790 Naturalization Act defined American citizenship as limited to only “free, white persons.” Armenians who came in this early period were designated whites and gained citizenship with the help of anthropologist Franz Boas.
But, in 1922, Takao Ozawa could not become an American citizen, though he was born in the U.S., as he was not considered legally white, but a Mongoloid, according to Race: the Power of an Illusion by PBS.
Yes, for a long long time, Americans born here in the USA, with Japanese ancestors, including African-Americans were treated with disgust, animosity and inhumanity, yet their responses were the opposite, dignify themselves even more.
The Myth: “all that is white is right, black is wack” to #Icantbreathe
On August 26, 2014, OWN aka Oprah Winfrey Network televised the intervention done by Iyanla Vanzant. We must interrupt the pattern, Eric Garner of Staten Island. John Crawford of Ohio. Trayvon Martin in Florida. Dante Parker of Victorville, California, Michael Brown of Ferguson. And two days later after Michael Brown was killed, Ezzell Ford of Newton in Los Angeles, California. The worst part of these unjustified killings was that they were done by police officers in uniform.
In Eric Garner’s case, he was unarmed, selling cigarettes by the unit. Instead of the police talking him down and diffusing the incident, they all decide to march in on him and with a tactical maneuver, put him in a chokehold that ultimately killed him as he kept saying, “I can’t breathe.” This was all documented on videotape, yet the grand jury decided no indictment for the policemen. No indictment for an unjustified killing of a citizen in plain sight?
Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed African American bound for college, was killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., while Michael’s hands were up. His death, while unarmed, at the hands of a police officer, sparked nationwide protests of young folks with hands up in the air and placards: “Hands Up, Don’t shoot!” Iyanla interrupted a man, with a placard, which read: “Do not affirm what you don’t want to happen,” she said. Instead, “Hands-Up, See Me.”
Most recently in the past month, the nation again witnessed killings at the hands of police officers: Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota.
Hands-Up, See Me
At the Beverly Hills Farmers Market, one morning, I saw a Latino American record producer shooed away and told not to sit next to a white elderly man. The white guy said, “This is my chair,” when he was sitting on one already. I saw the hurt in this Latino man’s eyes. I waved at him and loudly, “Here, please sit next to me.” I wanted to neutralize the bigotry and it resulted in me getting the most profound spiritual lesson of all times: “That when you are born and survived the first year even without your parents nurturing you, the Universe’s angels were taking care of you.”
At the same market, I saw a white volunteer stop an African American man from gathering recyclables in a trash container. The white guy said, “This is my trash can. Stay away from here. Go back to your neighborhood.” I was sitting next to the trash can. I stood up and said, “Listen, this trash can belongs to the City of Beverly Hills. It is for all of us to use. You both can gather recyclables from this trash can. You do not have to dehumanize him and pointed to the black man.” The white man was perturbed but the rest of the folks sitting in the tables clapped. They said, “thank you for standing up for that poor fellow.”
On Facebook, Third Paran posted this: While watching the Ken Burns documentary on jazz, I couldn’t help but be struck by the following quote from Wynton Marsalis and how it applies to what is happening now, after the non-indictments in the #MichaelBrown and #EricGarner cases. There’s a long way to go yet in the struggle, and sometimes there’s a stubborn refusal to go at all where we all feel we must go. And you wonder why.
“Race is … for this country, the thing in the story, in the mythology, that you have to (address) for the kingdom to be well. And it’s always something you don’t want to do–it’s always that thing that’s so much about you confronting yourself … And the question of your heroism and of your courage and of your success in dealing with this trial is ‘Can you confront it with honesty?’ And DO YOU confront it and do you have the energy to sustain an attack on it? … The more we run from it, the more we run into it.”
Not all white folks are racist. They are too, good people. We must all reject racist, inhumane behaviors! We must remake America into a non-racist, caring America with the likes of the Freedom Riders and Congressman John Lewis. We must include a full measure of respect for the first African American President, Barack Obama.
With many lives gone, we continue to say #blacklivesmatter and #notonemore.
Racism is a physical experience. The soul is part of the body. The mind is part of the body. When folks do physical violence to black people, to black bodies in this country, the soul as we construe it is damaged too, the mind is damaged too.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, as quoted by Jenny Kutner, 2015
This is a lesson for each of us, but also for the church of our time: If we let ourselves be led by the Holy Spirit, if we are able to mortify our selfishness to make room for the Lord’s love and for his will, we will find peace, we will be builders of peace and will spread peace around us.
Pope Francis, address, June 3, 2012
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas and MTV recently created a documentary, #whitepeople. It illustrated how whites define themselves as “the default race, the norm, the good thing.” 2010 census revealed that whites live in a bubble, where more than 77% are white, and with friends that are 91% white. The documentary continues, “whites are raised by white people, who are oblivious to race and issues that affect other people, “while another informs us about “where we live is all white people, they are all nice people, but at the end of the day… they are close-minded.”
Much of what we saw on television prior to 2014 were shows about white folks. While some of us, subscribe to GMA and ABS-CBN to see and hear teleseryes in Tagalog, our native tongue. In our native tongue, we get a sense of home, feeling safe in seeing familiar places that we frequented in the provinces, comforting us that we are home, even if in an adopted place, called America.
Notice though that if whites stay in a bubble, we too, stay in our bubble of ethnicities-specific activities: our neighborhood Catholic Church, local Catholic School and even our favorite weekend foods: lechon, menudo, pancit, lumpia. Even birthday celebrations and special family moments of bonding are limited to our family members and friends.
How then do we increase our knowledge and awareness of one another and each other’s issues? How can whites become more aware of issues affecting us, people of color? How do we, folks of color, become more aware of issues affecting whites in our midst and the folks of color around us?
Should we be concerned that Ku Klux Klan groups are popping up more?
Should we be concerned that our mainstream television news channels are no longer filtering hate messages, and instead, amplifying them to the point of popularizing these messages?
Should we be concerned that our own cable television shows contribute to that ignorance and without any discussions on race and racism as modern issues of the day?
How do we mortify our selfishness as a modern, developed, first world, that gave birth and nurtured a young 21yo Dylann Roof to be so filled with hate, and one who captured the world’s attention when he took the lives of 9 members of the Emmanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina, during a bible study at 9pm? 8 died at the church, while another died on the way to the Medical University of South Carolina. Did you know that Dylann was welcomed by the bible study group, whom he joined for an hour, before he took out his gun to kill folks?
Did you know that Dylann Roof revered the confederate flag, a flag that was flown by the states who opposed freeing the slaves, and fought for the imposition of slavery against African – Americans? Did you know that to this day, young white folks choose to fly this flag in their vehicles, even while camping in Northern California? When I saw this flag, it gave me eerie feeling of chills, as I saw hatred embodied, and the flag symbolized the hatred and the racial subjugation of African Americans as America’s Second-Class Citizens. Granted it is just a flag, and to some, they argue it is part of their heritage, but, to claim slavery as your heritage, is to claim something wrong as part of what was done in one’s history.
Should we now ask television network owners to be mindful of the content of their television shows? Should we watch our words around each other so we are not conveying hatred? Should we become “correction police” for what we hear are distastefully racist around us?
Huffington post’s Erin Whitney writes that 2014 became one of the most diverse in television history, “old shows sparkled too. Netflix’s “orange is the new black” continued to lead a progressive movement on television and even found time to celebrate women of different body types. And a conversation about the growing diversification of the television industry wouldn’t be complete without praise of shonda rhimes, queen of thursday night. Rhimes is not only a powerhouse figure on her own, being one of the few women, and women of color, behind the camera, but she’s also brought us two hit shows led by black actresses. With “Scandal,” Kerry Washington became the second African-American female to lead a network drama since Diahann Carroll starred in 1968’s Julia and “How to get away with Murder” not only stars Viola Davis, but also features a racially diverse cast of young actors.”
Should we celebrate that it took 47 years for Kerry Washington, an African-American, cast as the female lead in a mainstream television show? Should we also celebrate that Jennifer Lopez, a Latina, as one of the American Idol’s judges, though its 15th upcoming season is its last? What about Dancing with the Stars where we saw our very own Cheryl Burke, a Filipina-American professional, as one of the lead dance choreographers and instructors in 18 seasons, and who bagged the championship in two seasons? Should we feel like celebrating everytime we see a Filipino/a talent participate in the Voice or even American Idol, wherein Jessica Sanchez came in second?
Or what about our Filipina dermatologist, Dr. Tess Mauricio, who regularly appears in mainstream talk shows to discuss about how to be “skin-well”? Should we celebrate that we have Giselle Tongi-Walters as a Kababayan Today’s host of the only television show for and of Filipinos in America that is now going to be watched nationally, including Hawaii? Should we celebrate that we have many more plays and musicals now being showcased at mainstages throughout the U.S? That our very own internationally-acclaimed Lea Salonga (Miss Saigon, Mulan) will be starring in a Broadway play, called Allegiance, inspired by the true story of its star, George Takei (Star Trek, Heroes) this fall? Would that be enough?
Being comfortable with being uncomfortable
The first time I covered Air Force One with the big-time male photographers and male newscasters of major television channels, mostly whites, and few Latinos, I was so uncomfortable. It took a burly White man to help me out and he literally walked me through and what to expect.
When I was first invited to attend a Seder at a Jewish family home, I felt uncomfortable. It took my friend to walk me through as to what to expect: hours of discomfort, long hours of prayers, simulating the suffering of their ancestors, before dinner is served. It started at 6pm and dinner was served at close to 10pm.
But, when I covered another event, predominantly African-Americans, near the airport, I did not feel the need to be walked through nor the need to know what to expect. I felt at home, simply because the organizers warmly welcomed me and ushered me to a seat.
Isn’t that what home is about, to warmly welcome someone into? Should we not do the same in making others comfortably at home in our midst, so we can educate ourselves about others, outside of our daily bubbles?
Notice how you feel when you are in Hawaii, you are welcomed at the airport with a lei and introduced to the hang loose sign of the natives? In Hawaii, it is Aloha for all!
Jose Antonio Vargas is right, we can all be uncomfortable at the same time, in this journey to remove racism from our hearts and minds.
By asking the questions of what makes us uncomfortable, by starving our selfishness, we can perhaps shed light on dark issues of racism embedded in the recesses of our hearts and tinges of biases that we carry in the back of our minds.
Racism is a physical experience. The soul is part of the body. The mind is part of the body. When folks do physical violence to black people, to black bodies in this country, the soul as we construe it is damaged too, the mind is damaged too.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, as quoted by Jenny Kutner, 2015
Racism is a social construct. White slave masters and their cohorts invented the concept to normalize the use of African American slaves, as unpaid labor, for their tobacco plantations and farms in the early 18th and 19th century. Black slaves were the first victims of human trafficking, if we apply today’s definition: the unlawful movement of people for forced labor or sexual exploitation. Racists hate and fear the “other person.” They show contempt and disgust at engaging with “the other.”
Not many immigrants from our community know about this dark history of racism and how it emerged in America. But most of us know of or have heard of visceral experiences at the workplace or in churches or in public squares or in the media that Blacks are relegated as second-class citizens. We all know that Blacks and folks of color are not treated as equals. Even the current resident of the White House, our President Barack Obama is not spared as the object of bigotry and wrongful presumptions. In a recent press conference on Iran, the president was asked by Major Garrett: “
00:42:42
QThank you, Mr. President. As you well know, there are four Americans in Iran — three held on trumped-up charges, according to your administration; one, whereabouts unknown. Can you tell the country, sir, why you are content, with all the fanfare around this deal, to leave the conscience of this nation and the strength of this nation unaccounted for in relation to these four Americans?And last week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, under no circumstances should there be any relief for Iran in terms of ballistic missiles or conventional weapons. It is perceived that that was a last-minute capitulation in these negotiations. Many in the Pentagon feel you’ve left the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff hung out to dry. Could you comment?
Can you imagine this reporter asking this question of Pres. Ronald Reagan or Pres. G.W.Bush, with erroneous presumptions already embedded, to which Pres. Barack Obama responded to: “I got to give you credit, Major, for how you craft those questions. The notion that I am content as I celebrate with American citizens languishing in Iranian jails — Major, that’s nonsense, and you should know better. I’ve met with the families of some of those folks. Nobody is content. And our diplomats and our teams are working diligently to try to get them out.”
Imagine the America we dreamt of, the nation we worked so hard to immigrate to, the country we would cross mountains, hills, valleys and rivers for, is also the America with a hidden darkness in the deepest recesses of its soul, a cancerous and poisonous virus that keeps replicating in the minds and hearts of successive generations, unless we make RACISM no longer contagious. It was started in 18th and 19th centuries, and it is now still very much alive in the 21st centuries, after a period of three thousand years.
Racism is an agency and institutional practice where folks of color are relegated to a secondary status, while whites are presumed and are conferred special treatment by virtue of their skin, and to some, also known as “white skin privilege,” an invisible cache of privileges.
They are presumed to be competent, knowledgeable, honest and responsible. They are called first for jobs. They are cast in roles in films, television shows and even “made up” to assume roles of folks of color, much like the latest film shut in Hawaii, where whites were cast as Hawaiians. The reverse is also true, the hyperscrutiny of mistakes done by folks of color, while those are ignored amongst whites.
The opposite presumption attaches to African –Americans: “The number of African American men under state and federal criminal justice supervision in 2013, totaled roughly 1.68 million people. That is 807, 076 above the number of African American men enslaved in 1850.- The U.S. Bureau of Criminal Statistics, as posted by Senator Cory Booker on July 14, 2015’s facebook.
His bipartisan bill, the Redeem Act, gives us a glimpse of the compelling problem: “Our criminal justice system is broken, and we are all paying the price for it. Home to just five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prison population, our nation is wasting massive sums of taxpayer dollars to make our streets less, not more, safe. Furthermore, incarceration trends have created racial and socio-economic injustices of staggering proportions.” Pres. Barack Obama spoke of how America spends $80 billion on incarcerating folks and for that amount of monies, tuition can be free in all colleges and universities.
Racism is the scourge and poison in one’s heart and one’s mind that permeates one’s being. It is neither conservative nor liberal, it is simply an unacceptable cancer that must be rooted out from one’s being, our souls, and our collective population in America.
How do we translate the love that Pres. Obama speaks of and make racism obsolete?
Justice is making sure every young person knows they are special, they are important, and their lives matter. Not because they heard it in a hashtag, but because of the love they feel every single day.
Pres. Obama
On June 4th, Synergy Kinetic Academy promoted their 8th graders to high school. Part of their graduation ceremonies included a recognition and an award given to Guadalupe E., as a Synergy HERO: Honest, Exemplary, Respectful and Open-Minded. Their newsletter boasts of 99% of Synergy seniors graduated in 2015, even though less than a third of adults in this community have a high school diploma.
That does not happen by accident, it happens with intentions and consistent practice and a synergy between teachers and parents.
At Synergy, every child is called scholar. Before class begins, the children line up in their uniforms and do a formal handshake with their teachers and are greeted, “Good morning Scholar!” It reinforces the high regard the teacher has of each student but also the high potential of each student being nurtured by this school.
When a students is a disciplinary problem, parents are guided to work with the problem student positively and given clear choices: you can continue to be a disciplinary problem or you can emerge a new HERO, honest, exemplary, respectful and open-minded. He or she is also viewed as with high potentials rather than a high risk destined for prison. Instead, they are educated as if future scientists, engineers, poets, teachers and leaders.
This school was founded by two USC graduates, a husband and wife team: Randy Palisoc (a Filipino-American born and raised in Hawaii and the very first in his family to graduate college and now a TEDx speaker and an author of mathematics books which are used to make math more accessible to parents and their children) and his wife, Meg Palisoc, an inspirational administrator of Synergy Academies, now three. Both are USC’s doctorate degree holders who founded Synergy to provide educational equity for all students, regardless of zip code origins ( a euphemism for rich and poor students are a function of zip codes). It started as an Elementary School, then a Middle School and then a High School. This year, they are introducing a year of engineering classes to seniors in high school to emphasize the importance of science, math and engineering.
It matters to be in the right zip code, as in the heart of the urban cities, in Synergy Academies, where these scholars are grown and developed by caring and strategic-minded founders and teachers and administrative staff, “this fall, Synergy’s alumni will be attending these colleges and universities: Antelope Valley College, Bucknell University, Cal Poly Pomona, CSU Bakersfield, CSU Dominguez Hills, CSU Long Beach, CSU Los Angeles, CSU Northridge, CSU San Bernardino, Cerritos College, East Los Angeles College, El Camino College, Glendale College, Hawaii Pacific University, Los Angeles Trade Technical College, Los Angeles City College, Mount Saint Mary’s University, Pasadena City College, Sacramento State University, San Francisco State University, Santa Ana College, Santa Monica College, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, University of New England, USC, West Los Angeles College, Westminster College, and Yale University.”
When we practice non-racist methods of educating our children, we grow them as competent scholars, as in Synergy academies, where they are given safe and secure homes and where they are taught to be honest, exemplary, respectful and open-minded.
We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been – a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. [or corrected for precise terms to be used.] Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Somewhere where we can be free.
From Warrior Goddess Training, posted by @the_mind_body_spirit_tribe on Instagram
I am because you are! Nothing less, nothing more, all of us are equal and are all God’s beloved. #BLACKLIVESMATTER #ALLLIVESMATTER
I think the time is right and the ground is fertile for us to make progress as a state and to come together and remove the Confederate battle flag from prominent statue outside the Statehouse and put it in the museum. It is time to acknowledge our past, atone for our sins and work towards a better future. That future must be built on symbols of peace, love, and unity. That future cannot be built on symbols of war, hate, and divisiveness. I am aware of my heritage. But my appreciation for the things that my forebearers accomplished to make my life better doesn’t mean that I must believe that they always made the right decisions and, for the life of me, I will never understand how anyone could fight a civil war based, in part, on the desire to continue the practice of slavery. Think about it for just a second. Our ancestors were literally fighting to continue to keep human beings as slaves and continue the unimaginable acts that occur when someone is held against their will. I am not proud of this heritage. These practices were inhumane and were wrong, wrong, wrong. Now we have these hate groups and the symbols that they use to remind African Americans that things haven’t changed and that they are still viewed as less than equal human beings. Well, let me tell you: Things have changed. Overwhelmingly, people are not being raised to hate or to believe that they are superior to others based on the color of their skin. My generation was raised to respect all people, of every race, religion, and gender…I am proud to be on the right side of history regarding the removal of this symbol of racism and bigotry from the statehouse. But let it not satisfy us to stop there. Justice by halves is not justice.
Sen. Paul Thurmond, June 19, 2015
Will America succeed in shedding its presumptions that only White is right? Or White is Might? The concept, amongst holdovers from the confederate days, that America must be a Whites-only Nation?
We have long allowed racists to dominate our conversations in government. Because their opinions are shockingly filled with hatred, we have kept our mouths shut. We have even allowed Catholics to be seduced by racists, such that their unconscious messages have gone on the airwaves, without proper filters from their content editors, and shared in our inboxes.
During the campaign period to elect Pres. Barack Obama in 2008, I received emails from conservative Catholics, preaching not to elect Barack Obama, as he would become a Nazi Hitler in office. I replied, how many million Jews died at the hands of this US Senator? I asked the sender to be conscious of the hatred in her email, to which she replied, “but I did not react to your email about McCain.” I told her my email about McCain simply shared his track record. In my reply, I changed her subject heading and did not forward the offensive email about the President.
Should we now, as a group of Filipino-Americans, take a stand to filter out hateful emails, from the outside world, to not internally pollute our community’s inboxes? Should we not, as a community say this should not be shared, as we have long been accepting of all races? That Filipinos have been productive workers in 198 countries in the world and hence, we make room for all kinds of folks in the Philippines? What about here in America? Should that be our stance as world-class Filipinos, and by our institutions, as well?
I recall a subscribers-only cable television network ask a question to Filipinos, sort of a survey to determine our subscribers’ opinion about allowing the incumbent Pres. Barack Obama to send troops to Syria and to declare a war. I challenged this network to check their facts and to figure out which branches of US government has the authority to declare war. While Pres. Obama is our commander-in-chief, he has shown caution in how he deployed troops, and at that time, he was seeking diplomatic solutions in Syria. Clearly, the misinformation was calculated to dissuade folks from not reelecting this Democratic President, just before his 2012 reelection.
Should we allow the dominance of this cable television network to sponge off voters through unethical misinformation? Should we ask them instead to host town hall meetings about issues we care about: education, immigration reform, jobs, small businesses, and health care?
I recall the US Catholic Conference of Bishops circulated a flyer to US Catholics asking them to lobby US Congress to oppose the Affordable Health Care Act in a rich zip code church. The US Bishops wrongfully believed the Affordable Health Care Act was promoting abortion, through the use of birth control pills, which they called abortifacient drugs. I personally challenged this misinformation by citing facts from the Mayo Clinic and reputable medical sources on the true nature of birth control pills, as not causing abortion, and the specific statutory language on the Affordable Health Care Act, as not covering abortions.
But as Catholic lay leaders, who were privy to these flyers, should we have challenged the practice and pointed them to reputable medical sources that birth control pills are not abortifacient drugs?
Do we allow our faith and our science to be corrupted for the wrong reasons, to protect the Catholic institutional coffers so they need not pay medical health premiums for their employees?
Do we allow our consciences to be dormant, warped for expediency, just because they came from institutions, even when they plainly disseminate information that clearly negates science and truth, like the instances I described here?
We have stayed quiet while racist commentators, the likes of Rush Limbaugh, the talk show host like Bill O’Reilly rudely interrupt and disrespect women, as if those are acceptable behaviors, or cable news commentators, birthers, senators, congressional leaders, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin spew out falsehoods, targetting the incumbent in the White House, projecting every mistake they could find. We have allowed inappropriateness and unethical behaviors to be popularized.
We relied on President Barack Obama, Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow to do the critical thinking for us and to say these are not acceptable and decent behaviors. We did not stand up to say: enough Fox News, we will not tolerate your way of reporting news without factual basis, much like what the Great Britain readers did to the Murdoch-owned newspapers who wrongfully spied on their public figures. We kept silent to wrongdoings, as the FCC stayed silent, which respectable broadcasters would not have been allowed, the likes of Tim Russert, Harry Reasoner and even Peter Jennings. We enabled wrongdoers by numbing ourselves to say, that “Black teenager must have it coming to him,” only to find out that he was about to graduate from high school.
Or did we kill the messenger by saying, “Oh that person was a detractor,” and enabled what was wrong, without standing up for truth and our collective consciences?
When unarmed young black men were being killed by police in uniform, did we come out in indignation? Did we speak out like Chloe Dichoso, a sophomore at Salesian College Preparatory, who wants us to acknowledge our broken world? Or South Carolina state Sen. Paul Thurmond who understands his heritage, yet critiques it for how it dehumanizes sectors of folks? We must repair our brokenness, as America, to recognize that #blacklivesmatter and that #allhumanbeingsmatter, that we are all beloved children of God, and to keep the Confederate flag relegated as a museum artifact, and diligently snuff out racism from our collective consciousness.
Broken World
by Chloe Dichoso (a Northern Californian poet who won second place in the Mt. Diablo Art and Creative Writing Contest)
Look amid the broken walls
Of man’s hatred
Resurrected from stems of history
Mere fights of wasted pursuits
Lead to carcasses–
Piles and piles of fallen people
Heaped on the shoulders of the world
Do you not hear the world crying?
The mother weeps for her son
The woman weeps for her husband
A child left in broken streets
Cries for a guardian
The land is torn
A world of battlefields
In man’s greed
Of garbage of plastic and fuel
Exploded as useless feces
Breathed in as toxins
Igniting violence and ignorance
Is this the world you long to live in?
The people who once did not have a voice
Will soon rise
Ushering the corner stone
To the ends of the earth
Spread as a message for all
Until this earth stands united,
Together, hand in hand,
Our world will fall
Remaining in the chains we’ve held since the dawn of man
None of that required Dolezal to be black. In fact, civil rights battles benefit from the support of white allies. When I was in high school, my black history teacher was a white woman who pushed us to dispatch propaganda and seek truth. We learned that skin color wasn’t a measure of commitment. She was so in tune with her students – on a campus where almost every student was black- that lack of melanin never mattered. Her honesty did. The long-running lie is the most craven part of Dolezal’s charade.
Sandy Banks, Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2015
Rachel Dolezal recently resigned from being the president of the NAACP’s Spokane, Washington chapter, after her own parents disclosed she is Caucasian by birth, unlike her self-assertion, “I identify as Black.” She was elected to head the NAACP’s Spokane chapter in Nov. 2014, after James Wilburn expressed hope that the chapter can be revitalized, given inactive committees.
It was as if James Wilburn was hoping for a light to shed the darkness from this organization. But the justification of voting her into office has cast more darkness on this illustrious group, and now part of America’s national conversations.
Sandy Banks wrote in the Los Angeles Times that “Dolezal had the style right, but the substance was wrong. Seriously wrong,” and her essay was entitled “Dolezal’s black deception.”
What are the lessons that we can learn from “Dolezal’s charade”?
Dolezal, carefully constructed her identity as an “authority” on Blacks, including leading teach-ins in Spokane. Her popularity grew since her Nov. 2014 election to head the NAACP and became a member of the Police Oversight Committee, voted by the city council. Her fabricated identity was revealed when The Couer d’ Alene Press in Idaho published an interview with her birth parents, Ruth Anne and Larry Dolezal, that she is actually Caucasian at birth, with photos of her as a blonde young woman. Her mother, Ruth Anne Dolezal of Troy, Mont. told People Magazine, “She’s not being rational.”
So, what is the fuss about?
Enrique, my husband, offered this critique, “What is the harm in overreaching as an African-American ally? After all, even the NAACP said that they have had whites before in leadership?”
To which I said, “Yes, the organization has collective wisdom, perhaps a higher level than a single individual.” He then questioned the media frenzy, which surrounded this controversy, without illuminating identity, but more precisely, validating the “social construct” of racial categories of White and Black races. He suggested, “Why not look at her track record?”
But as we both question the media’s treatment of this topic, must we not challenge our own biases?
The Spokesman-Review, based in Spokane, quoted Michelle Nealy, a spokeswoman for the national chapter in Baltimore, Md.: ”One’s racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership. For 106 years, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has held a long and proud tradition of receiving support from people of all faiths, races, colors and creeds. NAACP Spokane Washington Branch President Rachel Dolezal is enduring a legal issue with her family, and we respect her privacy in this matter.”
But the city council was perturbed and cited instances of Dolezal’s inability to keep police oversight issues confidential, and the city council voted to remove her, as part of their Police Oversight Committee.
Deception is not colored black, nor white, it is unethical
In Dolezal’s case, she did not reveal a material trait that she has, that of being born to Caucasian parents, Ruth Anne and Larry Dolezal, which is deception. In the legal world, fraud is defined as the omission of a material fact or highlighting something inconsequential as significant.
Rachel Dolezal went on national television with Samantha Guthrie of NBC News to question who has witnessed her birth, when her birth certificate was issued a month and a half later?
While it is commonplace now to change one’s graying hair to different colors, with some Pinays becoming blondes for months or years, her “makeover” did not stop at hair. She assumed a space in the African –American community as one of them, voted in as one of their leaders, without revealing who she was, justifying it as she was not asked about her race. When asked now by Samantha Guthrie, she responded elusively, “I identify as black.”
I was educated by my gay son, Carlo, about the distinction of being a parent of a gay son and that of being gay. He told me I am an ally because my identity is not gay, and my experiences do not include being discriminated as a gay person, nor do I have that as part of my core personal identity.
Identity is fluid, amorphous and liquid
It is interesting to have two philosophers, Enrique and Kenneth, share perspectives on identities, one summer evening at dinner. Enrique has a doctorate in philosophy at UCLA and taught at UCLA and Cal State Northridge, while Kenneth Masong, a priest, has a doctorate in philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, taught at Ateneo, and wrote a book, Becoming-Religion, now published by UST Press.
We were eating with a group of friends when their perspectives on identity converged, perhaps, a result of common authors which they have studied and critiqued.
Enrique described, “identity as fluid and amorphous” while Kenneth, another philosopher, used these words, “identity is liquid” including a self-reflective question: “Was I the same Kenneth of 10 years ago to the Kenneth now? I would say not. But is the Kenneth now so fundamentally different from that of ten years ago. Again, there lies the accommodation, of what is and what is not. Identity is liquid.”
Both philosophers described identities as an evolving dynamic, influenced, and changed by our circumstances, a result of our presence and interaction with our environment.
But what did Rachel Dolezal do? She became more than a self-described ally to Blacks. She was not transparent about who she really is, instead assumed an alternate identity as a Black character, perhaps, with presumably Black experiences, including eight hate crimes perpetrated on her bio, as if a badge of honor to a Black person. She led the Black community in Spokane in a teach-in.
It was implying to the world that she has been part of those victimized by police, who are killing unarmed teenagers, without revealing who she truly is: a white person of privilege. It was a breach of public trust from a person who became part of a century-old organization that is quite respected.
Latoya Peterson, a writer, shared her views on Fusion.net: “But it is about a deep, cultural understanding – I assume if a black woman is on a seat of authority, she’s already grappled with the mandate to life as you climb, she already knows the half as good/twice as far truism. You know what it is? It’s a colonizer mindset. What I see, I am entitled to. I think those of us who are black are taught pride in the face of discrimination, and go through at least some process of reckoning to understand who we are in America and how that shapes us. And the spaces that came out of that, be it the NAACP or Essence, were confronting this culture, these dominant narratives of whiteness, and challenging them. To have a person who hasn’t walked that kind of path, and understood on a deep level, why the fight has to continue is something that honestly, could imperil these institutions.”
Was Rachel Dolezal being non-racist in switching identities, to embrace folks of color as now part of her inborn culture? That indeed, we are all part Black, part White, part Asian, part Latino, and therefore, part of the human race?
Danielle Henderson, another writer’s perspective on Fusion.net, has this to say: “And Dolezal, too, in a way — she wasn’t just black, she was peak blackness. A professor. President of the NAACP. She only played with blackness in a way that elevated her status. We have so few pathways to respectability as black women, and she co-opted all of them.”
I believe the NAACP has been inclusive in its choice of leaders, over its century of existence. It continues a tradition that the civil rights movement was more than a Black experience– that it was led by majority Blacks, and supported by Whites as allies, with Asians, like Grace Lee Boggs, and even Latinos, to form a movement of enlightened Americans.
What gives me hope in America is we are now openly discussing what are these social constructs, what are identities, including a show called “Your face sounds familiar” of Pinoy and Pinay performers impersonating singing personalities, including Iggy Azalea.
In the mind of writer Danielle Henderson, “Iggy Azalea comes to mind here, too—she constantly talks about her love of rap while denigrating the culture that created it. It’s a very strange cultural blind spot.” While Latoya Peterson asserts, “To me, what’s fascinating about all this is how it shows that race, racism, and racial identity are such convoluted topics. Rachel Dolezal is ridiculous, right? But it’s only because her background didn’t match. If she looked the way she did (tanning, blonde dreads and all) and had at least one parent that [identified] as black, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Whereas someone else, like say, our current President, can look black, and have a black parent, and identify as black, and experience the type of discrimination that black men experience in America and still have people both (1) deny his blackness and (2) deny his right to self-identify.”
But what is even more fascinating is Caitlyn Jenner, formerly Bruce Jenner, who crosses gender boundaries, and assumes a new female identity, even if her biological sexual features are male.
“Life is a journey towards meaningful existence. Holiness is the realization that the journey itself is at the heart of becoming Divine. This is becoming-religious, and when the journey is a journey of togetherness towards The Harmony of Harmonies, the sojourn of all is Becoming-Religion,” wrote Fr. Kenneth Masong.
I believe if we are in alignment with our innate divine, we become what God has meant us to be, growing as sources of light.
Happy Father’s and Grandfather’s day to all AJ readers, who helped give birth and raise children on this earth!
I am grateful to God, my creator and my father, Eleazar, who was called “Christmas,” a helpful, generous, dedicated and compassionate man, a gardener of many souls and sweet fruits. Oh how I wish we are in conversation today!
