There's a guy who writes for The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates. Friday he responded to something someone else wrote about the flying fur surrounding the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. This person wrote that the nomination was exacerbating tensions between Latinos and African Americans, who he said "could be as violently distrustful of each other as blacks and whites were." Coates (who is African American) begged to differ, saying, essentially, that there is no comparison:
One must be clear about what constituted "violent" distrust "between" blacks and whites in the 20th century. It meant thousands of whites, in Atlanta, in 1906, assembling on the streets to randomly murder black people. In Springfield, Illinois, in 1908, it meant whites pillaging a Jewish businesses for arms, and then proceeding to the black side of town, attacking black business and black homes, and thousands of black people fleeing for their lives. It meant whites--across the nation--in 1910 assembling in mobs and murdering random black people (On the 4th of July!). The cause? Jack Johnson had the temerity to win the championship. It meant whites in East St. Louis, in 1918, perpetrating a pogrom against the city's black population, and killing over 100 black people because, "southern niggers need a lynching."(I googled Jack Johnson for us, he was a boxer.) I read this passage and kind of had my breath taken away. Yes, I know there was slavery. Yes, I know there were lynchings and marches and shootings and the four girls killed in their church. I listened to the NPR series on the civil rights era. I know that in addition to wingnuts in KKK costumes there were a lot of other people who were angry or scared or who just remained silent.
I have not known Latinos in the 20th Century to perpetrate a Red Summer. I have not known blacks to lynch Latino veterans, returning from war, in their uniforms. The fact is that there was no violent distrust between blacks and whites in the 20th century. Rather there was a one-sided war waged against black people by white terrorists, which government, in the best cases, failed to prevent, in many cases, stood idly by, and in the worst cases actually aided and abetted. I'm sorry but comparing that to whatever's happening between blacks and Latinos, is a slander against both those groups, and an amazingly naive take on the history of white America in regards to race.
I think it was Coates' recitation of these very specific actions--places, dates, circumstances--we should all know this history. I did not know any of these incidents. These are just a few specifics of an ugly history that most of us are only very casually aware of. My reaction was that we all need to hear these things. There are other bits of our history that get repeated all the time, on anniversaries and when related events occur. These are not things that we should close the book on and look away from, these are things we cannot afford to forget. To forget them is to have the sort of silly dialogues that occur today about subjects such as the wisdom of affirmative action. (And affirmative action is by no means necessarily good, and it merits serious discussion, but it's silly to suggest that a Puerto Rican girl growing up in New York City with a single mother was somehow privileged.) We know the heros--Rosa Parks, Dr. King--(or do we?) but we need to know the other side as well.
Then I began reading email sent to Andrew Sullivan about women who had had late-term abortions. Stories prompted, of course, by the killing of Dr. Tiller. We hear "late-term abortion" and we mentally cluck our tongues. Irresponsible. Except that I didn't know any of the stories behind why women have late-term abortions--but because of Dr. Tiller's death I suspect that many of us will know some of these stories. They are heartbreaking. Here is one example:
At 17 weeks gestation our baby had been diagnosed with major heart defects requiring a minimum of three risky open-heart surgeries beginning at birth, and would later require a heart transplant. At 19 weeks we were finally given our amnio results which revealed our baby also had Trisomy 21.
A surgeon at the major teaching hospital where we'd had our fetal echocardiogram informed us that even if our baby somehow survived his palliative surgeries, this latest diagnosis meant he would not ever be eligible for a heart transplant. As we sat talking quietly in our living room, our priest shared with us that he’d spent time at the same hospital where we’d had our fetal echocardiogram and where our son would have had surgery.
He was there to support the family of a three-month-old who was having heart surgery. In the three weeks or so that he tended to this family, he also met 10 other families in the waiting room, each of whom also had young babies undergoing heart surgery. Sadly, within the short space of time our priest was there, every single one of those babies died.
Our priest came away from that experience feeling that this world-renowned children’s hospital was basically experimenting on babies. He saw their futile suffering and likened it to being crucified. The family he had gone there to support later told him that if they had only known what their baby would be forced to go through before dying, they would never have chosen surgery. Our priest told us that he believed we were not choosing our son’s death, only choosing the timing of his death in order to spare him a great deal of suffering. Something he said that brought us great comfort was “God knows what is in your hearts.” God knows our choice was based on mercy and compassion. Who would better understand our hearts than God, who made the choice for His own Son to die?
See this article for several stories, including one very frightening one at the end about a woman whose baby had died, and she had begun bleeding but was not in labor, and could not get a doctor or hospital to allow her to come in for treatment. Here is a roundup of some of the reader email stories on Andrew's blog today.
Finally, there have been a number of stories lately about the continuing travesty of sexual assault going on around the world. Nick Kristof of the New York Times is a frequent commenter, and he had a recent piece on the continuing suffering of women in Darfur in refugee camps. On the way home tonight, I heard a heartrending story on The World where they interviewed a number of these Darfuri women. I don't know the statistics, but the commonness of this crime and the fact that we accept it and are not walking, running, fundraising, and filling the Sunday morning talk show airwaves for it is completely unacceptable.
A facebook group went up today calling on bloggers to talk about this subject (it is called Silence Is the Enemy if you'd like to join). I reach about three people with this blog (and that's assuming they've read this very long post!), but I think the point is that we all need to do what we can.
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