10. Contradiction and Consistency

I want to return to the notion, mentioned earlier, of contradiction and consistency.  A consistent and unvarying record seems to me to indicate a smallness of mind, a refusal to admit mistakes, and an inability to change.  Logical consistency in all of one’s beliefs may be impressive but is very unreflective of how human beings actually function. To be pro-choice stance regarding abortion but anti-death penalty appears to be a contradiction, but many, perhaps most, people who hold the former also believe the latter as well; the reverse is also true.  Many advocates of rigorous firearm registration are also avid hunters and gun owners. A dyed-in-the-wool capitalist with a strong philanthropic reputation, the animal lover who hunts, the supremely Christian believer who considers natural disasters to be the revenge of an angry god, all of these are far from uncommon.

Contradictions are what make us up.  All of us, without exception. The different contradictions that we perceive in others give richness to our relationships, whether familial or distant.  Yet we harp on neat causal chains in order to define everything we do, insisting, particularly for political figures, that they obey this arbitrary rule.  But we are not syllogistic beings, but dialectic.

Elsewhere I have suggested that it is a mistake to posit the absence of absolute, objective truth; that there indeed are objective truths that, whether attainable or not, guide us and toward which we move.  I very much doubt that the absolute truth in its purist form can be apprehended by human beings, although we may sight it, literally “as through a glass and darkly.” The contradictions mediate and also guide us in a direction toward, away from, or tangential to these absolutes.  However much consistency might appeal, examination of our contradictions, either as internal monologue or externally with individuals we trust, appears to me to be the true path to acceptance, growth, and change. We grow more tolerant through recognizing our contradictions, both within ourselves and in our understanding of our fellow beings.

9. A Confession

This is not an attempt at self-justification but a confession.  No one person can answer for the crimes of a community but, equally, no one person, therefore , can evade their own responsibility for what they have done, do, and plan on doing.  Somewhere between communal criminality and individual responsibility there lies a dark ground that no amount of examination can clarify.  

I grew up in Washington, DC during the Civil Rights era of the 1960’s, with a mother who was passionately devoted to social equality of all Americans.  An activist by nature, she involved me in all of her projects, including marching in demonstrations, raising funds and collecting food, clothing, and bedding for people in need, lectures and rallies in support of SCLC and, as time went on, SNCC and other radical movements.  She passed on to me the desire to try to empathize with the terrible injustices of both the northern and southern US toward African-Americans and, at the same time, to realize that the real race problem lay within white people themselves: attitudes, prejudices, and culturally enforced stereotypes that needed to be questioned and laid to rest, not avoided.  The revered figures for me at this time, through her, were Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and James Baldwin.  As each one of these men were killed or marginalized, and as my mother’s sense of defeat and depression grew, I saw more and more how the notion of race as the crucial factor in US history, as articulated by Dr. WEB Dubois, was the literal truth concerning our society as a whole.  This background shaped my 40-year career as a teacher of music and composition, and my nearly 50-year career as a composer.

I pictured myself, then, as someone who set out to be even-handed and receptive.  I believed (and continue to believe) in Affirmative Action and intended to support its tenets in every way I could.  This translated into real actions. At the University of Georgia from the time of the inception of the doctoral program until I left in June, 2000, I directed every doctoral dissertation executed by an  African-American student and also all Hispanic students. I also worked on as many recitals given by an African-American student that was appropriate to my area of expertise. Perhaps of greater significance, I was once taken to task by an African-American student, who felt I had given him a lower grade than he deserved.  He made a good case and he was right, so I raised his grade, justifiably. I’m not sure I would have changed a white student’s grade under similar circumstances but I hope I would have. I also hope that I would have applied identical criteria. At Oberlin Conservatory, where African-American students were few and far between, I certainly taught my share of them and was the principal private teacher for almost all of the female students.  I could not teach all women or foreign students or minority students for reasons of excessive teaching load. But I was clearly, at both institutions, the go-to person in the minds of students who were under-represented in my field of music; who were, to some extent, victims of a society that devalued their capabilities for reasons of race or gender.

But what does all this mean?  Do I “protest too much” in enumerating this?  What purpose lies underneath this exposition? Am I guilty and want to cover my tracks by presenting what purports to be an honourable record?  Am I saying I am a friend to African-Americans? Or am I just a power figure bearing the white man’s burden with pride? There is no simple answer; no ONE answer.  And there doesn’t have to be. It is not (and never is) consistency that matters; consistency, as Hannah Krall has so eloquently stated, is almost a prima facie case for the probability of inaccuracy at best, mendacity at worst.  It is in the contradictions and contrasts, the unlikely and unexplainable, that illumination and clarification might lie.

One of the people whose dissertations I directed is someone whom I have known for a long time.  I conducted on his doctoral chamber recital and worked with him on a number of very successful performance projects, and I believe we both enjoyed these experiences and esteemed each other’s work.  He is a performer who has, with considerable reluctance, I believe, been called upon to exercise his considerable administrative skills and intelligence on behalf of two US colleges. He is an intellectual, a pragmatist, a dreamer, and a committed individual who possesses inter-personal skills of which I am both awed and envious.  He is also a “boss” for whom I would have considered it an honour to work. We have competed against each other in road races, he being by far the faster in the shorter distances with me being able to compete better in distances of 13.1 miles and further. In a sense, we have the appearance of being friends.

But I know that, in a very literal sense, we cannot be more than professional colleagues and acquaintances; good, appreciative, and respectful, but never close.  For any doctoral student, there is an uneasy feeling around the professors with whom one worked the most closely; even the location where one did one’s doctoral work can be tainted.  The professors know too much about you, saw you at your weakest, know all about the defects. Nobody wants to revisit those things.

But this is different.  There’s an awkwardness and a reticence that has nothing to do with past student foibles.  We were as close as we could ever be when performing together, which is, indeed, a very intimate experience.  But it is also impersonal and has a history outside of social history and social circumstances. He is measurably more successful in his career in academia than I have been—Professor, Dean, Provost, outstanding musician, educational innovator—and most certainly better paid.  But, while justifiably proud (or, at least, satisfied) with his attainments, his focus in his life has been on his family (of which he is the only surviving elder male), his peers and friends from his college career, and the support of African-American artists in all fields. What we hold in common can only be called positive; what differences there are can only make us more interesting, each to each.  From where does this awkwardness arise, then, between two people with so much history and experience in common?

Despite these most favourable of circumstances, the history we share is not the decisive history involved.  I am a white male power figure who, no matter how benign, helpful, or supportive I might appear, about whom any African-American man must harbour at least a certain amount of tension, distrust, and anger.  Speaking only for myself—and in light of my own experience growing up—I can certainly say that it would be impossible for me to trust the protestations of a family member, no matter how much I might wish consciously to trust and draw close to them.  In my “friend’s” case and in mine, the same kinds of issues arise. He believes, as any sane black man MUST believe, that when push comes to shove, I will support the maintenance of white power and turn from him; that there will inevitably be a point beyond which I will not go in the name of racial justice.  He would have to believe, maybe to know, that at some level I could never be trusted and that, even if I were totally exceptional in every way, I am still the representative of a group to which he will probably never be able to belong. My thought is that he can not really afford to trust me any more than I could trust one of the members of my immediate family, for very much the same reasons, even if those reasons are not entirely rational.

So what does this mean?  That history blocks change?  That atonement might need to precede any real rapprochement?  That there is too much water under the dam to reverse the direction of the flow?  What would help to alleviate this situation? Some kind of honest and open discussion with everything on the table, as per the suggestion of Malcolm X?  Just living through the situation and seeing where we end up?  

I can’t confront this person with my fears and failings, any more than I want to torture out of him his true feelings.  White people have expressed a bewildering assortment of conflicting and heartfelt views: some profoundly racist, some conciliatory but only up to a point, some perhaps more enlightened.  African-Americans have had to play a variety of parts in order to keep up with all of these personalities, none of which may be any more than coping devices that protect and conceal. And one can conceal oneself for only so long before one can no longer tell the difference between what is part of oneself and what is necessary to survive.  Survival skills that are part of the collateral damage of racism. All I do know is I love and respect this man and wish I had the chance or the skills or the opportunity to let him know this.

I leave this here for now.  Outwardly, I have been successful in presenting an image of a white man who wants to go farther than just alleviate racist behavior and racist history.  Inwardly, I am still learning how little able I am, even now, to comprehend the magnitude of the effect of systemic racism. Inwardly, no amount of outward success can change the fact that I have far to go in understanding and overcoming.

8. “Exception That Proves the Rule”

I have no idea what the expression “exception that proves the rule” means.  I think it was invented in order to deprive exceptional situations from having any significance.  It is similar to being told by a teacher, lawyer, or whomever that “if I do “X” for you, I have to do “X” for everybody.  These are not justifications for anything but shallow methods for denying individuality when individuality is what is important.   Exceptions are the black swans we don’t believe exist that can become new additions to the world, even become norms. Allowing for individual initiatives or actions stimulates creativity by allowing people to pursue ideas, even if they do not, finally, turn out to be as inventive or interesting as they might have seemed at first.  All that is necessary to accomplish this is time and empathy. Is anyone truly willing to give these to another person?

7. You Cannot Love What You Fear

You cannot love what you fear, especially when that fear is caused by shame for past actions.  It’s much more natural to hate what (and whom) you fear. “They” lower your self-esteem and detract from your sense of triumphant superiority.  Fear and hate are reciprocal, although the fear precedes hate. Violence releases the tension of fear, producing either hate or justification, depending on whether the violence is perpetrated on you or by you.  If on you, hate justifies the fear and calls for further violence. If by you, superiority is asserted and subsequent violence, promising additional release and feelings of superiority can perpetuate the well-being that violence releases.

6. White Achievement

Have white people achieved anything more than the knowledge that, at some point in time, whites need to accept African-Americans as equals in American society?  I don’t think so. When I was young, I wanted to believe so much in progress and that consciousnesses would be opened. I knew even then that the commitment to social equality had to be made by white people because whites were the source of the race problem and that black attitudes were shaped by the oppression wreaked upon them.

5. The Racism of America

The racism of America is not a problem of black and white but of white and white.  No black person is unaware of the oppression that they experience or how little progress has been made in beginning to heal the wounds of four centuries.  The problem is that white people only want to hold onto the power they have accumulated over time and do not want to address any issues that would even potentially decrease that power.  Honesty on race relations on a personal level are very far from every white person’s psyche. No white person, unless entirely racist, is willing to become honest with another white person and, truth to tell, it’s hard to imagine any black person wanting to listen to the confessions of a white person, no matter how sincere that person might sound.  Whites should not hope for understanding by African-Americans unless they can first get honest among themselves.

4. On Malcolm X

How could he sit there and patiently listen to uncomprehending white academics ask him inane questions about his name, his background, his work?  Where did that patience come from? How could he do that time after time and retain the quality of his intellect, without ever losing the sharpness and incisiveness of his speech?  As angry as he claimed to be and had a right to be, was there ever anyone as patient and composed as he was?

Whenever I hear his voice or read something he wrote or said, I go into mourning.  Not even because of the leadership all Americans lost when he was shot down. How many Malcolm X’s are currently in American prisons serving time for trying to fulfill the “American Dream” in about the only way open to African-Americans, or trying to alleviate the pain of living in a society where social support is denied to so many, and most particularly if one is black or Hispanic?  Malcolm knew very well that he was not unique, that generations of African-American men and women were thrown away into jail cells and forgotten while there, disenfranchised when released, and rendered socially unemployable.

The failure of America is not only the failure to right the wrongs of the past but to compound them by never confronting the multiplicity of causes that created the wrongs in the first place.  For African-Americans, this legacy stands in the way of having any chance at all to exist successfully in a racist society. While it is too true that the US government was largely responsible—either directly or by neglect—for assassinating the African-American leadership of the 1960’s, African-Americans certainly know, as all white people should also know, that this is only the most public manifestation of the continuing persecution of black people throughout the nation’s history, consistently targeting black males especially for destruction, whether through literal killing or social ostracism.  No American understood or experienced this more directly than Malcolm X.

3. Safety and Security

I had a conversation with a great friend who had been reading about the difference between safety and security.  A secure society has agencies to which members of that society can turn for assistance and support, be it police, disaster relief, medical assistance, etc.  No one and no society can guarantee safety. Traveling on a train, a loose bolt in a rail and a derailment can easily occur. This can happen at any time and no amount of safety checks will prevent accidents like this.  Similarly, terror groups who do not care about their own survival (NOT suicide but homicide attackers, please) voluntarily make themselves accidental phenomena against whom almost no amount of prevention will make a community or a society safe.

2. Being white in America

It means apologizing as amendment; pat-on-the-back liberalism at best; knowing that, no matter how bad things get, at least you’re white.  Almost no white person has the slightest idea of what it has meant to be black in America. White people constructed a concentration camp in which, with precious little change, black people have been forced to live for almost 400 years.  The history we teach and believe—the ”truths” we believe to be self-evident—takes no account of this phenomena. I imagine what it would be like to be a Jewish student in a class on Germany from 1933-1945 in which no reference to the Holocaust was ever made.  That is what we are, rather shamelessly, teaching our middle and high school students. Maybe a few doors open in February. Maybe.

 “Nigger” is a white construction.  Black men (especially) have taken the word and used it against the white purpose, not to sanitize the word but to make it an aggressive assertion, almost a negation of what the word was originally meant to signify—the African-American as a not-human being.  Perhaps this is an irony born out of a sense of necessity: an obscenity that, when appropriated, becomes a word of defiance. Same as calling oneself a bad motherfucker. But that does not make the word less horrible or, in all probability, more important to disappear.  It is the word of expressing social inequality. For the white person, a dehumanizing insult. For the African-American, an insult hurled back at the oppressor. A word that needs to disappear and not be replaced.

To accord a black person social equality, white people must cut them the same slack, make the same allowances, accept the same kinds of faults, be just as understanding as they would be for any white person.  Treat all people as people, while at the same time acknowledging that it will be necessary to understand that trust takes time and that learning NOT to fear or hate requires the kind of openness and honesty that few people, let alone cultures, possess.  

Does this actually ever happen?  To treat a black man as a man and a black woman as a woman.: can any white person in America say they have done this consistently?  A racist society is one which assigns sub-human status to a racial group that has been excluded from the power structure. America, as a living lie fervently believed, is a racist society.

At last, white people need to acknowledge and include the people best able to discern the needs of African-Americans: African-Americans themselves.  White power structures legislate dribs and drabs to black communities, as if they could even define what or where these were. It seems that black people are never allowed to participate in the solution to historical issues with which they have been confronted.  It’s not just a question of money or power sharing. The issue is that white people need to believe what they are told and let the black community have the means to solve the problems with which they are confronted. Certainly no white community would acquiesce in solutions that took no cognizance of their input into their needs.

But white people will not give up their power.  White makes right; white knows best. Thus does our own government make hypocrites of the best of us.  Our government is a white power government. Obama’s presidency, whatever his aspirations might have included, was nothing more than one more African-American political figure compromising his credibility in the black community by being managed by the minority white power cartel.  He’s not to blame, except insofar as he knew this was what was going to happen and didn’t ‘fess up to it. Perhaps he hoped for better, and I can’t fault him for this. But neither can I fault the African-American voting public for not being enthused by voting for a candidate who would only continue the glacial progress of the past.

1. There Are No Rich People in Jail.

This includes the staff as well as the inmates.  A jail is a community that is both dysfunctional and secure.  The staff knows very well that no matter what effort is made in the area of rehabilitation, nowhere near enough money is appropriated to the effort to be effective: whether in staff pay, number of staff, inmate support, parole and probation support, infrastructure, anything at all.  

The rich people are in the courtroom.  Not everyone, of course, but certainly the district attorneys and judges, as well as some defense lawyers.  The laws as they stand are questionable and variable from state to state. The punishments applied, however, are far worse: capriciously given out and very often politically motivated to make the principals appear “tough on crime” or “safety conscious.”  In reality, all the state and municipal lawyers and judges merely want to get re-elected. They have no idea and no particular concern for the prison society, either the guards or the inmates, particularly upon an inmate’s release.

Many realize that this “system” is “broken” but no one wants to investigate where the breakage has taken place.  When a (poor) inmate is taken out of his community and family without rehabilitation, often “out-sourced” to an prison out-of-state or out-of-region, his support network is broken.  Upon serving his or her sentence, release with no functional support regarding work or housing—let alone highly variable and erratic training and education whilst in prison—places the parolee in the dubious position of having no civil rights and little access to jobs that can support him or herself, let alone his or her family, it is hardly surprising that recidivism is as high as it is.  Add the lure, in the face of no job and no way to support self or family, of illegal activity—especially in drug trafficking—to break out of the enforced poverty and/or escape the reality of this predicament and the circularity of crime-prison-release-crime makes perfect sense.