By another name — why we African-Americans can’t ‘forget’ slavery

We African-Americans are often admonished, generally by those on the political right, to forget our roots in slavery and merely focus on the future. This has become more of an issue due to a small but growing movement toward monetary reparations for those of us descended from slaves.

But there’s a reason we can’t forget those days: Our very names.

Have you noticed that the vast majority of surnames in the African-American community have their origin in the British Isles? (Mine is Irish.) There’s a reason for that — when we were brought here from western Africa we had our cultures, customs and languages stripped from us, so we ended up taking what was “given” to us. Not for nothing did the former Malcolm Little, the Nation of Islam leader, replace his last name with an X. (And recall that early in the TV miniseries “Roots,” protagonist Kunta Kinté had his African name literally beaten out of him, the master forcing him to adopt “Toby.”)

What that means in practice is that we don’t have an “old country,” similar to the Southern Europeans, primarily Italians and Slavs who of course were mostly Roman Catholic, who arrived on these shores after the Civil War ended. And while they usually did embrace American ideals, they were never forced to abandon their respective cultures the way we were — and still are. That discrimination often manifests itself in employment, with surveys showing that résumés with African-sounding names receive fewer job interviews, let alone offers.

In other words, while it's OK for some people to remember their history, ours is considered taboo. It shouldn't be — just consider our names.

In good Jewish fashion ...

Over the past few years I’ve been treated to some of the Jewish cultural roots of the Christian faith. In one episode the Pharisees asked Jesus the question about from where He got His authority, and He threw a question back at them, “Did John’s baptism [referring to His cousin, John the Baptist] come from heaven or from men?” Because they knew they’d be trapped if they answered either way, they answered, “We don’t know.” Jesus thus refused to answer their question.

Because, I later learned, in that culture the answer to His question led to the answer to theirs, and they knew they would be embarrassed.

In that spirit, if anyone were to ask me why I hate President Trump, of whom I've certainly been critical, I would respond, “Why do you hate Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the rest of the Democratic Party?” It would be interesting to see the responses — if folks would answer, “We really don’t hate them; we just disagree with them,” I would say, “Well, then what’s wrong with disagreeing with Trump?” If they say, “Well, they’re trying to destroy the country,” I’d respond, “That’s what I believe he’s doing.” And the discussion would go, hopefully civilly, from there.

Now, as I write the president is in serious trouble legally and politically and is likely to be impeached as a result. My point, however, is that, in many cases, his supporters, by not addressing his attitudes and behavior, don’t appreciate that they’re contributing to the division of this country, and even the church if they’re Christians, along ideological lines.

In other words, we need to think critically about what we believe and not simply be reactive.

A "mandate from heaven"?

It appears that the so-called Cyrus anointing of President Donald Trump, if it ever existed at all, is wearing off.

Last week, after he ordered American military to pull out of Syria, in effect no longer supporting ethnic Kurds that had been our allies in Turkey and  likely leading to their slaughter by Turkish forces there, Pat Robertson, the host if CBN’s “700 Club,” complained that he had gone against a “mandate from heaven.” (That Trump has business dealings, specifically Trump Towers, in Turkey probably didn’t occur to Robertson.)

I’ve long argued elsewhere that Trump is and always been no friend to the Gospel or the Christian faith and simply threw us some bones so that we would vote for him. Whether you like it or not, he’s a politician — if anything, more so than any president before him because he clearly has no scruples or overall vision for the United States of America.

And now he’s going against the “dispensationalist” crowd that voted for him almost unanimously. It remains to be seen whether it will still support him after this latest stunt, which would fly in the face of its version of Biblical prophecy — because if it doesn’t he’s pretty much through.

A tale of two impeachments

Last week conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens tried to draw parallels between the 1999 impeachment of President Bill Clinton and the almost-certain upcoming impeachment of President Donald Trump. The problem is, of course, that the two situations are as different as night and day — conservatives complain that the Democrats are trying to overturn the 2016 presidental election when they themselves tried to overturn the 1992 and 1996 elections.

Understanding the difference, and there actually is one, between the modus operandi of the conservatives who tried to get rid of Clinton for getting elected in the first place and the “liberals” who merely want the stain of a Trump presidency removed is paramount here.

One action about which people would like to forget, if they ever knew, was that in July 1992 conservative activists took the unprecedented step of filing suit in Federal court in Little Rock, Ark. to force Clinton off the ballot. Three years later the original “right-wing conspiracy” surrounding the late right-wing Pittsburgh financier Richard Mellon Scaife’s financial support of media, including his own Tribune-Review, engaging in the smear campaign was exposed by CBS's “60 Minutes,” in the Times and on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And the night that Clinton was reelected anti-tax activist Grover Norquist vowed to have Clinton taken out.

Nothing like that has ever happened against Trump on the political left or in the Democratic Party, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Indeed, only recently has Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi even raised the specter of impeachment; in her heart she probably wanted to do so as much as anyone but was smart to wait until as much evidence as possible was gathered. And now that more of Trump’s malfeasance is being exposed, to say nothing of his ignorance and incompetence, a larger percentage of Americans is coming around.

As things stand now, it’s unlikely that the Senate would remove Trump — after all, the Republican Party still controls it and voters would revolt if GOP-affiliated senators voted to find him guilty (to be fair, impeachment is more of a political rather than legal process). But this isn’t tit-for-tat in that, since you tried to remove our guy, we’ll try to remove yours. The “left” isn’t anywhere near as bloodthirsty as the right; if anything, the “left” is reacting to the bloodthirstiness of the right — you can take bullying for only so long before you begin to react. That’s what we’re seeing now.

The hypocrisy of Franklin Graham

Recently evangelist Franklin Graham called for Christians to pray for President Trump — not that he governs well and according to consistent Christian principles but that he not be removed from office through impeachment for his various misdeeds.

If I have my facts correct, however, he was not so charitable toward Bill Clinton 20 years ago when he was impeached for far, far less than of what Trump is being accused.

And therein lies the hypocrisy for me. Graham thus is being overtly partisan in his call to prayer — and for that reason God isn’t obliged to honor it.

I sometimes wonder just how much such people believe in the sovereignty of God. I’m not joking about that because believing that the fate of the Republic hinges on the fortunes of whomever is in office comes across as a hint of atheism.

“We want a country safe for Christians,” you might say. The problem is that this world, let alone this country, isn’t safe for Christians, so praying for our hegemony in fact might very well be a trick of the devil. If that sounds crazy, consider that he has just one thing on his agenda: To keep people from trusting God through Jesus Christ, and he’ll use the faith or even the Scriptures, which he knows better than any of us, to do it.

I say this because, although at this juncture it’s pretty unlikely, suppose Trump is actually removed from power? Will that mean that God has failed? That’s what it sounds like, with James Dobson saying after Clinton was acquitted that Americans didn’t understand the "nature of evil."

But only if a Democrat who was set up commits an immoral act, correct?

That’s why I’m not at all impressed with Graham’s “prayer” — it assumes that God will act a certain way but doesn’t allow Him to be God. Part of the power of prayer of course is aligning the person/people praying with His will, and I don’t think that’s the case here.

A misplaced sense of 'unity'

Recently I saw a meme on Facebook about Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and the White House (of course, the last one never made it, the plane used being brought down about an hour east of Pittsburgh). The meme noted that, at least that day, we were “unified” as a nation regardless of race or ethnicity, religion or social class, that we were all Americans.

But we need to remember one thing: Such “unity” from the start was contrived. And, as things turned out, the attacks later proved to be preventable.

We now know that the terrorist attacks resulted from an intelligence failure on the part of the administration of George W. Bush, most notably Condoleezza Rice of the National Security Agency. We know this because the Clinton Administration had compiled over the years a lengthy dossier on al-Qaeda, the organization that carried them out, and, upon leaving the White House, handed it to Bush, who ended up dropping the ball because of his singular focus on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who, he said, “tried to kill my dad.”

Indeed, the Weekly Standard magazine published a piece suggesting a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam, so we sent troops into Iraq based on that. Trouble is, anyone with even a cursory knowledge of politics in that part of the world understood that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were mortal enemies, and the part of Iraq out of which al-Qaeda was supposedly operating Saddam didn’t even control. (Afghanistan? Well, that was understandable, because that's where bin Laden was possibly hiding out.)

We also need to remember that what happened in 2001 was in fact “finishing the job.” The first WTC bombing took place just months after Bill Clinton was inaugurated, so, according to Al Franken's book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” Clinton had not one but two counter-terrorism measures passed — over the objection of his Republican critics — and foiled a dozen or so al-Qaeda attacks during his time as president, including a planned blowup of the Los Angeles airport at midnight on 12/31/99, in the process.

Further, such would have never happened had Al Gore been president, as James Carville, in his book “Love and War” that he wrote with wife Mary Matalin, noted that Gore was “anal” about such matters — which would have been good because had Gore or any other Democrat been president we'd have never heard the end of it, from right-wing talk radio to the politicians out for blood and likely calling for impeachment. So in that context, that display of “patriotism” after 9/11 couldn't have been but partisan.

A few have published a meme that Muslims committed the acts, insinuating that Islam is by definition evil and should be subjected to unusual scrutiny. It should be noted, however, that President Trump's ban on Muslims entering the country wouldn't have stopped this, as all but four of the hijackers immigrated legally from Saudi Arabia — which is not on the list of countries from which folks couldn't come in, likely because he has business dealings there.

This is what happens when you try to seek some sense of unity without addressing things that are wrong. Yesterday, the 18th anniversary, a number of people posted memes saying, “Never forget,” which I understand. But that would also apply to how we got there in the first place.

Who's really living in the past?

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

st are condemned to repeat it."Of late, I've had reason to remember that quote from the late Spanish-born philosopher George Santayana. But only recently did I really understand the deeper meaning of what he was saying: If you don't deal forthrightly with the past you can't change things in the present or for the future.

And when it comes to issues of race and racism, it's why we in the African-American community have been, and suspect always will be, at loggerheads with the political right, which has often told us to “forget the past and deal with the present.” In that context, we “forget” at our peril.

You see, we truly see conservatism as dragging us back into the past before the changes that uplifted us and eventually broke the back of legal segregation because the attitudes that fostered it were never addressed on that side of the political fence.

That I believe to be by design, because modern conservatism has always sought to dominate those who don’t agree with it. And we’re going back to the 1950s, when it came about in the first place.

See, modern conservatism is, and has always been, out of touch with its own history and, when it doesn’t give off a positive spin, tried to change it. For example, many conservatives will argue that the Republican Party fought for the abolition of chattel slavery — which is true — and supported civil-rights laws — which is overstated.

What they won’t tell you is that conservatism as we understand it today didn’t exist during the Civil War and began taking over the GOP only during the 1960s; the Republican presidential candidate in 1964, Barry Goldwater, considered the first modern conservative to run for president (although by today’s standards he was more libertarian and not a racist), won several Southern states, the first Republican ever to do so, due to his stance against civil rights.

Anyway, understanding that history is why we feel the need to speak up when bad things happen to us. We truly don’t understand the backlash against now-former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s “taking a knee” to protest police brutality in any other context. We also reject the idea that we’re simply “causing trouble” by pointing things out; we’re merely calling attention to the trouble that has always existed but that people can’t or won’t see. And by the way, the same was said about Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil-rights movement, which tells us that attitudes have barely changed, if at all, in that time.

If you look at the Old Testament, you’ll note the large number of holidays that the Jewish people celebrate even today, but with their establishment came a command from God: “Remember.” Even today we give testimonies as to how our lives changed, with the Apostle Paul saying honestly that he had previously been an enemy of the church.

Some years ago I reconciled with a woman in my past, sharing with her the details of what had gone on between us back then — not to assign “blame” but to make sure that the mistakes that I made I never repeated.

As things stand now, I don’t see conservatives as willing to accept responsibility for their role in the rift that exists in today’s society. Which leads to the question: Who’s really living in the past?