The benefits of civility cannot be overstated. This can be difficult to bear in mind when confronted by those who make being civil seem overrated. One wonders if our current head of Health and Human Services had this experience when testifying two days ago before the House Energy and Commerce Committee regarding the troubled health-care website.

     Secretary Sebelius, a model of decorum and control, managed to maintain her composure throughout her questioning by committee members. Most likely, that is how she believed she should have conducted herself. Apparently, it is what most witnesses before Congressional committees believe, as most behave civilly even when such behavior is not deserved by those doing the questioning. Be polite, use your manners, act like your mother taught you some sense.

     Here’s a question: does anyone who has voted in excess of forty times to repeal the health-care law deserve a civil response while pretending to be concerned about its implementation. Having repeatedly proven one’s enmity, it takes an enormous sense of entitlement to then expect respect – a sense that can only be reinforced when such respect is forthcoming. The law’s detractors, the political theater they created with their questions and the nation’s interests all would have been better served had the committee been confronted with a WWA – a Witness With Attitude.

      It is doubtful Ms. Sebelius ever considered asking the President for permission to give the committee as good as she got. It is equally doubtful the President – Mr. Cooler-than-Cool – would have granted such permission had he been asked. For future reference, both should remember our history offers examples of those who were able to speak with civility while simultaneously giving off the unmistakable air of disdain for asininity.

      The bad taste left by watching the Secretary’s deferential performance was washed away later in the day. Quite providentially, while searching for a legal document among old piles of papers, I came across the draft of a play written years ago by a mentor and friend. It was based on the speeches, letters and verbatim testimonies of various American historical figures. The play opens with the great Paul Robeson’s testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in June 1956.

     In April of 1949, Mr. Robeson had given a speech in Paris in which he said black Americans would not fight for this country in a war against the Soviet Union, our World War II ally. He was subpoenaed by the members of HUAC, and appeared before them like a leviathan among Lilliputians. His testimony, like that of so many others before that committee (including my father-in-law’s) is essential reading.      

     When formally asked by the staff director, Richard Arens, if he was appearing in response to a subpoena, Mr. Robeson asked “Do I have the privilege of asking whom I am addressing and who is addressing me?” When Arens answered with only his name, Robeson followed with “And what is your position in such affairs?” When asked if he belonged to the Communist Party, Robeson noted it was “a legal party like the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.” When asked again, he answered “Would you like to come to the ballot box and see?” After being pressed, Robeson invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. Arens asked “Do you honestly apprehend that if you told this committee truthfully…”, but was cut off by Robeson who told him “… it is none of your business what I would like to do. So, forget it.”      

     International star that he was, Robeson briefly turned his attention to the cameras that were clicking away. He made a few jokes to the photographers, much to the annoyance of committee members. When a very upset Arens stated the proceedings were not a laughing manner, Paul Robeson summed up the sentiment most likely felt this week by Kathleen Sebelius. “It is a laughing matter to me.” he said. “This is complete nonsense.”

     According to one of the oldest tales we tell about ourselves, we know things we are not supposed to know. In a Mesopotamian version of the story, it is the knowledge of good and evil. As told in the Mediterranean region (as well as India, the islands of the Pacific and the Americas), it is the use of fire. Apparently, in certain instances, human ignorance has been seen by some as a necessity of human existence.

      A crucial component of the tale is how we come to know what we know. Someone who was not supposed to tell us, told us: a serpent, a coyote, a rabbit, a Titan. Often, the knowledge is imparted in direct defiance of those who have decreed the knowledge be kept from us, and the one who enlightens us is punished.

      It is no wonder a tale still told thousands of years after its origins allows us to see in it ourselves and our contemporaries. Adding the prosaic to the ranks of Prometheus, we have Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Their predicaments lead one to wonder what is more dangerous: defying gods or governments.

     Being prosecuted and imprisoned by our government might seem preferable to being bound to a rock on orders of Zeus and having one’s liver eaten by an eagle every day for eternity. Both may seem unwarranted and unfair to our modern-day heroes/villains. The rest of us are left having to make our decision based upon which side of that forward slash we stand.

      There is some question as to how much of it will be an informed decision. We don’t know why we aren’t supposed to know what we end up knowing. Is our national security really at stake if we know our government is secretly watching us for national security purposes, or if we discover some of our bombs in Afghanistan missed their targets? If so, why? Who has yet to hear a reasonable response from anyone anywhere in government? If there is a good reason, it is a reason known only to those who decided we shouldn’t know. That, in itself, is the problem for those like Assange, Snowden and Manning.

     This modern-day conundrum parallels the original. We still don’t know why the deity in Genesis thought it necessary to withhold information. To be generous, we’d like to think it was for our own good. To be practical, we’d have to acknowledge the reason offered smacks of class snobbery – God did not want us to be God-like.

      On the whole, we are nosy creatures who – having learned good and evil – have developed a pronounced sense of right and wrong. Some of us know things most of us don’t. Some in the know feel it is wrong to keep what they know from everyone else – and that the right thing to do is to tell us. Those who tell risk incurring the wrath of superiors who hold the opposite opinion.

      It seems gods and governments believe in the necessity of secrets. We create both, and must decide just how far that should go. When, in our somnolence, we complacently allow governments to go too far, we can thank God for those who choose to stir us.

     As far as Alex Shepherd was concerned, all of his sons-in-law were (in his words) “sons of bitches”. So, for his daughters, getting married had to be done surreptitiously. One of them, Maude, my grandmother, managed to accomplish the feat under the pretext of leaving the house to go to choir practice.

      Apparently, no man was good enough for any of my great-grand father’s daughters. In my grandmother’s case, I wondered if his objections had anything to do with the fact the son-in-law – my grandfather – was black. Alex and Maude also were black, but Alex – I’m told by my mother who remembers him well – looked like a Native American; his father, Tobe, looks like a white man in the photograph I have. My grandmother, like my mother, was light-skinned. My mother says she doesn’t think her father’s dark complexion was the problem for her grandfather; Alex’s last wife was a dark-skinned woman. Alex’ problem, according to my mother, was just being “mean as a snake”.

      My immediate family, like my mother’s and many others found throughout the African diaspora of North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, is one of those families in which siblings range from dark to light and everything in between. This can save families from succumbing to the pernicious skin-color prejudice still practiced by some blacks.

      In the rural Alabama of my mother’s youth, the attitudes of whites presented enough problems with which blacks had to deal. In the insular world of black Washington, a cocoon-like community often shielded from the everyday vagaries of white bigotry, my father’s challenge was different. That challenge comes to mind with the recent publication of First Class, journalist Alison Stewart’s telling of the story of America’s first black public high school: Dunbar, my father’s high school.

      I’ve long been familiar with the illustrious history of the school, as well as its less savory one. This city, an early enclave for blacks, was notorious for the practice of the so-called brown-paper-bag test; blacks darker than the bag often were not welcomed by blacks who were lighter. Social and cultural clubs and organizations, schools and even churches were not above participating in the practice. Dunbar was no different. Though it may not have been the official policy of the school, skin-tone snobbery was a socially accepted sentiment that permeated it. Knowing this, I once asked my father, – way too dark to have passed that test – if his experiences at Dunbar reflected this history. They had.

      We like to think those practices are no longer an issue, but that is wishful thinking. There’s been a great lessening of the beliefs that undergirded the practice, so much so that it now seems to be individual belief rather than mainstream sentiment, but there is no shortage of people who still think that way.

      I don’t want to leave the impression the South was free of all of this. I’m reminded of a story about an aunt in Alabama (mentioned in an earlier post) who was told by an old mentor about the valedictorian of the graduating class at a black, Catholic high school. The mentor, who looked like a white woman, mentioned to my aunt, in a disapproving tone, that the valedictorian was “a little dark-skinned girl”. She felt free to speak that way because she assumed my aunt, who was light, would feel the same way. She did not know that dark-skinned valedictorian was my aunt’s niece, my cousin, one of Alex Shepherd’s great-granddaughters.

     Once, on a summer afternoon long ago, a neighbor and I astounded each other. I learned from him that he believed the sun moved around the earth every day, at which point he learned from me it did not. At the time, he was twenty-one, and I remember wondering “Wow! How did this happen?” How had he not learned this? We had engaged in many long conversations, and there had been nothing about him that had ever given me the impression that he would not know this –- nothing I could see.
 

     We have to be taught, by accident or planning, not to believe everything we “see”. It can be a difficult lesson to learn. Some manage to master the fundamentals of this weird idea, and too many fail to advance beyond that basic level of understanding.

      When science has a hard time against belief, what chance does belief have against belief? It is a question asked in lieu of despairing about the current “conversation” the nation is supposedly having about our native-born boogeyman. Race, as a topic of discussion, is once more thrust forward, not because of its worthiness but because of its prickliness. A substantial percentage of black Americans are pricked by the verdict in the George Zimmerman case (“pricked” being an obvious understatement), and by the seeming beliefs of a substantial percentage of white Americans in regard to said verdict. Many white Americans don’t understand why so many black Americans are pricked, and are in turn pricked. Everyone wonders about everyone else “Why can’t they see?”

     Are there things black Americans don’t see that whites believe should be seen? Undoubtedly, but I think its safe to say that — throughout the nation’s history — black Americans have had more experience in dealing with the chasm between one man’s beliefs and another man’s sight, and are more used to others not seeing what seems plainly visible. I’ll bet my great-great grandparents believed they should not have been slaves, and probably had a hard time trying to understand why so many white folk just couldn’t see that. I know for a fact that my father and mother believed their country -– a segregated country where my father served in a segregated army — should have guaranteed their rights as much as it did the rights of their white compatriots. Their compatriots just didn’t see it that way. When the two-room schoolhouse for black students in my mother’s hometown was closed due to desegregation, and my aunt — a teacher and principal at that school — was preparing to move herself and her students (including my sisters, brothers and cousins) to the white school, the threats made in anonymous phone calls to her the night before were a clear sign that some white community members couldn’t see things her way. Far from being ancient history, this is living history.

     A preponderance of white Americans being blind to the life, liberty and happiness — and sometimes even the very humanity — of black Americans is not a new phenomenon, just a continually confounding, frustrating and infuriating one. George Zimmerman reminds us it can be a deadly one, too, but those who believe Mr Zimmerman is an aberration should consider a bit of information about seeing and believing. While discussing the Zimmerman case on MSNBC’s Morning Joe two weeks ago, Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion cited research which demonstrates that police officers and college students have one thing in common: they are more likely to shoot a black man with a wallet than a white man with a gun. She noted further “That happens in a nanosecond.” 

      So, we have polls and bar graphs giving us a glimpse of what is being felt, viscerally, all around: we remain uncomfortably and unproductively divided more than we care to acknowledge. We seem to have no idea how to have a conversation in which what is being felt is effectively communicated to those who aren’t feeling it. Although it is a conversation worth having, that is true only if participants follow the example set by my neighbor years ago. Instead of being wedded to what he had assumed to be true, he was open to the idea that what he had believed up to that point might be false. He was intrigued by the implications of this new information, by what it would mean in how he viewed the world. He wanted to learn, and — instead of being embarrassed by what he didn’t know, what he had somehow missed learning along the way — he was astounded.

     At some point in my youth, I attempted to read William Faulkner’s Light in August. I gave up almost immediately. I wasn’t getting it, and was certain I wouldn’t. A decade ago, I tried again. I say without reservation that Light in August is the Great American Novel.

     At times, it takes time to see things that have been right before your eyes the whole time. So it is with a collection of books I’ve been revisiting since childhood, books filled with superheroes and villains, clashing armies, beautiful women for whom kings killed, visitors from other worlds, and everyday people engaged in acts of selflessness or selfishness. Over the years, I have been continuously amazed by the things that have jumped out at me that I had never noticed before. The collection, of course, is the Bible, and my favorite book out of the bunch is John. Recently, it has come to mind often. I keep thinking it might be helpful for some people to go back and read it again.

      Those “people” include Mike Huckabee, the former pastor, Arkansas governor, and candidate for the Republican nomination for president who tweeted “Jesus wept,” in reaction to the Supreme Court rulings on marriage equality a few days ago. Mr. Huckabee obviously knows something about the book, since his tweet comes directly from it, but he might be surprised by what a few other passages could tell him about the man he cites.

 (First, a few warnings. A friend has said my posts are too long, so I’m going to warn you that now might be a good time to bail since this one might go a bit longer. I also want to warn those who identify with Mr. Huckabee’s sentiments that this might be one to skip for fear of developing a severe case of apoplexy. My final warning is that I find it helpful sometimes to discuss the sacred in a most profane manner. Duly warned? Okay.)

     I don’t know what edition of the Bible Mr. Huckabee reads (more on that later), but most of the ones I’ve read say almost the same thing about the same things. After years of reading and re-reading John, it seems obvious to me Jesus wouldn’t weep over marriage equality – given his own same-sex relationship. Yes, despite the DaVinci Code, novelist Dan Brown’s famous fantasy about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, John states explicitly that Jesus loved a man (loved, not knew). You wouldn’t know this from reading any of the other three approved books about Jesus, but the man Jesus loved – in sharing his tale with the author of the fourth book – wanted to make sure we knew.

      I don’t remember the first time he caught my attention, but catch it he did. I just remember wondering why the author felt it necessary to point out, repeatedly, that Jesus – the greatest lover of all time, the man who loved everyone to the point of dying for everyone – loved this man in particular. It was as if the author wanted to hammer that point into his readers’ heads, as if he knew that simply telling us the man’s name would not achieve the intended effect, would not make us understand. So, instead, every time he is written about, we are forced to read the words “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. After awhile, even the most obtuse reader might begin to think he was more than just the teacher’s pet.

      The first mention of him occurs right after Jesus announces he is going to be betrayed. Instead of Peter asking him directly who the dastardly bastard is, he asks Jesus’ guy to ask him. That was an attention grabber, making me think “Hold up, wait a minute. What the fuck is that about?” I mean, we’re talking about Peter! Peter has to ask someone to ask Jesus something?

     Come on now, you do know who Peter was, don’t you? Peter was Jesus’ right-hand man, his main man, his mans, his boy, his ace boon coon, his nigga. Peter was the type of muthafucka who not only would cut a muthafucka for Jesus, he did cut a muthafucka for Jesus. Apparently, Peter knew enough to know Jesus wouldn’t tell him who the culprit was (lest Judas not survive the night) but would tell his guy. When asked, Jesus does tell his guy, but the guy is wise enough to not tell Peter.

     The second mention of the man Jesus loved happens when the author is recounting the Crucifixion. Jesus’ guy is the only one of his male followers who had the courage to show up. Some of Jesus’ female followers were there, but nary another man. When Jesus sees his mother and his guy standing next to each other, he tells his mother that his guy is now her son, and he tells his guy that Mary is now his mother. The author goes on to say that, from that point, Jesus’ guy took Mary into his home. Imagine, Jesus creates an alternative family – from the Cross.

     Readers next encounter the Beloved Disciple when Mary Magdalene tells him and Peter she has just found Jesus’ tomb empty. The author tells us that Jesus’ guy and Peter make a mad dash for the tomb. Once again, the author feels a need to remind us of the specialness of this guy by letting us know he outruns Peter and gets there first, although he can only bring himself to look in rather than go in.

     The Beloved Disciple is mentioned a fourth time when he and his fellow disciples have gone fishing without any luck. Jesus shows up and provides them with almost more luck than they can handle. Jesus goes unrecognized by all of them except guess who.

     The last words about this man Jesus loved are found in five of the last six verses of the book. Peter makes the mistake of questioning this man’s very presence, asking Jesus “Lord, what about him?” Jesus is not pleased, and lets Peter know it. I’ll quote Jesus’ response verbatim, then offer my translation.

Jesus: “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!”

Translation: “Nigga please, I know you didn’t just ask me some shit like that. What the  fuck you mean ‘What about him?’ If I want this man to stay here ‘ til I get back, what the fuck that got to do with you? You just do what the fuck I tell you to!”

Not only does the author show Jesus putting Peter in his place, in the very next passage he repeats it.

     Now, please don’t just take my word about all of this. Read the book again (or the first time) yourself. It doesn’t matter whether you believe you’re reading the work of a biographer or a novelist, there’s something there for you. Just make sure you find a reputable edition, which brings me back to not knowing what edition Mr. Huckabee has been reading. When I first started paying attention to this storyline in the book sometime in the late ’70’s or early ’80’s, I became curious to see if it was told the same from edition to edition. Believe it or not, I once found one that leaves the story of the Beloved Disciple completely out of John. I could hardly believe my eyes, but they weren’t playing tricks on me; he wasn’t there. To this day, I regret never having written down the name of the publishing company with editors so unnerved by the implications of that part of the story that they took the Beloved Disciple out of it completely. Maybe Mr. Huckabee has been privy to only that edition. Too bad. He needs to know why Jesus wept.

     Sometimes, what is old and familiar can seem new. Something you’ve heard a thousand times will sound completely alien. This happened to me in recent months when listening to two people explain what they believed had saved them during horrific and terrifying experiences.

     While watching news reports featuring interviews with survivors of the April 15^th bombing in Boston and the May 20^th tornado in Oklahoma, I was struck by how unintentionally uncharitable the interviewees sounded while making what heretofore would have been – to me – innocuous comments.

     Steve Byrnes and two friends were standing near one of the bombers who placed a backpack on the ground and walked away. Byrnes, shielded from the brunt of the blast by the mailbox near where he stood, lost hearing in his right ear, some vision in his right eye, and has shrapnel near his jugular which has to remain there. His two friends each lost a leg. Speaking to a reporter, he said “I think about it all the time and for me, it’s like, you know, whatever you believe in — I believe I had a guardian angel over my shoulder that day and I thank God for it because it’s just, I know how lucky I am.”

     Shayla Taylor was in a hospital in Moore, Oklahoma when the tornado hit. In labor with her second child, Moore said she and the four nurses who huddled around her held hands and prayed. When Taylor mustered the courage to open her eyes, she could see outside; the walls of the room were gone. Three hours later, after being moved to a hospital five miles away, Taylor gave birth to Braeden Immanuel. “His middle name means ‘God is with us,’” she said. “The name had been picked out for months. Now I know why.”

      It was my reaction to the interview with Byrnes the month before which made me notice that the same sentiment was being expressed by Taylor. It is a sentiment I sometimes feel and had never questioned before. For some reason, though, listening to Byrnes was like hearing that thought for the first time, and it sounded ugly.

      When people say they have been saved from some unfortunate fate by the grace of God or his angels, what are they saying about the less fortunate? Byrnes believes he was saved by a guardian angel. His friends each lost a leg. Were there no angels for them? Were they less than worthy? Were there angels who decided they would save lives but not legs? Taylor believes god was with her in the hospital, as evidenced by the very presence of her brand new baby. Seven children drowned in an elementary school destroyed by the same tornado that tore the walls off the room she was in. Does she believe God was not with them?

     I don’t suppose these were questions contemplated by either Byrnes or Taylor when speaking to reporters, so they had no reason to consider the implications of what they were saying. There’s no reason to think the reporters themselves thought anything about it. We hear and say the same sort of thing so often that we’ve become inured to not giving any thought to what it might mean. I think about a common response many people give to being asked how they are doing. “I’m blessed,” they say. Do they think they are implying others are not? I doubt it.

     To think about these things would be the antithesis of what some people require in dire situations: faith. Ours is a culture in which faith and reasoning are not easily reconciled, so we tend to choose one or the other. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, attributed to the Christian apostles Paul and Timothy, states explicitly that “We live by faith, not by sight.” Rather than trying to “see”, many of us resort to misquoting English poet William Cowper (“God moves in a mysterious way”) and are content to leave it at that. Delving any deeper would be disturbing. As for those for whom only seeing is believing, there is no use for faith.

      Byrnes and Taylor give thanks to what seems to be a fickle deity. This makes sense if one concludes that, after the beginning, Man – capricious creature that he is – created god in his image. That, of course, was of no consequence to God, who understood it was just a “man” thing. I imagine that understanding most likely extends to those who feel they have a dispensation when others don’t.

I don’t know what it’s like in other school districts in other cities, but working in the school system here in the nation’s capital has been a challenge – and it has nothing to do with the academic performance of students. For me, the challenge is how to channel disapproval and annoyance into something that does not resemble any of that. As an old fuddy-duddy who came of age in the black-is-beautiful era, seeing the majority of girls walking around school wearing vast amounts of fake hair is distressing. Seldom is there a nap or kink – fake or otherwise – to be seen. The sight of all that long, flowing hair invariably reminds me of a long ago incident about which I wrote at the time.

The morning of February 4, 1999 was a cool and cloudy one. As was usual on a school day, I took my grandson to school and walked the one block back to the corner of 18th and California Streets to wait for a bus.

Shortly before 9:00 am, Metrobus number 9388 pulled up and stopped. As the doors parted, a young white woman about to disembark was telling a black woman seated behind the driver how rude and ill-mannered she was. In a blink of my eyes, the black woman leapt up, grabbed a handful of the young white woman’s hair, and dragged her back up the steps and onto the bus. The battle ensued.

Fool that I am, I expected the driver to intervene. I thought his duty in such situations was to stop the bus and summon the authorities. That driver sat there as if he were in a ringside seat at a Las Vegas title bout. In disgust, I rushed between the women, trying to separate them and demanding that they stop. The bus was not crowded and most of the few other passengers were seated near the front. Some – black, white, Hispanic, but all women – rose from their seats and made vocal or physical efforts to help end the fight. One young black woman I had seen on the bus on previous mornings was yelling at the hair-puller and telling her how “uncouth” she was. From this, I surmised that the attacker had earned the criticism she had received from the woman she was trying to pummel.

“Let go of her hair,” I told the black woman on my back.

“Tell her to let go of my arm,” she replied.

“Let go of her,” I told the young white woman who had either fallen or been pushed onto the long seat in front of me.

Soon enough, the altercation ended. The white woman, with hair all over her head, got herself together and left the bus. The black woman, the very picture of a staid, middle-class matron with not a hair out of place, resumed her seat behind the driver and began a series of occasional mutterings about slavery, white incest and the like. Fool that I am, I thought everything was over.

As I walked down the aisle to take my usual seat at the back of the bus, I could not help but notice both the glee and disdain in the eyes of some of the black passengers. An uppity white had been getting her comeuppance, and I had presumed to stop it. A black man seated with me in the back sought to drive the point home.

“That’ll teach her she cain’t talk any way she want to niggahs,” he said before correcting himself by adding “I mean, black folks. I wouldn’t ‘a got in the middle of no fight,” he went on. “S’pose one of ‘em had a knife. You could ‘a got stabbed. All heroes are dead heroes.”

I felt no need to explain heroism had nothing to do with my actions. I don’t enjoy watching people debase themselves, I get no pleasure from seeing anyone being assaulted, and I knew the longer the fight went on, the longer the bus would sit there and the longer it would take me to get to work.

It soon became obvious I had annoyed the man by interrupting his fun. He proceeded to annoy me by using his dead-heroes line as a refrain. I knew I should have ignored him, but I finally told him his attitude about heroes would never get anyone anywhere. With that, I decided to leave the bus two stops early. As I waited at the back door, he loudly called out “You have a good day, brutha, and don’t forget to get a haircut.”

The bus stopped, but I stood there with my hand on the door thinking, “I just stopped one fight. Do I really want to start another?” At that point in my life, I had been wearing dreadlocks for twenty-one years, and that ignoramus had just told me to get a haircut. I couldn’t let it pass. I walked back to where “iggy” was seated.

“Do you have something you want to say to me?” I asked.

“I just did,” he answered, looking out of the window.

“Well, let me say something to you,” I began. “I don’t get haircuts. I’m a proud black man who doesn’t feel there is anything wrong with nappy hair. I’m happy to be nappy.” I didn’t add it appeared he never missed an appointment with the barber to rid himself of any trace of a kink. I didn’t point out that Ms. Michelle Tyson sitting up front muttering about white people sat there with her hair chemically processed to make it look as much like a white woman’s as possible. Instead, I got off the bus at my regular stop to transfer to the subway.

I don’t mean to give the impression that I believe those blacks who wear their hair uncut and unchemicalized are above all others. To mangle the words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the coiffure on one’s head is not necessarily an indication of the contents of one’s character. I remember a saying from the ‘60’s, when black beauty came to mean something other than a horse or a pill: some people with Afros on their heads, the saying went, had processed minds. (For those who don’t know what a “process” is, look at a photograph of almost any black male entertainer taken prior to the late ‘60’s.) I will venture to suggest, however, that how one chooses to see oneself reflected in a mirror may be a reflection of the image in the mind’s eye.

On the train, I realized I couldn’t discuss the bus incident with some of my co-workers – black women who wear their hair straightened. I thought my foul mood and my thinking on the subject might cause hurt feelings. Once at the office, I did talk to a white male colleague. He got a big laugh out of the “haircut” line.

“I haven’t heard anyone yell ‘get a haircut’ since the ‘60’s,” he said. “It was usually construction workers yelling it at hippies, and now the construction workers look like hippies.”

I also told a black female co-worker what happened, a woman who wore her hair in its natural form. She and I had just had a good yuck the day before after reading a Washington Post article about black Christian hair salons. The article mentioned that everyone prays before the stylists start their work.

“Yeah,” she had said, “They’re praying alright, praying ‘Please, Lord, don’t let them fuck up my hair!’”

As we discussed my bus ride, I told her how strongly I believed the black woman grabbed the white woman’s hair partly out of hair envy.

“You mean like penis envy?” she jokingly asked.

“Yeah, I guess so”, I said, although I’m not sure such a thing exists. Hair envy, on the other hand, is something I’m convinced is real.

Later in the day, a friend called and I recounted my morning adventure. As I told him about the fight, he cackled. When I told him how disheartening it had been to see the reactions of some of the bus passengers, he asked how could I not understand. He then launched into a lecture on American race relations and the history of blacks in this country. I interrupted him to remind him he was preaching to the choir. I know the socio-political-cultural-economic dynamics of it all. I know that every human being dealing with the vagaries of everyday life has varying abilities to deal with the pressures, but that to be black in America means to be fitted with an additional pressure gauge – let’s call it the rage gauge – that other Americans tend not to notice.

Without knowing what transpired before I boarded that bus, I know the young white woman chastising the black one about her manners did not think about the other woman’s ability to cope with what was being said, how it was being said, and by whom. I know why that woman assaulted her accuser and I know why some of the observers approved. I told my friend on the telephone I understood perfectly, but it still did not make it right. He told me I was being pious.

We then talked about hair. I told him about “iggy” telling me to get a haircut. He howled. I mentioned the Post article about the Christian hair salons. He didn’t believe it was a simple human interest story. He believed the women in the story were being made fun of and didn’t know it. To him, the Post was just another instrument of a white racist establishment.

Reading that article helped show me how my own attitude had evolved over the years. I no longer believe black women who press or perm their hair, or who wear tracks or wigs do so because they hate themselves. I just believe they hate their hair. Only a few days ago, a young woman with whom I now work suggested it’s nothing more than just hating to have to deal with their hair . Yesterday, my wife pointed out this whole fake hair thing has become a phenomenon that transcends race, noting that white celebrities have embraced it as well. That’s true, but I haven’t noticed any of them buying and wearing naps.

As if I hadn’t already thought about hair enough that day fourteen years ago, my intern at the time returned from her lunch hour with her hair newly done. She had exchanged the African head wrap she had worn to work that morning for a Grace Kelly sort of “do.” She was very disappointed. The stylist she wanted was out, the one she had kept running to the bathroom to throw up, and the end result was nothing like the photograph she had taken with her as a guide. It was a very bad hair day, indeed.

I used to enjoy watching a television show about the war on drugs, the war between law enforcement and the drug gangs, and wars fought by the gangs against one another. There was routine maiming and murder, there were car chases with bullets flying, and drug lords engaging in a swaggering flouting of the law – until killed or caught. It was known as one of the most violent programs on television, so much so that the National Association for Better Radio and Television said it was “not fit for the television screen.” The Untouchables was everything an eight-year-old boy wanted to see.

Drug War I ended when the country regained its common sense and saw the folly, futility and tragedy of having outlawed an old, popular, and widely-used recreational drug: alcohol. Drug War II, now in its forty-fourth year, shows us to be either poor students of our own history or something worse.

I am mindful of the many years during which article after article appeared in this city’s newspapers about the lives lost to the violence of the drug trade, and those ruined by the criminal justice system. Every so often, a new list of names would appear in the press, distinguished-sounding English surnames which read like the names of the partners of some prestigious law or lobbying firm but were, instead, the names of the latest group of young black men charged as co-conspirators. These young men, whose entrepreneurial spirit would be applauded and championed under other circumstances, were regularly demonized, indicted, convicted and imprisoned. Yes, it is true that some of these men contributed to this city’s once-held title as the murder capital of America. Most did not, and fewer would have were it not for the criminalization of all recreational drugs. What’s worse, the criminalization carried racial overtones, leading to unconscionable disparities in sentencing and contributing to the disproportionate disruption of communities of color.      

The country’s current struggle against the trade in the illegal-drugs-of-the-moment is a study in asymmetrical warfare. This “war” has been, in essence, just a prolonged assault on the populace. We, the people, have no one to blame but ourselves. As a result of guilt, fear or apathy, we have allowed our elected leaders to enact draconian laws, we have silently watched the re-emergence of violent gangs, and we have given the drug warriors of law enforcement a task once meant only for Sisyphus; it has made some prone to exceed their authority, and others susceptible to criminality.

Imagine the state of things if the war were being fought with equal energy by both parties, if the American drug barons and baronesses took the fight to the authorities in the way their counterparts in Columbia and Mexico have been known to do. The regular killing of American judges, jurors, prosecutors and police by American drug gangs is not something with which we’re familiar. Its advent, no doubt, would begin a new conversation about the war and its efficacy, but there’s no reason to think those battle tactics would be adopted here. No. We, the people, seem content to continue down the path of least resistance, furthering the decimation of communities through mass incarceration.

The exceptions to this business-as-usual approach are the people who have thrown down the gauntlet American-style. They are the voters in the states of Colorado and Washington who – choosing ballots over bullets or the status quo – decided they had enough of the nonsense that is the nation’s drug policy. They walked into those voting booths as practicing law-breakers and emerged having changed the law in their favor: they decriminalized marijuana.

What has been the federal response to this exercise of states’ rights? The nation’s chief law enforcement officer tells us to wait and see. Three weeks ago, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Attorney General testified that the Justice Department is “considering what the federal response to those initiatives will be.”  The best he could come up with was “We will have the ability to announce what our policy will be relatively soon.” If he’s going to fight, “soon” had better mean before August, which is when the state of Washington intends to start issuing licenses. Let’s hope he has the strength to not fight, that he pays no attention to the collective wisdom of the eight former heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration who urged him to file suit, or to the International Narcotics Control Board, the United Nations agency that wants him to comply with drug control treaties. Let’s hope he paid close attention to the escape route offered by Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who cited sequestration as the reason he “would suggest there are more serious things than minor possession of marijuana.”

Here in 2013, the 80th anniversary of the end of Drug War I, one of those aforementioned former DEA heads thinks “It is outrageous that a lawsuit hasn’t been filed in federal court yet.” Reportedly, he lives near Chicago, the setting for The Untouchables. Despite a news report today touting a 42 percent drop in its murder rate, that city retains its current title as America’s deadliest. Have we learned nothing?  

There is no shortage of those who can attest to my being a slow learner. I was 46 before I understood that being a registered Independent in the District of Columbia is about as stupid as a voter could be. This is a district where one has to be a party member to vote in that party’s primary. This also is a district full of Democrats, and the results of that party’s primaries make our general elections seem redundant. The concern that the democratic process alone might create a Democratic Party monopoly here was so great that Congress mandated some city council seats be reserved for members who do not belong to the majority party. Seeking one of those seats is the only time it makes sense not to be a registered Democrat. Anyone with even a dim hope of having their vote matter, however, had better be able to vote in the Democratic primary. I would be a registered member of the Communist Party or the Taliban if either were running the show here and making that the only way I could have a say about the caliber of candidates for office.

In 1998, ready for a new ward representative, I changed my affiliation from Independent to Democrat, voted in the primary, and was happy when the longtime incumbent was defeated. The winner, of course, went on to win in the general election. That council member is still serving, but is now under an ethical cloud that threatens his chances in the next primary. Imagine: his success or defeat could be determined by nothing more than a few voters changing their registration.

So, it is only in a spirit of love that I say this: if you live in a place where Republicans rule and you can’t vote in Republican primaries, you’re stupid, and my advice is to stop being stupid and start being a Republican – bearing in mind that you can be whatever you want to be later on in the general election. Just think about what would happen if candidates in Republican primaries had to court a slew of new voters not interested in the usual stump speeches or the views that formed them. Think about the quality of elected officials who would emerge from that process. How many self-declared non-witches, birthers, communist hunters, homophobes, climate change-deniers and men confused about rape would we have to endure?

Some might see this as political mischief, as meddling in the affairs of others when, in fact, it is nothing more than plain political activism that’s good for the country. Some might caution that the same might be done by Republicans in deep-blue states, but that would be good as well.

Much is being made of the Republican establishment versus Tea Party Republicans, a schism worsened by November’s defeat. Ironically, in their struggle for party control, the two sides are closer in thinking than they realize.

Republican political strategist Karl Rove, Mr. Establishment himself, talks about the need to expand the party’s base by attracting more minority voters. “Minority” does not include “black.” Since November, there has been no dearth of Republican pundits holding forth about what a natural fit the Republicans would be for the Hispanic community, but almost no mention of a need to acquire more black voters. The day after the November election, Mr. Rove began honing the message. When speaking about Hispanics, he stated, “This ought to be our vote. They are socially, economically conservative, patriotic, church-going, family-oriented people who are very entrepreneurial and they ought to be a part of our coalition.” It might seem unfair to indict a man based on the offensive implications of things left unsaid, but this is Karl Rove. For him to speak so blithely means he is either more audacious than we imagined or not as sophisticated as he believes.

Mr. Rove might be surprised to learn that his thinking mirrors that of his perceived competitors among the Tea Party. Norman Hughes, a member of the Tea Party Patriots, recently coined a phrase while speaking at a forum in Michigan. Apparently, some poor American families are “ethnically challenged.” I’m not sure even God knows what Mr. Hughes means, but I’ll bet you Mr. Rove does.

Republicans who would be characterized as rational by most standards also seem to see no need to capture more of the votes of black citizens. Michael Gerson, a policy adviser and speechwriter for President George W. Bush, co-authored (with Peter Wehner) the article “How to Save the Republican Party” in this month’s issue of Commentary. The writers do an admirable job of enumerating the Party’s problems and their solutions, but they failed to make a single mention of the lack of black support or the need to rectify it. For an idea of just how clueless they appear to be on that subject, here is what they write about conservative critics of immigration reforms:
“Conservative critics of such reforms sometimes express the conviction that Hispanic voters are inherently favorable to bigger government and thus more or less permanently immune to Republican appeals. It is a view that combines an off-putting sense of ideological superiority – apparently ‘those people’ are not persuadable – with a pessimism about the drawing power of conservative ideals. Such attitudes are the prerogative of a sectarian faction. They are not an option for a political party, which cannot afford to lose the ambition to convince.”
Now, substitute the word “black” for the word “Hispanic” in the cited passage and ask yourself how the writers could miss the undermining of their own premise by the exclusion of blacks from their analysis.

Karl Rove has turned his attention to fending off an assault from the party’s right flank. If Democrats and Independents in solidly Republican districts would re-register en masse as Republicans (if that’s what it takes to vote in the primaries), it would force Mr. Rove and his party to turn their attention to an awakening on their left. These new members should bear in mind that joining the party would be an act of altruism, an attempt to help save a once-great party that formerly did so much for this country but that now has written off a significant percentage of the populace.

Republican Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana had it only partially right when he caused a stir by saying his party needed to stop being stupid. That’s good advice for so many more of us.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of helping chaperone a group of students on a field trip to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Ronald Edmonds, who teaches an advanced placement history class at Anacostia Senior High School, thought a visit would dovetail nicely with a recent classroom discussion on non-violence and the struggle for civil rights. The exhibit we visited was a section of the whites-only lunch counter from the F. W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina. In 1960, four black students from the Agricultural and Technical College – David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair (now Jibreel Khazan) and Joseph McNeil – sat at the counter and asked to be served. They weren’t, but they remained at the counter peacefully until closing. They, and others who joined them over the months, kept at it until the Woolworth chain dropped its discriminatory policy.

The exhibit is not as staid as it sounds. An actor, Xavier Carnegie, was there to lead visitors through the history, portraying a composite character based on young people whose task was to train others in the techniques of non-violent protest. Some of us were drafted into participating, sitting with Woolworth menus like those four teenagers, surrounded by others who were enlisted to represent those who verbally abused and threatened the protesters. Carnegie asked his audience if we thought we could have done what those teenagers did, leading me to reflect on my own unmomentous and unintentional involvement with integrating a segregated establishment – in 1956.

The summer of that year, my family was visiting my mother’s hometown in the Alabama countryside, a community begun as a coal company-owned camp for miners and their families. My grandmother’s house was not far off the main road, where sat a roadside cafe called the Snack Shack. Blacks were served in the back, and sometimes at the back door, a Dutch door where a black girl sat with the top open and the bottom closed as if she were standing behind a counter. My mother, heavily pregnant, would send me and my brother there at times for treats such as freshly roasted peanuts.

One day, the door was closed. I knocked, but the girl did not answer. I must have been determined to get whatever it was my brother and I had gone to get. The closed, unanswered door served only to disturb my four-and-a-half-year-old sense of the natural order and spur me to further action. With no idea I was doing anything wrong, I led my three-year-old brother around to the front door, walked through the cafe, and knocked on the inside door, which also was closed.

There are two reasons I’ve never forgotten this. One was the look on the faces of the people who watched as we walked through the cafe, a look for which I had no word at the time: astonishment. The other is what happened when I knocked on the inside door. The girl opened it, and even at four-and-a-half I had some understanding of why she had not answered the other door. With her in the back, looking at us with a grin on his face, was a teenage cousin of mine.

Those four students from North Carolina A&T helped create a world where the students from Anacostia High do not have to confront overt bigotry. They have different challenges, and we’ll see if what happened on February 1, 1960 in Greensboro will move some to act. As for me, I’m happy having learned over the years that an adage has resonance when one has lived the words. So it is with the ones about bliss and ignorance, babes and fools.