Maids A-Milking

This eighth day of Christmas seems as good a time as any to note the similarity, in some ways, between the coalition that comprised Christianity’s initial base two thousand years ago – Jews, slaves, the poor, women – and the one that, not yet two months ago, reelected President Obama to a second term in office. That former coalition eventually expanded to include an emperor, thereby becoming the state religion of an empire before becoming the enduring force it is in the world today. Does the latter coalition even have a chance of becoming a force in American politics beyond the last election cycle?

The countervailing force in our politics is the reason for that question. Politically conservative Americans who also are Christians have provided a remarkable display of the strength of the wall that separates their faith from the state. Of course, no such wall is recognized when any number of their other concerns arise: prayer in school, a woman’s right to control her body and marriage equality are a few that come to mind. When it comes to society’s care for the vulnerable, however, their wall is impenetrable. Churches, charities, the community – this should be all any society requires to care for the needy, not the state.

Who is vulnerable and who is needy is a subjective matter. How can it not be when food stamp recipients and multinational corporations both make the list? Common sense ought to tell us who is who and what is what, and more often would were it not for our efforts to ignore it.

You might suspect all of this comes to mind now because of the legislative mess in which we find ourselves. As this is being written, people claiming to share a common interest in the very reason for Christmas as well as a common interest in the nation’s welfare appear to be suffering from selected memory lapses, having forgotten the connection between needle eyes and camels and having decided that Caesar has been rendered unto enough. None of that religious nonsense for them right now, no feeding of the multitudes, no hard feelings. This is strictly business, the business of setting our finances right. Of course, this would seem less a hardhearted position if setting things right didn’t also mean not only an aversion to the dispensing of fishes and loaves, but also to paying for courses on fishing and baking. It also would be more of a believable position if there was any evidence that this fiscal concern predated the current administration.

So, what we are left with this Christmas season is a lot of folk on Capitol Hill, many of whom would be the first to loudly proclaim their faith in that baby in the manger, engaging in behavior even they would have to admit seems hypocritical were they able to view it objectively. These folk are working to stifle the efforts of others whose thinking mirrors that of the majority who said in November “This way forward.” That coalition that reaffirmed its faith in the President, though different in many respects from the one that placed its faith in Christ, appears – like that one – to be on the right side of history.

The twelve days of Christmas are followed, on January 6^th in western Christendom, by Epiphany, the day on which is celebrated the visit of the three wise men. Any number of the wise would be welcomed today.

Missing a “B”

Missing a “B”

Consider these choice words from a disgruntled citizen about the administering of a trust fund by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, as reported in the Oklahoman in July, 2006: “peppered with scandals”, “deception”, “dirty tricks” obscenity” and “outright villainy”. Lest the reader assume these to be the rantings of some Native American radical, be assured they are not. The speaker was none other than U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, appointed to the bench by President Reagan. The honorable judge reached these conclusions after ten years of overseeing a case (begun in 1996 as Cobell v. Norton) that left him seemingly apoplectic, although he had stated three years earlier that he had “no confidence that Interior is willing to actually implement an adequate accounting.” Judge as prophet!

Ah, the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Did you know the bureau is older than the present-day government of which it is a part, older than the Constitution, older than the Declaration? It was begun in 1775 as the Office of Indian Affairs, with Benjamin Franklin as one of its first commissioners. That these many centuries later its efficacy may still be in question is a testament to two things: the vagaries of bureaucracy and the ongoing idea that the need for its services remain. So, despite whatever problems it might pose rather than solve, the agency endures. As we humans have long said, it’s the thought that counts – right?

All of this came to mind again recently while I attended a community forum, hosted by Washington, DC’s historic Metropolitan AME Church and moderated by Charles J. Ogletree, a professor of law at Harvard University who counts our current President and First Lady as former students. The forum had nothing to do with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Titled “Stop the Pipeline to Prison,” its focus was the incarceration rate of black Americans. In any such discussion, I always am reminded of a missing bureau and a missing plan. That bureau would be the Freedmen’s Bureau, and that plan would be a Plan B.

I am a firm believer in the idea, held solely by myself it seems, that the rate of incarceration of black Americans is but one consequence of the fact that the only real plan for black people in America was slavery. There was never a Plan B or any other back-up plan. When Plan A went awry, the haphazard approach to solving the ensuing problems is what we are left with today: every Congressional act, every constitutional amendment and every Supreme Court decision that has sought to affirm the freedom and the rights of citizenship afforded former slaves and their descendants. Which of these can called a plan in the true sense of that word?

The best case that can be made for any attempt at a real, alternative plan was the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Begun in 1865 under president Lincoln, who intended it to last for only a year following the end of the Civil War, its efforts miraculously lasted until 1869, a few years shy of its official demise in 1872. Some historians, true to the idea that history is written by victors and not their victims, have sought to portray the Bureau as an inept and corrupt entity that deserved an early death, choosing to either ignore or play down the good deeds attempted and accomplished by the many Americans who went to work for the agency. They do the same regarding one the greatest impediments to the agency’s success: the terrorism perpetrated by the southern jihadists in service to the god of white supremacy.

Yes, for all of its proven dysfunction, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is still here two hundred, thirty-seven years later. The Freedmen’s Bureau is not. The nation in general, and too many of its black citizens in particular, continue to pay too steep a price as a result. The story of the end of the Bureau is worth recounting, for the irony involved if nothing else. General Oliver O. Howard, the Bureau’s commissioner, was asked by President Grant to take a leave of absence from his duties to handle Indian affairs out west. Upon his return, he learned that – in his absence – Congress had officially terminated the Freedmen’s Bureau and all of its functions.

And what of the Honorable Judge Lamberth? An excess of common sense and common decency was deemed to be ire clouding his judgment. He was removed from the case, only the second time in US history such a thing has been done.

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Nov. ’12

Fourth river on the left

Fourth river on the left

My home is in the mid-eastern region of the North American continent. It is about one hundred, sixty kilometers from the Atlantic and a little more than thirty kilometers from the great bay of this region – the Chesapeake. The land around me is covered by a lush, broad-leaf forest, and the Blue Ridge Mountains lie about sixty kilometers to the west.

From the ocean, you can reach my home by sailing into the bay and heading north along the western shore. The very first river you see will be the James, followed by the York River, then the Rappahannock. North of this is a river which leads to a city of magnificent marble edifices. This is my home.

Most of the people in this region are the descendants of English colonists (and those of their servants and slaves) who settled here hundreds of years ago, clearing the land of some of the forest and most of the aborigines. They became dairy farmers and tobacco growers for the most part, and some became fishermen. In the cities near the mouth of the bay, the people became shipbuilders and tool makers and cloth weavers. Here in the city where I live, the people are something else altogether.

The city is named in honor of the military general who led the colonists in a revolt against the English throne. It serves as the seat of government for the republic which grew from their victory. Some of the edifices were erected in their memory. The others were erected to perpetuate their ideals.

While the founders of the republic busied themselves with their newly-acquired freedom, slaves were busy with the building of some of the city’s most iconic structures – the presidential domicile among them. In just a few days, in just a few states, voters will determine who will live in that house for the next four years.

Recently, esteemed columnist George Will, apparently already having given up the Ghost on a Republican presidency, sought to preëmptively explain the demise of his party’s campaign by opining that the re-occupation of the White House by its current occupant would result solely from the occupant’s being black. Given that Mr. Will seems to have no known penchant for intentional absurdity, we are left with his publicly demonstrating that erudition is submerged in the wake of desperation. Worse for him, however, is that he might lack any ability to consider the possibility that the President could lose for being black. Shortly after Mr. Will’s piece made its rounds, the newspaper in which it appeared ran an article about the very real possibility that being black could shave three to five points off of the President’s chances of winning, or margin of victory.

A fitting end to a stormy campaign has been the real storm that has just wreaked havoc and claimed lives all along the eastern seaboard. Hurricane Sandy seems to have refocused minds, reminding us that we are all in this together. If we remember this as we head to the polls, perhaps we will be able to effectively deal with the devastation – both new and old, physical and political.

This city has weathered the real storm relatively well. Soon, we’ll see if the ship of state finds calmer waters or continues to sail through rough seas.

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Oct. ’12

Let’s Stipulate

This morning, the nation’s highest court begins its business. Much is being made of the fact that some of that business this session involve matters of civil rights, including the combustible subject of Affirmative Action. Why don’t we just stipulate that any discussion of that matter by the Court should be put off for another twenty years.

Much also has been made of the recent re-introduction of Arithmetic into the public discourse. Its simplicity provides a useful tool when attempting to explain the seemingly outlandish suggestion made above.

Affirmative Action is one consequence of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That was forty-eight years ago. That act was an attempt to begin ameliorating the damage wrought by the Court’s 1896 Plessy decision, when the Court – in essence – somehow thought it would not be unconstitutional to separate black people from their constitutional rights. It was the duty of Congress to say otherwise. Not feeling otherwise, Congress said nothing until 1964 – sixty-eight years later. So, for those who have yet to see where this is going: if the government could officially preside over rank discrimination for sixty-eight years, and if the society at large could gladly support it, then both should be able to grudgingly support counteractions for at least sixty-eight years. That would leave twenty more to go.

There are some, of course, who will quibble about dates and time frames, pointing to the Court’s attempt to reverse and redeem itself in 1954 with Brown. Those who would do so should be reminded that the Constitution requires Congress – not the Court – to make laws. Besides, quibbling can go both ways. Sixty-eight eight years is quite a compromise. What would happen if the years between the ratification of the Constitution and the ratification of the 15^th Amendment were taken into account? What if things were pushed back to the Declaration, or even back to 1619? Yes, one would think the 13^th, 14^th and 15^th Amendments would negate any claim on the Reconstruction years; after all, those guarantees and protections were all there in writing. But what did it mean when a law that freed slaves had to be followed with one that told people that the freed slaves were citizens? What did it mean when the law that said freed slaves were citizens had to be followed with one that told people that these citizens had the right to exercise the rights of citizenship? What did it mean that all those laws had to be followed almost a hundred years later with yet another law telling people the same thing all over again? No, let’s not quibble.

We can acknowledge, can’t we, that some of the pathologies that continue to plague some communities are the result of generations of discrimination? If so, why can’t we even consider the possibility that problems built over generations may take generations to solve? How about hands off for at least another twenty years? Let’s stipulate it.

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