“This office is bigger than any one person. And that’s why ensuring a smooth transition is so important. It’s not something that the Constitution explicitly requires, but it is one of those norms that are vital to a functioning democracy—similar to norms of civility and tolerance, and a commitment to reason and facts and analysis. It’s part of what makes this country work. And as long as I’m president, we are going to uphold those norms and cherish and uphold those ideals.”
[…]It’s easy for age to misremember the passions of youth, to muffle the grief of the past. It’s even easier for age to stand atop the soap box and proffer wise and useless advice.
[…]I want to remind my students about the power of language, the power not only to dismantle systems of oppression but also to strengthen from within. To hold oneself as marginalized, as a victim of institutional racism and oppression, as a receiver of micro-aggressions, is to show up for the fight dressed in flammable clothes. To hold oneself as the Obamas do is to show up not only flawless but fireproof. As James Baldwin said, “It is experience which shapes a language; and it is language which controls an experience.”
To be clear, this is not the same advice against ‘being offended’ so disingenuously and hypocritically dished out by traditional conservatives and the blatant racists of the so-called “Alt Right.” Disingenuous because it is ahistorical, feigning innocence of deeply-embedded power imbalances, pretending the objections of black and brown students grow solely out of what someone said to them in class, not the very real threat those words (and the structures which underlie them) present. Hypocritical because no one in America cries wounded more loudly than the white folks—working class and college-educated—who lifted Trump to victory. No one stands more magically removed from lectures about personal responsibility in the face of unemployment or foreclosed homes, no one gets told less to “stop whining” and get another job. No one gets more top-level support in the nursing of resentments; even Obama bent over backwards to pat the trembling shoulder. One white man I know mansplained to me, in the days immediately after the election, why Clinton had lost: because of Obama’s “clinging to their guns and their religion” comment in 2008.
“People don’t get over that kind of thing,” he told me. But when I pointed out that black people are constantly told to get over 250 years of slavery, 100 years of legalized oppression and violence and second-class citizenship, and 50 more years of viscous blowback to every meager gain in human rights, he shut up.
[…]You are not obliged to live in someone else’s imagination of you. You’re not even obliged to acknowledge it.
Where is home? Where do we live? Most Americans have no idea. A nation, a region, a state of blue or red. A race or a religion, a gender or an ethnic group. An identity. Here’s how we do things in Texas. This is the real America. Welcome to Red Sox Nation. California, land of dreams. Most Americans stomp around in one or two small and bolted rooms believing they are home. Believing they know where they live when they’ve never left the doorway. Never examined the foundation. Never been upstairs, or to the kitchen, or to the den…
Source: The Morning News (December 14, 2016)
Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Race Relations
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