Are we there? Does the endless litany of police murders of young, and not so young, black men, and the arrest and detention of so many more, require the deep, horrendous revisiting that comes with hearings like those held in South Africa? Yes, says The Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion:
The establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, inspired by the process that took place in South Africa, will allow us to develop an appropriate understanding of past injustices and to envision constructive remedies to create a new regional culture of fairness, equal opportunity and improved prosperity.
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, conducted after the end of Apartheid, were dramatic, traumatic, hideous and brilliant. Hideous because of the brutality of the testimony – brutal because Apartheid was brutal, and brilliant for their courage and honesty. In Country of my Skull, her gripping account of the hearings, reporter Antjie Krog describes post-traumatic stress that sent not only the accused and the witnesses but also the reporters and judges, into trauma therapy. It was simply unbearable to hear. And those who testified and listened, bore the unbearable, helped to defuse a rage that would have consumed the country.
Are things that bad here? No. Here, in theory, the law exists to protect Americans against the behavior that Apartheid institutionalized. Even so, the torrent of agony and sadness and anger of the past weeks is evidence that the current reality is often unbearable — and should not have to be borne. That reality includes an ever-growing list of dead black men, day after day after day, in WalMart, on the street, in a police car, a park, a back yard. Countless more detained, humiliated and released.
TV Producer Charles Belk, wrongfully detained.
Today, an additional outrage arose in the story about TV producer Charles Belk, (left) arrested, handcuffed and detained in Beverly Hills for several hours as a suspect who looked nothing like him (except of course, that they are both black.)
Now it turns out that although the arrest was flawed and he was never arraigned, he has an arrest record that will, according to local attorneys, probably never go away. Accomplished and with considerable power, on his way to an Emmy event, it (even) happened to him. If he’s ever stopped again, or if someone searches the law enforcement database for some other reason, his name will come up, even though he was completely innocent. He’s “in the system.” The law set him free, but racism got him arrested in the first place and left him with a record.
So. When we read of proposed reconciliation commissions, whose power lies not in their conclusions but in what they uncover as perpetrator (usually law enforcement) and victim (if they have survived) face one another, and what happens after that, we can’t just write off the idea.
Although all the recent reported incidents involve law enforcement (and yes, there are also many great police officers, we know that), so many other parts of our culture are in need of attention. Jobs, housing, shopping (even the president remembers being followed by sales staff in stores to make sure he didn’t steal something) education, culture, journalism, and the intangibles – someone grabbing on to their purse when you pass, or crossing the street, being quietly insulting … and in all of them, perception, so far from the truth.
So what do we think? Is our country, in its current self-occupied, nasty mood, capable of even considering such an idea, allowing a commission to be led as Bishop Tutu led South Africa’s? Do we have leaders with the wisdom and credibility to hold such a thing together. And would we recognize such a person if they were in our midst? AND can we be ready for this:
Bishop Tutu (L) with Nelson Mandela
I hope that the work of the Commission, by opening wounds to cleanse them, will thereby stop them from festering. We cannot be facile and say bygones will be bygones, because they will not be bygones and will return to haunt us. True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgement of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know… Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, on his appointment as Chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, November 1995
The presence of President Barack Obama has clearly given haters permission to go public. It’s given conservative politicians excuses to obstruct nominees and legislation almost to the point of treason. Today’s criticism of the president’s Ukraine responses, especially that of Senator Lindsey Graham, who knows better and seems to fear his primary opponent more than he fears adversely affecting our country’s future, is the latest example.
We expect that from the predictably-racist and from opportunistic politicians. We do NOT, however, expect it from mainstream comedians on mainstream outlets like The Huffington Post. So how does it happen that the much-honored Chelsea Handler, who has 5.4 million Twitter followers, her own nightly E! TV show, and is a frequent guest on others, feels free to:
a) Tweet what she did about African Americans and the Oscars (read this, you won’t believe it)
b) EVER believe these posts would be funny
c) Continue so long on such an influential venue without interruption by her “publisher?”
She is about to launch a stand-up tour and was tweeting to promote it, but in service to that end, repeatedly tweeted what were at least disrespectful and self-occupied and at most patently racist comments not only about Lupita Nyong’o’s win, but also about past Oscar winners Sidney Poitier and Angelina Jolie (who also received this year’s Humanitarian Award,) Whoopi Goldberg, and this: “#NelsonMandela looks great #abc#resurrection -Oscars –@chelseahandler” referring, presumably, to ABC’s endless promos for their new drama Resurrection.
As of this writing, there has been no searchable comment from HuffPo beyond a bland response to the Grio.
The thing is, as the only woman late-night anchor, an edgy humorist and all that stuff, her behavior is somehow especially painful. She’s reaching younger people and, with this kind of talk, making it a little easier for them to accept it from others. Because of the huge reach of HuffPo, she’s legitimized both by her presence and their silence.
So how is it, in the 5th year of the administration of our first Black president, when best picture, best screenplay and best supporting actress Oscars went to African-Americans, and, as Larry Irving has noted, “Who says Hollywood is stuck in the past… Mexican born Director wins for Best Director. British Born Brother wins for Best Picture… Kenyan born Yale educated woman wins for Best Supporting Actress… Love it!!! In America anything really can happen…” it is possible for this to happen and be almost solely in African-American outlets like The Grio and The Root?
Come on guys! Free speech, free press indeed. But we really need to speak up when this kind of thing is still acceptable as humor. Seriously.
Nobody ate lobster tail at our house, or bought anything else that came from South Africa, even way back in the 50’s, . Well before Randall Robinson’sTransAfrica or Steve Van Zandt’sSun City (see below**), my mother was actively boycotting the apartheid regime. Despite her generally moderate liberal perspective, she was fierce about this and created my own boycott habit, something that drove my kids crazy all the years that they drank Ovaltine while their friends got Nestle Quick. (That’s another story though.)
Of course anyone back then who knew about South Africa or read Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country understood the horror of it, but barely anyone talked about it, or demanded action from their own countries. So why was this the issue that set fire to my mom?
Helen Suzman*, who died on New Year’s Day at the age of 91, was the reason. For years she stood as the only anti-apartheid voice in the entire South African Parliament – for six of those years as the only woman as well.The Jewish wife of a well-to-do physician, she entered politics, visited Mandela in prison, stood and spoke, often alone, for the end of apartheid and all that it stood for. Because she was brave, and because, like so many early white activists there, she was Jewish, her often solitary and always dangerous crusade was a matter of particular pride to many Jewish women, my mother among them. Her powerful example was a foreshadowing of much that came later. By the time I was in college, friends were lying in at the doors of Chemical Bank to demand divestiture – removal of American funds from South African investments. By the 80’s daily demonstrations, and arrests, outside the DC South African embassy kept a drumbeat of attention on the issue. It took until February of 1990 for Mandela to be released from prison, granting great credit to Ms. Suzman, who later stood at his side as he signed the new constitution.
How interesting that one of the earliest moral political lessons I learned came from the courage of a woman half way around the world, not only because of her courage and effectiveness but also because of her faith. We speak so casually of “role models” these days, but when there is a true model of how to live, the impact is enormous. I’ve known that for a long time, and as I watched Barack Obama tell city kids he visited on Thanksgiving eve that ” You guys might end being the president some day” I thought it again.
Ms. Suzman’s example multiplied her power: not only did she stand alone for change when such a stand was desperately needed, she also taught all those who watched her that they could stand too, that just as her stands gave birth to theirs, their own actions multiplied the impact of hers. As we enter this new year, with so much ahead of us, it’s something we would do well to remember – and live by.
*Here’s an interview with Ms. Suzman
**Here’s the 1985 video from “Miami Steve” and artists from Herbie Hancock to Pat Benetar and Bonnie Raitt to Lou Reed and The Boss himself.
Are we there? Does the endless litany of police murders of young, and not so young, black men, and the arrest and detention of so many more, require the deep, horrendous revisiting that comes with hearings like those held in South Africa? Yes, says The Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion:
