Midlife Meditation

These guys. It's all their fault. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them:  for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:4-6 Yes, I used the non-inclusive archaic King James Version on purpose, because this essay is literally about men ruining the world for their descendants. First, let's talk American exceptionalism. Some things about being an American are indisputably wonderful. The cultural heterogeneity that birthed jazz, R&B, soul, rock 'n' roll, country, rockabilly, bluegrass, Cajun, hiphop, folk, and all their permutations, then freely shared them wi...

How could they do it? How could they treat human begins as animals, as worse than animals, abusing them to the point of death, then jamming those who survived into the lower decks of ships for a weeks-long journey that would kill even more of them? Forget the inhumanity of it: who treats valuable stock like that? I was not asking these questions, though I could have. I raise them whenever I contemplate the evil my people—white European colonists—visited upon first the indigenous population of the New World, then upon countless millions of Africans. Last night, as we gathered for a banquet to mark the end of the International Body Music Festival, I heard these questions from a fellow IBMF attendee who, hours after the final cultural event of our week in Ghana, could not put it out of her mind. Visiting Elmina, one of many slave castles on the coast of west Africa, is a shattering experience. The old buildings, some dating to the 16 th century, are maintain...

Torch-bearing "Unite the Right" bigots showing their true colors. "How does legitimate white pride look?" Tony Peterson, one of the people I most respect, posted this question on Facebook twelve hours ago. It's generated a great deal of conversation in that forum, to which I contributed one short response:   "White pride" is for those who don't know or, worse, ignore history. White shame is where pale-skinned Americans like me need to start. I posted an essay yesterday about how integral racism has been to the history of the Americas, with a line traceable to the first European explorers and colonists to set foot in the New World. Today's essay draws on much more recent history: specifically, the direct line of racist policies that runs from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump. Modern racism begins in the 1960s with the passage of civil rights legislation during the Johnson Administration. That's when, for the first time since Rec...

Across the South, Confederate battle flags are coming down. Wal-Mart has pulled them from its store shelves. Online gaming companies have disabled games that feature the flag prominently. Aghast at the sudden repudiation of their "heritage," Confederacy buffs object that Nazi symbols are not receiving the same treatment, even though they clearly represent the Holocaust, while the Confederate battle flag is about honor, not racism. Try telling that to the families of the nine people who died in Charleston, the members of the black churches that are, again, being burned across the South, or any African-American who has a lynching in his or her family tree. In fact, as has been copiously documented in the last week, the Confederate battle flag rose to prominence precisely because it was taken to symbolize white Southern resistance first to the enforced empowerment of former slaves during Reconstruction and, later, to the battle against granting their descendants c...

This bad boy needs a time out. Yes, he really said it. I saw a quote on Facebook yesterday that left me speechless. The statement was so insane that I couldn't even begin to form a response to it. Senator Rand Paul had, during a Senate committee hearing, equated the concept of a right to healthcare with slavery: With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me.  It means you believe in slavery. It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses . Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery. I’m a physician in your community and you sa...

Once and future Presidential candidate Rick Santorum doesn't like hearing about Christianity's dark side. He's not alone. Nine days ago, in his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama committed blasphemy: he spoke about the atrocities committed by terrorists in the name of Islam--this wasn't the blasphemy--and then made note of Christianity's long history of waging campaigns of violence against unbelievers, persons of other faiths, and even against other Christians who differed from the majority in terms of skin color, language, or interpretation of the Gospel. The President was not slandering the faith. All the crimes against humanity he referred to--and he did it in as diplomatic a manner as it is possible to say such things, short of simply not saying them at all--are well-documented historical truths, some of them taking place within his own lifetime. Truthful and diplomatic though these remarks might be, simply saying them was enough t...

To experience Ghana in a day, there is just one place to visit: Elmina. Elmina sits on the Cape Coast. It’s a fishing community with a scenic harbor crowned by two historic structures: a castle on one hill, a fort on the other. Parts of these buildings, as well as other buildings in town, date back to the earliest incursions of Europeans into West Africa in the 1400s. Viewed from the castle, Elmina is as photogenic as any place I've been in Ghana (though it should be noted that this has not been a touring experience; in fact, we spent an entire week in one location, focusing on the culture of that site). The harbor and the shore teem with long, brightly painted fishing boats that are rowed out to sea, then brought back by the tide. There are no sales, and all the fishing is done with nets. The lack of modern tools for this ancient trade is typical: when I’ve seen buildings under construction, work was being done with saws and hammers, not a power tool to be heard. Even...