The Swamp of Racism

Last post was about the lotus in the swamp. Now about that swamp itself. (Boldface descriptions of swamps come from diverse sources online. Comments on connections to systemic racism are mine.)

 

• Swamps tend to attract a lot of insects, which can spread disease. 

We have all been infected by the sickness of racism. Every part of the story created to justify the institution of slavery has been spread by the priests, the scientists, the doctors, the teachers, the entertainers, like infectious mosquitoes and all of us without bug repellent.

 

• The sodden terrain can make traversing them on foot difficult. 

The watery undependable ground sucks us down, makes it hard to move forward, occasionally takes us all the way down into the quicksand. Most associations with swamps involve being stuck—bogged down, sinking in the muck and mire, in a quagmire. Almost 150 years after the end of chattel slavery, here we still are, inching toward more solid ground, but still trapped in the swamp of our purposefully created and sustained ignorance. 

 

• Many swamps are prone to heavy fog, which can make it easy to get lost.

The 70 million Americans who just voted for a future of relentless lies, refusal to condemn white supremacy, daily breaking the Presidential oath to uphold the Constitution and so much more, are lost in the fog, are blind and still can’t see—yet. (Luckily, 75 million received some degree of the Amazing Grace that allowed them to be “found.”)

 

• Some swamps are inhabited by dangerous animals—alligators, crocodiles, snakes.

Reptiles, who lay eggs and don’t nurture their young—and occasionally eat them!—have no heart, are cold-blooded and without emotion. We created a whole culture of human beings who preyed on fellow humans without an ounce of remorse—from the first slave-master to the most recent cop that murdered an innocent black person.

 

• Most swamps are drained to create space for human development.

Swamps actually have an important place in our eco-system, but not as happy places for people to live. While we can’t simply eliminate them, we can give the wetlands of our own ignorance, our own incapacity to welcome and understand the other, our own willingness to perpetuate our unearned power and privilege, a place to live that won’t dominate the ecology of our soul.

 

We all, without exception, have racism inside of us that we can’t ignore or simply wish away or casually drain it. But we can work with it, reduce its harm, recognize when it pulls us down into its dark waters. We can choose not to build our home there. 

The Lady and the Lotus

“The lotus has a life cycle unlike any other plant. With its roots latched in mud, it submerges every night into river water and miraculously re-blooms the next morning, sparklingly clean.”

 

In yesterday’s Jazz History class, I talked about the swamp of racism and jazz as the triumph of the human spirit, the flowering of beauty arising from the muck and the mire. We then went on to learn about Billie Holiday, her life-story, her music, her courage and character.  I shared this quote about her 1956 Carnegie Hall Concert, where a narrator read some excerpts from her newly published autobiography and then commented:

 

“It was evident, even then, that Miss Holiday was ill. I had known her casually over the years and I was shocked at her physical weakness. Her rehearsal had been desultory; her voice sounded tinny and trailed off; her body sagged tiredly.”

 

The years of racism, sexual abuse, drug abuse, life on the road, life in jail, relentless persecution from  federal authorities, the whole swamp of culturally and institutionally-approved cruelty, had taken its toll, was wearing her down. She was only 41 years old but already in physical and mental decline. And then: 

 

“But I will not forget the metamorphosis that night. The lights went down, the musicians began to play and the narration began. Miss Holiday stepped from between the curtains, into the white spotlight awaiting her, wearing a white evening gown and white gardenias in her black hair. She was erect and beautiful; poised and smiling. And when the first section of narration was ended, she sang – with strength undiminished – with all of the art that was hers.”

 

There it was—the miraculous re-blooming as Lady Day steps into the spotlight, that “sparkling clean” spirit and soul in the midst of one of the most difficult lives one could imagine. 

 

The lotus in the swamp. 

Billie's Dream: Part 2

Billie Holiday is right that the most important step of all is to show children who they are (see quote from the last post), to encourage them to celebrate who they are so they’re on the right track to who they yet might be, to organize all activity around helping them discover the gifts of their particular genius and reason for being. Easy to say, supremely difficult (but necessary!) to do! I suggest three things to begin.

Spelling Mississippi: Billie puts this in opposition to discovering yourself and yes, if you had to choose, spelling is small on the list of what’s important. But it still should be on the list! To learn how to spell correctly, to add and subtract, to play your scales on the piano, to correctly weave a potholder, to master the procedure of a scientific experiment— these are the tools that help one master the details of human learning, help one control one’s expression and communicate effectively, help pay honor to the human inheritance of the neo-cortex and its capacity for analytic and critical thought. 

On one level, Billie Holiday’s life was a detour around the straight and narrow of traditional schooling. She never went past 5^thgrade, did not take music lessons, practice her scales or go to a conservatory. She found her own intuitive way into a song and even then, rarely sang the notes as written. Yet both she and Louis Armstrong (who also didn’t go past 5^thgrade) expressed regret that their schooling was so short and so ineffective. In the dream school that supplants the nightmare school,  the babies of precision in learning need not be thrown out with the bathwater. Nor need they dominate the intuitive minds of geniuses like Louis and Billie—and Ella and Duke and Miles and Monk and the many more who graduated from the school of Life. Ultimately, we need both. 

 

What happened in Mississippi: Let’s imagine that in our school, children are loved and welcomed and still know how to spell Mississippi. Is that the end of the matter? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to know something of what has happened in Mississippi? To know the story of Emmet Till? To know about Fannie Lou Hammer’s delegation of black voters she took to the 1964 Democratic Convention? To find out how the blues of the Mississippi Delta made it possible for a white boy from Tupelo to become the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, a title born of white privilege named by the white folks in power? 

 

You can graduated with a doctorate in most any field from Harvard and still not been told these stories. As a result, you might have voted for the guy who has shot democracy in the foot and then boasts about his cane. What good is a college education if we are not only welcomed into our genius individually, but also not taught the essentials of our collective genius called Democracy? What kind of education is that? Apparently, the one most of us got. So in Billie’s dream, steps one and two are essential. 

 

Beyond Mississippi: Each of us comes to this earth “trailing clouds of glory,” not only in a general way, but in very specific ways, accompanied by our genius, our Muse, our daimon, our particular way of being and seeing the world. Our lives our spent following the little bread crumbs on the path our genius leaves for us so that our Soul’s purpose and destiny is gradually revealed. School is one place where this process can begin and that means encountering the full range of our human intelligence, promise and possibility. Schools that have no arts programs, to give but one example, sever one limb from our whole self. Schools that only care about the right and wrong answers of precision, acing Mississippi on the spelling test, without calling forth our capacity to create, are merely places of instruction. Education means to lead out, draw forth, all of our multiple faculties. Which not only means offering the broad spectrum of the 3 R’s alongside music, dance, drama, visual art, P.E., but widening the way each of them are taught. And then tying all of the above together with action, with doing, with creating. 

 

And so following our own path of genius, we might continue to try to dismantle systemic racism in Mississippi and beyond. We might study the ecosystems there and the threat of environmental destruction and work on solar power plants or sustainable farming. We might dive deep in Mississippi Delta Blues and rise up singing with the next incarnation of this remarkable American art form. Nurturing our genius in Billie’s school is not just for our own satisfaction of a life more fully lived, but a way in which we can contribute to our collective life and help make it more sustainable, more livable, more lovable, more beautiful, more just, more fun!

 

Billie Holiday is testimony to someone who was graced with an extraordinary gift of song and had the courage and determination to follow that genius through endless hours on the road, facing the constant assaults, both mental and physical, of racism and sexism and drug abuse, and still rose up singing and refreshing the world with the power and beauty of her voice. And also kept some deep seed of kindness alive and some beautiful vision of a world better for the next generation of children, a place where kids could thrive partly because of their education rather than in spite of it. 

 

I’m ready to help out, awaiting the call from President Biden.  

Billie's Dream

“My big dream has always been to have a big place of my own out in the country someplace where I could take care of stray dogs and orphan kids, kid that didn’t ask to be born…. I’d only want to be sure of one thing—that nobody wanted those kids. Then I would take them.…I’d take care of them, feed them, see to it the little bastards go to school, knock them in the head when they’re wrong but love them whether they’re good or bad.…I’d always be around to teach them my kind of teaching—not the kind that tells them how to spell Mississippi, but how to be glad to be who you are and what you are.”

 

                                                                       -Billie Holiday: from Lady Sings the Blues

 

Most every day, I keep up with the news, sign a petition, donate money to a candidate, sometimes write a letter to distant voters—in short, try to do my part to participate in the democracy I was bequeathed and hold it accountable for its dream of liberty and justice for all. Most petitions are accompanied by a short survey about what’s the most important challenges that lie ahead—the climate, the pandemic, the economy, police reform, etc. But as important as these immediate topics are, the most vital long-term issue rarely makes the list—education. 

 

I’m not talking about 2 + 2 = 4 or how to spell Mississippi or school budget education, the same-old same-old small questions that distract us from the larger ones. I’m talking about the questions we’ve refused to ask, the essential questions of our particular moment in time that move beyond yesterday’s solutions to tomorrow’s problems. The things all teachers and school administrators and parents should be talking about beyond how to wipe down the desk and speak clearly through a mask, as if their lives depended on it. Or more importantly, the discussions we need to have as if our children’s lives depended upon it. Because they do. 

 

Consider. 70 million people voted for a guy who tore children from their families and put them in cages. 70 million people voted for a guy who proclaimed climate change a hoax even as the hurricanes and fires raged and the chances for an inhabitable planet for these children continued to diminish. 70 million people voted for a guy who refused to deal with the pandemic and kept children longer out of school than might have happened with swift and sensible responses. 70 million people voted for a guy who hired a Secretary of Education who pushed for schools to re-open too early in the pandemic, refused Federal Aid in the face of the COVID crisis for DACA children. tried to privatize education to give yet more privilege to the white and wealthy. 70 million people voted for a guy who is a bully, a liar, a self-obsessed narcissist who has not shown one ounce of care or empathy for anyone other than himself, including other dubious humans he has hired and then fired, behavior no parents in their right mind would want their children to emulate. 70 million people voted for a guy who refused to condemn white supremacy. The list goes on. 

 

The children feel this. Some part of them senses that grown adults who are supposed to protect them, encourage them, care for them and love them, have abandoned them. Not all adults—some 75 million refused the man and his policies. But the 70 million others? A 51/49 split in the most fundamental of human (and mammalian) legacies— to care for the young—is intolerable. As a culture, we have abandoned our children. And the children feel it.

 

And so Billie Holiday’s dream and her criteria that the children in her lovely vision would have to be unwanted and unloved to qualify for her dream school is fulfilled. Which means that every school must now help heal this bleeding wound in the American heart. We’ve had “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top”— I propose the new Secretary of Education (and I wouldn’t refuse it if you offered it to me, Joe!) name the new Mission Statement “Billie’s Dream.” And if it were me, I’d begin with three steps. (to be continued).

 

  

AMAZING!!!!!!

According to Miriam Webster, the definition of “amazing” is: “Causing great astonishment, wonder, surprise.” To be amazed is to be caught in a maze , perhaps feeling a bit hopeless and in the dark and suddenly, surprisingly, you stumble into the bright sunlight. Synonyms of the verb “amaze” include “astound, astonish, bowl over, dumbfound, flabbergast, floor, shock, stun, stupefy, stun, thunderstrike.” These are strong words, on the extreme edge of human emotion. If most language is a simple children’s song, this is high opera!

 

And so I just have to wonder at the comments on Facebook when after yesterday’s online Orff Conference, a fellow colleague posted a screenshot of the gridded squares and so many responded with “You are amazing!!!” Really? Isn’t this just a tad overdone? The guy I daily pass in Golden Gate Park juggling six balls strikes me as amazing. Stacey Abram’s work getting out the vote to turn Georgia blue is amazing. Brad Mehldau’s extended solo piano improvisation on the jazz standard Get Happy is amazing. But posting a screenshot from a Conference? Don’t think so. 

 

In the world of things to be concerned about, this inflation of language and misplaced emotion seems low on the list. But still it says something about our national character, our willingness to settle for so little, to give undeserved standing ovations because we’ve lost the criteria to distinguish between the good, the special and the extraordinary. Yes, I prefer the bright-eyed open -armed “you’re awesome!” quality of my fellow Orff teachers over the scowling arms-crossed “you’re crap” of the old school style, but both of them miss the mark. And while children might smile a bit at each unearned over-affirmation, some part of them knows they didn’t quite deserve it and a single “not bad” from a teacher with high standards who they respect will hit a little deeper. 

 

Just a little food for thought. And I do expect to see in the comment section: “Amazing piece of writing!! You’re awesome! Absolutely incredible!!! I’m flabbergasted by the depth of your thought!! These words struck me like a thunderclap!”

 

I’m waiting.

Five Reasons to Be Happy

A couple of nights ago, I Zoomed onto my bi-monthly Men’s Group Meeting expecting five uninterrupted minutes of shouted euphoria and folks pouring champagne over their computers. I was surprised to find that while all were unequivocally glad about the election’s results, so many were on the somber side looking at all that empty space in the half-full glass. I understood each point— the complete bewilderment that 70 million people thought “Yeah! I want four more years of that!,” the prospect of the Senate still singing along with Mitch, the shameless Supreme Court that reminded us that more women in positions of power is not a guarantee of more justice. 

 

True as it all is, I found myself wanting to convince them to be happier. And then came out with five reasons why. Hope you find them useful.

 

1) Imagine if the Don had won. Without having to worry about re-election in 2024 and thinking the country just gave him further permission to do as he likes, imagine what havoc he would have wreaked. Hard to picture him more unleashed than he has been, but I think it would have been a rampage beyond our imagination. So simply stopping that disaster is reason enough for jubilation.

 

2) Yes, I'm as baffled and outraged and disgusted by the 70 million as anyone, but imagine all of THEM unleashed! Now they'll have to pull back a bit as the national mood shifts and I do believe that once weaned from sucking on his hateful tit, some will make better choices and feed some better parts of themselves. But whether or not, the difference between their hate and ignorance endorsed by the leader or refused by the leader is a massive difference. Like it or not—and now I like it a lot— the leader has enormous power to set the tone. It's a game changer.

 

3) Regardless of what happens in the Senate (still hope there!) or the Supreme Court (nice bi-partisan work with the ACA and yes, let's pack the sucker!), here's something none of us talked about. The removal of incompetents at every level of Cabinet appointments is an ENORMOUS victory!!!!! Fuck off, Betsy DeVos, Andrew Wheeler, Ben Carson and so many others. That's a HUGE game-changer.

 

4) The restoration of our place in the world community. The congratulations I received from people I know in Iran, the Ukraine, New Zealand, Germany, Iceland, Ghana, Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Canada— just a sampling, there were more—was so uplifting and in the glass half full way, made me proud of the 75 million who refused to give up on our country. Means a lot to me to hold my head up a bit higher in my international community. And having turned back from autocratic rule, perhaps Brazil, Hungary, Poland and beyond may follow our lead.

 

5) The switch from defense to offense, from constantly re-acting to constantly pro-acting, shifts the entire mood of the nation. I think it will take a while to fully fathom how we took into our bodies that shoulders-up hands-out defensive posture, steeled ourselves most every day for the next outrage, felt our hope and faith in humanity get hacked away at relentlessly without pause. When he's gone—and hopefully in jail—I think many who fed on that energy will also start to feel some strange kind of relief, like when that weird uncle leaves the dinner party and everyone can start to enjoy themselves again. He just took up so much of the breathable air, with the support of the shameless news who just needed to get people to watch or read (and he was good for that). Whether it's jail or not (Oh God, I hope so!), just seeing his name on page 15 of the news instead of the headlines will change everything. 

 

And one bonus point to consider. We know so much more than we did when Obama was elected. We know that the Republican Party has no interest in uniting and so I hope the ruling Democrats have no naïve intention to invite them unless they sincerely make an offer. We know that they’ll be working furiously to keep gerrymandering to skew future votes, double their Fox News efforts to lie and spread fear and discredit the Democrats. We know that we, the people, cannot relax and leave it up to Biden and Harris, that we all need to commit to keep riding the political blue wave all the way to the shore of liberty and justice for all. We’ve learned a lot. 

 

Add them all up and I think there is indeed just cause for jubilation. 

 

Don't you?

More Scraps from the Filing Cabinet

I think this might have come from the early 80’s during my involvement with the Nuclear Freeze Movement.

 

In the midst of this spinning wheel of Life,

open to the suggestions of newspaper headlines and Time magazine,

the horror seeps in, the despair,

hopelessness strikes deep.

 

Yet one moment of clear vision

and it all disappears like a forgotten nightmare. 

Seated firmly in the Source,

intimately connected to all things,

entering the stream of power that runs through all things, 

there is no question

that we will triumph. 

Suddenly, 60,000 nuclear bombs are vanquished

by one atom of Love. 

 

And then this one.

 

Buddhist Primer

 

In Buddhism, there is no god—

but she’s always with you.

 

There is no distinction between good and evil—

but all is good.

 

There is nothing to be realized—

but we must spare no efforts to realize it.

 

There is no waiting for grace—

Buddha has done his part, the rest is up to us.

 

This world will survive—

but we must work to survive along with it.