Why Bernie Sanders’ Speech at Liberty University Matters

Preface: This does not constitute an endorsement for Bernie Sanders’ candidacy. While I like a lot of what he’s saying, I’m as yet undeclared.

On September 14, Bernie Sanders, the unabashedly liberal populist candidate for President, went to Liberty University, a bastion of conservative Christian thinking and teaching, to give a speech. One would think at first blush that there wasn’t much common ground, given his differing views on abortion, gay rights, and the role of government than most of the attendees. However, this speech is significant for a few reasons.

Sanders opens with stating what he believes that is different. He’s pro-choice and pro-gay marriage and doesn’t try to dissemble or make that palatable. He then follows with:

I believe from the bottom of my heart that it is vitally important for those of us who hold different views to be able to engage in a civil discourse.

The Fox News climate (which birthed the less blatantly partisan but still strident MSNBC response) leads to a framework where those who disagree with us are at best, deluded idiots, and at worst, enemies trying to destroy “our” America. For us to move forward, we’re going to have to acknowledge that people who disagree with us have something valuable to say.

As a liberal minded person, I enjoy how Sanders then unpacks the hypocrisy of the self-serving theology that the Republican party has taught. I want the government out of my decisions (unless it’s who I partner with or whether I have a child). I care about the rights of the unborn (but am indifferent their needs when they become children). I should be able to acquire as much wealth as I want without being taxed, and it’s your own fault if you can’t do the same, because you didn’t work hard enough or pray hard enough. Your mistakes should be punished to the fullest extent of the law; there is no mercy for the criminal.

In a gentle, non-accusing way, Sanders walks through how injustice permeates our country, largely due to the adoption of conservative ideology. He even asks at one point, encouraging the listeners to check their moral compass rather than their talking points, “You have to think about it and you have to feel it in your guts. Are you content?” He then reclaims the language of morality and family values that the Republican party has been so successful at appropriating and redirects it toward wealth inequality, health care costs and challenges, and excessive imprisonment.

So this is all well and good, but why does it matter? First, it’s critical that politicians (and their supporters) not forget that most passionate people believe they’re really pushing for what’s best for the most people. You can be misguided or base your position on an invalid premise, but that’s not the same as being willfully ignorant and hateful. We have to make arguments with people that we don’t agree with and meet each other on common ground. This means that both that I have to engage and consider conservative language and that conservatives arguing with me have to think about and respect my framing.

Second, the conversation Sanders is trying to have outlines the true complexity of the Christian message. Jesus spoke a lot about wealth inequality and caring for those who cannot care for themselves. He also said that he did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. I find that the Christians that are seeking hardest to meet and follow Jesus don’t fall neatly into conservative and liberal buckets. They mourn the loss of unborn life but work to create a world where abortion never needs to be the best available choice, and they care about children after they’re born. They don’t see a provision in the Bible for a spiritual marital covenant between gay people but don’t see being homosexual as inherently wrong either. Since these Christians know rules don’t save people and government marriage is a contract, not a covenant, they see no need to prevent governments from declaring people married. They personally give generously of time and money to help those that are struggling, whether or not they are in favor of higher taxation to help facilitate that.

For me, I think if you find Jesus easy to follow and everything makes perfect sense, you’ve missed something important. The political and theological intertwining that has taken place among Republicans leaves many of them far too certain, unable to “work out [their] salvation with fear and trembling” as Paul encouraged Christians to do, but expecting and insisting upon a “good life” by standards of the flesh, which involves pleasure, comfort, and self-serving rather than sacrifice for others and altruism.

If you believe in conservative politics and conservative Christian theology, I encourage you to look at the world, unfiltered. Look at inequality, injustice. For a moment, stop justifying and determining who deserves what for a moment, remembering what Jesus was willing to do for the utterly undeserving. Remember how you said you wanted to be more like Jesus. Then think about it, feel it in your guts. Are you still content?

Zoe as Nina and the Failure of Hollywood Imagination

I was reading this article from Shadow and Act and it made me think about something I’ve had a problem with for a while: the casting of Zoe Saldana as Nina Simone. Zoe says in response to criticism:

“I didn’t think I was right for the part, and I know a lot of people will agree, but then again, I don’t think Elizabeth Taylor was right for Cleopatra either… An artist is colorless, genderless… It’s more complex than just ‘Oh, you chose the Halle Berry look-alike to play a dark, strikingly beautiful, iconic black woman.’ The truth is, they chose an artist who was willing to sacrifice herself. We needed to tell her story because she deserves it.”

(emphasis above mine)

I think Saldana is a decent actress and don’t have any problems with her personally. Despite this being my second article in two weeks about Nina Simone, I’m not a fanboy either; in my Swiss cheese relationship with music, Nina’s discography is one of the larger holes. What I see in her casting though is a tone deafness, a biography team that learned the whole story but wasn’t paying attention.

While I would have been really excited to see Danai Gurira (Michonne from The Walking Dead and Adenike from Mother of George) in this role, I agree with Saldana when she says that it’s more complex than skin tone.  Throwing in some other mediocre actress who looked more the part would be equally problematic. However, if you look at who Nina Simone was, it’s important to recall her struggle with self-love in a world that said that dark was not beautiful, and her later speaking with an increasingly militant voice encouraging other black folks to love themselves as well. I think choosing someone who does not physically look like Nina Simone, particularly in complexion, is an insult to that particular legacy, and I have a problem with that in a way that I might not have for someone doing a biopic of, say, Donny Hathaway.

I understand that they wanted to make money and find an actress that already has appeal and will have “box office draw”. However, I see actors and actresses we’ve never heard of being elevated again and again by Hollywood until they stick, and I don’t see why we can’t find some talented dark-skinned, Nina-Simone-looking ingenue to do the same with for this role. I find it interesting as well, that movie casting teams can use their imagination to stretch a Zoe Saldana into playing Nina Simone (or for that matter Angelina Jolie as a multiethnic French woman) but they can’t imagine black lead dramatic characters in a mainstream movie. David Oyelowo, who is cast in the Simone biopic as one of her managers, stated in an interview once that when he was cast as a lead in one particular film and told his family about the new role, his young son asked him, “are you the main character’s friend?” He asked that because he had unconsciously internalized this belief that a black character doesn’t get to lead. That comment from an actor’s own son shows what a failure of imagination costs us, in lowered expectations, and down the road, in lowered achievement.

We owe it to our children, especially children from historically marginalized groups, to be imaginative. We say we’re post-racial and we live in a society where people are up in arms about the blackness (and in some cases, even the proposed blackness) of fictional characters, because even in a fantasy world with magic and bizarre creatures, we can’t imagine non-white people having roles of any importance. (Apologies to the article I cribbed that observation from, the name of which escapes me at this time but may have been over at Very Smart Brothas). If you think this is hyperbole, try performing a racial version of the Bechdel test on the next drama you watch. My proposed rules:

  1. There must be two black characters (okay, fine, even just one),
  2. who aren’t related to each other (if there are two),
  3. who have a function in their communication other than helping the white lead character on their journey or providing comic relief,
  4. [Edit courtesy of my man Damon Young‘s suggestion] and the movie is not primarily about race or “blackness”

You’ll be surprised at how many movies fail.

This isn’t really about Zoe’s fitness to play Nina, physically or as an actress. This is about our collective imagination being so weak, we can never find enough diverse talent out there, but can always find another slender, pretty white woman or handsome, wiry white guy to be the Next Big Thing.

Satire as a Mask for ‘Hipster Racism’

In the past few years, several new “satire” sites have arisen, copying what used to be the exclusive province of The Onion. Two sites in particular, The Daily Currant and The National Report, have become the source of much Facebook and Twitter head shaking and eye rolling among people who disagree with their pseudo-conservative posts. While I’m not sure of the writers’ political stances, the joke is usually supposed to be, “Hey, aren’t these conservatives crazy? I wonder what they’ll say next, maybe something ridiculous like ____________!”.  As I see post after post circulated by people that didn’t get the joke, I suspect something a bit more problematic is going on.

One of the ones recently posted in a Facebook group I belong to that is mostly conservative leaning people was a fictional story about a landfill in North Dakota being named after Obama. The article concluded with:

Ordinary citizens in the state also seem to approve of the government’s choice.

“I can’t think of a better name,” says Joe Blough, a plumber from Minot. “It’s darkly colored and it’s full of shit. That pretty much sums up Obama.”

An article in National Report focuses on Bobby Jindal’s alleged secret ties to Transcendental Meditation and Ravi Shankar, with Shankar purportedly saying, “I knew Piyush’s mother Raj, we would meditate together back in Malerkotla.”

What I see in these articles is what many have referred to as “hipster racism“. The concept refers to engaging in traditionally racist behavior ironically or satirically, and using the fact that you’re aware of its wrongness and trying to take its power through humor as a defense. I see this both in the illicit chuckles these articles elicit from the anti-PC set and in the way that the articles are celebrated by conservative news sources that don’t check their facts well enough. The articles have beliefs embedded in them that people want to say, or at least explore, but that society has told them are bad. Through humor, the authors and fans can explore this in a way that’s safe, and doesn’t make them “bad people”. (There’s probably a whole other post to be had about how we ignore our racism because we don’t want to be “bad people”, but that’s a post for another day.)

Incidentally, the same is true of sites I have higher regard for, like The Onion, which has explored some troubling topics and occasionally missed the mark. The Onion, however, apologized when they crossed the line and wrote a (obviously satirical) hit piece on a child (in this case, ingenue Quvenzhane Wallis of “Annie” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild” fame). I’m not asking for an apology from any of these satire sites; they should be free to write what they like and bear whatever consequences result. However, I do think it’s irresponsible to play with these themes in a way that lets our demons off the hook.

Even as I write this, a counterargument arises in my head, which is, “but the world is absurd right now!” I’m frankly not sure what to do with that. We live in a time when our former Vice-Presidential candidate or our current leading Republican Presidential candidate might just make a gaffe that sounds just like a satire piece, or where people are comfortable making racist jokes in public about the President, or for that matter, where a double-digit percentage of the population appears to believe his birth certificate is forged. In an absurd world, maybe we get the humor we deserve.

Kim Davis and At Will Employment

I’ve refrained from posting any official commentary on Kim Davis because despite the hubbub, I don’t think it’s legally, philosophically, or theologically that interesting. Legally, she’s an elected official, sworn to uphold the law, and refusing to carry out that function when issued a court order. Since she can’t be fired outright, holding her in contempt is a legitimate alternative if she refuses to resign. Many think that she’s being punished with jail time instead of being fired, but the courts do not have the ability to fire her; she can only be impeached by the legislature. Philosophically, she has the right to resign and protest, exercising both free speech and freedom of religion, but I don’t think she gets to collect a salary from the government she’s protesting and not do her job. From a theological perspective, I don’t see the government as being the issuer or authorizer of sacred covenants, so even if you believe marriage is between a man and a woman, I don’t think you should get more angry about government recognition of same-sex marriage than you should about the government honoring power of attorney contracts between gay people. The covenant and the contract are completely separate, even in heterosexual marriages.

Where this gets interesting for me is when I juxtapose it with the notion of “at will employment”. Many states, including my home state of Georgia, have limited protection of jobs for employees. The employer can fire someone for pretty much any reason, as long as they are not stupid enough to make it obviously about race, gender, age, or other protected classes. The people I know who support Kim Davis, or at least her theological views, also tend to be people who think this is a good thing. They take the view that if you don’t like what’s happening at your job, leave and get another one. Conversely, if you get fired and you have value and cultivated skills, you’ll get another job. (The implication here is that if you aren’t able to get another job, something’s wrong with you because the market is efficient, but that’s a bit beyond the scope of this discussion).

Why, then, are the people who believe this not calling for Kim Davis to step down and get another job? If she doesn’t like what’s happening at her job, she should leave it.

What do you think?

“Superlativity” Politics

I’ve been having a few conversations lately about the nature of respectability. In the context of our current times, it’s about the belief that people’s behavior determines their entire outcome in the context of a police interaction, a job, or other situations. This belief sits in contrast with the notion of prejudice, where people are literally pre-judged before their behavior can be taken into account.

In particular, there is a belief by some that most of the police incidents being highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement are the result of the behavior of the citizens. Sandra Bland and Eric Garner shouldn’t have mouthed off. Mike Brown was a criminal. Trayvon Martin was on his way to being a criminal. With respect to black folks in particular, his belief is espoused by two camps: conservatives (mostly but not all white) who don’t actually have personal relationships with black people, and successful black people who in many cases may have themselves come from an adverse upbringing.

The first camp could be written off as a lack of empathy, but that’s not completely fair. I think for a white conservative person of moderate or higher means who has only their experience to measure by, it’s quite a leap to imagine a world where the police are a threat to you if you’ve done nothing wrong. In a world where everyone around you is at least steadily working, and progressing through the ranks in accordance with their effort, it’s hard to see how Ben Carson can become a successful neurosurgeon with an upbringing like he had, but another black guy who actually works at it can’t get a steady job. The second camp is harder to argue with, because it’s their experience that’s on the table. They know what it’s like to live in poverty, or to go to inferior schools, or to experience discrimination. And they made it. So why can’t someone else?

This is what I call the “superlativity problem”, where we base the judgment of the bar for success on what the superlative people in the group have done. We look at Ben Carson, or Barack Obama, or our black friend who went to a good school or got a good job, and go, “he did it, why can’t these other people get themselves together?” The answer to that is complex. There is a conversation to be had about black agency and the repeal of hopelessness. It would also be great if more people could find in themselves whatever fire, whatever perseverance these icons had that led to their successes. However, I’m more interested in determining how a person of average ability can achieve an average result.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his seminal essay, “A Muscular Empathy”, says,

“If you really want to understand slaves, slave masters, poor black kids, poor white kids, rich people of colors, whoever, it is essential that you first come to grips with the disturbing facts of your own mediocrity. The first rule is this–You are not extraordinary.”

He goes on to say that the interesting question isn’t whether you would do better than a person in a bad situation, but rather taking some time to understand why you might not. Our dirty secret is that we each think we are extraordinary, and in some way, we are. Fearfully and wonderfully made, each of us. But are we extraordinary in all situations?

If you grew up in a war zone, would you still have pursued the love of math that made you an accountant? Would your business acumen be as sharp if you didn’t overhear your parents talking to their business associates that came to the house for dinner, or if Mom and Dad didn’t talk shop at the table? If your school had poor resources, would you have even learned enough to get into that college that shaped you into who you are today?

Chris Rock calls out the other side of this in his joke from his comedy special Kill The Messenger. He points out that in his wealthy neighborhood, there are four black people: Rock himself, Mary J. Blige, Jay-Z, and Eddie Murphy, each of whom are at the very top of their field. His white neighbor, however, is a dentist. Not a famous dentist to the stars, not a specialist in rare mouth diseases. A dentist.

Put these together, and what do we learn? First, our circumstance has more to do with who we are than we wish to admit. Some will make it, no matter what. These people become CEOs, Presidents, visionaries that choose the most difficult jobs and paths. Most of us, though, have not pushed to our limits, but have instead ridden the wave as high as it carried us, doing our part to stay atop it, but not much more. Second, riding the wave produces unequal outcomes depending on where in the water you are. If you’re in a poor neighborhood where hopelessness is high, schools are failing, and parents are absent because they’re working multiple jobs to keep their household afloat, a lot of the things that someone in a well-off neighborhood with good schools, role models aplenty, and two available parents take for granted are just not available to you. So your choice is to swim against a hard and dangerous current to find a better wave, or ride the one you’re on, like most people in all situations do.

We should absolutely encourage our children to push to their limits, to find their true potential, and take agency for their lives. However, we should not accept a world where anything short of world-class performance means complete failure, either.

Gemini (for Eunice and Nina)

Eunice wanted to play.
In a concert hall with the precise
and measured proportions of a cello, she’d sit.
Fine, fine, this Bösendorfer, waiting to serve,
to sing at the mistress’s command.

Instead, Nina sang.
Through nights, cloven hooved,
this toe black, that one white,
’til dawn, driving a baritone up Jacob’s ladder
until it spread across the sky, electric, angelic.

Rage as unkempt as lightning.
White boys’ stares and freshly licked lips
would have to do for refined applause.
Another martini, on the house,
for flowers at her feet.

And through the chaos of her Gemini self, this
A pulsing, gravitic heart of a neutron star.
An angel descends the ladder, bandoliers and Afros,
seeking the doors where the blood
has been carefully scrubbed away.

And this, through the chaos of her reclaimed self.
Standing on the shore, facing west,
tracing a lyric reversal of the course of precious cargo,
and watching a crackle in the sky.
“Like me, like me,” she must have thought.

We are left, then, commissioned to carry,
to run the voodoo down, to watch
where the lightning meets the sea, and imagine
if they had just let Eunice play
how wonderful that would be.

-C. G. Brown

Why should Facebook have all the fun?

I have held back from starting a blog for a long time. I don’t like the pressure of feeling like I need to say something that warrants being on a permanent post. However, as I find myself writing more and more short discussion posts on Facebook, I asked myself, “why should they have all the fun?”

So here goes. I’ll be posting some old and new thoughts here. I’ll cross-post links to Facebook, which is where I “blog” the most and have conversations with people.