“Until Justice Rolls Down Like Waters”: Something Much Bigger Than What One Police Officer Or One Prosecutor Does
Once again we find ourselves reckoning with the reality that we live in a country where justice is applied unequally. But the truth is – unequal justice is no justice as all. To keep our “eyes on the prize,” it might be helpful to step back and envision just what it is we mean by the word “justice.”
Back in 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke at the memorial service for the four little girls who had died in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Imagine with me for a moment if he had said these words about the killing of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, or Tamir Rice.
And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice. They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.
When Dr. King quoted the scripture that says “Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,” he was referring to something much bigger than what one police officer or one prosecutor does. And it was something much more audacious than what happens in a court room.
Now don’t get me wrong. Dr. King said we should not “merely” be concerned about the murderers. Holding people accountable for their crimes is certainly a part of justice. But the truth is…he had a finger to point at all of us for our complicity.
Too many of us in this country have bought into the idea that jail = justice. If we just send the perpetrators to prison, we can wipe our hands clean and assume that justice has been done. That’s one of the reasons this country has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Yes, I know that its also because of the failed “war on drugs.” But that war was based on the idea that we can effectively deal with a problem by locking people up. So it is our addiction to prison as the solution that is at the root of the problem.
The idea that jail = justice is not something that is simply embraced by conservatives. It finds a home with liberals when we step away from what happens to the poor and start thinking about the crimes of the wealthy. For example, Bailey Miller writes: Can We Please Put Some Bankers in Jail Now? In it, Miller doesn’t grapple with what justice would mean for the activities that led to the Great Recession. The assumption seems to be that – until the bankers are put in jail – justice has not been served.
But Miller does point out that for then-Deputy U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (and eventually the Bush administration), the idea of justice went beyond sending the specific perpetrators to jail.
One clue might be the contents of a memo written by Holder in 1999, during his stint as deputy U.S. attorney general. The document, “Bringing Criminal Charges Against Corporations,” urged prosecutors to take into account “collateral consequences” when pursuing cases against companies, lest they topple and take the economy down with them. Holder also raised the possibility of deferring prosecution against corporations in an effort to spur greater cooperation and reforms…
I would suggest that Holder’s concept of justice is more in line with the one articulated by Dr. King. First of all, it took into consideration what justice would mean for all of the innocent people who would be impacted by the prosecution of a corporation. But secondly, more than sending perpetrators to jail, he had his eyes on reforming “the system, the way of life, the philosophy that produced” the crimes.
I’ll leave it to another day to discuss the role prisons should play in our search for justice. Suffice it to say, I agree with Al Giordano.
Prison should always be a last resort, and only for someone who will put others at risk with predatory behavior. It doesn’t work as a deterrent. As a punishment, it is barbaric. My concept of a just and better world has almost nobody in prison, not even people I hate or who have done bad things. The whole thing has to be rethought…
A re-thinking of what justice means would require us to consider the affirmative rather than simply the reactionary. One place to start might be with the words of Bryan Stevenson: “The opposite of poverty is not wealth. Its justice.” When I think about what that means, it gets the brain synapses going in a whole different direction than jail = justice. And I can begin to imagine what it would mean for justice to roll down like waters.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal, The Washington Monthly, November 28, 2014
“Servants Are Not Like Us”: Ferguson, Immigration, And ‘Us Vs Them’
In his brilliant book At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson describes the relationship between servants in mid-19th-century England and their masters/employers: “Perhaps the hardest part of the job was simply being attached to and dependent on people who didn’t think much of you….Servants constituted a class of humans whose existences were fundamentally devoted to making certain that another class of humans would find everything they desired within arm’s reach more or less the moment it occurred to them to desire it.” Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, once poor herself, noted, “The only people I really hate are servants. They are not really human beings at all.”
It strikes me that many reactions we’ve seen to the events in Ferguson, Missouri, and President Obama’s recent executive action on Immigration are bound by a common attitude: ignorance, disregard, and dehumanization by a white majority of an underclass of people of color. The Caucasian (and rapidly shrinking) majority in America is largely ignorant of the lives led by African Americans and undocumented Hispanics. There seems to be a proactive disregard for knowing or caring about their lives and plight. And this ignorance and disregard are enabled through a dehumanizing of both groups—not overtly, of course (we at least know how not to sound racist)—and an attitude that all too often is in agreement with Millay’s sentiment that “they are not really human beings at all.”
Humankind has a really bad track record with those who are regarded as “other” by the majority. Perhaps the attitudes toward and treatment of those considered to be “other” have their roots in prehistory. When competing tribes of homo sapiens encountered one another, there was often survival payoff in regarding the opposing tribe as being utterly “other,” not like “us,” and to be resisted at all costs. Such sentiment is at the heart of every war.
There may even be a physiological basis to our apprehension about the “other.” After all, our bodies are hard wired to recognize the difference between “me” and “not me.” That is what allows us to recognize bacteria and other foreign matter in our bodies and answer with an aggressive immune system response which attacks and rids the body of these threats to our well-being.
The problem, of course, is that the “me vs. not me” response can serve us poorly in the more social sense. When we assign a primitive “not me” status to another individual or social group, it can—and does—take us down a destructive path. Taken to its logical conclusion, the “not me” judgment can lead us to regard other human beings as not human at all! And that is where the trouble really begins.
The disdain that masters once showed for their servants is today more apt to be played out systemically on a classification or group of people, rather than on individuals. “They” are not like “us.” I can remember during the Vietnam War, it was fairly common to hear Americans say about the Vietnamese (and Asians in general): “they just don’t value human life the way we do.” In other words, while we value our soldiers and remember that each one of them is a husband/son/father, the same humanity doesn’t apply to our enemies.
Broad generalizations are made about African-Americans, born out of attitudes from the days when slavery treated them as non-human chattel to be bought and sold, and Jim Crow laws perpetuated their status as underlings. Immigrants from Central America are characterized as brazen gold diggers who come here to “drop” their babies on American society and its social safety net.
Today’s hot debate about the fate of millions of undocumented people in America, most from countries to the south, belies a similar dehumanization. Opposition to the President’s executive order, and the resistance to dealing with immigration legislatively, both involve an inherent “they’re not like us” attitude. And yet, the yearning for a better life for oneself and one’s children—the overwhelming explanation given for coming north—is a sentiment known to every human being and family on earth. Yet, many do not find in this shared, human yearning a reason to regard immigrants as “like us” rather than “not like us.”
Oddly enough, many who hold this “not like us” attitude are religious people. And yet, a central teaching of the Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—is that all human beings are children of God, equal in value and worth to God. Isn’t it strange that religious people would embrace a “not like us” stance toward people of color, in direct and overt opposition to the teaching of their religions, all the while claiming to be faithful adherents?
Religion could—and should—be part of the solution here, rather than part of the problem. Significantly, many churches are actively and aggressively advocating for the justice and compassion for those in our midst who are undocumented. Some churches are serving as “sanctuary” for those fleeing injustice—an encouraging return to a time when church buildings were “safe houses” for those fleeing unjust treatment by the authorities.
It is significant that President Obama alluded to scripture in making his case for better treatment for the undocumented in his executive action. In his address, the President noted, “We were strangers once, too.” Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament, Jews are reminded that they too were once treated as strangers and “the other,” enslaved by Egypt, and in return must welcome the stranger and treat them with compassion and respect. And with the exception of Native Americans, all of us here in the United States came here as immigrants, as the President reminded us (making the case for “us” over “not like us”).
The outraged reaction all across America to the non-indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of Michael Brown is an appropriate response to being treated as “other,” and “not really human beings at all.” That kind of treatment leads to rage—at first, quietly borne internally, and eventually erupting in an outward expression of sheer “out-rage”; that is, an outward expression of the rage within the victim of such treatment.
White America would do well to focus not on the burning of a couple of cars and vandalism (no one is excusing such behavior), but on the reasons such rage is felt in the first place. This has long stopped being primarily about the death of an unarmed young black man in St. Louis. It is about the victimization of an entire group of people at the hands of a white majority who views them as “other” and “not really human beings at all” in a country that has broken its promise of “liberty and justice for all.”
The secret to solving our immigration “problem,” as well as the “problems” posed by race in Ferguson and all across America, begins with overcoming our tendency to extrapolate from our obvious differences to a broader, more dangerous, “not like me” attitude that borders on complete dehumanization. Our wariness of difference and diversity all too often leads us into “not like me” thinking. Instead, we need to focus on the reality that although almost everyone is different from me in some respects, we remain far more alike than different.
At the end of the day, this is not “us versus them.” Because there is no “them.” Only “us.”
By: The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Washington, DC; The Daily Beast, November 27, 2014
“Try Getting To Know Each Other”: Don’t Argue About Politics This Thanksgiving. Just Don’t
Imagine this scene on Thanksgiving day. The turkey is partly carved, the mashed potatoes are being passed around.
Your Mother: What are you thankful for?
You: Well, if I can say so, I’m thankful for ObamaCare because it was great that I was able to sign up for health insurance on the internet.
Caricatured Uncle: Hope Reverend Wright isn’t on your death panel! Payback for Ferguson coming to you.
Your Mother [hoping to get control of the situation]: I did something different this year with the sweet potatoes! Do you like it?
Never fear. The pundits are here to save you. Think Progress has a guide on “how to argue with your Evangelical uncle” about marriage equality. Vox is advising you on Bill Cosby, Ferguson, and immigration (you’re for it as much as possible, of course).
Last year, some of Michael Bloomberg’s dollars trickled down to someone who gave you talking points on gun control. Chris Hayes is once again dedicating an hour of his MSNBC show to the cause.
Less combatively, Conor Friedersdorf advises you to adopt his brand of nodding empathy: “Before you focus on any point of disagreement, ask questions of your interlocutor to figure out why they think the way they do about the subject at hand.”
These advice columns are becoming a genre unto themselves. The stock villain: crazy right-wing uncle, the jokes about stuffing. But I recognize them by what they unwittingly emulate: guides for religious evangelism. The gentle, righteous self-regard, the slightly orthogonal response guides, the implied urgency to cure your loved ones of their ignorance. Your raging uncle will know the truth, and the truth will set him free.
That’s a problem. Our politics are taking on a religious shape. Increasingly we allow politics to form our moral identity and self-conception. We surround ourselves with an invisible community of the “elect” who share our convictions, and convince ourselves that even our closest and beloved relatives are not only wrong, but enemies of goodness itself. And so one of the best, least religious holidays in the calendar becomes a chance to deliver your uncle up as a sinner in the hands of an angry niece.
I’m as guilty of this as anyone. As a conservative raised in an argumentative and left-leaning Irish-American family, Thanksgiving and other holiday dinners did more than any professional media training to prepare me for MSNBC panels. But arguments like these, particularly when we allow politics to dominate our notions of ourselves, can leave lasting scars. And precisely because our familial relationships are so personal, the likely responses to our creamed and beaten talking points will be defensive, anxious, off-subject, or overly aggressive.
You might think you can sneak in a killer talking point about immigration reform, only to touch off a sprawling congress about the personhood of unborn children, the Vietnam War, and whether it is really sexist to describe Nancy Pelosi as a “tough broad.”
Instead, what we really need are guides for gently deflecting the conversation away from politics, as our polite grandmothers once did.
Bringing up politics can be a form of self-assertion, or a way for a family member to test whether he is accepted for who he is. One of the reasons the “conservative uncle” has become the cliched oaf of the Thanksgiving dinner is precisely because he may feel, rightly or wrongly, that the country is moving away from him. He could be testing to see whether his family is ready to reject him, too. Or he could just be an oafish, self-regarding lout. Either way, it doesn’t have to be that hard to show he is appreciated as a family member and human being.
Caricatured Uncle: Obummer sure got waxed in that election. Guess he isn’t the Messiah, huh?
You: Har har, you got me. But hey, I get to read and think about the news every day. I only see you twice a year. How is the renovation going?
Instead of honing your argument on tax reform into unassailability, maybe ask your parents or siblings ahead of time what some of the further-flung or more volatile members of your family are up to in their lives before they sit down. Get the family’s talking points, rather than Mike Bloomberg’s.
And if you do want to pointlessly and frustratingly argue about politics with your uncle, just friend him on Facebook.
By: Michael Brendan Dougherty, The Week, November 26, 2014
“Beware Of Voting Based On Fears Stoked By Politicians”: Ebola, ISIS, The Border; So Much To Fear, So Little Time!
If there’s a pandemic or crisis that we should really be worried about, it’s this relentless election-time fear-mongering.
If you’re not afraid, you are clearly not paying attention. So much to be fearful of, so little time!
If there is a pandemic to be actually worried about, it’s the pandemic of fear as we approach the midterm elections. Election time almost always is a time for fear-mongering, but this particular season seems to be more so than in the past.
Ebola, a horrific disease for sure, is surely threatening all the people of the United States, despite the tiny number of people who have contracted it while treating people who actually have it. However, the fear of Ebola has infected vast numbers of Americans who will never have the opportunity to come into contact with someone who actually has it. But be afraid!
ISIS, the more common name for the so-called Islamic State, is a threat to everyday Americans. After all, I heard it on Fox News! Although this group of barbaric and inhumane humans is having a tough time conquering the geography they actually inhabit, their real goal is to come after us. And they will do so by simply walking across our Southern border with Mexico, because, you know, that border is so porous and unprotected.
Which brings us to undocumented people in this country. You should be afraid of them too! They’ll take your jobs (never mind that you don’t want to do the burdensome and humble jobs they are willing to do)! They are only here to reap the rewards of the American safety net (such as it is) and thereby raise your taxes.
And in a sleight of hand mindboggling in its absurdity, politicians are combining these three fears into one by getting you exercised over ISIS terrorists coming into the United States from Mexico, infected with Ebola. All because this president (who has presided over more deportations in his first term than George W. Bush did in his entire presidency) refuses to take these fears seriously, as does the entire Democratic Party.
And just for good measure, why don’t we add on our fears about race? It’s interesting, isn’t it, that these Ebola-infected ISIS terrorists are only a threat from our brown-skinned Southern border, not from the white-skinned northern border with Canada? White people, after all, just couldn’t be this bad. The tragic death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the subsequent reaction to it, only underscores the threat of a non-white population that is seething with anger and ready to get back at the white population that oppresses them. So much to be afraid of here.
Religion is not immune from fear-mongering either. The famous New England preacher Jonathan Edwards is perhaps most noted for his “sinners in the hands of an angry God” sermon, in which he had people collapsing out of fear of a God who dangles them over the burning fires of hell, held by a spider web-thin strand of hope. One gets the impression that God would take great delight in letting them go. Modern religion is no different. Many conservative religionists believe that “they” are coming to get us, to force their secular beliefs on us, and win the so-called War on Religion. Much of the evangelical church seems bent on raising their members’ paranoia and anxiety about the culture that is hostile to them. And it sure does fill the coffers on Sunday morning.
Fear is not necessarily a bad thing. It is indeed the human being’s natural and appropriate response to danger. Jews were right to fear the Nazis. Bicycle riders are prudent to fear being clipped by a passing car. The unemployed have a right to be anxious about the ravages on their families exacted by their unemployment. Americans have a right to fear over-zealous and unwarranted surveillance by the NSA.
Oddly, though, Americans are not fearful enough when it comes to real threats. Humans seem to be the only species that fouls our own nest, perfectly willing not to fear the environmental calamity our present course of inaction will surely wreak on the entire world, unless we reduce our carbon emissions, or entirely deny the science that foretells it. Smokers (I am one) seem entirely willing to live with the danger of self destructive behavior, in hopes of escaping its devastating consequences. Racism, income inequality, and a rising political and financial oligarchy threaten the very existence of American democracy, yet we are paralyzed when it comes to talking honestly about these issues.
But fear of something that is not actually a threat is not rightful fear, but rather paranoia. Feeling under attack may be a great way to raise money in churches and political races, but it’s a terrible way to solve the problems that actually face us. But in order to discern the difference between things that rightly should be feared, and those that shouldn’t, we need to be willing to talk about our fears and face into them. Which brings us to FDR’s first inaugural speech assertion that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Indeed. Nothing may actually threaten America more than our own fears.
Perhaps the worst fallout from all this is that when we are gripped by fear, we usually make terrible decisions. Like in elections. All of us should be going to the polls to vote this week. It is the most important civic duty we have as citizens, and in some ways, it’s the our only shot at changing things for good. But beware of voting based on the fears stoked by politicians for their own political gain — on both sides. It’s a terrible way to make the important decisions about whom to vote for.
And know this: No politician is going to take away your fear and anxiety. If you’re already fearful about contracting Ebola, finding an ISIS terrorist at your door, or the anxiety you feel when you encounter a person of color, you won’t find any relief on the day after the election. That’s work you and I have to do for ourselves, every day. We need to separate trumped-up fears from the legitimate ones. The state of the nation and the state of humankind may depend on it. Now that’s something to be fearful about.
By: Gene Robinson, The Daily Beast, November 2, 2014
“A Crass Political Stunt”: Christians Enraged With Cruz Over Pro-Israel Comments
Christian writers are incensed with Sen. Ted Cruz, and argue that the Texas senator is putting politics before his fellow religious brethren.
Cruz was the keynote speaker Wednesday evening at a dinner put on by In Defense of Christians, a group dedicated to raising awareness about persecuted Christians in the Middle East. During his speech, the Texas senator argued that Christians have “no greater ally” than Israel. Soon after, heckling from the crowd cut off his remarks, and an address that started by emphasizing the unity of Christians ended with shouting and disagreement.
“If you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you,” Cruz told the audience as he walked off the stage.
Much of his pro-Israel conservative base would have had no problem with these comments, so Cruz may not have expected a backlash. But the response among key Christian thinkers and writers was fierce and immediate.
Cruz was accused of ignorance about the dynamics of Middle Eastern Christianity; of suggesting that he would not stand with Christians who didn’t agree with his political stance on Israel; even of orchestrating a crass stunt on the backs of persecuted Christians.
“Sen. Ted Cruz suggested that holding the same political views on Israel was more important than the fellowship we share as Christians,” Mollie Hemingway, a senior writer at The Federalist, a conservative website, told The Daily Beast. “We shouldn’t fight the global persecution of Christians only if the victims share our political views.”
Added Mark Tooley, the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy: “Must overseas Christians pass a political litmus test, even if it further endangers them, to gain American support and sympathy?”
Jeff King, the president of the watchdog group International Christian Concern, said that Cruz was “off-topic and rude” (the crowd was rude too, King added), but mainly did not understand the nuances of the persecuted Christian minority groups he was addressing.
“They can’t be pro-Israel where they live, because they will get the snot beaten out of them or worse. If you don’t understand the dynamics going in… you’ve got to question what he was thinking,” King said. “He just doesn’t understand the reality of Middle Eastern Christians.”
Others went so far as to question whether Cruz purposely went to the conference as a stunt, that he was aware of the dynamics and wanted to show that he would support Israel in front of an audience where this would be unpopular.
“He used arguably the most persecuted and powerless minority in the world, Middle Eastern Christians, who are supposed to be his brethren in Christ, as a prop for a self-aggrandizing political stunt,” said Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a Catholic writer, in The Week.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat was particularly scathing, pointing out that Cruz’s “co-religionists are being murdered.”
“[B]y making a statement at *this* event, he basically flipped the bird to people and churches that are dying right now,” he tweeted.
Some conservative websites weighed in in support of Cruz, but may have overstepped in doing so—with two websites implying that the Middle Eastern Christians present at the event were not Christians at all.
Both Breitbart News and Townhall wrote defenses that put the word “Christian” in scare quotes—as if those who heckled Cruz might not appropriately be termed so. Breitbart has since taken down the quotation marks.
Christian writers were mixed on whether Cruz’s remarks could have an enduring political effect.
“There are potential repercussions—particularly if this becomes a trend. To be sure, there is often a stark dichotomy between so-called opinion leaders and rank and file believers. But there’s a reason they’re called leaders,” Daily Caller writer Matt Lewis, who was critical of Cruz’s speech, told the Beast. “The folks who have voiced concern about his actions buy ink by the barrel and paper by the ton, and people turn to them for interpreting events. There is always the potential for this sort of thing to trickle down.”
Countered Tooley, “Religious persecution has rarely been major issue in electoral politics.”
Democrats might also seek to capitalize on Cruz’s statement. Michael Wear, a strategist who led White House evangelical outreach during President Obama’s first term, said that Republican “voters will be looking for a candidate who can support Israel without demeaning an audience gathered to defend persecuted religious groups, a cause Senator Cruz has now distracted from in order to defend himself.”
Catherine Frazier, a Cruz spokeswoman, told the Beast that the senator will continue to speak out on behalf of religious minorities everywhere, and has made a point of bringing public attention to persecuted Christians in particular.
“He does not agree or stand with those who do not believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state,” Frazier said. “But that does not change his passion and priority for standing with persecuted Christians across the region and across the world.”
In the meantime, however, Cruz’s remarks appear to have at least temporarily shattered Christian solidarity on the issue of persecuted Christian minorities.
“Fighting persecution of Christians is a unifying message among voters, particularly on the right,” Hemingway said. “For better or worse, Cruz’s political speech may have broken that unity.”
By: Tim Mak, The Daily Beast, September 12, 2014
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