recognizing my America

To hear Brandi read “Recognizing My America,” click here: https://youtu.be/IfafK5C1a4Y

This week Americans celebrate Independence Day, a holiday that cheers freedom and demonstrates patriotism, often with jorts, fireworks and excessive day drinking. Just as often, we mark the holiday with neighborhood bike parades, BBQ and watermelon. Thinking about the various ways we spend our fourths of July leads me to also wonder what exactly it is that we are celebrating. Put another way, what is America, and who gets to decide?

Are we Lee Greenwood’s version? Proud, certain we are free and blessed, and familiar with the agricultural highlights of each state? Is Charlie Daniel’s vision of a national kumbaya correct? Will we “all stick together, you can take that to the bank. That’s the cowboys and the hippies, the rebels and the yanks?” Does Donald Glover get to decide? In “This is America” he reveals a country alive with movement and soul, but also littered with guns, violence, apathy and fear. Maybe Toby Keith gets it right, describing us as an international bar bouncer: “You’ll be sorry you messed with the U. S. of A; we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way.” Do veterans who think we honor the whole America in the National Anthem by standing or kneeling get to decide what America is? On a national holiday that celebrates our origin story, it is worth thinking about who we think we are.

For many Americans, , America does represent freedom and independence. We are the magical land where people prove their worth through their work, where everyone gets a fair shot. God loves to bless us because we are His favorites (outside of Israel, of course). Real Americans have no need to protest anything, because we are great and protesters are violent whiners. I like this idea of America, and sometimes wish I could believe it. I have learned, however, that in order to believe this is THE version of America, I have to erase more history than I remember. I have to erase the experiences of many friends. In order to believe, I have to ignore the fact that our country was founded to guarantee the freedom and equality of white men, and white men alone. I have to ignore that fact that we legally and intentionally oppressed, killed and stole from Native and Black peoples. I have to ignore the single mom in Appalachia who works incredibly hard but can’t establish her worth or sustainability to the world around her. I have to ignore the Black man who works long hours even though he is treated with suspicion and disdain when his paycheck fails to give his family breathing room.

I recognize these ideas can seem inflammatory, but I don’t write them to provoke. Instead, I am suggesting that we might best celebrate Independence Day by recognizing our entire history. We are both a country that loves our work ethic and a country that refuses to reward the hard work of some parts of our population. We are both a country that believes in equality and justice for all and one that legislates injustice and inequality. We believe in democracy and fair shots, while protecting a caste system based on race and education. We are the home of the brave and yet we have punished displays of bravery in brown or female bodies. We cherish our religious freedom but we ban people on the basis of their religion. 

Calling these assertions unpatriotic doesn’t make them untrue.

People who study American culture talk about our longstanding tradition of imagining American spaces really as white spaces. In our dominant cultural imagination, hard workers look like white workers. The American heartland looks like quilts sewn and fields plowed and pies baked by white hands. I know the mention of race is off-putting for some, but this is because many Americans have the privilege of not thinking about the cultural and historical racism that links color with suspicion. If we could recognize our passive linking of “real Americans” with “white Americans” then we can embrace our country’s entire story on this historical holiday.

This Independence Day, could we honor our nation’s legacy by thinking independently? Could we reject the narrative that the only way to be patriotic is to love Lee Greenwood and ignore Donald Glover? Could we listen to those who honor our flag by kneeling or standing? On July 4th, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. A group of brave white men in tights and wigs wrote an epic letter protesting the oppressive injustice of a group of powerful privileged men who refused to consider their perspective or value. The origin story of America is one of protest. Knowing this, it is hard to now accept the idea that those who protest are unpatriotic. Un-American.

Writing this gives me pause, because I know the dangers of living in the middle space, where American failures and triumphs are remembered. I know the mention of white supremacy feels like an attack on America, but I am even more afraid for all us if we continue to act as if America only belongs to a certain type of person. The thing that we celebrate on July 4th is taking power from a few and sharing that power with many. While we have yet to get this right, we come closer to living up to the American democratic ideal when we make room for all kinds of voices to share their experiences of America. This begins by remembering our whole history.

When our daughter was three she had a funny speech pattern of addressing people with a possessive pronoun.  She called her favorite neighbor “my Isabelle.” She said, “I want to swim with my Emmett” or “I go play with my Marion.” Remembering this makes me think about what it means to claim a person. She was not trying to own them with her “my,” she was asserting her devotion to them. She was relationally bound by love and delight to these people.

As we celebrate Independence Day, to whom are we relationally bound?

Who is worthy of our delight and love, and who do we naturally dismiss or avoid? We all have these kinds of biases. They can be confessed and examined, transforming them as markers in our journeys as we expand our us and build better communities. These biases become dangerous though when we trust them as good and right, using them to demean the value of another human being who shares our air and zip code and country.

In an age where I hear angry voices claim, “He’s not my President,” or “They aren’t welcome in my America,” I want to celebrate the 4th of July by claiming my America. Our America, which has been exclusive and inclusive, brave and cowardly, bullying and welcoming, oppressing and dignifying. Let’s celebrate the whole America, and every person who helped build, cultivate and shape it. Every race, culture and gender who contributed to the country we call ours. It took a diverse village to build us into who we are, and we lose very little when we acknowledge that fact. We lose our country when we pretend like it is and always has been the result and promise of one race alone. As we celebrate, let’s reflect on who we’ve been, who we are, and what each of us might help America become.

on the joys of precision

To hear Brandi read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/mUE9IFFgUwo

I’m a contrarian.

I’ve spent a lot of energy in the last twenty years trying to become a nice contrarian, but the label reveals me. I generally find labels a demeaning tool of evil, a reductionist way of describing other miracle-humans. That said, I’m also generally happy to admit a label that suits me well. Indeed, “own your shit” reasonably captures one of my core beliefs and practices. Not sure it should go on my tombstone or hang cross-stitched in my kitchen, but still. It offers me a way forward from many a wrong-headed dead end.

Owning our faults, our choices, our bias, our ideas about self and community, feels like a solid place to begin any thought or prayer or conversation. It requires me to be precise in where I stand, how I view others, and how I attempt or fail to align my actions with the values I hold. It requires us to take ourselves seriously. What we think and believe shapes the sources we trust and the advice we give. Naming the foundation of those ideas with specificity is crucial if we hope to live well with others.

A couple asked me to talk to them about educational choices in Nashville. I begin such conversations with a clear confession of my bias. I name exactly what I care most about and describe how I tend to think about the purpose of education and the history of the endeavor here in Nashville. I don’t start there because I think my biases are particularly egregious; instead, I do so because I respect the fact that they are the ones making a new choice here. Not me. They deserve to hear my experience and to access advice, but only through a frame of my clearly stated bias. If they don’t share my way of seeing the world or my hope for how my kids will learn and participate in it, then my advice might be useless to them. That’s fair.

Precision is key when owning our stuff or amplifying what we value in our communities.

Words are handy in our desire to communicate as long as they signify in clear, consistent ways. Many words don’t anymore though, and these slippages make collaborative meaning making hard. Because we need to collaborate in this life, I’m asking us to work harder to resist lazy labels and instead to speak in ways that clarify our positions.

To be a person who is FOR faith or justice or woke-ness or life or freedom or democracy requires us to name exactly what we mean when we invoke such a label. For instance, my understanding of myself as a Christian prevented me from voting for Donald Trump. For many others, their vote for Mr. Trump was an expression of their Christian-ness. Behold the fluid nature of words.

My contrarian instincts cause me to flinch if someone asks if I’m a Christian precisely because the word signals differently to diverse audiences. Do I believe Jesus is the Son of God whose sacrifice redeems me, offering me hope as I do justice and love mercy within the context of a humble community sacrificing for others as a testament to a longer arc of hope? Yes. But the label “Christian” no longer signifies a specific orientation toward God or others. My claiming of the word could signify my adherence to patriarchy and nativist white supremacy, or it could signify my advocacy to abolish the death penalty, or it could signal that I champion the death penalty and advocate against abortion. It could mean I love capitalism and loathe welfare. Or it could mean I desire to share resources and care for the poor. The word contains multitudes, and it makes me want to reject it. Labels have always been weaponized, but now conversations are like navigating land mines.

We affirm or attack using words whose meaning is unclear, making it all but impossible to really see or know another person, let alone feel affection for them or find common ground.

 We still share a planet though. We share parks and schools and street corners and air and a government. We have to collaborate, and that means we have to keep working to communicate with others. Don’t dismiss others by labeling them, and don’t dismiss yourself by playing it safe in the vague middle. Try harder to speak with precision. Explain your advocacy or frustration in precise ways. Don’t settle for lazy labels that fail to describe the nuance for which you strive. Don’t be a victim of a process that co-opts and muddles words, but choose to precisely claim the things you value. Failing to do so keeps us less known, less appreciated, less connected. Speaking up with precise language sharpens the thinking of everyone around you. You might even find it helps you own your stuff.

Allow me a closing thought on the joys of precision. Three of our four go to a school built around the idea that kids learn best when they are safe and known in all the diversity they bring. They pursue academic excellence through social emotional learning. They experience this mostly in a practice called “Circle”, where every kid and adult gathers several times a week to check in, presenting aspects of their emotional growth, resolving differences in community, and appreciating each other. “Appreciations”, as they are known, are my favorite practice of their school community. Students affirm a specific aspect of another’s identity or behavior. “Brandi, I appreciate they way you…” The guidelines suggest the student must maintain eye contact and speak with precision both on the action or trait and on the way it impacts the speaker.

Isn’t that beautiful? Looking someone in the eye and telling her exactly why you think she is fabulous is a super power. Life is too short to stay vague. In your critiques and appreciations, be specific. Every interaction offers each of us the chance to own our shit, describe our thinking, and appreciate others with precise language. Let’s not by lazy. Let’s communicate openly, with nuance and with specificity, as we work to expand our us.

claiming Lincoln, claiming King: speaking with precision in the public sphere

To hear Dr. Kellett read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/cpp3Gp4TbDg

President Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King were quoted often on the floor of the House during the second impeachment of President Trump last week. Members invoked their memories boldly, sure that each legend would back the person now quoting them with such intensity. Collectively, the body, surely without meaning to, reminded students of history of President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, given in the midst of a long raging Civil War. Lincoln aptly observed that both sides of the conflict believed their cause was righteous, and both sides invoked God’s help, as they fought for the decent, patriotic, good guys:

“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained…Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.”

Last week, members from both sides tried to be the spokesperson for American heroes, for hardworking, decent, patriotic Americans. Lincoln knew then, and we would be wise to remember now, that anyone pretending to speak for God best do it with a large dose of humility. Indeed, “The Almighty has his own purposes.”  

Seeing the violent assault on the Capitol the Wednesday before last and the absurd posturing in the Capitol last Wednesday, brings to mind the idea that each of us believes our cause, our action, our perspective, is the best one. We think Lincoln would agree with us. We think Dr. King would agree with us. We think God agrees with us. We think we would have handled the Civil War with nobility and nuance. We think we would have marched with King. We look back to history and insert the myth of our own heroism.

Not so fast.

It is difficult to realize you are living through a moment that will later define your generation. We experience life in the present tense, feel conflicted, and do our best to make sense of our allegiance, words and actions. When we look back on big American moments, moral clarity looks easy. In real time though, we struggle to articulate our positions.

I’d like to gently remind us that the number of Americans who denounced slavery as evil was actually quite small. The number of Americans who marched with King, civilly disobeying, breaking the law and sacrificing their own safety, was quite small. (In fact, the number of Americans who didn’t hate him was quite small; he was widely regarded as a trouble maker and a dangerous agitator). Most Americans felt either apathetic or conflicted, and in either case chose to keep their mouths shut. Our African American brothers and sisters led us, in both instances, to demonstrate what it looks like to know a thing is wrong, to articulate why it is wrong, and then to move with haste and courage to end that wrong.

The legacy of Dr. King is rhetorical in that he articulated so much of what plagued us, and named who we might be in the Beloved Community he worked to inhabit. Nearly everyone loves this part of his legacy, but we do so while simultaneously overlooking or ignoring his physical legacy in active, precise resistance. Dr. King is attractive to us from a distance, as we each find parts of our own humanity in the invitations he offered to elevate our higher natures and affirm the dignity of everyone.

However.

This year, as we mark his birth and legacy, we must examine the massive chasm in us between who we think we are and who we demonstrate we are. Most of the white folks I know would have nodded along to the words of Dr. King, but refused to challenge the grip of white supremacy in their own neighborhoods. They would have said that naming or physically challenging white supremacy was “getting political” or “contributing to our divides.” We hear the same today: “Sure, I agree that things got out of hand since the election, that people got too intense…But anyone speaking out about what led to these divides, to this violence, is contributing to the tension. Ignore it, and it will go away.”

Friends, most of us would not have marched with King. It dishonors his legacy to pretend we would have while shunning those who speak specifically against white supremacy and racially motivated violence or fraudulent claims today.

We do not speak with precision about things that make us uncomfortable. Here in Nashville, as we reflect on 2020, we talk specifically about the damage of tornadoes, the isolation of students, and the death toll of Covid. We use no such language to refer to the collective protesting of police bias and brutality, nor the systemic and societal devaluing of Black lives, nor the President’s stoking of xenophobic fears. Instead, we say the “tension from this summer,” or mention our “intense political divides.” If we can’t name it, we can’t address it. If we won’t address it, let’s not pretend we care enough to do anything about it.

King spoke with precision, and then he acted sacrificially to bring about change. As Presidential power transitions this week, I urge us to take the chance to reflect on our speech and our actions. What are you willing to name as wrong, abusive or a lie? How do you describe what occurred in the last 8 months? How do you speak up about what happened in our Capitol in the last 3 weeks? What are you willing to specifically support or disavow? Friends, I ask these questions with fear and trembling. I am asking them of myself, and I think they will bring you needed clarity if you join me in asking them of yourselves.

Many Southerners in the Civil War found slavery to be a fraught and even evil institution, but they would not agree that disruptive action was necessary to end it. What good was their uneasy sentiment, or lack of support, if they refused to take action to stop institutionalized oppression? Many Americans in the Civil Rights Movement felt uneasy about the caste system created by Jim Crow. They felt terrible about the indignities Black folks had to daily face, but they would not agree that strong action was necessary to end it.  Again, what good was their awkward discomfort if they weren’t willing to sacrifice their social acceptance to speak out against evil?

We might not have had the chance to speak up then, but we do now. If you find yourself aligned with the Republican Party’s traditional platform, and voted for Trump, and now feel that you are not aligned with “those people” who rejected election results or brought violence to our capitol, then find the courage to precisely name what you are for and what you are against. Your vague discomfort with what your vote might have been supporting will not save anyone’s life or republic. You have to name and reject it.

I am currently more aligned with Democratic values, and I commit to doing the same there. I will challenge specific behaviors that endanger the lives of others, that destroy the public trust through repeated injustice. As we remember King, and keep hearing about Lincoln, let’s be like the few Americans who went all in to affirm the better angels of our nature, not like the majority who noticed the evil but took no action to stop it.