‘In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I learned to read quite early, although I cannot tell you at what age.  When I went to school in England, the way of teaching reading and writing was by the phonics method.  So complete was this method, we even learned to ‘sound out’ the alphabet before we learned their names.  This is difficult to explain on the written page, but imagine ‘b’ and ‘c’ being sounded out as ‘bu’ and ‘ku’.  So I could sound out my letters and read.  Once I got started I read everything, to the amusement of my siblings, since my pronunciation could be quite bizarre.  Standing next to a bus, I proudly identified it as a ‘kitty bus’! It was actually a Manchester City Bus.

We forgive mispronounced words in children, in fact we admire their efforts, and try to gently correct them.  Writing is the same, although my daughter felt her way of writing the letters ‘g’ and ‘y’, sitting on the line instead of their tails dangling, was the right way.  Of course we are being warned that handwriting skills are dwindling fast, as keyboards,  microphones that translate the spoken word into text, all are helping to make handwriting obsolete.  Which is a shame.  Research has shown that the act of handwriting makes a special connection with the brain, linking facts with memory in a way that fingers on an electronic keyboard does not. 

But the spoken word has power, which politicians have always known.  How things are framed can alter perceptions.  This administration in particular has cleverly used words to turn a department of defense into a department of war, and then carried out acts of war illegally, here in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, and abroad in Central America and Iran.  Social Security, which millions of the US population (both citizens and non-citizens) have paid into over the years, an insurance policy for retirement years, they like to refer to as ‘benefits’, the suggestion being that they are a charitable contribution rather than earned income.

It is not insignificant when a political leader demeans female reporters, whether by referring to their appearance, or most recently calling one ‘darling’.  I well remember my instant anger at a physician that I had called to report on some heart irregularities of one of his patients. “Listen, honey” he had started.  I didn’t hear much after that, I was seeing red! Interestingly, that same cardiologist died unexpectedly some years after that, supposedly of heart irregularities. 

With the coarsening of the national dialogue, and demeaning of those spaces once reserved for dignified events, it is perhaps not surprising that, after the latest exhibition of the brutal sport of UFC (I am not a fan of violent sports), the ‘winner’ came out with an overt racial slur, demeaning no less than a former First Lady of the United States.  The outcry, the pushback, the public statements denouncing this display, were noteworthy by their absence.  But we are not surprised.  The so-called leader of the so-called Free World leads by example.  This week he told stories (and they are, like most of his stories, based in a fantasy world) in front of other world leaders, combining profanity with former President Obama.  Behavior that, if this was your teenage child, would be punished with removal of privileges, or worse.

But this has become the norm.  With the latest foray into making peace with Iran, I recently heard a TV announcer suggesting that the President has been ‘humbled’ by the encounters.  I beg to differ.  Being humbled suggests that one has learned a lesson, has recognized what one has done wrong, has internalized the situation and has grown from it.  In this case I would suggest that the better word would be humiliated, but it appears that we are not supposed to even hint at that fact.

One of the practices of this administration has been the white-washing of history, ordering information to be removed from websites and National Parks that tell the truth about the history of the United States of America.  Their desire not to make one segment of the population feel ‘bad’ about the many crimes woven into the founding of the country, from the wiping out of vast swaths of the indigenous people and subsequent heinous mistreatment; the trafficking of huge numbers of Africans with complete disregard for their humanity or dignity; the enslavement of generations of their descendants in ways too inhumane to even imagine; and the systemic racism that was so effective in the Jim Crow era and has only been driven underground despite advances in Civil Rights.

I have recently read several novels that incorporate the lives of enslaved people in the USA and in the Caribbean.  Scenes of obscene cruelty are difficult to read, and must be even harder to write, but of course many did not survive the actual acts.  But it is important that White people, as descendants of the race which colonized the world, acknowledge the brutality that was part of the lives of the enslaved and the indigenous people, in order to recognize the wrongs that continue to be a part of current life.  The good thing about exploring history is that there are examples of good and bad people in all of the stories, and while the enslaved were trying to escape to freedom, there were abolitionists who were aiding and abetting through the Underground Railroad and other means. 

On this Juneteenth, a day when the Obama Presidential Center officially opens, it is important that all citizens of the United States celebrate ‘Ourstory’, a history of a diverse people who all call the USA home.  I recently read about David Dinkens, first African American mayor of New York.  He was quotes as saying that New York city was not a melting pot, ‘where everyone was supposed to dissolve into the same gray broth’.  He called New York ‘a gorgeous mosaic’, made beautiful by the fact that each tile kept its own color.  If only the whole country could see that vision.  Could appreciate each tile for its own hue, while also embracing all as a part of a beautiful whole.

Have a wonderful weekend, Family! May you celebrate your own personal story, along with the stories of everyone else in this world.  May we one day live up to our potential.

One Love!

Namaste.

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