How do you make a 10-year-old disappear? It’s easier than it should be

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I prayed for that 10-year-old child, raped and impregnated by a man who has confessed to the monstrous crime, a young girl who then had to travel from her home state to end that pregnancy.

Then, I prayed for America.

Just when you think things can’t get worse, that human nature couldn’t sink any lower, something happens to prove you wrong, to make you realize that the country is truly broken in ways that each day make the path to healing more difficult to imagine.

It is the case of the girl child who was quickly transformed from flesh and blood human being, used and abused by adults tasked to take care of her, to political cudgel, used and abused by a country that says it cares about its children most of all — and obviously doesn’t mean it.

If you cheered the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the constitutional protection for those seeking and providing abortions, this is the ultimate nightmare. It’s not the vision of a post-Roe world you want to present to the world, this story of a 10-year-old abandoned by the courts and the country’s health care system, a child many would have forced to bear a child conceived in violence, no matter the physical and emotional costs.

So, does that mean the most extreme foes of abortion rights have started to rethink the wisdom of their plans to enact ever harsher and stricter abortion bans in the states?

Of course not.

Instead, the narrative quickly shifted from stories of the indecisive giving birth and feeling vindicated by the choice forced upon them — to be sure, an occurrence that does happen — to a harsher alternative: Erase a 10-year-old, or worse, turn her into a weapon dreamed up by abortion rights activists and the party whose members overwhelmingly support that right.

For those with blinders on, softening an anti-abortion stance might require compromise, which equals hypocrisy if you sincerely believe life begins at conception — no exceptions allowed. But that kind of compromise simply makes room for the complexity that is real life.

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Jul222022 TAGS: ,

What it means to be ‘surprised’ by the massacre in Highland Park

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Why do I know that Highland Park, Ill., was the backdrop for “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” a 1986 John Hughes movie starring a young Matthew Broderick as a cheeky teenage suburbanite who misbehaves? It’s because so many articles recounting the horrific Fourth of July shooting at the town’s annual holiday parade mentioned it.

The reference was used as an emblematic totem, shorthand that tracked the comments sprinkled through the articles and tweets launched that day: “probably the last place we would expect this” or “just inconceivable in a community like Highland Park.”

I mourned along with the country at the heartbreaking details, the child left without parents, the grandfather in an extended family, now left without its patriarch, the mother hit as she ran with the daughter who saw her go down but who kept running to save her own life.

Will this country ever be rid of the senseless gun violence that stains a quintessential Independence Day celebration, with marching bands, floats and children toted in strollers and wagons? Will there ever be a consensus that pushes politicians to change laws that allowed a 21-year-old suspect to obtain authorization to purchase weapons at an even younger age, with a co-sign by dad, even after incidents that drew law enforcement to the home?

Apparently not until America decides enough is enough and makes elected leaders pay a political price, which has not yet happened.

But while I mourned, I also realized, and not for the first time, that Americans mark tragedies in different ways, with wide-ranging levels of empathy, that deeply felt emotion that allows you to look into the faces of those whose lives are forever changed by violence and feel the same pain, maybe because those people remind you of you.

 

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Jul142022 TAGS: , ,

‘Equal Time’ podcast: For Pride Month, reflecting on progress and the road ahead

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As Pride Month ends, celebration is tempered by setbacks across the country, from laws that ban transgender athletes from competing in school sports to efforts to remove books on the LGBTQ experience from library shelves. And with a Supreme Court willing to overturn precedent, many wonder if LGBTQ rights will be next. What is needed, culturally and legally, to ensure forward movement on the path to equality for all Americans? What can organizations and corporations do to be more intentional in supporting the LGBTQ community?

“Equal Time” host Mary C. Curtis explores what comes next with guests Sasha Buchert, a senior attorney in the Washington, D.C., office of Lambda Legal, and Kendra R. Johnson, executive director at Equality North Carolina.

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Jul032022 TAGS: , ,

A Fourth of July tribute to those who love a country that won’t protect them

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Just who deserves protection in America?

If you observe the folks this country chooses to protect and chooses to ignore, you may get an answer that doesn’t exactly line up with America’s ideals.

When Wandrea “Shaye” Moss bravely testified before members of the House Select Committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, I was enraged, though I know my rage slips me into the stereotypical category of “angry Black woman.” I refuse to give up a full palette of emotions because of fear of judgment.

When I heard her mother, Ruby Freeman, speak of the horrors she has had to endure, I was sad for her and for America. “Lady Ruby” was the moniker she proudly used to display on her shirt until racist political operatives dragged that earned good name through the mud.

At an age when she should be comfortably enjoying life, lauded for her community service, Lady Ruby’s life has been forever changed. “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?” she asked. “The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American.”

She’s right, of course.

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Jul032022 TAGS: , , , , ,

What hate did to Birmingham

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In the 1950s, Atlanta and Birmingham were about the same size, with about the same population, problems and promise, John Archibald points out in his book “Shaking the Gates of Hell: A Search for Family and Truth in the Wake of the Civil Rights Revolution.” But then, Atlanta fashioned itself the city “too busy to hate,” while Birmingham, “as the world would learn, was not that busy.”

I told Archibald I would reference that line, crediting him, of course, after he repeated it in a speech during the recent National Society of Newspaper Columnists conference in that Alabama city, his home base, because it was both ruefully funny and soul-crushingly tragic — and most of all, because it provides a too accurate view of a cycle that continues, one you don’t have to travel to Birmingham to observe.

Those at the conference got a chance to witness the roots and results of what hate did to Birmingham, how it labeled the city and hobbled its progress, during a visit to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Unfortunately, those who most need to learn its lessons would never have the sense or the courage to set a foot inside.

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Jun222022 TAGS: , , ,

When will Congress call domestic terrorism by its name?

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I can’t imagine how Garnell Whitfield Jr. did it, how he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to demand some sort of action from the country’s leaders on gun violence and on the domestic terrorism wrought by white supremacy. But as I was riveted by his testimony, I realized the strength and courage he must have drawn from the memory of the mother he will never stop grieving.

Ruth Whitfield, at 86, was the oldest victim in a shooting at a Buffalo supermarket that left 10 people, all African Americans, dead. It was May 14, not even a month ago. Yet there have been so many shootings since, it sometimes seems as if the rest of the world has forgotten. An 18-year-old white man is accused of carrying out the racist attack, accused of driving hours to hunt and murder as many Black people as possible.

“I would ask every senator to imagine the faces of your mothers as you look at the face of my mother, Mrs. Ruth Whitfield,” Garnell Whitfield testified on Tuesday.

Would they be able to do that?

“Ask yourself,” he said, “is there nothing we can do?”

The track record isn’t great.

I’m not sure what Whitfield was expecting from lawmakers who have a hard time even naming what happened. How, then, could they put themselves in his shoes?

Garnell Whitfield is far ahead of our elected representatives, many of whom want, have always wanted, to distract and downplay, to accuse others of bad intentions, to look everywhere but into the eyes and the broken heart of a man whose life has been forever changed.

Whitfield’s plainspoken speech must have startled those reluctant to call out “domestic terrorism” and “white supremacy” for the dangers they are, despite the warnings from FBI Director Christopher Wray’s March 2021 testimony before the same committee about the connection between the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and right-wing “domestic terrorism.”

They would rather, as Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas have done and continue to do, point to acts of violence by those on the left and accuse Democrats of using any effort to counter domestic threats as an excuse to go after political opponents.

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Jun132022 TAGS: , , ,

For Asian Americans, celebration, challenges and action

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May, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, has special significance in 2022, as both an acknowledgment of contributions and a reminder of a resurgence of xenophobic rhetoric and violence. Civil rights groups, academia and businesses have responded with action, education and activism, part of a “Stop AAPI Hate” coalition.

Mary C. Curtis speaks about the past, the present and future solutions with Anne Lee Benedict, active with MCCA — a national organization dedicated to advancing diversity, inclusion and equity in the legal profession — and Joanne L. Rondilla, an assistant professor of sociology and interdisciplinary studies and Asian American studies at San José State University.

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May242022 TAGS: , ,

What happens to America when optimism dies?

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When I interviewed Majority Whip James Clyburn in 2014 about his memoir “Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black,” the South Carolina Democrat was confident in America’s ability to find its way, no matter how extreme the political swings might appear at any given time.

“The country from its inception is like the pendulum on a clock,” the congressman told me. “It goes back and forward. It tops out to the right and starts back to the left — it tops out to the left and starts back to the right.” And remember, he said, it “spends twice as much time in the center.”

I have always appreciated Clyburn’s wisdom, his passion and his commitment to his constituents. But most of all, I have admired the optimism of this child of the South, who grew up hemmed in by Jim Crow’s separate and unequal grip, yet who believed in the innate goodness of America and its people. Clyburn put his own life on the line to drag the country — kicking and screaming — into a more just future.

He was convinced, I believe, that no matter how off balance America might become, the country would eventually right itself.

A lot has changed since that afternoon, when he sat at a long table, signing books and chatting in the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture in Charlotte, N.C., right beside his beloved wife. Emily Clyburn, a passionate civil rights activist, died in 2019, though Clyburn often references her wise words.

That optimism, however, has lost its glow.

Clyburn’s worries drove our conversation in July 2021, the second of two times he was a guest on my CQ Roll Call “Equal Time” podcast. The topic was voting rights, and Clyburn had opinions about the Senate procedure that would eventually stall legislation to reform those rights and restore provisions invalidated by a Supreme Court decision in 2013.

“When it comes to the constitutional issues like voting, guaranteed to Blacks by the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution, that should not be filibustered,” he said. And about restrictive laws being passed in states? “I want you to call it what it is. Use the word: nullification. It is voter nullification.”

“This isn’t about just voting; this is about whether or not we will have a democracy or an autocracy.”

With those remarks in the back of my mind, it was still startling to hear Clyburn last week on MSNBC, talking about his GOP House colleagues, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, and their waffling about complying with subpoenas from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

When asked if the government and Capitol Hill could “be fixed,” Clyburn, known for his philosophical “this too shall pass” mantra, instead replied, “I don’t know.” He talked about threats to undermine democracy and said the country is “teetering on the edge.”

And that was before the shooting in Buffalo that claimed the lives of 10 beautiful Americans doing something as routine as Saturday supermarket shopping. African Americans were targeted by an 18-year-old who wore his “white supremacist” label like a badge of honor in a heavily plagiarized racist screed, a man whose stated goal was to “kill as many blacks as possible.”

Is it any wonder Clyburn’s optimism has been waning in these times?

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May192022 TAGS: , , ,

What’s the state of our rights? Stay tuned

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The concept of states’ rights has never been pure.

The Confederates who eventually went to war over the right of their states to own men, women and children ditched their reasoning — that what they did was none of the federal government’s business — when the enslaved escaped to states willing to grant these brave human beings their freedom.

Then, it was time for Southern politicians to demand revisions and ever harsher penalties added to existing Fugitive Slave laws that punished those who escaped and anyone who aided them, including offering bounties that ensnared even freed Black citizens (“12 Years a Slave,” true story).

Hypocrisy has always been a feature, not a bug in the American way, especially for those deemed not worthy, not possessing “rights which the white man was bound to respect,” as Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote in the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford opinion in 1857.

You don’t have to reach back to pre-Civil War days for examples that prove the philosophy of states’ rights can be quite malleable when it interferes with a desired outcome.

A current proposal favored by a Missouri legislator, aimed at a clinic in neighboring Illinois, seems cut from the same cloth. It would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident obtain an abortion, including the out-of-state doctor or the person who connected patient to clinic.

Such laws, if approved in Missouri and elsewhere, while unconstitutional on their face and sure to be subject to a slew of lawsuits, could nonetheless serve as chilling warnings for anyone tempted to help a desperate client, friend or family member.

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May122022 TAGS: , , ,

When did admitting mistakes become weakness for Republicans?

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In 2002, Trent Lott of Mississippi tried, awkwardly, to make amends.

What did the then-Senate majority leader do to merit penance? Waxing poetic and perhaps feeling a bit nostalgic, Lott gave a speech honoring the 100th birthday of fellow Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, the onetime Dixiecrat who once broke off from the Democratic Party with a group of the like-minded to form the States’ Rights Democratic Party, built on segregation and steeped in white supremacy.

“I want to say this about my state,” said Lott, harking back to Thurmond’s 1948 folly. “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

First, Lott backtracked by saying he did not mean what he clearly said, calling the celebration “lighthearted.” Next, the apology, “to anyone who was offended.”  “A poor choice of words conveyed to some that I embraced the discarded policies of the past,” he said in a statement. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

He resigned as majority leader after receiving criticism mostly from Democrats but also from some Republicans, worried they might lose support of Black conservative voters for whom whistling Dixie was a step too far.

I’m not sure if Lott’s motive was genuine moral growth or reading the room. But at the very least, it acknowledged that longing for the bad old days was not a good thing.

For reasons exemplary or political or both, anything that name-checked the divisive and ugly politics of Dixiecrat days of glory was seen as a drag for a politician and his or her party. This was true even when the words honored Thurmond, a longtime senator, one whose hypocrisy moved front and center when his Black daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, in 2003 claimed her truth and her birthright.

Was 2002 really that long ago? In political years, apparently, yes.

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Apr282022 TAGS: , , , , , , ,
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