In 1964, Malcolm X, having rejected the Nation of Islam and embraced Sunni Islam, wrote a letter from Saudi Arabia, where he was performing the fifth pillar of Islam — the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
“There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans … displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.”
1964 was an important year in American history. Not only did the country survive an invasion by The Beatles but it also finally acted to outlaw the poll tax by passing the 24th amendment. Not only were the bodies of Henry Hezekiah Dee, Charles Eddie Moore, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner recovered after being murdered by KKK members and white supremacists but Pres. Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, an act intended to abolish racial segregation in the United States.
Today, The Beatles remain popular, the victims of Freedom Summer have been buried and, in spite of the Civil Rights Act, racism in America persists.
Today, we lack still the unity and brotherhood that moved Malcolm X.
Today’s racism, in most cases, is often more sophisticated, lacking in the overt, vulgar and deliberate expressions of hate that have persisted for hundreds of years and lacking in reason, advancing arguments unsupported by facts.
Affirming the axiom that even a stopped (analog) clock is right twice a day, the execrable Ayn Rand, objectivist heroine and third-rate fiction writer, once wrote, “Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Leave them alone.”
I wish I could leave haters and racists alone, ignore and be blind to the rage of hate and ignorance, of denial of reason, that currently consumes so many Americans.
“When hatred serves as a dimension of self-realization,” theologian Howard Thurman wrote, “the illusion of righteousness is easy to create.”
I refuse to ignore the righteous racism that insists on devaluing the humanity of certain peoples by dismissing or diminishing them while at the same time extolling all the wonderful things white settler colonialists and their inheritors believe they’ve accomplished. Racism based on a delusion that peoples of non-European origins are politically and culturally inferior.
Within this context, I, an American of non-European origin who believes that we’re called upon to confront our history in order to sustain that promise that all people are created equal, want to offer thanks to critics of diversity, inclusion and equity programs and opportunities.
Thanks for being so unreasonable that there’s no ambiguity in what you believed.
I apologize, too, for falsely assuming you’re open to reason. Open to do the hard work to examine who we are as a nation and what we can do to assure all Americans are equal not only in the eyes of their creator but equal in the canons of jurisprudence, equal in debate, equal in opportunity.
For falsely assuming you’re open to arguments that acknowledge that for centuries Americans of color were enslaved, disinherited, exploited, oppressed, denied the right to own property, denied the franchise, denied equal opportunity to education, fair employment, fair housing.
These critics, vulnerable, fearful and exposed to unvarnished truths, today are facing the facts of an unflinching reality that for decades Americans chose not to confront — the persistence of systemic racism and institutional discrimination against communities of color.
It shouldn’t be too hard to acknowledge that we all have different starting points, with often insurmountable differences in treatment and resources being inequitably distributed, points related to identity, race and privilege.
Yet, for too many, the truth is too much to handle.
To counter the truth, some Americans have created a faux controversy that opposes teaching a more accurate reflection of American history that challenges the prevailing, predominantly white narrative of American exceptionalism. Challenges the narrative of immaculate conception, of America being born without sin.
These deniers of truth, resistant to reason, perhaps fear that if we teach our children the facts they might discern America’s a racist nation, or white supremacist sympathies, and feel inspired to do something about it. Something their parents seem incapable of doing.
Further, to advance that false narrative, they have embraced an anti-democratic, Jim Crow-inspired national wave of voter suppression laws that seek to advance the false narrative that Black people and other people of color aren’t real Americans who want to rewrite American history by advancing “woke” theories involving concepts of racial sensitivity, critical race theory, diversity, inclusion and equity.
They particularly hate “equity.”
Equality means what our Founding Fathers meant it to mean, that all men [and women] are equal in the eyes of our creator and free to pursue life, liberty and happiness.
Equity means that all Americans should have access to the tools that would enable them to advance and pursue life, liberty and happiness if they choose. There’s no equity if one party has broadband and another does not. If one drinks clean water and another lead-poisoned sludge. If one can vote and another cannot.
Equity speaks to opportunity, not to outcome.
Today, if we want to display the unity between white and non-white that Malcolm X never realized we must together begin by rejecting those elements who believe falsely their opinions are as valid as truth and facts.
Begin by acknowledging truth.
“I love America more than any other country in this world,” James Baldwin wrote, “and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
Exactly for that reason, for our survival, that’s what Americans must do.
(Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wor dpress.com and he can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com.)
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