We Are Parents - First: Or, How Our Kids Turned out Fine Despite Us

To date, we’ve devoted most of our attention in this blog to race, politics, and sports. We’ll have more to say on those subjects as time goes on. Believe it or not, however, we care about other things and it’s time we explored some of them.

First and foremost, being parents has defined our lives. Though our children have reached adulthood, we remain involved in their lives. We still try to “be there” for them and help when we can, particularly by sharing the knowledge we’ve paid so dearly for in the form of our own mistakes. Though some of our parents withdrew from taking intimate roles in our lives once we left home, we’ve chosen a different path.

Admittedly, cell phones, e-mail, and social media make staying in touch with our children easier as they’ve spread out across the country.  Even if it wasn’t so easy, however, we’re convinced remaining involved in our children’s lives, without meddling, offers significant rewards for us and them.  To date they’ve welcomed our involvement and we’re confident if we get overbearing about it, they’re independent-minded enough to tell us to back off.       

Our Children   
Between us, we raised 13 children.  There are, therefore, 13 stories. We won’t claim to have gotten it right with each and every one, but we can say this:  within their individual limits as people, all 13 are solid, respectable citizens who contribute to society and their communities as best they can.  They all enjoy reasonably well-balanced existences that bring them the highs and lows that go with living in America today. Eight have baccalaureate degrees, three are nearing one, and four have professional or graduate degrees. Yes, we’re proud of them and, we think, for good reason.        

We should note that their family stories diverge considerably because the marital and relationship histories of their fathers vary so much. They grew up in different kinds of families.  One of us, Woodson, has survived and thrived through 46 years of marriage to the same woman.  His five children, therefore, came of age in the stability and security of a two-parent household.

Rob and Henry, and their children, lived different lives.  Both married young, but experienced divorce.  They parented a total of eight children and held together blended families. Rob and his children endured the death of a spouse, mother, and stepmother. 

Gifts We Gave   
Though our children traveled different family paths to adulthood, we tried to give each of them, regardless of what else might have been happening in our lives, four treasures:  unconditional love, emotional support, financial stability, and a moral compass.  We didn’t always succeed. We know we made our share of parenting mistakes.  We’re often tempted to regret our failures, but as one of our wives once said, “You don’t get to do this over, but you do get to do it better.” That’s such good advice that it has helped us decide to stay involved with our children and do better in the process.

We find discussing these concepts difficult because of their subjectivity and the fact they defy easy description.  We would never, for example, try to define how a parent gives a child unconditional love.  We certainly wouldn’t try to tell another parent how to give it.  We try to make our children see what they mean to us, to let them know through words and deeds how much they remain a priority for us. Beyond that, we can’t say much, except that if we tried we’d have to say a lot.

Emotional support meant, in our children’s younger years, helping with homework and attending countless football, baseball, and basketball games, soccer matches, dance recitals, art festivals, school plays, and swim meets, as well as offering a shoulder to cry on when somebody wasn’t properly impressed with the prom dress. Today, emotional support may mean career advice that respects professed desires and objectives, yet remains grounded in our real world experience.

Assuring financial stability meant late nights, meeting deadlines, and enduring demanding clients. It also included doing without things we wanted for ourselves. Today, we focus on teaching financial literacy.

Providing a moral compass didn’t necessarily mean the same thing to each of us, given differing ideas about methods of discipline, religion, and sexual morays.  Each of us, however, stood by the conviction that we wanted our children to seek and work for a just and peaceful world, treat others with dignity and respect, and eschew violence if at all possible. As a result, we are confident they all now treat their fellow human beings civilly and compassionately.

Parenting isn’t a science. No assurance exists of getting out of it what goes into it.  We each know parents who did everything right, and more, yet ended up with children who did not turn out as the parents hoped. We understand just how much uncertainty attends parenting. Our experience, however, teaches that adhering to basic principles makes a positive outcome more likely.  The fact we’ve decided to stay involved in our children’s lives as adults and they, so far at least, welcome that involvement, indicates the wisdom of the path we’ve followed.                                 

  

       

Hidden Figures and the Super Bowl: The Skewed Relationship Between Black Athletes and Black Academic Performance

Along with 111 million other Americans, we watched the Super Bowl Sunday. Depending on your perspective, it ranked as a classic because of New England’s historic comeback or as a colossal disaster because of Atlanta’s unprecedented meltdown.

 A Movie   The first month of 2017 we’ve been as enthralled by a movie as we normally are by football.  Hidden Figures chronicles the “colored computers” – African American women who worked as mathematicians for NASA, helping plot trajectories for the early Project Mercury flights.  What does the movie have to do with the Super Bowl?  A lot, we think. Though the three of us disagree about some implications of this determination, none of us doubt the tie or the importance of the issues it raises.

The player introductions demonstrated the on-field black dominance of pro football. Each team’s starting 22 included 14 African-American players.  That dominance extends into the college ranks. Clemson’s national championship football team featured ten African-American starters on defense and six on offense.  In basketball, black players comprise 75% percent of National Basketball Association rosters and the best college teams aren’t different.

Woodson and Henry contend that African-American success in athletics results from the investment society makes in athletic facilities, financial rewards for coaches, and junior college alternatives for athletes not ready to play at major colleges.  They argue that similar investment in African-American scholastic endeavors would produce similar results, an assertion Rob contests because he sees the academic and athletic structures as too different to draw such a conclusion without more evidence than we have.  

Facts and Figures   This racial composition of sports teams leads us to the Hidden Figures analogy.  African Americans do not come close to similar academic performance. In a 2013 study, for example, 81% of white 12^th graders scored better than the average African American 12^th grader in math and 78% of white 12th graders scored better than the average African American 12^th grader in reading.

 This, we stress, is not about deemphasizing sports in school or society. We do not attack youth sports programs.  Our children benefitted greatly from participating in athletics.  Sports programs serve a useful purpose in developing young people, including youth from families historically lacking in educational achievement.

The movie, however, makes us ask how the United States can produce more minds like the spectacular ones in Hidden Figures, as well as better educate the masses. African Americans, like the women in Hidden Figures, continue to excel at the highest levels in many fields. The hidden figures remain with us.  But the nation must also confront how to raise achievement levels of all students.     

One thing we know works and a debate   While we don’t underestimate the role of poverty in the educational achievement gap, evidence abounds that parental and adult support make a huge difference in the development of young minds. Before we reach the issue of government funding for public education, we emphasize that educational achievement starts with parental/adult involvement and support for the individual student. That support runs the gamut from simple encouragement to helping with homework to tutoring to parent-teacher contact. Parental involvement lifts mediocre schools and makes good schools great.

Despite consensus on that point, we differ on a related issue. Woodson and Henry contend that institutional racism plays a predominant role in limiting African American academic achievement. They point to essentially abandoned public schools that have become little more than prison pipelines and where the war on drugs often serves as a vehicle for criminalizing young men of color, creating a culture of hopelessness.  Rob acknowledges that such racism exists, but argues that his colleagues put too much responsibility on it, giving blacks a pass for their academic failings.    

 Leaving aside political debates about “taxing and spending” and mind numbing battles over “school choice,” most people who’ve thought about this understand the need to better fund public education. We acknowledge both sides of the arguments about teacher pay and the role of teacher unions. Experts disagree about why some things work in education and others don’t. Still, given America’s middling standing among developed nations in student achievement, doesn’t it make sense to resolve our differences over these process issues and find a way to better educate young people?

We believe education can help solve many of the nation’s economic and racial problems.  The days of a high school diploma automatically leading to a middle class income are going fast and won’t come back.  As Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum demonstrated so well in their 2011 book That Used to be Us, increasingly, the ability to earn a good living depends on understanding mathematics, science, and business and possessing critical thinking skills, not making things with your hands.   An educated populace, equipped with superior analytical and critical thinking skills, we think, might also give us a better chance of breaking through our never ending racial discord.

Inspiration   The Hidden Figures women should inspire all Americans and African Americans in particular.  Rob asks that if they could do what they did, given the obstacles and handicaps under which they worked, what excuse do blacks have for not equaling or exceeding their accomplishments in a much different world, one with many fewer legal and institutional barriers to success?  As he sees it, no one now must petition a judge to get into engineering school, as Mary Jackson had to.  No one must sneak a book out of a public library to learn computer programming like Dorothy Vaughn, and no accomplished mathematician like Katherine Johnson has to run to a different building to use a rest room.

Woodson and Henry, however, argue that obstacles African Americans face today present at least as much of a challenge as those in Hidden Figures.  They point to loss of control of public schools and the exodus of the African American middle class to the suburbs brought about by desegregation, creating an underclass trapped in failing inner city schools and devastated by a mean spirited war on drugs.  They assert investment of more money in education (and less in prisons), with the laser focus currently reserved for athletics, would produce the kind of success African-Americans enjoy in sports.  Rob challenges this position, contending, again, that the arenas differ too much to justify such a conclusion.       

Despite some differences in philosophy, we agree communities of color need a new emphasis on education. Success in sports and academics is not mutually exclusive.  Hidden Figures and the Super Bowl provide examples equally worthy of emulation. 

      

         

 

The List: A Critique of Trump's Proposed Presidential Agenda

Donald Trump took the oath of office last week as the 45^th President of the United States amid pomp and circumstance, celebration by part of America, but trepidation, foreboding, protest, and fear by other parts.  His 40% approval rating represents the lowest ever for a new President, so Trump has his work cut out for him.  We won’t say we wish him well because, frankly, such a platitude from us seems meaningless and insincere given our attitude toward some things Trump has said he wants to do, like dismantling the Affordable Care Act, banning Muslims, giving new tax breaks to billionaires, and getting into bed with Vladimir Putin and the Russians. As patriotic Americans who deeply love this nation, we’ll just say we wish the country well and leave it at that.

A number of thorny issues fill Trump’s plate for the foreseeable future.  Some he put there himself in his zeal, and that of his fellow Republicans, to undo the policies of the previous administration.  Others he campaigned on, meaning the electorate will judge him on how he does with them. Some are there because they’re there for every President. We can think of dozens of things Trump needs to deal with, but we’ll hone in on seven that will likely move front and center during the early weeks and months of his tenure. Most have a domestic tilt, a few fall within the international realm, and some overlap.  All this presupposes Trump doesn’t face an early, unexpected foreign policy crisis or a domestic trauma we can’t now predict. 

Affordable Care Act Repeal   Republicans moved at warp speed in the early days of the current session of Congress to repeal the ACA. What they’re going to replace it with remains a major mystery. People who understand this issue know one thing: keeping the “goodies” in the ACA that even Republicans like, such as coverage for pre-existing conditions and letting young people stay on their parents’ policies until they’re 26, seems exceedingly difficult without the taxes and mandates the GOP hates.

Infrastructure/Jobs   Trump’s promise to bring jobs back to the rust belt may have won him the election. Can he now deliver? During the campaign, he talked about a major infrastructure program to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges, airports, water systems, and other public works.  Passing a major infrastructure bill, especially one that puts significant federal dollars, and not just tax credits, into play probably requires Democratic votes in Congress since Republicans usually detest such programs.  Will Trump propose something with real meat that Democrats could vote for? Or will he take the path of least resistance and offer up a tax credit scheme Republicans will support, produces profits for Trump’s wealthy corporate friends, but yields few improvements in the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and even fewer jobs.  

Russian Hacking/Intelligence   The new President will have a hard call once Congressional committees finish their review of the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia attempted to swing the 2016 election to him through computer hacking of his political opponents. Does he ignore a clear attack on American sovereignty and democracy? Does he reverse course and move to punish the Russians as his predecessor did? Can he repair his relationship with the intelligence agencies?  The questions bear on U.S. national security and our concept of the nation.

Supreme Court   Trump said he’d put up a nominee for the Scalia seat that’s been vacant almost a year about two weeks after he takes office. Does he propose a moderate conservative at least some Democrats could vote for or does he put up a right wing zealot, thereby inviting a bruising Senate confirmation battle? Which way he goes may signal something important about how he plans to govern.

Syria/Middle East   Trump never really said during the campaign what he thought about Syria except that it was a “disaster” and he offered vague, almost incoherent ramblings about Assad and the Russians being better for Syria than ISIS. Does Trump have a Syria policy or doesn’t he?  Maybe we’ll find out soon.

Immigration   Will Trump follow through on three promises he made (at least at times he seemed to promise them) during the campaign: (1) banning Muslims from entering the United States; (2) starting mass deportation of undocumented persons in the country illegally; and (3) building a wall between the U. S. and Mexico that would keep out illegal immigrants.  These ideas have legislative and legal components and Trump may not have the last word on them. 

Criminal Justice Reform   Trump didn’t campaign on this issue and it isn’t a high priority for his core supporters. Many of them, in fact, may oppose efforts to reduce incarceration levels and eliminate race based sentencing disparities. His business allies probably like it that private prison companies reap more and more tax dollars from warehousing inmates.  Communities of color, however, care passionately about this, and that concern presents a potential political opportunity for Trump.  He won’t ever get the lion’s share of black and Latino votes, but he could score major points with those groups, and some moderate to progressive whites, by going against type and taking on an issue outside his natural wheelhouse. It would resemble Richard Nixon, the unrepentant cold warrior, visiting China.

Trump and the country, of course, have things other than these seven issues to worry about, including the President’s business conflicts, ISIS, trade policy, voting rights, and many others.  But these seven issues represent headaches and opportunities. Minefields, and a few safe harbors, lie within this constellation.   Your ideas?

       

  

       

Missing President Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama gave his farewell address this week. Shortly, he leaves office as the 44^th President of the United States. We lament his departure and not just because of the dire prospects his successor offers. We’ve stated clearly how much of a mistake we think the country made in electing Donald Trump. We’ll have more to say about that in due course. For now, we celebrate and commemorate the Obama Presidency.

As the first African-American President, no matter how he did, Obama occupies a unique place in American history. That he accomplished as much as he did makes the man all the more important. Republicans, right after the 2016 election, started talking about shrinking his legacy. They will do away with many of his executive actions and some legislative accomplishments, given their Congressional majorities. They won’t diminish Obama as a president who changed the nation, impacted people’s lives, and altered American culture.

CHANGING POLITICS   

Obama campaigned as the candidate of hope and change. Even he’d admit he didn’t live up to all that hype – no one could. But, Obama changed an accepted tenant of American politics, just in getting elected. He showed that a person of color could win the Presidency. The idea of a black (or brown) President no longer represents a fantasy of novelists and screenwriters. That he won by capturing the nomination of his party and taking the general election in an electoral college landslide made his triumph even more remarkable. We’d guess most people who dreamed a black person could become President assumed it would happen through vice presidential succession – a black elevated by tragedy. Obama did it the old fashioned way. He earned it. No back bench Republican Congressman can erode that part of Obama’s legacy just by voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

A DIFFERENCE IN PEOPLE’S LIVES  

Americans may have forgotten how stuck in a ditch the U.S. economy was in 2009 when Obama took office – unemployment at 7.9 % and rising (vs. 4.7 % now), the stock market at 7,949, the lowest inauguration day number ever, as opposed to flirting with 20,000 now, home foreclosures skyrocketing, and, most important, confidence at all economic levels at lows unseen since the 1930s. That many give Obama minimal credit for changing things says more about them than him. He admits he never took a victory lap touting his success and that perhaps he should have. By rescuing the auto industry, pushing through Congress a stimulus package that paved the road back, and reassuring the financial markets, Obama got the nation headed in the right direction. That the recovery hasn’t been perfect – we know about the lack of wage growth – doesn’t detract from the significance of his economic accomplishments.

The Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature legislative program, of course, remains controversial. Polls show the electorate almost evenly divided about it. Those polls also show, however, that even opponents want it replaced with something that provides widespread coverage. Very few want to return to the Wild, Wild West that characterized health coverage before the Affordable Care Act passed. That fact alone demonstrates that Obama, by finally passing a national health insurance law, changed the dynamic around the issue. Republicans, in their zeal to repeal the Affordable Care Act, must realize that they take health coverage away from Americans at their peril. Why? Barack Obama.

GRACE   

Even before January 20, 2009, the new President acquired the moniker “No Drama Obama.”  He wasn’t prone to snap judgments, he didn’t indulge conspiracy theories, and he didn’t stir up or manufacture crises. He didn’t seem scandal prone. None of that changed over Obama’s eight years in office. In fact, he presided over a deliberate White House that, with a few exceptions, avoided the controversies, blow ups, and intrigue that had become common place in American Presidential politics. Above all, no scandals marred his Presidency. Even the trumped up IRS affair proved much ado about nothing. Vultures never circled the Obama White House because he and his aides didn’t leave battered carcasses lying around. Obama, his wife, and daughters conducted themselves with grace, dignity, and decorum. While many of his adversaries didn’t meet that standard, the President and the First Lady kept their cool in the face of both real disrespect and mere tackiness.

Obama wasn’t perfect. From time to time, even we objected to things he did or didn’t do. He occasionally misread the national mood, as when he used the words “cop” and “stupid” in the same sentence when discussing the Henry Louis Gates arrest early in his tenure. He whiffed on Syria. He likely deserves some blame for the decline in his party’s fortunes at the state and local level. In fact, his most significant failure might have been his inability to find meaningful involvement in the political and leadership process for the millions of young Americans who propelled him into office in the first place. Had he done so, the Trump insurgency might never have taken hold. We’re not sure any Democrat could have done better legislatively once Republicans took over Congress, but Obama sometimes seemed aloof from the legislative process. Yes, Obama has a few things to regret but, as Frank Sinatra might say, “too few to mention.”

The first sentence of Obama’s obituary will, no doubt, reference his status as the nation’s first African-American president. What happens between now and then will determine what else goes into it. Is there another President of color in his life time?  Does another Democratic President revive signature Obama policies the Trump administration dismantles? Do subsequent economic events demonstrate just how well he handled that part of the job?  Will anyone else govern with his dignity and intelligence? Will another family so graciously inhabit the White House? No one can answer these questions now, but they will bear on how history ultimately treats Obama and his times. What we can say now, is, “Well done and we’ll miss you.”

Election 2016: From Here, Where?

The Trump Presidency stands around the corner with many Americans anxious, fearful, and angry. The President-elect lost the election by almost three million votes, but on January 20 he takes the oath of office nevertheless. Fully acknowledging that we stand with progressives, we ask: What now?

If solving a problem first requires admitting the existence of a problem, Democrats and progressives initially must take ownership of their 2016 defeat.  That compels us to suggest that former President Bill Clinton rethink his public pronouncement that Hillary Clinton overcame every obstacle standing in her way  except FBI Director James Comey’s October/November mischief and Russian computer hacking.  

Leaving aside how much either Comey’s pronouncements or the Russian interference influenced the outcome, and despite our enormous respect for the former President’s political knowledge, we think he disserves our cause by suggesting that his wife would have won but for those two dispiriting developments.  Looking at it that way allows the Clintons, and other Democrats, to evade accountability and delays the process of moving forward.

The suggestion Secretary Clinton lost only because of Comey and the Russians roughly equates to a football coach whining at the post game news conference about officiating while ignoring his team’s five turnovers.  We see at least three conceptual shortcomings in the 2016 Democratic campaign that helped lose it and, more important, have implications for the future.

Strategic    

Clinton’s failure to campaign at all in Wisconsin now symbolizes the campaign’s strategic flaws.  That, however, wasn’t the only tactical error.  The candidate’s thin schedule, when compared with Trump’s intense barnstorming, the selection of Tim Kaine as a running mate instead of a candidate who might have energized young voters (i.e. Elizabeth Warren) or voters of color (i. e. several possible Hispanic nominees), and the failure to deploy President Obama in the Midwest when he advised the campaign he should put in more time there all strike us as potentially outcome determinative decisions the campaign got wrong.

Judgment   

Hillary Clinton did not wake up in 2015 and just happen to decide she’d run for President.  That die was cast from the moment she stepped to the microphone at the 2008 Democratic convention and moved to nominate Barack Obama by acclimation. 

Given that, some decisions the Clintons made defy logic. Could not they, or those around them, imagine the problem a private e-mail server might cause in a presidential campaign?  Did none of their advisers warn them of the danger of the Secretary having ANYTHING to do with the Clinton Foundation?  With the prospect of a White House run looming, how hard was it to see that speeches to Wall Street executives might yield embarrassing quotes?  Or did someone warn them about all these things and they chose not to listen?

Message   

Secretary Clinton had the makings of a strong economic message in 2016.  She made substantive proposals on infrastructure, job retraining, health care, and tax policy that might improve the lives of the working class whites who swung the election to Trump. Clinton, however, buried her proposals in a weak slogan (Stronger Together than what?) and a conviction that if she talked enough about the evils of a Trump Presidency everything would turn out fine.  

Elections for many Americans turn on what a candidate proposes to do that will improve their lives.  Clinton never figured out how to make that case, all the while permitting the untrustworthy, unethical, unlikeable narrative to play out.

Democrats need to own up to these mistakes and not fall for the comforting eye candy implicit in the notion that ‘we wuz robbed’ by Comey and the Russians.  Why?  Avoiding such failures in coming years, that’s why.

The Future   

After the election, President Obama reminded Democrats they need to “show up,” even in hostile red territory.  He won in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan and not just with minority votes in the cities. Many working class whites in those states voted for him and, he noted, he lost some rural areas by small margins.  With the election decided by about 100,000 votes in three states, Democrats ignore his admonition at their peril.  The Clinton campaign made the decisions it made, for better or for worse, but the President’s “show up” theory offers an organizing principle Democrats should remember.

No doubt, wanna be Democratic candidates have begun plotting 2020 campaigns.  We urge them to consider the front page test: If you’re contemplating doing anything that reeks of ethical taint, ask what it will look like on the front page of the New York Times or splashed all over cable news and the internet. We may have struggled with the concept of foreseeability in law school, but it’s not hard in politics. If it might look bad in the headlines, don’t do it.

As Democrats move toward 2020, there’s already talk of who might run, who’s going to be the lead singer.  We find having a song a more important consideration for the time being. Democrats need a message for 2018 and 2020 that attracts white working class voters who deserted them in 2016, while still appealing to the Obama coalition of young voters and people of color. In fact, the party’s most difficult task may lie in keeping the messaging effort from becoming a zero sum game pitting working class whites against black and brown voters so critical to the success Democrats have had.

The irony of this circumstance lies in the fact the last two, two-term Democratic Presidents, both immensely talented politicians, pulled off exactly this trick.  Bill Clinton (he was “Bubba” at one time, you might recall) and Barack Obama won election with strong support from both groups.  It can be done. It’s mainly a matter of working at it.  Over the coming months, we’ll have plenty to say about that work.   

Your thoughts?

The Russians are Here!

When we think of the 1960s in which we grew up, aside from the details of our own lives, we think most often of the civil rights movement and the struggle for racial justice that so defined that decade -- not unexpected for three black men from the American South. Others, coming from a different place, might focus on anti-war protests, the counter culture, or the beginnings of the feminist movement. We are confident, however, that every American who lived through that era recalls the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. "The Russians are coming" had a real, fearful meaning.

Russia v. U.S. We thought of the Soviet Union as "Russia." Fifteen countries made up the Soviet Union before it broke up in 1991, but we ignored Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Georgia, and 11 others. Only Russia, the biggest one, mattered. The United States maintained a massive conventional military force, deployed thousands of nuclear missiles, built fall-out shelters, and set up a huge intelligence operation mainly aimed at protecting the country against aggressive acts by "Russia." America devoted a huge portion of its GDP to defending its interests against "Russian" adventurism. In October 1962, a young President even took the world to the brink of nuclear destruction because of the threat posed by "Russian" missiles in Cuba.

This history makes all the more interesting the relatively mild reaction in the United States to reports that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into computers of Democrats, then releasing their embarrassing e-mails with the purpose of helping elect Republican Donald Trump. Whatever the differences between the old Soviet Union and current day Russia, until now, a fundamental tenant of American policy, and of our cultural understanding of the world, has been that the United States and Russia have different interests. Right now, the U.S. and Russia differ mightily over the Syrian conflict. Despite business deals and cooperation on the international space station, the two countries have non-aligned world agendas and the societies vary greatly. By and large, Americans haven’t cared much for Russia during most of our lives.

While some members of Congress call for investigations in to this matter, we don’t hear an outcry. One poll showed only about a third of Americans believe the hacking influenced the election. This story hasn’t consumed the mainstream media, talk radio, or social media. Many other controversies went more viral than this one. We dare say the 1992 "nannygate" scandal resulting from Bill Clinton’s intention to nominate corporate lawyer Zoe Baird as Attorney General generated a hotter firestorm than has the possibility Russia interfered in a basic aspect of American democracy. We don’t suggest nobody cares. Speeches have been made and statements released. But, the measured response raises questions we think deserve thought.

Admittedly, the public doesn’t have the full story. The government hasn’t released details of the intelligence showing Russia tried to tip the electoral scales. Much of what we know comes from anonymous sources. We also recognize no one can show that Russian interference determined the outcome. But, as we’ve written, we subscribe to the theory that many little things caused the 2016 result, and this could have been one of them. We emphasize, however, whether the interference changed the outcome isn’t the point. The fact remains that the U.S. intelligence community has determined that a foreign power, one traditionally hostile to American interests, interfered in our electoral process and the country isn’t up in arms about it.

The President’s reserved reaction fits with his "No Drama Obama" persona. He’s said he didn’t talk more about this before the election so as not to look like he was putting his thumb on the scale. He says now that in deciding how much to reveal about what we know and how we know it, he must weigh the effectiveness of a U.S. response against the right of the American people to know the details of something that affects their security and way of life. These considerations, at least facially legitimate, seem to have prevented venom from spewing out of the Obama White House.

Not so Noble We think, however, the muted American reaction stems from other, less noble motives. Dispirited Democrats, mindful of being cast as sore losers and seekers of scape goats, have decided to leave this to their Senators and Representatives to investigate "in due course" while they focus on other things, like picking a new Democratic National Committee Chair and figuring out a winning strategy for future elections. Republicans, giddy with the prospect of controlling both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, want to do nothing that delegitimizes Trump’s victory. Republicans have warmed to Trump, but only because he won, giving them the opportunity for the legislative and executive mischief they’ve so craved the last eight years. No matter how much they hate the Russians, and many of them do, they’re taking Trump’s lead on this.

Trump’s coziness with Russia and its leader, former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, has been well documented and we need not repeat it here. What further evidence do we need than the selection of a Secretary of State who received the Russian Order of Friendship award? Trump’s followers – his true believers – probably agree with him on the merits about the Russians – they’re not our number one enemy and we ought to forge closer ties with them. Traditional Republicans, like Mitt Romney, who don’t buy that at all, kept relatively quiet on this. They don’t want to endanger Trump’s presidency, and their own access to power, by riling up the country about Russian hacking and interference into our election. Self-interest Trumps everything else.

John F. Kennedy, in his 1961 inaugural address, warned that the danger of riding the back of a tiger lies in the possibility of ending up inside. The United States for years applied that axiom to Russian bears. Maybe we still should.

Outrage, anyone?

Attitudes, Behaviors and the 2016 Election

Some time ago, we believed race would diminish as an issue in American life.  We saw the progress made since our 50s childhoods and our coming of age in the 60s.  We read the late 70s/early 80s work of authors like William J. Wilson who wrote of the “declining significance” of race. With the 2008 election of Barack Obama, we reveled in the bright promise of a color blind, post racial nation.

Today, arguably we live in a better world than the one into which the three of us arrived between 1945 and 1951.  But, things we see every day tell us we’ve come to a dark chapter in the book and that discomfort, perhaps even terror, fills the pages ahead.  The complex issues like policing and criminal justice, a frightening electoral outcome, and the stark partisan divide in the country portend, in Martin Luther King’s words, difficult days ahead.

During our formative years, open hostility often characterized interpersonal interactions between whites and blacks.  Whites considered blacks inferior and viewed them with disdain, disgust, and derision. Blacks saw whites as hateful and viewed them with fear, mistrust, and suspicion.

White insults sometimes provoked fierce black reaction.  One of us, for example, acknowledges threatening to physically assault a white college classmate who spouted the ‘N’ word in discussing  a prolific black athlete.  This response, whatever ethical and moral qualms one might express about it now, generated a sense of empowerment.

We also saw another black response to whites – a transactional approach that sought tangible economic or professional benefits.  Blacks acknowledged white people didn’t accept or like them, but whites had things these blacks wanted – jobs, professional training, mentoring – things that made slurs, insults, and put downs bearable.  The notion that “we don’t care about your attitude, it’s your behavior we’re concerned with” summed up this way of dealing with white people. The advantages of doing business with the devil outweighed the discomforts.   

We used this method from time to time.  One of us tolerated a broadcasting mentor who made jokes about the radio station’s “Resident Negro” and the incongruity of designating oneself as “black when you’re really just brown.”  Another of us, in order not to jeopardize a summer job, bit his tongue when confronted with vile characterizations of black women’s private parts.  These insults stung, but we calculated the value gained outweighed the hurt.

We learned recently how much the world has changed, while staying so much the same. Racial hostility rears its head every day in America and blacks and whites still often view each other with the derision, fear, and mistrust we saw as young men.  But, racial insult may now command a very different response.

One of our ministers shared with us an unprompted essay by his 17-year old daughter. This young, bi-racial woman (Asian father/ white mother) wrote of her heartbreak at how verbal assaults on blacks at her school must cause “unimaginable” pain for her black classmates and their families.  That such things occur in America in 2016 surprises us not at all. The difference in her response and both the assertive and transactional approaches we sometimes employed fascinates us.

This young woman, raised in the bosom of a multi-ethnic church, spoke poignantly of how she hoped her God would “reveal the hurt” blacks and other people of color experience when whites say insensitive, hurtful things about “people I love so much and consider my family.”  In her missive, we see how different a world she not only craves but believes she has a right to inhabit.  Her desire that her classmates understand the hurt their words can cause showed us an unwillingness to accept an America in which racial insensitivity represents the norm.

Still, we understand how negatively people might view her response.  Some wail about the evils of “political correctness.”  “Get over it” and “stop being so sensitive” they will say.  Others may respond with admonitions that she “grow up.”  She’s only in for disappointment, they’d contend, if she expects real change in the attitudes of white classmates. Didn’t in 1957 we wonder when such things would stop in schools?

Our young friend’s essay causes us to ask tough questions.  What is the proper response to racial insensitivity?  The aggressive and transactional approaches we used back in the day?  Her heartfelt, spiritual call to our better angels?  Something in between? Were our approaches more “realistic?”  Did we pander? In confronting racism with aggression were we any different than our oppressors?  Did we miss opportunities to teach lessons about the evil of racial animus?

America overcame some aspects of racial discrimination. The laws changed. Blacks can eat in whatever restaurant or sleep in whatever hotel they can afford.  Blacks regularly get jobs they never could before. Some white people will even vote for a black man for President of the United States. So, yes, white behavior changed.

Our young friend’s essay demonstrated, however, that racial animus remains strong in America. Many white attitudes have not changed.  At the most serious level, law enforcement officers still mistreat and kill young black men.  Black people still get shot for being black, even in church.  At a different level – not unimportant, just different – blacks still endure slurs, whites still presume blacks unfit for jobs with no evidence other than skin tone, and high school students still sling racial insults at classmates.

Our young friend’s sincere, spiritual wishes notwithstanding, we fear the hurts she sees her friends of color enduring will sting more often, not less in the next few years.  The outcome of the election enabled at least some of the forces of evil.  Despite calls that our new leader more forcefully denounce the bad acts carried out in his name, no powerful admonition has been forthcoming.  The sincerity of one young woman’s plea compels us to ask how long we must wait.