The Fragility of Racial Equality: What It Demands at This Moment

 

THE FRAGILITY  OF RACIAL EQUALITY:  WHAT IT ENTAILS AND WHAT IT DEMANDS OF US AND ME AT THIS MOMENT.

 

 

I’ve often remarked that the pursuit of racial diversity, inclusion and equity cannot be put on automatic pilot.  There are too many other pressures that can thwart making racial diversity and inclusion a reality which is sustained.  In a business, it’s the pressure to deliver sales and profit targets.  In government, it can be the pressure imposed by a financial crisis or, as is the case at this moment, a health epidemic.  It can also be thwarted by changes in leadership, some leaders believing in its importance more than others. 

 

This is not an academic concern. I have seen us lose momentum in realizing our commitment to sustain progress in  diversity and inclusion in companies, on university campuses,  and I’ve seen it in our Nation.  

 

A fresh light was shed on this challenge for me by a series of lectures which I recently listened to by Professor David Blight of Yale.  The lectures actually occurred in a course on Reconstruction he was teaching in 2009, eleven years ago. 

 

Professor Blight noted that the concept of racial equality has rested on three foundations: 

 

The first foundation grows from the belief that we are all creatures made in God’s image and that everyone deserves the respect which that belief imposes.  

 

The second foundation is rooted in law.  It didn’t really come until the end of the Civil War, with the passage of the 13^th Amendment, outlawing slavery, the 14^th Amendment, confirming the right to due process on all people regardless of race, and the 15^thAmendment, conferring the right to vote on all citizens without regard to race.

 

It was felt at that time, even by the Radical Republicans  that this pretty much did it.  Racial equality had now been embedded in law, it was acclaimed.  

 

The third foundation of racial equality didn’t fully come alive until the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and ‘60s.  This was the dimension of equal opportunity.  This has led over time to many things, including affirmative action, hotly (and I believe wrongly) contested, at this very moment. 

 

Professor Blight makes the point that the strong commitment to racial equality which, at least in the legal sense, existed following the Civil War in the three Civil Rights amendments faded quickly.  By the middle of the 1870s and for the next 70 or 80 years, it fell fallow.   

 

What changed in the 1870s which caused even the radical Republicans who had led the drive for equality to let up; to feel that their goal had been achieved?  

 

One element was the passage of the Amendments and the Enforcement Acts passed in 1870-71 which among other provisions gave the federal government the right to deploy federal troops to enforce the right to vote.  Treacherously,  the Supreme Court, in decisions occurring in 1875 and later, took the teeth out of the ability of the federal government to intervene.  It left the authority to enforce the rights conferred by the Amendments up to the states. And, of course, particularly in the South, states  were moving into Democratic hands. They were led by legislators, including many Klansmen, totally opposed to the equality which the amendments had called for.

 

But there was more than that which stalled momentum.  The severe financial panic of 1873 led people to worry about things they found to be of greater importance than pursuing racial equality.  The leaders of the Radical Republicans, who had led the drive for racial equality were dying:  Sumner, Wade, Phillips, among others.  And people were just getting tired.  They wanted to move on, and they had enough of a rationale to convince themselves, at least most of them, that it was time, it was okay to move on. 

 

Here is a classic example of the fragility of racial equality.

 

I would argue that we saw much the same thing following the Civil Rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s.  People got tired in the late ‘70s and ‘80s; we are just now waking up.  Ronald Reagan preached a convincing (for many) doctrine of a unified, happy, better America; the proverbial village on the hill.  

 

And something else was happening that gave credence for many to the belief that, surely, the issues Black men and women had faced were behind them.  There was the  progress of individual Black men and women.  The election of President Obama, Oprah Winfrey, celebrated sports figures, and many more.

 

And it went beyond the anecdotal.  There was a growing African American middle class.  The percentage of African Americans with college degrees doubled between 1995 and 2017, from 11% to 24%. And the percentage of Blacks living below the poverty line was cut in half from about 40% in 1966 to 20% in 2018. 

 

What more could Blacks be seeking, some asked—though it was more a declaration than a question. .

 

All of this brings us to today.  The murder of George Floyd and Covid-19's  revealing of immense racial disparities  have sensitized America, including countless White Americans-- like me-- to the continued burning reality of  of racial inequity and injustice  in our Nation. These inequities in education, wealth, health, the application of criminal justice and more are staring us right in the face. The facts are inescapable.  We have not seen anything like this in my lifetime.   

 

Still, the haunting question remains:  Will the fragility of racial equity which we’ve experienced many times come back to haunt us again?  Will our energy flag? Will this become another lost moment in time? Or can we turn this "moment" into a "movement"-- for it is a movement we need.

 

There are reasons to be concerned.  We live in the midst of a horrific health epidemic; millions of people face enormous financial challenges.  And for the moment, we have a president and any number of other politicians that seek to leverage the racial divide for their re-election.

 

To be clear, I am not despondent about what’s possible. I am lifted, for example,  by the relatively rapid if still incomplete change in attitude, policy and law with respect to members of the LGBTQ community. .

 

But I warn myself  and everyone who reads this paper that we’re going to have to be very intentional.  We’re going to have to mount enormous commitment—personal commitment—to put in place the systemic changes needed to overcome racial disparities. As my son, John, says, we need to keep showing up. Especially when it is inconvenient. Even when it's not clear that a "return on investment' will be realized. 

We need more than incremental improvement.  We need radical systemic changes in policy and practice--  in housing, criminal justice, healthcare and education. We need to confront the widening wealth and income gaps.  

 

Personally, and I am speaking to myself, we need  to  bring far greater empathy to our relationships with people who are different than we are. We need to let them know they count, that they matter.  We need to listen to them with an open mind and heart. That's how we will come to know and appreciate their stories as they learn ours. From this can come what I have discovered to be that most precious of gifts: a "positive transformational" relationship.

 

Transformational relationships build our expectation of what we can accomplish; they make us feel we matter; that we "belong", that we are '"in the house". They allow us to be freer to be our authentic selves  and to take risks. In my experience, it is generally harder to form such a relationship with someone different from you. That doesn't make them less important; it make them more important. 

 

As I chart my own small  part in converting this critical moment into a sustained movement, I intend to work on two objectives: 

 

1. Intentionally developing empowering transformational relationships with 4 new people. Covid-19 may make this more difficult but it won't stop me.

 

2. Working on systemic change in a) the support systems supporting the development of children, 0-5, and their families and b) the contribution to building racial equity through programs offered by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. 

 

I will pursue these objectives to the best of my ability.

 

 

John Pepper

 

Words Which Describe Why Donald Trump Must Be Replaced as President

 Over a half century ago, Walter Lipmann, then arguably the most famous columnist in the country, wrote, “Those in high places are more than the administrators of government bureaus.  They are more than the writers of laws.  They are the custodians of the nation’s ideals, of its permanent hopes, of the faith that makes a nation out of the mere aggregation of individuals.”  

 

It is this perspective that makes Donald Trump's presidency so dangerous.

 

So does this which Lipmann wrote eighty years ago, in 1940:  “Our civilization can be maintained and restored only by remembering and rediscovering the truths, and by reestablishing the virtuous habits on which it was founded.  There is no use looking into the blank future for some new and fancy revelation of what man needs in order to live.”

 

“The revelation has been made.  By it man conquered the jungle about him and the barbarian within him.  The elemental principles of work and sacrifice and duty—and the transcendent criteria of truth, justice, and righteousness—and the grace of love and charity are the things which have made men free…only in this profound, this stern, in this tested wisdom shall we find once more the light and the courage we need.”  

 

That is about as well as it can be said.

 

As is this quotation from novelist, Joseph Conrad:  “What one lives for may be uncertain; how one lives is not.  Man should live nobly, though he does not see any practical reason for it, simply because in the mysterious, inexplicable mixture of beauty and ugliness…in which he finds himself, he must be on the side of the virtuous and the beautiful.”

 

 

Trust—The Magic Potion of Every Great Team Effort

 “I think trust is the single most important thing in rowing.  You really do become part of something larger than yourself.  Every time you take a stroke you are counting on everybody else in the boat to be putting his whole weight, full strength into that stroke.  That is only going to happen if every man in that boat trusts the others at a very fundamental level.”

 

That monologue comes from the narrator in the documentary The Boys in the Boat, which tells the story of the University of Washington crew as they were preparing for their nail-biting win in the Olympics in Berlin in 1936.  

 

This description of the importance of trust, unbounded trust, shared trust describes the magic potion of every great team effort I have ever experienced.

 

 

A Man Forgotten Joseph Davies—Lessons for Us All

 

Joseph Davies was the second ambassador to the Soviet Union, serving from 1936-38.  He was 49 at the time; a practicing lawyer, defending companies against the government, quite successfully, most prominently the Ford Motor Company, which had been charged by the government with the requirement to pay back multi-millions.  The government lost that case and ended up paying Ford several millions, resulting in the largest fee to a lawyer in history at that time.

I just finished reading his book, Mission to Moscow, published in 1941.  It was very popular, selling 700,000 copies.  

His description of the Soviet Union was deep, based on extensive travel orchestrated by the Soviet government.  There is no doubt that he, like many other people, was taken by being “close to power.”  He and his wife, Marjorie, were treated with careful and, from all appearances, sincere hospitality by President Litvinov and other officials.

He offered accolades to the Soviet government on the progress it had made during Stalin’s first five-year plan.  Indeed, it was impressive, whether measured in infrastructure (e.g., railroads), building K-12 schools or universities, etc.  

Davies’ attempted to bring “objectivity” to his task but I believe  he far too kind in looking past the atrocities which were going on in his sight, including the “Trial of 20,” in which the defendants pled guilty (David felt genuinely; others weren’t so sure).

Davies was convinced, and in this I believe he was right, that there was a genuine affinity between Russian leadership, Russian people and the U.S.

He was convinced that “there were no conflicts of physical interest between the United States and the U.S.S.R….nothing that either has which is desired by or could be taken by the other.”  

The U.S.S.R.’s fear of Germany was high; no less was its fear of Japan.  As has been the case throughout its history, including in recent years, the U.S.S.R. felt under attack.  It felt betrayed by Britain and other Western European countries as they “gave in” to Hitler’s demands, step by step.  Both Stalin and Davies could see the ultimate outcome.  Davies, presciently, warned President Roosevelt and the U.S. State Department that, unless they provided strong support for the U.S.S.R., there was every likelihood it would get into bed with Germany to protect itself.  It was also clear to Davies before Germany’s attack on Poland that it would try to find a way to take the threat of a two-front war off the table by establishing a treaty with Russia, which, of course, is exactly what happened.  

Davies was too sanguine—as I have been, too—in forecasting the future development of the U.S.S.R./Russia.  He writes:  “In my opinion, there is no danger from Communism, so far as the United States is concerned.  To maintain its existence, the Soviet government has to continue to apply capitalistic principles.  Otherwise, it will fail and be overthrown.  That will not be permitted by the men presently in power, if they can avoid it.”

He expected the government to move “to the right in practice, just as it has for the past eight years.  If it maintains itself, it may evolve into a type of Fabian socialism with large industry in the hands of the state, with the agricultural and smaller businesses and traders working under capitalistic, property and profit principles.”

He was right in what would happen to large industry; dead wrong in what happened to agriculture and the peasantry.

In the end, it can be argued he was proven right, with Perestroika introduced by Gorbachev and what followed, Russia has moved to a more “capitalistic” economic form.  But it did so in a robber baron fashion, with the government (Putin) maintaining strong autocratic control of the kind Russia has embraced since the time of the tzars.

Following his return from his assignment in Russia and then later Belgium and Luxembourg, writing in 1941 just after Pearl Harbor, Davies offered this, addressing the concern that, in aiding Russia we might be creating a greater danger than Nazi Germany.  “I shall mince no words,” he wrote, “certain Hitler stooges have been trying to frighten us into the belief that Communism would destroy our form of government if the Soviet Union defeats Hitler.  That is just plain bunk.  It is bad medicine.  It is as unintelligent as it is unpatriotic and un-American.”  Hitler had declaimed:  “Peace of the world depends upon the domination of the world by the German race.”  

That said it.  Davies recognized correctly that “the government, the people and the armies of the Soviet Union stand between us in this fate (of being defeated by the Nazis).”  Correct in his emphasis on priorities, Davies was far too sanguine, indeed naïve, in not recognizing the threat of Communism, distant though it was.  

Davies’ naïve optimism, which was the outgrowth, I believe, of getting very close to a people and culture he had come to love, is perhaps best summarized by this:  “It is bad Christianity, bad sportsmanship, bad sense to challenge the integrity of the Soviet government.  Premier Stalin has repeatedly told the world that the Soviet government seeks no territory in this war.  It does not seek to impose its will on other people.  It fights only to liberate its own people and to give all people now enslaved by Nazi, fascist, or Japanese dictators the right to self-determination.  The Soviet government has a record of keeping its treaty obligations equal to that of any nation on earth.”  

Davies totally discounted the “so-called menace of Russian Communism” to American institutions.  “I cannot see it,” he wrote, “our soil is not friendly to or ready for its seeds.  Conditions certainly are not ripe for it yet, nor are conditions even possible to conceive that would be so bad, so desperate, as to cause our people to turn to Communism as a relief.  We know our system of life and society is the best yet devised by man.”

In that statement he was, of course, right.  And the threat of Communism was never as great as was broadcast by folks like Joe McCarthy in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s.  But it was a threat well beyond what Davies envisaged.  

It’s easy to criticize Davies in retrospect.  Yet, others, most prominently Winston Churchill, had a more realistic view.  I think Roosevelt did, too, though not one as clear as Churchill.  This is an example of how all too easy it is for highly intelligent people of good will to underrate the hidden duplicitous ambitions and intentions of some people pretending to want good will and hold a commitment to peace far different than they harbor.  On the other hand, there is another risk, probably equally dangerous.  And that  is to attribute malicious motivations to other people which they do not hold, at least to the degree we assert or fear.  These convictions and the actions they lead to can, tragically, actually bring us or our countries on to the collision course which both want to avert.  

In large measure, this was a driving force in the start of World War I.  I fear in some measure, it characterizes our attitude and relations with China and Russia today.  Food for careful thought.

Davies is a forgotten man today.  Testimony to the humility with which we should pursue our lives-- realizing even more that the most important thing we can do is try to make a positive difference along the journey of life to people whose lives we touch.

THE FIGHT AGAINST POLIO—THE SANCTITY OF SCIENCE AND RECOGNIZING WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT

 I just finished listening to a mesmerizing podcast hosted by Jon Meacham on the battle against polio.  I can recall this vividly from my youth, sitting in movie theaters and having the cup passed for our nickels and dimes, seeing a video of Margaret O’Brien, suffering from polio herself, in an iron lung, on the screen.

I almost didn’t listen to this podcast.  I already knew the story, or so I thought.  But I didn’t.  There is so much to be drawn from it as we tackle the threat of Covid-19 today..

The importance of respecting science.  The need for patience. It took decades to find the polio vaccine and have it expanded to be available to everyone in the country and the world.  It took resources, it took philanthropy, it took private drug firms working together, as they are today and did later in finding penicillin.  It took public/private partnership.  And it took focus.  And it took leadership, importantly, which I had not known or forgotten, in this case, the leadership of President Roosevelt who himself had contracted polio at the age of 39.  It left him unable to walk on his own for the rest of his life.

It tells the story of the two scientists who found different paths to the vaccine:  Albert Sabin and Jonah Salk.  Both sons of immigrants, Salk’s parents from Russia, Sabin’s from Poland.

The March of Dimes raised more money during the late ‘40s and ‘50s than any other charity in the United States other than the Red Cross.  It was rolled out officially in 1954 by President Eisenhower.  Eisenhower was known for what he called “my scientists.”  

We’ve lost some of this faith and facts, in science.  A respect for it.  President Trump  has denigrated the role of scientists, disputed their findings.  

The win over polio did not come easily.  While Roosevelt always made fundraising for the March of Dimes his focus on his birthday, there were some Republicans who wrote they would give to the March of Dimes on any other day than the President’s birthday.

The fear of polio impacted parents and grandparents just the way the fear of Covid-19 does today.  Many parents took their children away from the city during the summer, a particularly draconian period for the disease.

The scale of death from polio was small compared to what we are seeing from Covid-19, but it affected the young in a particular way that Covid-19 does not.  At its height, there were 40,000+ cases a year and deaths of 3,000+.

We can’t know the future of Covid-19, the path it will take, how long it will take to have a vaccine that works the way the polio vaccine does.  But we can take hope from history.  And we can learn what were the key elements which led to success.  Science.  Resources.  Everyone working together.  Philanthropy.  Public/private partnership.

Interestingly, the polio vaccine was never patented.  When asked if he would patent it, Salk responded, “The public holds the patent.”  He likened patenting the vaccine to patenting the sun.

My Faith and Hope in Joe Biden

I am counting on Biden. To pull the Nation together. Over the last month,  I  have developed far deeper confidence and faith  in him. In his mind and heart. He is a decent man; a man of character; a man with great experience. I believe he knows what needs to happen. He knows he needs to unite this country. Heal our wounds, bridge our separateness. He has suffered the worst possible personal pain. He has come through it. He has lived his life for this moment. Much as Winton Churchill It is his moment; his responsibility. He knows this. It is why he is running. 

He will be thinking of Beau and a whole lot more that we will never know. He has a loving wife at his side. This was made even more evident by her magnificent reflections during the Democratic Convention.  

Biden's acceptance speech was everything I hoped for.  He was crystal clear on what is at stake in this election—the character or as Biden rightly states "the soul of our Nation", His speech was filled with hope and empathy and the commitment to unify our country. 

 To that end, I hope and pray he includes Cabinet members and other senior advisers who represent diverse views and from across the aisle. Lincoln did that in 1860; Churchill did it too in 1940. 

We have been through worse as a country. We always have depended on great leadership in our most challenging moments. I believe we are about to be graced by such leadership at this critical moment. 

2020 - Confronting Reality and the Demand for Change

2020 – THE YEAR OF CONFRONTING REALITY; THE YEAR THAT OFFERS THE POTENTIAL AND THE DEMAND FOR SIGNIFICANT CHANGE

I’ve just finished reading the book, How to be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi, and watching the movie, 13^th.

In a way, it’s hard to imagine an encounter with a book and a film opening my mind in as significant and challenging a way to my views on racism, having lived this subject and thought about it and labored in it for close to 50 years.  But these two interactions have had that effect.  

For me, it has taken off the table any notion that a “color blind” or “race neutral” approach to confronting the racial divide that exists in this country will be adequate to the challenge.  

The only thing that will make a difference, and this will be very hard, is changes in policy which can happen through the exercise of power—political power, corporate power, grassroots power.  

This is not really a new discovery.  It was only the civil rights laws and the voting rights laws of the 1960s that made a difference, and even that has been only a partial difference and one subject to erosion.

Racial bias is deep and enduring.  It will not go away.

Eyes have been opened as never before to the deep inequities that exist racially.  COVID-19 and the racial protests surrounding George Floyd’s death are doing that.  We are witnessing a rallying of Whites together with Blacks in protesting inequities in policing and criminal conduct that I believe can, if sustained, result in substantive policy change.

The biggest challenge lies in changing the distribution of income and wealth.  This affects the poor, particularly Black, but people of every race and color.

The gulf in income and wealth between the top 20% and 1% and the bottom 50% (pick the percentages as you wish) is growing larger, not smaller.  COVID-19 and its economic consequences will make this gap grow larger, not smaller.  The new administration, which I trust will be led by Joe Biden, is going to have to take decisive steps in income distribution and inheritance policy.  As Kendi summarizes:  “Individual behaviors can shape the success of individuals.  But policies determine the success of groups.  And it is racist power that creates the policies that cause racial inequities.”

I drew many points from this book and film which opened my mind and some that challenged me.  In particular:

1. Reassessing my commitment to and call for the integration of Whites and Blacks.  I have sometimes lamented how Blacks separate themselves to be on their own.  I now see this evinces a certain disrespect and lack of appreciation for the natural desire of Blacks to share their culture and friendships with one another.  No one would criticize Whites for getting together as a group, drinking beers after a golf game, at a bar.  To be clear, my motivation for desiring the coming together of Blacks and Whites in sustained relationships is based on my own experience on the best way for White people to come to appreciate the individuality of individuals who happen to be Black.  “Individuality,” including all their personal qualities. I still hold to this view—strongly.  But I have to acknowledge a watch-out in this and it contains an element of racism.

At Yale, as I saw Black students sitting together in dining rooms, I did not see “these spaces,” as Kendi describes them, as ones of  simple and understandable.cultural solidarity.  “Integrationists think about them as a movement away from White people,” Kendi writes.

2. The film, 13^th, presents this remarkable analogy.  A monopoly game that has gone on for almost 500 years.  Blacks were allowed to be at the table for the first 400 years, even as slaves.  But everything they made in the game was not theirs.  It was turned over to their competitor, White people.  Then, during the last years of the game, running up to today, they were allowed to keep something, but less than the White people and too often, when they were successful, they were attacked, as Blacks were in the Tulsa riots in the early part of the 20^th century.  

Now comes the clincher.  Blacks are asked to play Monopoly today.  They’re told they are starting out with the same stakes as the White people.  They’re “free” now, so there is no reason they shouldn’t be able to compete equally.  But no account is taken that their White competitors have, over the course of time, accumulated lots of houses and hotels; they’ve been able to take possession of the key properties like Boardwalk and Park Place.   Some equal opportunity!  

While I think it may be changing at this moment—I hope so—there has been a huge cleavage in opinion between Whites and Blacks in the belief that the country has made the changes needed to give Blacks equal rights with Whites.  For example, in a survey of nearly 8,000 police officers in 2017, nearly all (92%) of White officers agreed with the post-racial idea that “our country has made the changes needed to give Blacks equal rights with Whites.”  Only 6% of White officers agreed with the idea that “our country needs to continue making changes to give Blacks equal rights with Whites” compared to 69% of Black officers.

3. I’ve become even more aware of the burden Black people are asked to play.  You’re expected to exhibit “good Black behavior” in order to make White people “less racist.”  In other words, Blacks feel they have to prove something, not just about themselves but about their race.

At the same time, they carry the burden for exhibiting to their Black friends that they have not left their Black heritage and Black culture behind.  

As I reflect—how often have I looked at an outstanding Black man or woman, and I’ve known so many, and think of them as a model of their race?  Yes, I’ve done that.  

How often, on the other hand, do I look at a White person whom I value and think of them as an outstanding representative of the White race?  Never.

So, a racist lens does affect my view, even at this ripe age of 81.

Kendi concludes with some very important points that I had not thought about in the way he presents them.  

“Moral and educational suasion breeds the assumption that racism minds must be changed before racist policy, ignoring history that says otherwise.  Look at the soaring White support for desegregated schools and neighborhoods decades after the policies changed in the 1950s and 1960s.  Look at the soaring White support for interracial marriage decades after the policy changed in 1967.”

“To fight for mental and moral changes after policy is changed means fighting alongside growing benefits and the dissipation of fears, making it possible for anti-racist power to succeed.  To fight for mental and moral change as a prerequisite for policy changes to fight against growing fears and apathy makes it almost impossible for anti-racist power to succeed.”

“Changing minds is not a movement.  Critiquing racism is not activism.  Changing minds is not activism.  An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change.”

I join this line of reasoning only to a point.  I believe it is important to simultaneously work to change minds even as we change policies. 

When it comes to diversity and inclusion, this is what has always led me to start with the mandate, “Make diversity happen now, in your own circle of influence.”  For it is as it happens that people experience the benefits of diversity they also come to see the rumored dangers that they might have suspected are fables.

Kendi is no Pollyanna optimist.  Nor am I.  He says, and I agree, before we can treat racism, we must “believe in the possibility that we can strive to be anti-racist from this day forward.  Racist power is not godly.  Racist policies are not indestructible.  Racial inequities are not inevitable.”

He makes the point that “race and racism are power constructs of the modern world.  For roughly 200,000 years, before race and racism were constructed in the 15^th century, humans saw color but had not grouped the colors into continental races, did not commonly attack negative and positive characteristics to those colors and rank the races to justify racial inequity, to reinforce racist power and policy.”

He is right, certainly as he talks about institutional slavery and racism.  But there is no mistaking the tendency of the human race, over time and to this current day, to separate ourselves from “others,” defined by race, yes, but defined in other terms—religious beliefs, ethnicity and other differentiators.  In the end, our task is to view every person as an individual, appreciate them for their differences, see the world as best we can through their eyes, recognize that our DNA structures are 99.9% the same and, if we hold to a religious belief, as I do, that we are all children of God.

I close by recommending you consider reading Kendi's book or watching the documentary "13".