Only once in my lifetime have I ever been where I am now: Confronted with the reality of social injustice in a country that is bereft of any sense of moral decency, consumed by consumption, lost in the selfishness of “whatever makes me feel good about myself is just fine with me,” and beneath it all, a cancerous, malignant, degenerative, rotting, racism and classism that I can no longer tolerate, or stand silently by as we continue to lie to ourselves, and to the world, about who we are, and how we see the world.
Between the emptiness of words like equality, opportunity, and freedom, and the reality of racism, sexism, the growing disparity between those who have and those who have not, falls a shadow so deep, so dark, so blackened and bereft of any sense of hope, that I see no recompense. I see no reconstruction. I see no redress. I see no salvation. I see no atonement. We speak lies and posit them to be truth. We distort and demean and we claim only to love. We claim justice is to be had by all, and yet we know, we have seen, we have had placed nakedly before our eyes, the reality of a country in which black lives — no lives of color — matter. Ironically, we see the problem far too simply — as though the world can be divided into two groups of people — people of color and people who are white. Those days, those days of the simplistic dualism of white and black and now gone, and perhaps were never true.
This was never a country that asserted and believed that being human was enough. This country was forged on the lives of people who were never believed to be equal. The truth is that the founders were not only racist. They demeaned and denied the humanity of anyone, white or not, who did not own property, have an education, and derive a living in a way that did not entail dirtying their hands. In the pattern that has emerged since the days of Reagan, we see the manifest destiny of their view of the world. Fewer and fewer have more and more. The rest of us are left to languish without health care, marginally educated and — increasingly — stripped of any sense that the future will be better — indeed that there is a future at all.
I did not start out this way. I believed the Great Lie of the American Dream, handed to me by my father, preached to me by my teachers, indoctrinated into me by a steady and consistent stream of misinformation and half truths by the media. All I needed to do was work hard, dream the dream, dedicate myself, and I could have anything I wanted.
No, I could not.
But this isn’t about me. Not completely anyway. In part, I am not sure how I got where I now stand. Beginning in the youngest of my years, I began to become radicalized, and day-by-day, black life after black life, with numerous encounters with the local police that remind me that I am not white (I am multi-racial), and that I do not deserve justice. I am still in awe that a police officer had the audacity to ticket me for speeding when I was stopped at a light because, in the words of my lawyer, “there was no good reason on god’s green earth why someone who looked like (me), driving a car like that, would be in that part of town.”
Well, I’m proud to be an American, because at least I know I am free.
No, actually, I am not proud to be an American.
And no, I am not free.
Whatever innocent illusion I might have had about the Greatness of America was taken from me by the Pentagon Papers. I decided then that I would never take a human life, and, though I escaped VietNam because I was too young, I knew that if it came to fighting in the armed forces or going to jail, I would choose jail. Eventually, I came to realize that going to jail was a useless gesture that served only to open me to violence. Exile was my only option.
Several weeks ago now, I received a summons to serve on a jury.
I was not prepared for my reaction.
I am not given to acts of civil disobedience, despite the lasting influence Henry David Thoreau has had on my life. Even during the final days of VietNam, I knew that the war would end when those who cared nothing for the lives of those who were sent to die, had had enough. Until then, the carnage would continue.
And yet, as I read the summons for jury duty, I knew I could not “serve.”
There is no justice, unless you are white and wealthy. Even then, justice is a catch-as-catch-can sort of thing. Even in my small corner of the world, having once been threatened by a local police officer on my own front lawn -”On your knees, hands in the air or I will shoot” were her words — I knew my place in this white world was tenuous. So, given all that I have experienced, given the continued killing of people of color, including Asians, given the failure of the Civil Rights Movement to secure an end to racism, why would I serve on a jury? Doing so would be the equivalent of my agreeing to serve in the military as a supply officer or a medic. I would still lose my innocence. I would forfeit the moral high ground. I would be just as guilty as someone who fired a gun.
If I agree to serve, even if it spares me from the moral indignity of going to jail, what good will come of my disobedience? To believe that a single act of defiance can change the world is an illusion, as much a lie as the lie that justice is possible for everyone in this country. It isn’t, and honestly, I cannot believe that a person of color could possibly serve in the military, be part of a police force, or work in the legal system. It is a compromise of which I am not capable. But then, I can’t stand for the national anthem, and I refuse to pledge allegiance to anyone or anything.
Needless to say, my appeal to be excused was denied. I have appealed again, this time including a list of all the encounters I have had with the Greensboro police. I have directly, blatantly, in no uncertain terms said that if i am forced to serve, if I were to watch a person of color commit a crime on a video recording that was an actual account of what happened, I cannot and will not vote to convict. I can’t. Not knowing that a white person would never suffer a fate as harsh, as racist, as a person of color.
And yet, I have not been excused.
I could, as many of my friends have suggested, play along. When I get there, should I actually be interviewed for placement on a jury, I will have the opportunity to say exactly what I know to be true. But will that be enough?
I don’t know. I fear it won’t be. I am still complicit. I am still as guilty as the cop who ticketed me for speeding when I was stopped at a traffic light. I am just as guilty as the cops who killed George Floyd. I am guilty. I also know that, as an American, I am guilty as well. Guilty for all the crimes against humanity this country has justified. Guilty for the violence against women and people of color which I cannot stop. Guilty because I was not in the streets after George Floyd was killed.
All my life, I have believed that, whatever the world did, I would not harm another human. I would love in a world in which all that is human dies. I would love and nurture and care because it was the human and humane thing to do. I believed with all my heart that changing one life was enough.
Now, I think not.
I raise my arm over my head. I clench my fist in rage and defiance. I have had enough.
