The past we step into
When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade? [1]
The arts took center stage at the presidential inauguration proving yet again how vital the arts are to our civil society. In particular, National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman stole the show with her reading of The Hill We Climb singularly articulating our shared pain and our collective will to rise. Her words resonated deeply with our national conscience. For a moment, we were thinking less about what had become of us and more about the possibilities ahead of us. She let us know that our struggles are just part of our story — and that there’s no shame in our struggles, only in our response to them. She allowed us to forgive ourselves.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
When I was young, our house was divided by many things, politics being just one of them. But more than other divisions that simmered beneath the surface, the political disagreements boiled over in full view, often with little warning.
I remember once, nearing my high school graduation, my mother had purchased a family photo session. In the car, all dressed up and on the way to the studio, I happened to mention that Atlanta’s public safety commissioner Lee P. Brown had been appointed police chief in Houston, where he would be the first Black person to hold the position. (He would ultimately become Houston’s first Black mayor.) I can barely remember how the conversation proceeded, but it ended with my father erupting, “He’s just another n — — r who’s gotten where he is because he’s Black!” That was that.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
As I raised my own family and saw the amazing people my children were becoming, I assumed such arguments were left in my past. But I was wrong. We do have disagreements, on a different spectrum, but sharp disagreements nonetheless.
I grew up defending the word “liberal” during the Reagan revolution. I never expected that 40 years later, liberals would be on the defensive again, this time, from young progressives. Gen Z is angry and frustrated — Clinton’s support for the 1994 crime bill; Democrats’ support for the Bush tax cuts; Obama’s incremental approach to healthcare reform; and the broad bipartisan support for American imperialism. In his New York Times editorial last year, Charlie Warzel writes, “The kids aren’t all right…. The kids are fed up. More specifically, Generation Z is disillusioned by a country and its myriad institutions whose moral arc seems to bend toward corruption and stagnation.”[2] That’s a harsh assessment to hear.
I see it in my own Gen Z children. I am in awe of their idealism, although I’m frustrated by their naïveté. I genuinely respect their integrity, but I’m heartbroken by their cynicism. Naïve and cynical are my words; they don’t see it that way. We argue about whether their fresh eyes allow them to see things more clearly or whether their parents’ lived experience allows us to understand things they can’t.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children’s birthright.
My kids haven’t succumbed to conspiracy theories, Q-based or otherwise, but I can see their empathy for those who do. Looking past the racism and the antisemitism and the nationalism, they understand the feelings of powerlessness and frustration and see that the cards are stacked against ordinary people in favor of the wealthy and connected.
Conspiracism has many origins, but its most insidious abettors are those who would propagate these lies among the powerless and disaffected for power and profit. As most of us have seen through our social media pages, the antidote to conspiracism isn’t more arguing. We certainly need to stand up to lies and misinformation, but experts maintain that the most effective thing we can do to fix our national reality crisis is to address the underlying problems that drive people to conspiracy theories in the first place.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
With every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
“A lot of the barriers to re-entry are very pragmatic and boring,” suggests William Braniff, a graduate of the United States Military Academy, is the Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) and a Professor of the Practice at the University of Maryland. “They’re not necessarily about changing someone’s ideas. They’re about giving them access to different circumstances that allows them to disengage.”[3]
Christian Picciolini, a former skinhead who now runs the Free Radicals Project, an organization that helps people disengage from hateful extremist groups, agrees. Picciolini’s work focuses on the role of identity, community, and purpose in drawing people into and pulling people away from conspiracism.[4] He says it’s impossible to separate people’s material conditions from their choice to join an extremist group or follow a deranged conspiracy theory like QAnon.[5]
Here I know my kids have a point. As much as I want to believe in the pragmatism of the past and trust the good intentions behind the compromises made, I also have to be willing to examine the full consequences of those policies, intended and otherwise.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
As a society, if we want to put this darkness behind us, we must reach out to the disconnected and disengaged with empathy and compassion but also with real hope and opportunity for a future that genuinely looks different from the reality they are living right now.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/20/amanda-gorman-poem-biden-inauguration-transcript
[2] Warzel, Charlie, “Gen Z Will Not Save Us,” The New York Times, June 22, 2020.
[3] Roose, Kevin, “How the Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis,” The New York Times, February 2, 2021.
[4] Picciolini, Christian, “My descent into America’s neo-Nazi movement — and how I got out,” TEDx Talks, April 20, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM6HZqQKhok&feature=emb_logo
[5] Roose, Kevin, “How the Biden Administration Can Help Solve Our Reality Crisis,” The New York Times, February 2, 2021.
