Not all Men can be Forgiven or Celebrated: Maleness, Race, and Redemption

Mark Sanford (R-South Carolina), Anthony Weiner (D-NY), Eliot Spitzer (D-former NY Attorney General and Governor) and Charles Ramsey. "Flawed" men according to some, but the first three have publicly begged for forgiveness and have reclaimed or are trying to reclaim their place in society. Ramsey, although doing what we typically celebrate as a good deed, cannot be seen as a hero as his prior acts seem to shadow his current behavior. His past is his current story. Consider that Sanford was recently reelected after lying about his extra-marital affair and allegations of stalking his ex-wife. Anthony Weiner, after publicly acknowledging his personal flaws that led to his sexting and eventual removal from public office, is now running for mayor of NY. Eliot Spitzer, who left office after his involvement with a prostitute was brought to light, is indicating that he will again run for public office. Charles Ramsey helped to rescue three women who had been abducted and held against their will for years. But he is abusive. Some might argue that the sins of the men are different. After all, the three white men “cheated” on their spouses and as such this is a personal matter that has no implication for how they conduct their public lives. The larger question I have is how are such decisions made? Who or what determines that the past should stay in the past and that some of us can be redeemed and others can not?

The stories of these men speak to how the intersection of maleness and race functions in American society. It shows how society determines who is worthy to be celebrated and who is worthy of forgiveness. 

Sanford, Spitzer, and Weiner, three White men, have come forward and declared their sins. The public confession of sins and asking for forgiveness appears to have become a norm in American society in general and particularly so for elected officials and other public figures.

The model appears to be:

1. Deny

2. Confess, while crying or looking forlorn (one has to have the right mix of contrition)

3. Confess sin as a means of (re)claiming public standing while promising that you know what’s best for the rest of us and/or that you truly understood why you did what you did (you have been pained as a result of your actions and have learned from this pain).

While the actions of these men have stirred conversation about the act of publicly asking for forgiveness, many have not looked at this process through a lens of race and class. This path to redemption does not seem available to Black men, regardless of social class. For some reason, Black men are unworthy of forgiveness. Part of it has to do with which behaviors become “normalized” and for which populations.

Let’s look, briefly, at the issue of sex scandals. Tiger Woods cheated on his wife. He like other men avoided, denied (to some extent), admitted, and asked for forgiveness. Some refused to forgive him. The sincerity of his apology was often discussed among media pundits. Yes, he continues to play golf, but his stature, in the eyes of some, remains tainted. Tom Brady and his “baby mama” drama has not received the same salacious coverage in comparison to others. He remains the darling of many.  Michael Vic, who was convicted and served time for running a dog-fighting ring, also followed the above script. Some argued that he should be hanged for his transgressions.  Ben Roethlisberger, the quarterback for Pittsburg Steelers, was accused of sexual assault (on more than one occasion). He remains a darling for many football fans. Spitzer, after resigning, was offered a gig on CNN, he became an adjunct faculty member at City College, and he wrote a number of books. Now he’s running for political office Sanford, as I mentioned earlier was recently reelected. Weiner, after comparing himself to the likes of Nelson Mandela, has found himself to be clearly ready to assume political leadership in NY. 

Not all sex scandals, and sins, are responded to in the same manner. Some folk are given pardons and others’ regardless of how they engage the public apology process seem not to be able to access forgiveness.

The Charles Ramsey case is slightly different from the other three in the sense that he was not directly involved in a sex scandal. Charles Ramsey, after helping to rescue three women who had been kidnapped and held hostage for a decade, cannot access the narrative of “hero” because he cannot be forgiven for his prior sins. The media, following the rescue of the women, informed the public of Ramsey’s prior charges of domestic abuse. It was almost to suggest that this man had no redeemable qualities, he was not worthy of forgiveness and as such his actions could not be celebrated (no I'm not condoning inter-partner violence).

Maleness, and its intersection with whiteness, affords some men access to particular narratives and tropes of goodness that are not afforded to other men. Discussions on forgiveness and redemption of Sanford and his colleagues tend to ignore the types of regulative governance that facilitates who can be redeemed.

As Ronald Jackson (2006, 51) argues, “American popular culture is fascinated with the game of charades so much that it is has produced its own complex White solipsistic versions, one of which centers around the varied iterations of the racialized body”. Such solipsism results in inscribing the Black male body with narratives such as sexual excess and violent depravity. This is at the core as to why Black men are not deemed as redeemable and why mainstream America cannot celebrate/recognize their current behaviors, regardless of their past. It also explains why White men, with similar past, can be redeemed. Goodness is inscribed onto their bodies. Newt Gingrich implicitly used this narrative when he argued that his philandering was simply the result of his youth and therefore he should be forgiven. This was a 30 plus year old man who had cheated on his wife. He like so many of his colleagues make the claim--I made an error, but because I am intrinsically a good man—read White man—you can trust me regardless of my past.

Beyond the ideology of white solipsism, the denial of redemption also results from some not being able to see Black bodies as a site of pain. Trawalter, Hoffman and Waytz, in their study on racial bias in perceptions of others’ pain, show that “people assume that, relative to Whites, Blacks feel less pain because they have faced more hardship.” Although they focus on health and medicine, I argue that their findings are informative for helping to understand why Black men cannot be redeemed. One must feel pain, emotional pain, in order to ask for forgiveness. If Black men are some how impervious to pain and suffering then it would stand to argue that they can never move beyond their prior “bad” acts. They are unable to do such because they cannot recognize and feel the pain associated with misbehaving. 

This is why Mr. Charles Ramsey cannot be celebrated. He is not able to wrench and purge the “evil” within. It also helps us to understand why Trayvon Martin was held responsible for his own death. Simply put, Black men can never be redeemed in the eyes of some. 

My life in a “Post-Racial” World

It’s been a while since I last posted. It’s not because I haven’t wanted to. So much has happened that I wanted to comment on. However, I was working through my response to a number of racist-sexist emails and tweets I received in response to the Trayvon Martin Social Justice Award I organized.

I will not post the correspondences I received. What I will tell you is that some went so far as to wish death to my family and I. Some felt inclined to tell me that I was racist, ignorant…. I’m at the point where I actually feel sad for these individuals. Sad that they cannot see how what they “condemn” they actually perpetuate.

There were a few issues that I address before I speak to my experiences as a Black woman living in a so-called post-racial world.  My sister-colleague, Professor Janni Aragon, and I will blog about post-racialism around claims such as “We have a Black President” in the near future.

Silence Perpetuates Racism

I was asked why not name the award in honor of Martin Luther King. I smiled; it was clear to me that this individual seemed to have embraced a rather deracialized understanding of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. In the 1960s he was not a “hero” in the eyes of a few. Oh, but in this so-called post-racial society some seem to have forgotten this. In the whitening of Martin Luther King (whitening in the sense that his image is often used to assuage White guilt) some have forgotten that his message involved a form of radical racial justice. 

In deed I decided on Trayvon Martin because his death, in part, embodies the radical racial justice calls of Dr. Martin Luther King—not the sanitized recitation we engage in every January. For many of the young individuals I encounter, Trayvon Martin’s murder resonated with them. But some would never know that because like the White liberals Martin Luther took to task in his “Letter from Brigham Jail” they refuse to listen. They refuse to allow minoritized and marginalized individuals to speak. And when we speak they often work to discredit our claims.

As Martin Luther King Jr. articulated in his letter “I am in [all states and cities] because injustice is here.” Yet, some deny it’s existence because they want to believe that we are existing in a post-racial state, where racism in a thing of the past. Those of us who dare speak of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression are told that we are simply agitators who need to stop engaging in “destructive” and “divisive” efforts. This is part of a muting/silencing project that must be resisted in the same way that Jim Crow laws were resisted.

Everyday I encounter stories of racism from the young people I serve. I see first hand how others go out of their way to tell them that they don’t belong. Black men are stopped and frisked, no not in NY, but on college campuses. They are treated as criminals because of the color of their skin. Students of color are called “nigger” and told to “go home” and that they "don’t belong.” Faculty members of color are treated with suspicion. If this is not racism, then clearly I don’t know what is.

Yet, their and my experiences are met with silence. We are told that while some individuals might be “bias” that life is better for us. I guess that we should be happy that we are no longer working on the plantation. However, I ask, when one is the recipient of such hate, when we are being terrorized on a daily basis, what exactly is better? And who is it better for?

Some are so caught up with defining racism by focusing on specific acts or at individual level behavior that they have lost sight of the fundamentals of racism. Racialized bodies might not be hanging from Southern trees. But that is not an indicator of a post-racial state. Racism may be direct, indirect, individual and/or institutional. Indeed as Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues we don’ need racist actors to have racist outcomes.

Racism is not a simple bias neither is it simply prejudice. Yet, some continue to conflate racism with these concepts. Racism involves the transformation of prejudice and bias, at an individual and/or institutional level, passively or actively, through the exercise of POWER against racialized groups deemed as inferior.

Racism, in the words of, Carmichael and Hamilton is "the predication of decisions and policies on considerations of race for the purpose of SUBORDINATING a racial group and maintaining control over that group." (Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, pg. 3)

Many, in an attempt to put the legacy of slavery behind them in hopes of achieving the utopian post-racial state, ignore everyday racialized-gendered practices that terrorize some of us.

As I live through my current experiences with gendered-racism I find myself fighting to have my voice and the voices of those who experience systematic racism on an everyday basis heard. I cannot pretend that these past few weeks have been easy. I’ve had a range of emotions. However at the end of the day I’ve decided to speak—to break the silence that is complicit with notions of post-racialism

Post-racialism is designed to render us silent or to mute our claims. It is because it requires silence that indeed post-racialism perpetuates racism.  Here are just a few examples of how post-racialism perpetuates racism via silence:

• Silence does not allow us to challenge the deracialization of Martin Luther King’s dream. Consequently we accept for example “A Day of Service” often with little thought to issues of equality, justice, and peace.
• Silence allows us to ignore issues of joblessness, HIV/AIDS, food insecurity and their relationship to race. We become silent when we use universal terms for fear of offending.
• Silence harms us when we deploy terms, such as “colored” and “nigger” that are steeped in historical a legacy of racial harm and crime and then claim “innocence” or “ignorance” when we are asked why.
• Silence harms us when we allow racialized actions to take place on a consistent basis and then simply say “sorry” and engage in no actions designed to implement institutional change.

Silence is sometimes the best response. However silence can also be an act of racism. When we claim at an individual and/or institutional level that we are committed to anti-racism and we remain silent in the face of racism our actions beg the question: Who or what does our silence protect?

Audre Lorde poignantly wrote, “Your silence will not protect you.” None of us are protected when we remain silent in the face of racism. So how do we respond to the silences that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us against? Those of us who experience racism, overt and covert, must speak. Yes, we are at times intimidated, but our silence does not promote change. It is only when we consciously work to unmask the often hidden structures of power, of which silence is one, can we begin to challenge power structures. Those in the majority, who benefit at various levels from privilege, directly and indirectly, must also break their silence. The pleas of ignorance or that it’s not my problem, or the claim that I’m not racist, are inadequate and are not enough! The onus of fighting racism must not be placed on the laps of marginalized and minoritized communities. It is a problem that we must all raise our voices against. We cannot lament on how our speech will be responded to and/or interpreted.

The Blood of the Lamb: How Society Stole my Babies

Today I lost 20 of my babies. Yes my babies! Someone unknown to me came and ripped them out of my future. S/he came and stole them, robbing me of their smiles, their giggles, their groans, their scraped knees, their futures. 

So many babies I’ve lost. Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Shelly Frey,… Too many names to list. Too many salty tears flowing like a river bursting its banks down my cheeks. I want to cry to God; I want to sing every spiritual I know. Jesus, wash me in the blood. But it doesn’t stop my heart from pounding. It doesn’t stop my head from pounding as I feel my blood pressure rise. 

Rise I say, rise! I rise up from my kneeling position. I’m desperately looking for safety. I’m looking for my babies. Their cries haunt me. My cries, like a wounded animal, haunt me. I try to muffle it in my sleeve for fear that my child might hear. After all, who wants to have their child see them sobbing uncontrollably?

Minute by minute we are given details of how I lost my babies—well at least some of my babies. Only some of my babies are recognized. Some others, because of their race and class, remain unknown and unseen. Experts on personalities talk about the type of person who stole my babies. Pundits on TV pontificate about the need for stricter gun control. But none of them truly understand.

None of them truly understand the pain I feel. 

Society is robbing me of my babies. 

We protest abortion clinics. We argue that abortion is a form of genocide. We talk about a woman’s right to choose. Well what about my damn right to have my babies live and not have society take them away from me?

Yes, society is worse that any gun seller; society is worse than any abortion doctor. Yet after every tragedy no one talks about how we are responsible for each other. NO one talks about how we work harder and longer trying to achieve some magic bullet that is to offer us a more fulfilling life while we literally stand by and watch them die (remember the gentleman in the subway?). We build more and more houses and hide them behind gates to keep out the bad elements. While we ignore that the bad elements can’t be contained. Greed, selfishness, narcissism, loneliness, and alienation these are our enemies and they can’t be contained behind any gate. They can’t be contained behind a six-figure income and poverty sure as heck doesn’t help either.

We concern ourselves with our social media presence while ignoring the old lady next door. We walk around with our phones glued to the palm of our hands. Yet, the body of a young woman murdered by her boyfriend lay decomposing in his bathtub for months. We are busy wanting to be seen, yet not seeing each other. We are busying playing roles as opposed to living roles. We are busy talking about economic poverty (a real issue!) while ignoring all the other deficits we face. Our politicians are busy separating people by class and family formation—acting like that makes some us better than the others. Our religious leaders are busy separating us based on their human and flawed understanding of God/Allah/Jah/Hashem/Jehovah...All the while they and we are ignoring each other. We’ve stopped taking care of each other! Who politicizes this issue? Who pontificates on this? Who regulates this?  

So many babies I’ve lost. Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Shelly Frey, too many to list. I’m on my knees, scrubbing their blood; their blood that lay pooled at the feet of humanity. 

This is me trying to deal with the grief I feel after the recent news of another mass shooting. I wrote this from the heart and posted without editing. I just needed to get this out.

Black Women’s Public Cries: Mothering, Death and Activism

Trayvon Martin

I don’t know how many times I’ve sat down to write this piece; each time I walk away thinking I’m not ready for this. The pain I feel about the loss of our children leaves me with such grief that I literally become immobile. After the recent shootings in Aurora, CO I thought about dusting this piece off—I wrote this piece on Mother’s day 2012. However, I was still crippled. It’s taken me a few days to comprehend the depth of my feelings. I realized that I was mourning. I was mourning in a way that I’ve never mourned. It seems that every since the brutal killing of Trayvon Martin, I’ve been in mourning for the children of my community.

Trayvon Martin’s murder touched me in a way that I can’t always explain. It is only upon reflecting on my feelings with an older, and much wiser, woman was I able to name the fact that I was in mourning for this child. A child I never met. Yes, I was compelled by the nature of his death. But for me it was something much deeper. It was as though I had lost my child.

As the weeks progressed and we learned more about Martin’s murder, I made a conscious decision not to listen to any of the rhetoric of the case. Although I made this decision, I continued to think about this “case”. Particularly, I kept thinking, If this were my child, how would I respond? Would I become an activist and mourn publicly, or would I mourn only in private? Then I started thinking of all of those Black women who lost their children to colonialism, the institution of slavery, and the institutionalization of racism and its correlate poverty. Then I stopped and asked myself, what would society look like if all these Black mothers choose to challenge the systems that robbed them of their children? Also, what would society look like if all of us who “other-mother”, as I found myself doing for Trayvon Martin, also publicly cried out?

 What would a global social movement, in protest against the brutal and senseless killing of our children, look like?

There is no way for me to chart the loss, broadly defined, of our children at both the national and global levels. But consider the following:

• In 2008, Blacks, [in the U.S] constituted 17 percent of the youth population (10-17). They constituted:

o   31 percent of all juvenile arrests.

o   26 percent of all juvenile arrests for drug abuse violations.

o   52 percent of all juvenile arrests for violent offenses.

o   58 percent of all juveniles sent to adult prisons. 

• African Americans were overrepresented among police shooting victims in every city the publications [ColorLines] investigated. The contrast was particularly noticeable in New York, San Diego and Las Vegas. In each of these cities, the percentage of black people killed by police was at least double that of their share of the city’s total population. 

The U.N.  32 children under 10 among the dead in Syria

•   More than 400 children in Syria have been killed since the start of the uprising last March, according to human rights activists.  .

•   In 2008, 65,646 children age 0-9 died of AIDS in South Africa. 

In his speech to the National Urban League, President Obama stated, "Every day and a half the number of young people we lose to violence is about the same as the number of people we lost in that movie theater" in Aurora, Colorado. Our children are dying!

These are somebody’s children. They have been removed from our communities as a result of structural violence—poverty, lack of health care, lack of education, and racism. We will probably never see the faces of their mothers. We’ll probably never see their tears. Many of them will remain nameless and unknown to us. Hopefully they will be comforted by a loved one. Hopefully, some stranger will walk by and bless them with a smile. 

Over time, many of us will forget their stories. As the media spotlight another story, the cries of these mothers will move to the recesses of our minds. We’ll move on to worry about what’s for dinner, how to make the next car payment, and the everyday challenges we face. Sometimes the tragedy is just too much for us to bear and we need a reprieve—we need to avert our eyes. We leave these mothers to mourn on their own. But, what if there is an alternative? What if we turn our grief into action?

Mamie Till Bradley, Emett Till's mother, crying over Emett's coffin

 What if we moved the conversation away from gun access (a valuable and much needed dialogue) to include poverty and other forms of oppressive structures? How might this help to form a movement that’s inclusive of mothers and other-mothers? We cannot turn our heads in the face of such violence. We need to (re)claim our communities. We cannot sit back and wait for others to come in and do it for us. They will fill our ears with rhetoric and no action. Our fore-mothers, such as Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer, provide us with a platform to build a movement. We need to write, we need to sing, sing like Nina Simone so that the world can hear our pain, we need to influence and make policies—in both the public and private sectors, we need to occupy the streets. We need to throw open our coffins and show the world the brutality our children suffered. We need our version of MADD. We need a mother’s day to honor these women. Such a day is needed to let them know that we recognize their pain. We need a social movement—one that addresses the multiple causes that encourage and perpetuate the deaths of our children. Let's turn our grief into activism.