~a column by guest Janice Fullman, Boston MA
“It’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.”
This was spoken by Doc Rivers, longtime NBA coach, a black man, after Jacob Blake, a young black man, was shot seven times in the back by a cop on August 23 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
I remember watching Doc Rivers years ago on TV; he was the winning coach of my home team, the Boston Celtics, when they won the NBA championship in 2008. He always seemed to keep his cool while he stood up for his players, so it really hit me when I saw him break into tears while making his statement.
My thought was, I don’t see how Doc Rivers can put words together into sentences instead of just standing there screaming “No! No! Not again!”
His is the most poignant quote from the past two weeks — weeks that included protests and rioting, two political conventions and too much sad news. For me it sums up what’s been going on — during these past few months of shootings of unarmed black people that led to the Black Lives Matter movement’s gathering strength; and for the past roughly 400 years of whites treating black people as if they are not humans.
In the two weeks surrounding the shooting of Jacob Blake, I watched the political conventions with a skeptical eye. First the Democrats. I was pleasantly surprised with their portrayal of the multi-racial look of our country. I enjoyed the roll call in which each state’s video portrayed a lovely scene and often a different ethnic character. There were cowboys, there were Indians (Native Americans, for correctness), there were whites, blacks and browns, there were Asians, Alaskans and Alabamans.
You might say I bought into the DNC fairytale of a well-crafted image of racial harmony and diversity. That is partly true, but it did present a hopeful vision of Americans, real people, working together. Those state delegations were charged with making a representative short film, and the results showcased diversity. Something for us all to think about.
The next week I decided not to watch the Republican convention. But I was curious about Melania, a foreign-born woman who burst into the “American Dream” in a lavish and visible way. I tuned in for her speech.
Here came Melania. As I expected, she was stylish — dark khaki jacket with military shoulder details. She paraded her supermodel cat-walk strut down the long corridor lined with white columns and American flags alongside the White House. She’d given the photographers, the audience and the viewing public long minutes to admire her. Then she was at the podium, speaking carefully scripted words in her carefully adjusted accent. Poor thing, she looked like a deer in the headlights, always peering sideways at her Teleprompter. When she stared directly at the camera, her narrow eyes seemed cold behind all that makeup.
She began by talking about the pandemic and its effect on “so many people [who are] anxious, helpless. I want you to know you are not alone.” She assured us that “Donald will not rest, he will do everything he can….”
Referring to the pandemic, she had been “moved by how Americans have come together.” This struck me as ludicrous: I’d been watching protests and riots and innocent people being killed by police every day. It didn’t look like people coming together. But Melania will look back to “tell our grandchildren about the kindness and compassion that we employed.” Was this true? I had not heard about it.
Then Melania played the immigrant card, telling us how it took her 10 years of patience and dedication, studying, but she finally became an American citizen. “One of the proudest moments in my life,” she said—yes, and she was forgetting to mention that immigrants would find it nearly impossible to follow in her footsteps. Her husband brought immigration to an almost complete standstill and stopped the issuing of green cards.
She talked about visiting sick kids in hospitals, said she held in her heart “children of all circumstances who I have met around the world.” But maybe not in her adopted country, where young children were torn from their parents and put into cage-like shelters, separated from their families trying to immigrate here. Or children who have been shot randomly because they lived in the wrong neighborhood.
As I wrote this, there was a new shooting. Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old self-styled vigilante, killed two people and injured a third, with a military-style semi-automatic rifle he carried into a protest rally in Kenosha. Our president made a statement, or a tweet, saying it was likely that Kyle was acting in self-defense. The President refused to condemn the young man’s violence. He issued his call to law and order after having been successful at inciting vigilantism.
I am sick of writing about all this, but it is occupying a big space in my consciousness. I don’t want to see and hear these awful things. I want to get under my blanket, turn off the TV and pretend it’s not happening. I hope this is my last piece about injustice in the USA for a while. I need to do something to shake off the feeling of guilt for not knowing exactly what to do besides vote. Soon I will help to get out the vote, but it will not feel like I’m doing enough.
I think I believe that living in America in racial harmony is possible. But a sense of automatically benefitting and enjoying my white advantage in this country is with me as I try to figure out what to do about it. It’s an uneasy feeling.
I notice that I did not write “my” country. I wonder when I will again.
