Civility will not save us | TIME

IIn the view outside my window, the trees in my yard sway from east to west. The meteorologist said this would be a “big problem,” meaning that within hours the debris would turn the concrete streets into a mess, littered with whatever the storm brought upon them. I’m watching my kids watch Paw Patrol. “Grab the cable and pull it up,” Chase tells Rocky. My children, Asa and Ava, sit side by side, intently learning lessons of help in difficult times. The energy increases. They look from right to left. “That was weird,” my son says. “It’s just the storm,” I say back to him. “No storm lasts forever.”

This is true and false; some storms last longer and cause a lot more damage than others, I think. Some storms ruin us. Some storms leave debris behind. And some storms bring us closer.

America currently finds itself in a storm. A terrible, sometimes unbelievable storm. A storm so terrible and visceral that it seems to be the stuff of fiction and fantasy. From the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13th, to the questions that are not being answered, to the punching in the air, to the confusion and confusion within the Democrats, to the continued bloodshed in Gaza, to the burning from airmen himself alive, to students being tear gassed just days before graduation – it’s all difficult. We’re tired. And every day, as we watch the clouds form and approach in this way, we feel a sense of impending doom and dread. We are not well. Nothing seems safe. And I’m praying for us, trulybecause what lies ahead will be much worse than what is behind.

In times of crisis, whether in the 1870s, 1960s or 2010s – each had some form of racial and political reconstruction in its name – there was always the question of what kind of country we would be “after this”. At all these points, the American experience – for that is what this country has always been – has been shaken and challenged to its core.

And yet, there is something about this moment that feels different. “We’re in a rut, we’re in a rut, we’re going backwards,” my 90-year-old grandmother, who is a black woman born in the South, told me in a recent conversation while sitting in front of the grandfather clock with an American flag encased in it. your compartment is a long time to be in one place and have seen its bloody and sometimes glorious metamorphosis. Ninety years is a long time to be black in America and have seen America struggle. its existence, when so many try to deny it or control it. Ninety years is a long time to have seen wars and deaths and victories and losses and terrors and joy and days and nights.

But the question I struggle with, as I look at our country, at my children, and at a time when we are desperately trying to find answers is: what are the lessons? If, as the poet Robert Frost says, “the only way out is through,” then how could we live together on the boat while we wait so anxiously for the storm to arrive?

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“We need to be more civil this time,” I hear the voices shouting. “We need to be more united,” they say. “We need to unite”, they lament. What a bitter irony: people think politeness or courtesy will save us. “No!” I want to scream from the bottom of my belly. I can’t be civil and supportive of people who act like we’re not being eroded. I cannot be civil to people who want to take away the rights of others, who believe that only one group deserves power at the expense of the humanity of others.

I can’t be civilized. We are not the same. We don’t have the same kind of salvation in mind. I may be angry and full of fear, but I will not be civilized because civility will not make us free and safe.

Now is not the time to call for civility, unity and sympathy. It is time, always the right time, for courage, solidarity and honesty.

At this moment, we are faced once again with the harsh reality: we have always been on the verge of collapse and we call it luck or grace, somehow time has been bought over and over again. However, there is a danger in this; a danger rooted in a collective pessimism about our future and an inability to imagine anything different for ourselves.

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That’s what made me so angry right now. There is a kind of pessimism that wants us to believe that we should simply give up, that the “game” is over, that since we know the storm is coming, it is better to give up before it arrives. To that I want to say, especially as a black person in this country: this kind of pessimism will not save us.

This kind of pessimism, an American pessimism – the kind that will blame and resent others because of fear, ban books, steal the rights of human beings, make it harder for people to find a home in this nation, continue to send unjust aid, will give arms to the most hateful and desperate – they are destroying us. It’s not honest about who we are, what we inherit, and who we inherit it from. It resigns the system and the functioning of the country to the worst dreamers, those who created laws that turned others into second-class citizens, who burned and lynched, who created bombs in secret, who lied to ordinary citizens just to get money or votes, who harm in the name of God and country. This pessimism robs us, kills and destroys us, and not to mention that it weakens us to affirm that something different can be done for us, and that all of us – ancestors and heirs – deserve to live in a better future than the one we desire. were delivered. If there is anything to learn, it is that we must always challenge this American pessimism that eats us up inside.

My ancestors taught me that the authors of our destruction cannot be the architects of our liberation. That their nostalgia – in that dramatic and fantastic language of “We are losing, this is our last hope, to restore what was lost” – is the fuel of their ignorance and that we should not fall in love with a nostalgia like those that They are desperate that a country is changing, redefining itself, expanding to be more inclusive, becoming what it never was. It is true that those who got us into this mess do not deserve to be the ones who tell us how to get out of it, nor should we give them the power to make us believe that “it is what it is”. No. It will be what we do.

There has never been a time in our nation’s history when we achieved a better future by being civilized and united with those who wanted to drag us back to a racist past. When tragedy strikes, for any human being who can prevent it, we do not show solidarity, invoking performative prayers for their well-being. We were very aware that when time passed, they would return to who and what they were. They would galvanize their base by invoking fear, making promises that they are the messiah, who will save the resentful from losing everything in the end. My ancestors taught me to be skeptical and not supportive.

They taught me that the powerful cannot be trusted – not with the words “democracy,” “justice,” “unity” or “greatness,” or “America” or “past” or “present” or “future.” They taught me to be careful when people who come from hate try to tap dance in the name of love. As Maya Angelou once said, “when they show you who they are, believe them for once.”

They taught me that the powerful will use even those who look like you to do their bidding, to increase their power, their money, and their plans. They taught me to question who people tell me to be afraid of, what and who they tell me to hate, and what they tell me to regret – to be careful about the sympathy people try to create in the name of unjust causes. They taught me to question our addiction to avoidance, why the things we are told to be silent about are the things we are told to be silent about, to look at those who are not around when I am in a room, to avoid Oppression Olympics. Knowing that none of us are free, until we are all free.

They taught me – and my God, this is something that many in this country could learn from – that every human being is still a human being, and even the worst human beings are still human beings and deserve recognition as such. My ancestors taught me that everything you must do is to protect humanity and to protect yourself and others against the lies that they are less than human, that they deserve less power than you, that they are taking things away, then you must do it.

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They taught me to mourn when humans suffer, when things don’t make sense, when chaos reigns, to mourn when bad people become and do evil things. They certainly taught me not to act like bad people weren’t bad people, but to call them for who and what they are — whether they’re draped in a MAGA flag, shouting “you won’t replace us” or “let’s make America it’s big again”, or they are in fact saying that they are the party of justice, while conveniently sending bombs, arresting protesters and being everything they say they hate in others. They taught me that when the storms come, reach out, dig deep, and find a way to survive together.

The choice to help everyone see reality again at another time – to undo the damage that has been done to the words we use to describe ourselves, to speak, to challenge our despair and powerlessness – is imperative. It’s a choice to fight like hell for a fair world, and know that in the end, when the sun cracks the sky a little, you did your best and that your best is enough. With this truth, people have survived wars and depressions and famine and despair and storms and confusion and death.

“The world is before you,” wrote James Baldwin in Nobody knows my name. “And you don’t have to take it or leave it as it was when you came in.”

Not much hope there. But there is something there that keeps me determined to not just wait out the storm, but to protect ourselves in it.