One of my favorite quotes comes from Joseph Campbell. His lifework elevated Myth and mythology from ancient fables to include modern day allegory. He said, “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows but we can choose to live in joy.” His words rang true with a clear eyed view of man's mortal journey. Campbell was telling us to take the high road when sorrows prevail. You only live once and all you can put your hands on is the here & now. My journey has been a rational unfolding where sorrows were either small or far removed. Buying into his rhetoric was just that. With great timing, good fortune, sufficient diligence and White Privilege my life story has been a situation comedy with a happy ending. I’ve never had to endure grim sorrows that that rain down everywhere except for where I am at the time.
I could always dodge the weight of a sorrowful world. Maybe I’m too old now. Over time there must be a cumulative effect; what was just, ‘that’s too bad’ at the time gains weight and a deeper meaning. The result is deferred sorrow. The horrors of war and our collective inhumanity to each other either compounds with age or it makes you go numb. In the old days I never saw sorrow coming and when it washed over people like spring floods across bean fields all I could do was move my feet and wonder, ‘. . . what is this about?’. But this one, I see it coming.
It took a while for ‘Pandemic’ to register but it did. No safe place on the planet. I will have to hibernate for the next year. Mankind is just begun to suffer a large dose of sorrow. Then, just as Americans are trying to find the handle, another unarmed black man dies, on film, of police brutality. This sorrow on top of the other was too much and now we’ve regressed back to burning, throwing bricks, breaking glass, tear gas, rubber bullets, and billy clubs. I knew it would come back around someday but I wasn’t ready again. I fear. I never had the foresight to do that before. All I can do is stay home and avoid the virus but I’m afraid for so many poor people of color. It seems like a Catch-22. If the virus doesn’t get you the police will.
If you put good people in a corrupted culture, they will either assimilate or be rejected. In order to survive and advance a policeman can not push back against bad policy and practice. After the first Gulf War in 1990, police officers who served with the National Guard returned to their beats with aggressive, military, warrior attitudes. Waging war on the bad guys was addictive. Not that racism wasn’t already flourishing in police ranks but it began to surface with tacit approval. Over 30 years, police departments have morphed into military units with an us vs. them sensibility. White citizens get the benefit of doubt but law enforcement's fundamental priority is to have their way, if not by intimidation then by force, not unlike chivalry among knights in the middle ages.
Since emancipation, police departments realized the new dilemma, how to keep blacks contained? How do we make them conform to what we think is their rightful place? Not just the South; there was little or no tolerance for them in the North either. 160 years later, unarmed black men and women are still dying at the hands of white policemen. When challenged, authorities do what every smart lawyer does; blame the victim, make token gestures and resume the injustice.
White privilege has been so comfortable for so long we tend to see that norm as a God given right. When you’ve enjoyed privilege all of your life, then you have to live with a just and fair share of equality it feels like you are being punished. That is where we are. I fear for my country. I fear for white men and women who champion brutal police and condemn people of color for their pigment and a subculture they were funneled into like cattle at the slaughter house. I don’t know what I would do if I were black. I’ve never had to live with this kind of deep, wide sorrow. Leadership in Government is a myth. Their most important concerns are getting reelected, from the White House down to local mayors and police chiefs. Joseph Campbell is telling me to participate joyfully because it’s all there is. My brain tells me that he is correct but my gut doesn’t want to go in harm’s way just yet. White privilege; easy to hate but hard to let go.
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