2021/1903/1619: why this week wasn’t really about Trump.
hello, friends.
happy new year.
it’s been precisely a week since the first day of 2021, which also happened to be the first day my partner and i spent in our new home, an arrival we eagerly awaited after months in an apartment that had become physically and emotionally stifling. the new place is awash with eastern sun, a stone’s throw from my favorite park, and cradled in a sturdy, post-war building on a quiet, leafy street.
currently, i am sitting cross legged on a stool — one of just three pieces of furniture we have left after the move — typing in a room that is bare apart from a few precarious piles of books and two potted plants. the plants, like me, are a little worse for the wear — a bit dry and wilted after some chaotic weeks — but we’re here. planted, i hope, in a new place that will offer a little more stillness, a little more light.
of course, new apartments, neighborhoods, or calendar pages can only offer so much relief. we bear our histories with us wherever we go, and time itself is more of a scroll than a book neatly leafed in one direction. despite the endless memes and wisecracks about leaving 2020 behind, the first week of 2021 has been tragically, if predictably, continuous.
in the midst of our complicated, sometimes-joyous lives, we are still living in a world in which injustice engraves virtually every space, in which a virus continues to steal life and livelihood, and where senseless loss and outright malice challenge our notions of hope. this week, we witnessed yet another moment of unmasking as one man, having chosen the mantle of this country’s worst convictions, summoned these vile truths once more into the broad light of day.
“one of the whitest moments in American history” said some — a caricature of white privilege, this caucasian spree of destruction, mockery, and deluded indignation. “shocking but not surprising” to some of us, but for others, not shocking enough — a day of desecration mostly witnessed, rather than prevented, by the same forces that have so often battered, abused, and silenced peaceful protestors of color.
for those caught off guard, we are confronted with the fact that once more, too many failed to believe the promises of white supremacist organizers. too many ignored or brushed off the thousands of online conspirators who have rallied, threatened, and boasted “Proudly” for years now of their hell-bent commitment to claiming this country as theirs, and theirs alone.
the last few days have been full of commentary, diagnostics, analysis, and calls for accountability. i am not going to add to the noise, but will just say that i actually don’t care *so* much what is done to Trump. i care more about what is done about Trump.
this moment, to my mind, is far more about “us” than him.
we’ve known who he is all along — he’s never stopped telling us.
but the shock and surprise of so many Americans over the past four years
shows me that we still don’t understand who we, as a nation, are.
“we” here meaning white and relatively privileged, the insulated and comfortable or at least comfortably-removed masses who have lived lives of both conscious and unconscious separation from the racial realities of this country. the reluctance to fully admit and confront these realities, especially in the past four years, can no longer be excused as mere ignorance. only a willful suspension of reality can explain any lingering denial of our nation’s problem — the problem, as W.E.B. DuBois put it in 1903, of the “color line.” at the time, he predicted this would be *the* issue of 20th century America. 118 years later, we’ve yet to fully enter, let alone transcend, this question.
despite all the wishful thinking, this nightmare won’t end on January 20th.
it will continue at least as long as this generation — and that is only if we learn something the MAGA mobs. for all their rabid nonsense, they do offer us a critical lesson, expressed with the terrible simplicity of their cherished emblem, the Confederate flag. in clinging to this symbol, they gesture towards a reality that most of us are unwilling to face: that, like the Civil War, the stakes of this “battle” are elemental in nature, national in scope, and lethal in its consequences.
at times, it’s been tempting shrug off the misguided grandiosity of these extremists, to chuckle at the absurdity of their fervent adoration for long-dead villains like Jackson and Hitler. but what is our basis for this sense of humor, or indifference? the assurance that these bygone eras are just that — bygone, safely captive to the past? where is our proof? just because we met these figures from the remove of history books or film does not mean they do not live among us today. i hope, after this past year and this past week, we’ll let go once and for all of this comforting fiction of distance.
history — not a set of pages turned, but a scroll, continuous.
or, to quote James Baldwin:
“history is not the past. history is the present…to think otherwise is criminal.”
so will we meet this mob, at last, with a sense of seriousness to match their own? will we call out not just for impeachment of one decrepit demagogue, but for accountability of all the enablers, and enabling lies, that will outlast him? when, two weeks from now, we inaugurate a leader who will look heroic simply by observing basic human decency, will we settle for the still-unjust status quo? will we make the same mistake again, believing that the zombie-body of white supremacy will not rise and strike again? will we still refuse to see our country for the complicated, wounded mess it is — and forgo healing for denial?
there is so much to grieve, and so much work to do. many have been laboring for decades, unseen by those who could afford ignorance. but now, in our lifetimes at least, no one can plead oblivion.
2021, and beyond, stands before us as a question. i’m already tired, but the bridges are all in flames. i pray we all give up the fantasy of “going back” — monument huggers and “nice” liberals alike. the only way is forward.
(this essay was originally published in my weekly newsletter, [me]re. please subscribe here to join the conversation!)
