One Big Thing: Just Mercy
Sally and I (with my sister-in-law and Vernaculist subscriber Elena) watched Just Mercy over the weekend. It’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, and every American adult needs to see it.
The movie tells the story of Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, in his tireless but successful fight to free Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx) from death row. It’s harrowing, angering, saddening, uplifting, and challenging. I cried—more than once. And it’s streaming for free all month. There’s a quote at the end that is worth repeating here:
Through this work, I’ve learned that each of us is more than the worst thing that we’ve ever done. That the opposite of poverty isn’t wealth. The opposite of poverty is justice. That the character of our nation isn’t reflected in how we treat the rich and the privileged, but how we treat the poor, the disfavored and condemned. Our system has taken more away from this innocent man than it has the power to give back. But I believe if each of us can follow his lead, we can change this world for the better. If we can look at ourselves closely, and honestly, I believe we will see that we all need justice. We all need mercy. And perhaps, we all need some measure of unmerited grace.
Whew.
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An Awakening on Race?
It has now been 20 days since George Floyd was murdered. It’s been 94 days since Breonna Taylor was murdered. It’s been 113 days since Ahmaud Arbery was murdered.
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day when he expressed skepticism about the unrest that America has seen in the past three weeks. I think that kind of skepticism is reasonable, but I don’t think it’s fully correct. I’m optimistic that this moment can be different from the post-Ferguson moment, and launch movements that both sustain and have meaningful impact.
Sure, a lot of the corporatist bandwagoning is overwrought performance art (to wit: Gushers informed the world that they, indeed, are not racist—I know a lot of grade school-age fruit snack fans were concerned about the stance of their favorite sugarcane-fueled conglomerate.) And yes, even the well-meaning #BlackoutTuesday quickly descended into vapid virtue signaling that undermined the original intent of the movement and drowned out more vital voices.
But put all of that to the side for a moment. If you have any social media account, you’ve read or seen heartbreaking stories of racism and reconciliation over the past few weeks. You’ve heard our Black brothers and sisters talk about their experiences. You’ve encountered at least a dozen lists of books that you can read to learn more. These are all good things, and I’m hopeful that they’ll lead to sustained conversations and meaningful, national reconciliation. There are cracks in my optimism though.
Protesters in NYC during 2014 protests after the Ferguson, MO shooting of Michael Brown (cred: Otto Yamamoto)
Reflections from a Token Black Friend by Ramesh Nagarajah (Medium)
A friend of mine (and subscriber to The Vernaculist) sent this to me. My friend is a Black American who grew up in a largely white, relatively affluent community. He told me that this piece speaks to his own experience as well. My first reaction was that I’m a terrible friend for not understanding that this was his experience; my second reaction was to ask, “how can I help?”
Many of the white people I know have no concept of the role they’ve played, passively or actively, in perpetuating these conditions. They have no idea how much we long to hear them speak up for us and to embrace some of the discomfort around these issues with us. Furthermore, the good ones are oblivious to the level of overt racism still out there. I have been among my white friends each time I’ve been called “nigger” by a stranger. And every time, my white friends seemed shocked. They had been misled to believe that kind of overt racism only happened in the past (or in To Kill a Mockingbird).
Or a Missed Opportunity?
In last week’s newsletter, I wrote:
I’m concerned that a lack of linkage between grievance and solution—or divergence on solutions—will hinder progress.
Today is a rare instance in which i think that something I said aged well. There are two issues, I think, that pose significant challenges to the possibility of substantive progress on racial justice and specifically criminal justice reform as we emerge from this crisis, and the first is a harbinger (or perhaps a symptom) of the second.
The first problem is a hijacking of the criminal justice reform movement by the criminal justice negation movement. A brief anecdote will suffice: in last week’s installment, I recommended a DeRay McKesson interview on the Bill Simmons podcast in which he talks about what we can do right now in this moment. DeRay has done his research, knows what he’s talking about, and has identified (with his team) 8 policies that can reduce police violence by 75%. And they’re commonsense solutions (see the left image in this tweet).
But the ink had barely dried on DeRay’s campaign (8cantwait.com) before the site had to issue the following apology (now visible at the top of the homepage). Its crime? #8cantwait had unintentionally distracted from the efforts of activists who are aiming for “paradigmatic shifts that are newly possible.”
What paradigmatic shifts, you ask? Here’s the New York Times on Friday:
So why is this a problem? It’s not because the New York Times is publishing a provocative article. (Unlike some NYT staff, I actually think that’s one of the purposes of an opinion section—to help us engage both good and bad ideas in good faith.)
No, this is a problem because meaningful progress will only come if it is a) politically feasible and b) incremental. For the next seven months we have an imbecilic president who likes to tweet about “LAW AND ORDER.” We have a Republican-controlled Senate, and more Republican governors than Democratic ones. Efforts to “literally abolish the police” are a complete non-starter for the so-called “law and order” party. (For an interesting history of that moniker, see Ava DuVernay’s 13th, which I recommended last week.) The police reform movement is being undermined by the political shortsightedness of its own members.
This of course is not a new phenomenon, but it’s an important principle for social organizers to understand: movements are judged by their most fanatical adherents. It’s why people think of pro-life people (like myself) as more likely to bomb an abortion clinic than to stand outside of one praying the Rosary. If the “end police violence” cries sustain their metamorphosis to “abolish the police” cries, I fear that all of the meaningful reforms that could (indeed, should) happen will never see the light of day.
I mentioned that there is a second, bigger problem too. That problem is the so-called Great Awokening, which is widening our partisan and ideological divides in America to what has to be the breaking point. More on that in next week’s newsletter, but to get you thinking about it, I’m including the below:
The American Press is Destroying Itself by Matt Taibbi (Substack)
[P]olice violence, and Trump’s daily assaults on the presidential competence standard, are only part of the disaster. On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described liberals, we’re watching an intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.
The American Virus by Eliot Weinberger (The London Review of Books)
It’s amazing to think that COVID-19 may not actually be the biggest story of 2020 by the time we roll into 2021 . Already, the effects of the pandemic (and America’s response to it) are at risk of being overshadowed by other, more immediate events. But let’s not forget that the U.S., which has approximately four percent of the world’s population, has accounted for twenty-five percent of the world’s known pandemic deaths. That’s a disastrous policy failure by any measure. Eliot Weinberger digs in:
The procurement and distribution of personal protection and other medical equipment was the domain not of federal emergency, public health or even military officials but of a team of young volunteers from venture capital firms led by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. On the VIP list of those to be given ‘communications priority’ were Mar-a-Lago members, Fox News commentators and Republican donors. Kushner, an unsuccessful real estate developer, is also in charge of bringing peace to the Middle East, reforming the criminal justice system, overseeing the building of the Mexican border wall, diplomacy with China, the 2020 re-election campaign and the creation of an Office of American Innovation dedicated to entirely revamping the way the government works. His efforts at procurement have been disastrous, and there is a continuing nationwide shortage.
I’m starting to think that maybe Jared Kushner isn’t very good at his job(s). Whoever thought that a neophyte benefiting from nepotism would be so incompetent? I never saw this coming.
A Conversation: Retired African American MLB players on race, baseball, America by Ken Rosenthal and Doug Glanville (The Athletic)
We don’t have baseball yet (and it looks like that if we have it at all it will be a fifty (!) game season), so here’s something good: Rosenthal and Glanville sat down for an interview (via Zoom of course) with Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, Dontrelle Willis (the D-Train!), Torii Hunter, and LaTroy Hawkins for a conversation about our national moment. Jimmy Rollins, the greatest Phillies shortstop of all time, had the following to say:
Obviously, our white counterparts, they have a completely different view. They don’t have to grow up having that talk — and we all know what that talk is. They don’t have to get in a car, drive down the street knowing I didn’t do anything wrong, but this cop has been behind me for two blocks, something’s about to happen. They don’t have those fears.
What I’m…
Listening to: This morning we released a conversation with EWTN’s Gloria Purvis on racial justice and what we can do about it. Listen here: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / other apps. I also stumbled across a band called AJR this week and have been playing them on repeat. Play it below…but you’ve been warned. It’s dangerously catchy.
Reading: I picked up a copy of Mother to Son by Jasmine Holmes, which was presciently published this past March. I’m working with Jasmine’s publicist to try to get her on Vernacular for an interview, but even if that doesn’t work out, I recommend giving her work a read. You can get 50% off the ebook here through the end of the month.
Watching: See my plug for Just Mercy at the top of the newsletter. It’s free for the whole month.
Afterwords
Thanks so much to subscribers who sent me remarks. Reader Nathan and I had a back-and-forth about protests and secularism that I’ll say more about next week. Special thanks to Christina C., Rachael D., Jeff W., George B., Casey C., Kevin D., and others for their kind words. Paul S. pointed me in the direction of Marshall McCluhan’s famous “the medium is the message” idea. Shawn S. wrote me to commend this piece on “participatory propaganda.” It’s…not good news.
Participatory propaganda restores state sovereignty from within. It aims to build walls in the inner spaces of the subject by shaping categories of perception of the environment. First, it constructs the object of a conflict that can potentially divide people. Second, relying on the design of social networks that combine information proliferation with personal interaction as well as the mediated mobility of devices, it makes this conflict an omnipresent and integral part of everyday life. Third, it offers a range of simple and immediate opportunities for participation in conflict-related activity. Fourth, it increases the importance of conflict in shaping the structure of people’s social categorizations. Finally, it relies on the affordance of disconnectivity to mitigate the capacity of horizontal networks to cross borders and challenge a state’s sovereignty.
Just replace “participatory propaganda” with “Twitter” or “Facebook” and you’ll see the problem.
In other news: the clonal grove of Aspen trees in our backyard is finally gone, and hopefully will not return for a while, though I’m not confident I ripped out enough of the root system. I also spent a bunch of time outside with the family this weekend and successfully avoided sunburn. Thank goodness for SPF 70 and above—or as I call it, “liquid kevlar.”
Have a great week!
I would love to hear your feedback: zac@vernacularpodcast.com.
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Editor’s Note: This newsletter (and future newsletters) will capitalize the “B” in “Black” when referring to our Black brothers and sisters. Any instances in which this is not the case are typographical error (or true to the original author, in examples of excerpted quotations). For more on this typographical intention, see the Brookings Institutions’s explainer on their similar decision last fall.