What happens when we’re not all human? Part IV

Slavery wasn’t invented by the United States, nor was it invented in North America. I know this very personally as a Jew. I celebrate Passover with my family every year. The story and the symbols are about thanking G-d for our freedom from slavery in Egypt. So much of our holy books recount the stories about Moses leading us out of Egypt, wandering in the desert, Moses on Mount Sinai and then finally making it to the land of Israel. If you’ve seen Cecil B. DeMille’s the Ten Commandments, you know the story.

You can only take another person as a slave and treat them as a commodity, something that you own, if you don’t perceive that person as human.

Africans were brought to America as slaves long before the United States of America even existed. Slavery is woven into the very fabric of American existence. Our not seeing Africans and African Americans as human started long before we were a country and this perception exists in America today. There have been dramatic changes over time, but change has been very slow. For some people in America, there has been no change at all. Laws can be passed which force changes in behavior. We can mold the way people behave; we can punish discretions. Changing how people think is a whole different story. We can’t force people not to be prejudiced. We don’t control people’s minds. That is the reason why changing how people think is difficult and slow.

Racism has a different quality in American society as compared to all our other prejudices. You can hate Jews, but I can make it difficult for you to know that I am a Jew if I choose to do so. And that might include changing my name. There is no hiding skin color. Society can treat a person of color differently without knowing a single thing about the individual. If a policeman observes a person of color driving down the highway, they can have thoughts about that driver that they might not have about a white person. A store clerk might have suspicions about a person of color that they don’t have about a white person. There’s no hiding black or brown.

During President Obama’s two terms as President of the United States, I started reading about people referring to America as a post-racial society. That the election of a black man to the highest office of the land was proof that the racial disease in America had been cured. My first thought upon hearing this thinking was, what a wildly absurd notion. And then I became concerned, because we can’t repair problems in our society unless we are willing to admit that we have a problem. I knew we had a problem, and I also knew that nothing had been cured and I was concerned about a significant backlash from Obama’s two terms in office, by people who remain racist in America and resented his place in history.

Obama’s two terms as President represented the best of who we are in America. I think that his winning was something of a miracle, given who and what we are collectively in this country. It sure didn’t reflect any kind of cure.

I can remember as a young boy driving in the car with my dad. We were going through a neighborhood not far from where we lived. My father told me that it was written into the deed restrictions that a person couldn’t sell their house to either a black person or a Jew. First, my father had to explain to me what a deed restriction was all about. Then I had to ponder that notion for a while. What could possibly be a problem with selling a home to a black person or a Jew? I had to spend fourteen years getting a degree in Cultural Anthropology to arrive at the definitive answer to that question. If we sell our house to a non-human, the remaining homes in the neighborhood will lose their value.

Slavery was possible because Africans weren’t considered human. After the Civil War, Slavery was abolished, but African Americans didn’t get to be human. The Jim Crow laws were based on the fundamental belief that African Americans were not human. You only share a neighborhood, a swimming pool, a bathroom, a hotel, a restaurant, a school, a drinking fountain, a section of a bus, or a white husband or wife with a human. Legislatures in the south established segregation through laws. In the north, segregation was accomplished through slightly less formal but no less effective means. Still not human.

In the 1960s, Federal civil rights laws were passed focused on ending discrimination. Laws were enacted that provided a framework for ending segregation. The laws were focused on behavior, because no laws can possibly change how a person thinks or believes.

Civil rights cases are being fought all the time based on these and new laws. We aren’t anywhere near nirvana on the race front, even when only considering behavior. We focus on discrimination because it is imperative that we fight for equality in education, employment, voting rights, and other critically important institutions in our society. Prejudice is a much harder nut to crack.

As a society, I wouldn’t say that we’re in the place we were in the 1600s, but I would say that we have a lot of work in front of us to live up to the ideals in our Bill of Rights and Constitution. As noted earlier, culture usually doesn’t turn on a dime. Change can be incrementally small and slow. And change in American culture is not going to occur in the same ways, at the same pace across the entire country. Change will be slower in small, homogenous, rural communities than it might occur in large, heterogenous metropolitan areas. We are a long way from Blacks being perceived as real humans by everyone in America.

With the founding of our country, the men in that room had the opportunity to abolish slavery. They didn’t, and a good number of them were slave owners. Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s beliefs and relations with his slaves is way more than confusing. I’ll start with, what does a consensual sexual relationship with a slave look like? Jefferson not only owned slaves, he was instrumental in using his slaves to create an industry and he most explicitly monetized his slaves. To Jefferson, they were clearly a commodity. The man most often credited with framing the very ideals of our country was so incredibly distanced from living those ideals. We do ourselves no good ignoring or sugar coating this part of our history. We can’t repair those facets of our lives which we deny.

Our founding fathers knew the bible. They understood that slavery was wrong. It would have been a complicated mess for them to deal with it as our country was being established. It would have been an act of incredible courage. They didn’t take it on. Not even close. If they had chosen to be examples for their countrymen, they could have freed their own slaves. They didn’t. Am I being harsh and unrealistic by imposing my values and the lens of a few hundred years of history to judge these decisions? I don’t believe so, because the values I hold to be self-evident were also their values – that all men (and women) are created equal. Their bible tells me so.

Our way of life depends on our getting this racial thing fixed in American culture. The ideal stratification system in American society is the class system. Fundamental to class is the belief that one’s own hard work can result in getting ahead in our society.

Individualism, hard work, self-reliance should result in upward mobility. Our folklore is filled with stories about people being born into poor families who work hard and become business people or presidents. The class system depends on the belief and the reality that people can ascend or descend in both social and economic class of their own free will; that we are born into a society where one’s own efforts can determine one’s standing in society.

In a caste system, a person’s status is determined at birth. You inherit your family’s social and economic status. You marry a person from that same status; you have no access to marriage outside of your group. Your children will inherit yours and your spouse’s status. There is no mobility, there is no advancement in caste.

While America proclaims to be a society based on class, the reality is that for Blacks, our society has been a caste system. Up until the 1960s, this caste system was supported by laws. When it came to education, separate was not equal. When it came to economics, access to opportunity was severely limited. The deck has been stacked against Blacks in the suppression or denial of voting rights, treatment in our criminal justice system, access to good education (which is often associated with access to housing in America where most of us went to neighborhood public schools), and access to good paying jobs. The civil rights laws passed in the 1960s began the process of eliminating behaviors that discriminate against Blacks and limit or deny opportunity. But change can occur slowly, unevenly or not at all.

Change has occurred. Dramatic change has occurred. We’ve had a Black president. Blacks have better educational and economic opportunities. Interracial couples appear in television commercials. For those of you new to the planet, that is a very recent occurrence. But racial prejudice persists and discrimination remains an explicit element of American culture. Today, we remain distant from the reality of equality. Democracy and capitalism rely on a class system that offers real opportunity to everyone. We can’t proclaim to be a democracy or a capitalist society if everyone doesn’t have equal access to opportunity.

Ending slavery did not make Blacks human. The civil rights laws of the 1960s did not make Blacks human. Laws can be used to change people’s behavior. People can challenge the laws, and they do. Cases of discrimination can end of up in court and can spend years in the legal process with appeals and further challenges. We’ve seen these challenges over and over again in education, in voting rights, and in our economy. Affirmative action cases are continuing to be litigated. Changing behavior does not happen quickly.

Changing thoughts and beliefs happens even less quickly. How do we change prejudices? How do we change how people think and believe?

I am going to wade slowly into the difficult waters of political correctness. I listen to Bill Maher rail about the excesses of political correctness and about how going to the extremes doesn’t help the cause. I see his point. But I also wholeheartedly believe that political correctness plays an important role in changing how people think and believe.

At the most fundamental level, political correctness dictates speech so as not to hurt people’s feelings. You can diminish the significance of this notion but you cannot deny that children can hear speech that hurts their feelings. The same can happen with adults. It costs very little to be aware of how speech impacts other people, and to think about being sensitive to other people’s feelings before you say what comes into your head. A governor on speech is not a bad thing.

During my sophomore year in college, a friend of mine used the term ‘to Jew down’ to describe a financial negotiation. When hearing it, I wasn’t angry; I was hurt. This person grew up in a small town in Indiana, and he probably heard this phrase throughout his life, and never thought about what those words really meant, where they came from, and the many layers of prejudice upon which they are founded. The words conjure up all the vulgar beliefs that connect Jews to money. A synonym for Jew down could be cheap Jews. I was hurt because it is painful to hear those words, to think about the prejudices, and to consider that they were coming from someone I liked. So, I spent some time talking to this person. I explained the context of those words, the prejudices that they reinforce, and how it made me feel. He was embarrassed. He acted out of ignorance, and I let him know that I didn’t really blame him for not knowing. How would he? I might have been and likely was the first friend of his who was Jewish. I also know that he likely never used those words again.

Please do some research on the stereotypes that link Jews to wealth. It is an interesting historical phenomenon that serves as an important lesson as to how Jews adapted to the prejudices and discrimination in Europe, and around the globe for that matter. I grew up in a lower middle-class family. It was a complicated upbringing. When I listen to the stereotypes about Jews and money, I am not in the least amused by the notion of being lumped into a category and defined based on someone’s ignorance. And that’s how prejudice works.

How long does it take for a people to become human? I don’t think there’s a good answer to that question. I do know that it can take generations to accomplish and that it takes a lot of work. Culture is learned. Culture is passed down from generation to generation. If Blacks being not human is an integral part of American culture, and it is, how do we break that generational chain of learning this prejudice?

Political correctness is one of the ways this can be done. I can’t very easily stop a person from expressing prejudices, but I can exert a social and economic cost to that person. Those costs can motivate the person to keep their prejudices to themselves, or at the very least, to limit the acceptable audience that hears what they want to say. When I heard my friend use the words, to Jew down, I could have just let it go, because challenging someone as prejudiced or of promoting and reinforcing prejudice can be an uncomfortable proposition. Conflict can be difficult, and particularly with friends and family who you are likely to have a relationship with regardless of their prejudices. But if the person goes unchallenged in expressing prejudices, they aren’t going to stop and people will hear their thoughts.

I am most concerned with their children hearing their thoughts.

If a person expresses prejudiced thoughts and opinions in the workplace, there could be a very real economic consequence for their behavior. Many workplaces require training that puts people on notice that certain prejudices will not be tolerated. The defined consequences are such that people do moderate their speech. People may hunt down colleagues who they believe share their opinions, but that can be a risky endeavor. These work rules do have the impact of narrowing down an audience for inappropriate speech. Consequences can also be meted out in social situations. The rules are far less well defined, and the consequences are more amorphous than being financially whacked, but the results can be meaningful. If at a party someone expresses a prejudiced opinion, and you challenge that opinion, that challenge is often enough to curb the speech. Those are uncomfortable situations and most people try to avoid them. They are also very teachable moments, because the person may figure out that not everyone around them shares their thoughts and beliefs, and it might be a good idea to keep those to themselves. It isn’t going to work for everyone, anymore than we can curb people from saying inappropriate or unacceptable things in the workplace and then watching them get punished for it.

One of the most important roles parents play in their children’s lives is that of a teacher or a mentor. We spend their entire childhoods teaching them how to be good people and how to be successful adults in our society. If you know that your children are going to get into all kinds of trouble with family and friends, in the workplace, in their social lives by spreading certain opinions and thoughts, it might be a great idea not to share those opinions and thoughts with them. Some words or phrases should only be used to teach your children not to say them. Ever.

Not teaching your children is a good way to stop perpetuating prejudices. Teaching children your prejudices is doing a horrible injustice to them. The world is changing so rapidly. Our societies are changing so rapidly. I don’t know if it is possible to predict what our children’s and our grandchildren’s lives are going to be like when they become adults. What are they going to need to learn to be successful? What skills are they going to need to be successful as adults? What I do know is that their lives are going to be filled with even greater diversity than we have today. Our world is becoming smaller and smaller. Through information technology, transportation and environmental and economic interdependence, our children’s lives will be immersed in cultural diversity. Accepting and respecting different peoples who practice different ways of life is going to be a prerequisite to success. Of that I am certain.

How do we get our children to this place so that they can be successful and well-adjusted people? Education must be an important part of this process. Understanding our history is a critical part of this process. I haven’t taken a history class in a very long time, so I can’t say how children are learning American and world history. I sure hope it is connected to reality in a much more sophisticated and honest way than it was when I was a student. We can’t repair our society if we aren’t made aware of who we are and how we got to this place. Denying the problem never offers the opportunity to fix it. If we don’t understand and accept our relationship with and treatment of American Indians, we can’t contribute to repairing their lives. We own the reasons for the current state of affairs; we need to all be involved in improving their lives. The same is true for African Americans. If we don’t understand and accept the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow laws, and the underlying prejudices that are an integral part of American culture, we can’t repair the injustices and the inequality that exists in our contemporary society. If we don’t understand the long history and the consequences of Anti-Semitism, we can’t address the prejudices that exist in our society and around the world today.

An inconvenient element of political correctness is that we (the dominant society) don’t get to tell minorities what is offensive about our behavior or speech. They tell us and we’re required to listen and then pay attention to what they say. If Native Americans tell us that the caricature of chief wahoo is offensive, I don’t get to argue with them about it. If they tell us that having an Indian as our team mascot is offensive, we need to find a new mascot. The fact that the football team in our nation’s capital are the Redskins sort of says it all. Why not the Washington Whiteskins? If Blacks tell us that the confederate flag is a problem, then it is a problem. You can twist your head into a pretzel trying to understand what the problem is, but while you’re doing so, please take the flag down. We don’t get to tell them what they should or shouldn’t be offended by. We’re not a reliable judge. The dominant society often doesn’t have the perspective that easily gets them to that place. I can tell people all day long that the American calendar is a problem for some Jewish people. But if there’s never a conflict on the calendar then what in the hell are you talking about? If you don’t like it here, go home. (Do you mean Cleveland?)

And why is it that we should be invested in this repair? Because we can’t continue to exist as the society we believe we are without repairing those prejudices and the resultant discrimination. The growing economic inequality in our society has us bending towards caste instead of class. People will ultimately not tolerate the growing disparities between the haves and the have nots. We are seeing this today in our ever-contentious politics and the populist messages that are being shared by candidates. It is hard to get the haves to give up wealth, power and prestige. These are the goodies in every society. Our society has worked greed into an art form. It isn’t possible to have too much wealth or power or prestige. The haves will accumulate and consolidate until they are forced to give some of it or all of it up. That’s what all of world history has taught us. The disparities can only go so far before people vote to change the laws or start a revolution. The haves risk less in a legal process than they do in a revolution.

America is great because of our ideals. Our constitution and our bill of rights set out a philosophy for governing for which we should all be proud and to which we should aspire. But it is equally important to recognize that those ideals are aspirational; we sure aren’t there. And our founding fathers were even further from it than we are.

I taught a college course for over ten years on Diversity in American Society. Most of the classes involved discussions; very open, honest, difficult discussions. I could count on it like clockwork; at some point during the semester, one of my students would state that America was the greatest country on the face of the earth. My response was always, on what basis would you arrive at that conclusion? We then began an exercise of going through all the possible measures one might use to determine how a society might be given the greatest country on the face of the earth award. The following list includes many of the variables that were presented: the best educational system, the most open democracy, the highest percentage of people who vote, the highest literacy rate, the lowest mortality rate, the healthiest population, the greatest wealth, the most open society, the most aggressive press, the most religious tolerance, the best health care system. When objectively reviewing all the variables for greatness, America often falls short of being the greatest. Often, we aren’t even good. We do have the most powerful military and I think we spend the highest percentage of our gross national product on defense.

What makes America the greatest country on the face of the earth is our ideals. Our reality falls short of our ideals. I know no one wants to hear that but it is true. Do some reading and please rely on multiple, reputable sources when you choose what to read. We can’t be satisfied with having the greatest ideals that we don’t live up to. We all must take responsibility for repairing the real to bring us ever closer to our ideals. We can’t be a democracy without that work. We can’t be a capitalist society without that work.

And why is it that I think we are all responsible. It would be very easy and convenient for me to make the observation that my family was not yet in America during all those years of slavery or when our government was stealing the lands from the Native American tribes and destroying their culture. Believing that would also be denying that I benefit every day from living on the land that once belonged to those tribes. My community has grown on their land. My way of life was made possible by living on the land that belonged to them. I benefit from living in an economy that was built by slaves. The American economy developed and grew on the free labor provided by slaves. My family came to this country to benefit from the economic opportunities that were made possible on the backs of those hundreds of years of free labor. I can choose to deny that reality, but it doesn’t make it less real.

Education helps to diminish prejudice and discrimination against minorities, but it is not a panacea. I developed a view of the world from my life experiences. First, I was born a Jew in America. There are more Jews living in the US than in any country around the world, even more than Israel. Yet, Jews make up only about two percent of the US population. Jewish American culture is different from the dominant American society, which tends to be based more on Christianity. The Protestant work ethic is a fundamental principle in our social and economic system, and it is Protestant. We are all unconscious about our way of life unless our way of life comes into conflict with a different way of life or if there are dramatic changes taking place in our way of life. The rules for how we behave become conscious for us when those rules change or when we come into contact with people who operate by different rules. The same is true for all elements of culture. As a Jew living as a very small minority, our way of life was sufficiently different from the dominant culture. I believe minorities are much more conscious about the dominant culture, because of the conflicts and also because a minority community is constantly negotiating their own way of life to accommodate the differences.

Going through the education and training to become a cultural anthropologist magnified my sensitivity to culture. So much of cultural anthropology involves the comparison between different cultures. We are exposed to and learn about so many different ways of life, and most of them are very different from American culture. I am not the only Jewish person who developed a sensitivity about culture who then became a cultural anthropologist. There are many Jewish anthropologists, and it is likely that they found their way into this discipline from similar life experiences as my own.

You can’t be a cultural anthropologist and not develop a consciousness about your own culture. My life experiences have led me to the following conclusion. If America is the greatest country on the face of the earth, then everyone else needs to be trying a lot harder. We have so much potential, but have work to do to live up to that potential.

So, how do we change the world? It would help if everyone were either Jewish or a cultural anthropologist. Since that isn’t happening, the next best solution in my mind is to be sure that people are exposed to different cultures throughout their lives, and starting when children are very young. You can’t live among a different people without coming away from the experience with a respect and appreciation for those differences. Living with difference broadens the mind and it expands the way you think about your own way of life. I’ve heard people propose mandatory service in Vista or the Peace Corps in lieu of requiring everyone to do a few years of military service. I think that is an awesome idea. Exposing people to these experiences would definitely resolve a lot of problems in the United States and around the world. It would make people more appreciative of what many of us have in the United States. It would also make us more accepting of different ways of life and accepting that we are all human.

It is inescapable that the president of the United States is a role model for all of us. Most presidents understand and accept that role and try to behave themselves, with varying degrees of success. When it comes to the issues of prejudice and discrimination, our current president is operating in uncharted territory. Please think back to all the issues I raised about political correctness and the importance these behaviors and speech play in moderating our prejudices. Giving people a reason to think differently is very difficult, and role models can play important roles in this process. Parents, teachers, clergy, and presidents can set the tone for how we think about people who are different.

I’m not going to engage in a thorough review of our president’s speech and behavior during his candidacy and term in office. He’s proven to be a racist and misogynist. I am going to note some of his anti-Semitic behavior and speech. The president didn’t invent anti-Semitism, but he hasn’t done much to help the cause to fight this prejudice.

In August 2017, white nationalist groups marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. There were violent conflicts and a woman was struck by a car and killed. The white nationalists were marching in the streets chanting, the Jews will not replace us. The president described the situation by noting that there was blame on both sides for the violence and he said that there were fine people on both sides. Blows the mind. A good Nazi? Sort of like consensual sex with a slave.

The president claimed that Jews who vote for Democrats either don’t understand what they’re doing or are disloyal. He is a strong supporter of Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu. First, a case could be made that the positions he’s taken on Israel have made peace with the Palestinians even more difficult to achieve. His claims about loyalty to Israel reinforce the dual loyalty issue about where allegiances reside for American Jews. His loyalty to Israel is directed at Evangelical Christians who support Israel as a doctrine involving the second coming. The irony there is what happens to the Jews after the messiah arrives.

The president has made a number of comments reinforcing the stereotypes about Jews and money. He’s stated that Jews have no choice but to vote for him, because he’s protecting their money. In his reinforcing of these stereotypes, he also legitimizes them, as our role model in chief. He has been roundly criticized by numerous Jewish groups for perpetuating the worst stereotypes and prejudices about Jews.

He’s going to do what he can to keep his base fired up and supportive of his candidacy. He’s got the white nationalists and the anti-Semites in the bag. He has emboldened white nationalists for political gain.

There is no doubt in my mind but that this president has made life more perilous for American Jews. Through his speech and reinforcement of the worst Jewish stereotypes, he has legitimized anti-Semitism. Hate speech and free wheeling prejudice has been magnified by social media. The anonymity of social media facilitates this kind of speech and misinformation dissemination. Worse, these prejudices have riled up enough people to act on their beliefs. The shootings that have taken place in synagogues and the bomb threats that have been taking place in Jewish centers across the country are the very real evidence that these prejudices are going beyond the expression of hateful words. My personal litmus test – before his presidency, my temple doors weren’t locked on the sabbath and there were no guards at services. Since his presidency, the doors are locked and each congregant is let into the temple by a person who knows the members of the congregation. There are armed guards in the lobby for all our services or for large events. This is going on in my temple and in temples across the country.

We need to find our president his very own cave. He doesn’t deserve any natural light. (He comes with his own tan anyway). I’ve heard the argument made that the president couldn’t possibly be anti-Semitic; he has Jewish grandchildren. My response to that notion, hey, kids; Zadie is a total whack job. Please find a safe place to hide in the basement.

Distrust or dislike of the other is as old as humankind because of the way we learn our own culture. The conundrum for us is that while it is a natural outcome of this process, it is no less dysfunctional and becoming more dangerous all the time. We no longer live in small, isolated societies. We live in complex, industrialized, culturally diverse societies. We live in a very interdependent world. It is not going to be enough for us to just tolerate each other. We cannot survive as a cohesive, thriving and healthy society distrusting, and not respecting or accepting each other as equals. We all must be human beings.

We must all be human beings in America to also be a democratic, free, capitalist society. The class system must work for us to live up to our ideals. There must be equal social and economic opportunity for everyone, regardless of the family they are born into. There has to be a real promise of upward mobility based on one’s own work and one’s character. Otherwise, America remains a hypocrisy. We either become our ideals or America becomes something quite different.

My magnum opus blog focused on Jews, Native Americans and African Americans because Nancy and I spent the weekend at those museums at the Smithsonian. If I was writing a comprehensive article about prejudice and discrimination, I would have so many other groups to include. How we’ve handled the current immigration dilemma with Hispanics has been way more than disconcerting, and we don’t show the will to fix the immigration issues. Our policies have been reprehensible and hypocritical, because our economy depends on this community, and yet, it’s so hard for us to embrace different. When the Chinese came to America, we pooped all over them. We put the Japanese Americans into internment camps while we sent their brave young men to fight in our war. Every generation of immigrants that came through America’s open door wanted to close it on everyone who came behind them … we didn’t want the Irish or the Italians or anyone else … after we made it in safely. That’s been our history.

We need to change. I believe in my heart of hearts that the future of America depends on our making that change. If we are going to live our ideals, there can be no second-class citizens among us. We all have to be equal, even when we’re different.

I am a patriotic person. I am proud of my father’s service during World War II, and that of all my uncles. My father and mother were of the greatest generation. They helped to rebuild America after the war. They raised children who embraced diversity and who believed in America’s greatest ideals. We come from a family who were peasants in Europe. They came here because their villages were being destroyed and their families were being killed. They came here to escape the slaughter, and to seek the economic opportunities promised to everyone. They didn’t know a word of English. They had no trade. They had no possessions. They built a life here, they raised families who lived the ideals of America. We’ve all received wonderful educations, we’ve worked hard, and we’ve had access to the American promise.

As Jews, we have a centuries long history of living as small minorities in dominant societies all over the world. Jews have always been the stranger; the people who were different. We know how to do it. The reactions to this difference, as noted earlier, has been good, lukewarm, and really horrible. In America, throughout my life, I have felt free to be openly Jewish and to practice and believe in my way without any concern or fear. That sense of acceptance and freedom has changed. My parents experienced anti-Semitism in a much more direct way than I ever did. Housing, education and employment practices and laws have changed since my parent’s generation. I lived during a period of dramatic social change. The equal rights movements that flourished during the 1960s brought all these issues to the forefront of our lives. They remain in the consciousness of America but they remain unresolved. And the progress that has been made over the years has seen a retrenchment, and not just in America. The distrust and dislike of the other is again rearing its ugly head in Europe.

We all have so much work to do. I love America and what it stands for. I'm just not going to be in denial about the difference between what our great country stands for and what we are. We must do better. If my generation isn’t going to make this change, perhaps we should just die off quietly and let the next generation wrestle with these changes. They seem to be in a better place to repair our world.