I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: racism

  • no one is born hating

    no one is born hating


    “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.  People must learn to hate, and if they learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013)

    Nelson Mandela was a super hero to me, a man whose extraordinary personal sacrifice changed the politics of his own South Africa which inspired dreams for peace and democracy around the world. Facing the death penalty for sabotage at his trial in April, 1964  Mandela spoke these words:

    “I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

    He was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released in 1990 by President F. W. de Klerk who then negotiated with Mandela’s party to end apartheid in South Africa. Twenty-seven years of his life with no personal freedom, and Nelson Mandela became a symbol of freedom for his nation and the rest of the world.  In 1993 Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work to end the oppression of apartheid in their country. Mandela became the first black president of South Africa in 1994.

    This past weekend the news of another racially motivated massacre of ten Black people in the United States took place in Buffalo, New York, at a grocery store in a zip code the alleged 18 year old shooter stated in his manifesto he believed had the highest percentage of black people close enough to where he lived. According to Dustin Jones of NPR today the teenager said “the influx of immigrants, more specifically people of color, will lead to the extinction of the white race…decrease in white birth rates equates to a genocide.” This young man was not born hating, but somewhere along the way he was vulnerable to evil influences similar to those that enabled a 21-year-old white man to murder nine Black people while they held a prayer meeting in the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina in June, 2015.

    Meanwhile almost 5,000 miles from Buffalo, New York across the Atlantic Ocean, a 21-year-old Russian soldier was put on trial last week in Kyiv for allegedly killing a 62-year-old unarmed Ukrainian civilian riding his bicycle on a road in the Sumy region when the soldiers suspected the man of telephoning their location to Ukrainian defenders. Russians and Ukrainians may share the same color skin but radically different ideas about their governments – the ideals of democracy the Ukrainians believe in are very much like Mandela above who was prepared to die for his hope in a “democratic society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.”

    I am at a loss to understand the ongoing mass shootings in my country, an experiment in democracy that has failed to deliver on its promise of harmony and equal opportunities for all. Not only has the nation failed in providing fundamental rights to all but also is currently in the process of a sitting Supreme Court actually reversing some of the precious fundamental rights that were guaranteed for the past 50 years. What’s that I hear? Oh, never mind. It’s only the cries of 166 million females in the US as we await the decision of 6 men and 3 women called the Supremes who will determine whether the government controls our bodies or we do.

    If Mandela can be our north star, then we have the capability of teaching love to our children as surely as we teach them to hate the persons of different colors, different political beliefs any “other” from ourselves and our families. Portions of the human race are surely broken when we teach teenagers and twenty-somethings as children to hate enough to kill with weapons we refuse to prohibit.

    But that’s a topic for another day.

    *******

    Stay safe, stay sane, and please stay tuned.

  • Still I Rise by Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

    Still I Rise by Maya Angelou (1928-2014)


    You may write me down in history
    With your bitter, twisted lies,
    You may tread me in the very dirt
    But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

    Does my sassiness upset you?
    Why are you beset with gloom?
    ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
    Pumping in my living room.

    Just like moons and like suns,
    With the certainty of tides,
    Just like hopes springing high,
    Still I’ll rise.

    Did you want to see me broken?
    Bowed head and lowered eyes?
    Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
    Weakened by my soulful cries.

    Does my haughtiness offend you?
    Don’t you take it awful hard
    ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
    Diggin’ in my own back yard.

    You may shoot me with your words,
    You may cut me with your eyes,
    You may kill me with your hatefulness,
    But still, like air, I’ll rise.

     

    Does my sexiness upset you?
    Does it come as a surprise
    That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
    At the meeting of my thighs?

    Out of the huts of history’s shame
    I rise
    Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
    I rise
    I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
    Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
    Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
    I rise
    Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
    I rise
    Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
    I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
    I rise
    I rise
    I rise.

    Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/still-i-rise-by-maya-angelou

    And Still I Rise was author Maya Angelou’s third out of five volumes of poetry published in 1978 to mixed reviews for some strange reason known only to reviewers. April is National Poetry Month in the US so I couldn’t miss the opportunity to showcase one of my favorite poets: African American author, civil rights activist, and truth teller Maya Angelou.

    I sprinkled several of my favorite Maya quotes this month on my sidebar beneath the archived posts of I’ll Call It in an effort to share her wisdom that transports her words on wings to our ears and minds if we are willing to listen.

    In 1998 Maya Angelou spoke at the Second Annual Human Rights Campaign National Dinner; her speech that evening focused on the importance of gay people coming out of the closet. 

    You have no idea who you will inform because all of us are caged birds,

    have been and will be again.

    Caged by somebody else’s ignorance.

    Caged because of someone else’s small-mindedness.

    Caged because of someone else’s fear and hate…

    and sometimes caged by our own lack of courage.

    I miss Maya Angelou not only for her words but for her voice when she spoke. The rich, slow – almost ponderous – rhythms of her speech mesmerized me, and the deep rumbling voice was like the sound of my old Dodge Dakota pickup truck’s muffler when I started it first thing in the morning.  Music to my ears.

    Thank you, Luanne Castle (see blogroll), for reminding me to celebrate the rich history and present work of our American poets this month. When I was a child, my daddy enjoyed nothing more than to recite a poem to me – I know he would have loved a National Poetry Month.

  • two singular American warrior women: one shared destiny

    two singular American warrior women: one shared destiny


    Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, have had a front row seat at their 51 year old daughter’s confirmation proceedings to be appointed the first Black woman to the United States Supreme Court during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s public hearings this week. Their faces remained noncommittal, even stoic, when their daughter’s faith, views on pornography, questions of character were attacked by the Republican Senators in the room.

    The confirmation hearings that began with President Joe Biden’s nomination of Judge Jackson had a zoo-like quality with the zookeeper a/k/a Chairman Dick Durbin doing his best to maintain order – decorum was out the window. Johnny and Ellery Brown had undoubtedly seen worse behavior as natives of Miami growing up in the Jim Crow South but as public school teachers in Washington, D.C. they had also seen the impact of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s which gave their children more opportunities for success. Judge Jackson was born on September 14, 1970 in Washington, D.C.

    When Judge Jackson was 27 years old in 1997, a woman named Madeleine Albright, who then President Bill Clinton had nominated to become the first female Secretary of State, went through her own Senate confirmation hearings in an atmosphere much less combative than the circus she was forced to endure. Republican Senator Jesse Helms who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee led then United Nations Ambassador Albright through the process that ended in a unanimous Senate vote to confirm. Wow. Those were the days.

    Madeleine Albright was born on May 15, 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovokia (now the Czech Republic). In 1939 the Nazi occupation forced her family to become refugees in England, but they returned home after World War II; only to flee again when the communist coup occurred. Her father Josef Korbel had been a member of the Czechoslovokian diplomatic service and sentenced to death by the communist regime. The second time her family fled Madeleine and her mother Anna took a ship to Ellis Island in November, 1948; Josef joined them later. They eventually settled in Denver, Colorado where Josef accepted a postion at the University of Denver.

    Madeleine Albright’s storied career represents to me the best of America. To be “the first” woman in any field, to be known as a woman who “tells it like it is,” to successfully navigate the political land mines of our nation’s Capitol to serve our country in an ever changing world – these are accomplishments we celebrate; but to achieve as an outsider, a refugee, demands our highest honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed by President Barack Obama in 2012.

    Madeleine Albright died yesterday, March 23, 2022 following a long battle with an enemy we all know: cancer.

    The first woman ever called Madam Secretary of State left us as the first Black woman battled for her position on the Supreme Court in a contentious, even embarrassing at times, public hearing while her parents, husband, daughters, brother and others watched. The coincidental timing was remarkable to me.

    Yet I had a spirit of hope for the future when I heard Judge Jackson’s answers to the questions posed yesterday, a glimmer of hope for equality and fairness for my granddaughters. I also felt that same spirit of hope in the legacy Madeleine Albright leaves, her persistence in pursuing freedom for all nations, the world peace she strived for. I salute both of these warrior women during Women’s History Month for their shared destiny, for the heritage we can honor by emulating their courage in our own outrageous acts of everyday rebellions.

    Onward.

  • celebrating Black History Month with Pearl Harris

    celebrating Black History Month with Pearl Harris


    In the tiny Sears Roebuck kit house I grew up in, boundaries were both invisible and highly visible. The home was owned by my maternal grandmother and shared with two of my mother’s adult brothers in addition to my daddy, mother and me. The home was crowded. When I think back on it, I don’t know how we all managed to eat and sleep there – not to mention the scheduling of everyone’s turn in the single bathroom which barely had space to turn around to close the door after entering. That room was tight, and boundaries were tightly defined.

    While the home itself was small, the lot on which it sat was large, a corner lot with an unattached garage (with an attached outhouse that may help explain the bathroom scheduling inside) behind the house. Beyond the garage a small pond which we called a tank in rural Texas lay quietly in an “in-town” pasture that had no fences. My back yard was spacious, vast in a small child’s mind, unique in comparison to the other small frame houses sitting on the few dirt roads that connected them.

    Although the tank wasn’t very big, the fish and frog population that lived there mysteriously thrived, encouraging our relatives from the bigger cities of Houston, Dallas, Rosenberg, et.al., to make regular fishing trips to our place “in the country.” They came with their poles, rods, reels, live and artificial bait to try to land Ol’ Biggie, the name my Uncle Toby gave to the wiser large perch and catfish that proved elusive most of the time. During those early years I preferred running around the banks of the tank with my cousins to dropping a line with a squiggly worm in the water.

    At random times, though, I made an exception to enjoy the company of a full-bodied black woman named Pearl who walked across another invisible line to come fishing in our tank. One paved road we called main street distinctly divided black and white people in my community in those days in the late 1940s and early 1950s;  that street should have been painted blood red. Pearl lived in an area of town on one side of the street I knew simply as The Quarters. I would be much older when I realized the name referenced slave quarters that still separated her world from mine.

    Pearl told me the best stories about all the fish she had caught in the hottest fishing holes around the county. I believed every word she said because I trusted the deep rich voice that spoke. Pearl and my grandmother were good friends who visited together whenever she got ready to leave with her bucket full of fish. Pearl had the best luck catching perch in our tank – never very large – but she bragged that the little ones were better to fry anyway. Made sense to me. My mother also adored Pearl which surprised me since Mama didn’t adore anyone including herself.

    Pearl Harris was the first black person in my life. She was warm, affectionate, funny and always kind to me. I have no idea how she came to be friends with my grandmother. I suspect they met in the general store in town where my grandmother clerked. Whatever the circumstance, I felt their friendship was authentic. They were easy with each other. I now know Pearl’s walk across the invisible racial divide to our fishing tank was not only brave but necessary to put food on the table for her family. My grandmother could relate to that need, too.

    Wanda Sykes says in her Netflix comedy routine that I’ve watched at least four times now, seriously, at least four, that all white people need to have at least one black person who is their friend. Wanda thinks that friendship just might be a starting point to heal the racial divide that is at the center of income inequality and a host of other problems in our country. From a little girl growing up in a Texas town big enough for only one general store but large enough to contain two worlds separated by skin colors of black and white, I say I couldn’t agree more, Wanda. Bravo.

    RIP Pearl Harris (1893 – 1957).

                                              ***************

    You may remember this post from last year. I will remember Pearl for a lifetime.

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated, get boosted and please stay tuned.

  • say her name: Breonna Taylor. now say his name: Amir Locke

    say her name: Breonna Taylor. now say his name: Amir Locke


    Before 7:00 a.m. last Wednesday, February 8th., 22 year old Amir Locke was sleeping soundly, wrapped in a comforter on a couch inside a Minneapolis apartment. A police bodycam video shows SWAT team police officers entering the apartment at that moment by quietly turning a key to unlock it, bursting through the doorway yelling Police! Search Warrant! One of the officers kicked the sofa where Locke was sleeping. Locke, a Black man, seemed to be startled and tried to sit up while holding a gun he had legally purchased for protection in his work as a driver for a food delivery service in the Minneapolis/St.Paul area. A few seconds later, Amir was shot and killed by policemen serving a no-knock warrant – but not for a warrant against Amir.

    Sound familiar? It really should. Next month, March 13th., marks the two year anniversary of the murder of Breonna Taylor, the 26 year old Black woman killed by police in her own apartment in Louisville, Kentucky. Ms. Taylor was an Emergency Room tech for the University of Louisville Health. Three police officers fired 32 bullets in the early morning raid that killed Taylor, hitting her six times.

    Jury selection has begun this week (two years after the fact) for Louisville Metro ex-police officer Brett Hankison on charges of wanton endangerment because he fired recklessly during the early morning raid into Taylor’s neighbor’s apartment where three people were inside. He also fired 10 shots into Taylor’s apartment, but his bullets were not the ones later identified as killing her.

    No one has ever been charged in Breonna Taylor’s death.

    Marisa Lati in an article in The Washington Post on February 03, 2022 writes “Ben Crump, an attorney for Taylor’s family, said the three felony counts of wanton endangerment against Hankison should be the lowest charges among many in the case. ‘The trial of Brett Hankison recalls the inconceivable lack of justice for Breonna Taylor,’ he said in a statement. ‘It is hard to comprehend that this is the only criminal trial to emerge from the botched no-knock raid that took her innocent life and subsequently shook the nation.’ ”

    Reporting by Sara Burnett of the Associated Press on February 05th. states Amir Locke had recently filed paperwork to start his own music business and was leaving Minneapolis to move to Dallas next week to be closer to his mother. Locke’s family said he had no previous criminal record. Amir was born in the St. Paul suburb of Maplewood, grew up in the suburbs where he played basketball in middle school and tried out for the high school football team but a broken collar bone ended his athletic career. Music became his passion, he loved hip-hop and “speaking about the realities of what’s going on in the neighborhood,” according to Andre Locke, his father.

    February is designated Black History Month, and the clouds that cover me today are for these two young people who should have been contributors to that history but whose names now become reminders of the ongoing lack of equal justice and systemic racism instead. Amir Locke. Breonna Taylor.

    Hear their voices as Oprah explained the remarkable cover of Breonna Taylor for the September, 2020 issue of Oprah Magazine:

     “For the first time in 20 years, @oprah has given up her O Magazine cover to honor Breonna Taylor. She says, Breonna Taylor. She was just like you. And like everyone who dies unexpectedly, she had plans. Plans for a future filled with responsibility and work and friends and laughter. Imagine if three unidentified men burst into your home while you were sleeping. And your partner fired a gun to protect you. And then mayhem. What I know for sure: We can’t be silent. We have to use whatever megaphone we have to cry for justice. And that is why Breonna Taylor is on the cover of O magazine. I cry for justice in her name…”

    Today on this 08th. day of Black History Month I also cry for justice in Breonna Taylor’s and Amir Locke’s names, two young people who made history for the wrong reasons but whose legacy will forever be linked to the struggles for justice for all Black people everywhere. Say their names.

    **********************

    Stay safe, stay sane, get vaccinated, get boosted and please stay tuned.

    Stay safe, stay sane and stay tuned.