18 Jun After the Stage of Rage: An Immodest Proposal

As we’ve all witnessed, the past three weeks have included significant worldwide protest about the treatment of African Americans by police and about racism overall. It’s been powerful, moving and unprecedented.

The protests have included more diversity than ever before related to this crucial blot on the American experience, and they’re actually working. Around the US cities are changing their policies about the use of force by police officers, as well as how their departments are funded. And that’s just the beginning.

Whenever protests erupt about events like the tragic and completely avoidable death of George Floyd, the first crucial step is to get heard. Hopefully that happens with what I call a Loving No! Before we can even begin to address the systemic crisis that gave birth to such a horrific act, we need to vent our outrage. We need to make it clear that this cannot keep happening, and that we stand together on behalf of liberty and justice that is truly for all.

So often, unfortunately, we don’t get very far past that Loving No! Those of us who’ve protested many times in years past know all too well how once the furor dies down, our government and society quickly turn our attention to other things. Then another tragedy occurs, the cycle repeats, and nothing even near the amount of change required takes place.

Can this time be different? If so, what would make that possible? It’s to address these two questions that I reach out to you today. Please stay with me for a bit as I build to the immodest proposal referenced above.

One thing we can already see is that this wave of protest against racism is decidedly different than those that have come before. The protesters are more numerous, more diverse, more educated on their issues and more sustained in their approach than we’ve seen in decades. They’re appreciative of the specific policy changes announced, but also unwilling to settle for less than a full-scale social transformation.

What you and I know, from our deep work together in service of personal healing and growth, is that it’s impossible to change anything while in resistance to it. The first step toward true personal change is awareness of where and how we’re in resistance. This resistance is always emotional at the core, and it lives in our bodies. The next step after awareness is acceptance. We need to accept that we are in resistance, and then we must accept what we’re in resistance to. Only after that acceptance takes root can we begin to see the situation clearly, and to create meaningful change.

The royal road to personal change outlined in the paragraph above is equally true when addressing social change. When it comes to racism, our resistance has hardened over centuries and is therefore especially difficult to address fully and even more difficult to overcome. Rote acknowledgement may help a little and feel good for awhile – think of Black History Month – but it’s no match for all the pain and suffering that’s still festering beneath our collective awareness and which we haven’t yet owned and addressed.

Which brings me to my immodest proposal. The proposal is immodest because its willfully idealistic, unabashedly unrealistic. But the truth is that if we aren’t able to articulate what’s truly necessary, we’re never going to achieve what’s actually possible.

I propose that America convenes a truth and reconciliation commission on the subject of our racism both past and present. I imagine it modeled on the one that occurred in South Africa at the end of Apartheid. Such a commission is not focused on blame, revenge, or recrimination. Instead, it aims to bring forward hard truths in a way that ultimately leads to healing and forgiveness. Only when perpetrators of oppression are willing and able to take responsibility for their own actions can their victims join with them in rectifying those injustices successfully and sustainably.

A key point: I do not presume that I am the only person proposing such a truth and reconciliation commission. In fact, US Representative Barbara Lee has actually drafted legislation for one in the House of Representatives. I’m simply adding my voice to that rising choir, and angling my own version of the proposal toward the realm of emotional pain and trauma which has been my professional focus for the past two decades. It’s my passionate view that without convening such a commission to embrace the brutally painful legacy of racism, which in one way or another has damaged us all, we’ll never truly be able to grow past our core American wound.

Let’s fund and implement our truth and reconciliation commission on all levels – national, state, county, city, and neighborhood. Let’s keep it front and center with a coordinated campaign between congress and the Department of Justice, with specific hearings at least once a week. Let’s designate an entire year for the process to complete, with the first half to focus on thorough listening, learning, grieving and healing. Then, and only then, let’s move toward solutions. Let’s take advantage of that healing, and the clear vision it allows, to conclude with a comprehensive civil rights act that launches a new era of opportunity for all races on all fronts – including but not limited to economic, educational, and environmental.

It must be added:

1)The whole truth and reconciliation process would be built upon the recognition that the country we know and love was founded upon twin crimes – the theft of Native American lands and the slavery of African people. We already know this well, of course, but as a nation we have never proclaimed it directly and addressed it fully. We haven’t even apologized for our actions in any truly meaningful and proportional way. Without that, no real healing can occur.

2)The key elements of such a truth and reconciliation process would be envisioned and implemented by leaders of the Native American and African American community. Both communities are blessed with profound authors, experts, artists, visionaries and activists who have so much to teach the members of our white population, including myself.

3)White Americans also have so much work to do among ourselves, and we owe it to our fellow citizens of all other racial and ethnic identities to conduct that work in a way that doesn’t add insult to injury. This work among white Americans would also need to be a vital part of the truth and reconciliation process.

4)The work white Americans need to do can be messy, uncomfortable, and ongoing beyond any artificial time frame or enactment of legislation. That’s because much of it is in the domain of inner work, which requires the unmasking of hidden bias, the revealing and supplanting of racist beliefs, and the healing of emotional wounds and traumas that gave rise to such bias and beliefs in the first place. This work includes recognizing and redressing the inner structures in each of us that allow systemic racism to persist, beyond just the realm of history, in the here and now. If we succeeded at everything else in our quest for justice and somehow left out this work, we’d only recreate the same structures in new versions (see the current South Africa as an example).

5)Even though white Americans can still live for the most part in a bubble that allows them not to face the effects of racism in an ongoing way, there must be a persistent nationwide commitment to burst that bubble once and for all.

6)Neither Donald Trump nor the Republican party are at all interested in such an endeavor. An American truth and reconciliation commission could only take place after the November election.

Speaking of that election, the amount of Americans excited by the Joe Biden candidacy is very small. Most people who vote for Biden will do so while either holding their nose, yawning, or both. And he knows that well. This awareness is in large part why Biden has promised to choose a woman as his running mate.

Along those same lines, I urge Biden to make a racial truth and reconciliation commission a fundamental promise in his pursuit of the presidency. I’m no pollster, or political strategist, but I can’t imagine anything else that would boost enthusiasm for Biden’s campaign more than his support of such a bold, essential, and long overdue racial reckoning.

I want to take part in such a reckoning with all my heart.

Do you?