“Countries are not machines; they can’t be “fixed.” They are more like bodies and can only be healed. Our body politic has been deeply wounded at the point of race; the signs of infection are clear – inequality, mass incarceration, police brutality.”
Samuel Kimbriel
My father was one hundred percent bad ass. Equal parts the discipline cradle-to-law school Jesuit instruction ensures, and a trip-wire temper his Scottish bloodline provided, my dad walked this earth with an iron set of cajones. Growing up I learned to dread when he felt himself pushed to take a stand. Whether it was telling the waiter to get him a new steak because rare was how he ordered it, or telling a line cutter at the movies he had better think twice about whether his improved position was worth the wrath he was going to face to earn it, my dad did not play!
No less than several times I bore witness to his brinksmanship with another man’s behavior he couldn’t abide. You always knew defcon 5 was at hand when he took off his glasses; it was no different than Josey Wales spitting his chewing tobacco – trouble was coming.
I will never forget, circa 1968 or ‘69, when my dad and his friend, Dave, agreed to take me along for a Saturday afternoon lunch/6 dry Manhattan-on-the-rocks venture to his favorite tavern, Hackneys. Mickey Mantle’s retirement ceremony was on the television above the bar as I was digging in to my favorite ham sandwich with fries and their trademark slaw, when my father and a stranger began exchanging words.
My father never seemed more relaxed than when he was ready to go, and as he calmly handed his glasses to Dave, who sought to diffuse the situation, my previously ravenous appetite was gone. Dad was old school and would never engage in a going establishment. Instead, he called the guy outside where privacy was assured and the issue would be allowed to run its full course, nobody stepping in to break things up. The man refused the invitation. They all did.
My mother’s father was much the same as his son-in-law. It’s safe to say Grandpop liked dad, who afforded him the respect your beloved’s father warrants without any hint of insincere sycophancy. To my eyes, they were very much cut from the same cloth, neither the indulgent type. In fact, I received about the same amount of affection from each; my Grandpop was far more tolerator than coddler of his grandchildren. Exactly like my father, I had no ambitions to challenge the limits of his forbearance.
Working class whites, who moved out of northeast DC to McLean, VA as part of the first waves of late 50’s flight to the suburbs, my grandparents’ sensibilities on race were no better or worse than the Joneses of their time. Which is to say they were part of a herd MLK sought to move against their natural inclinations, with limited success. The riots after his murder reinforced those inbred sensibilities. My grandfather was not in an empathetic mood as he brought a gun with him to protect properties he supervised while the nation’s capitol burned.
In 1972 Richard Nixon tapped my father to be the General Counsel of the newly created Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and my family migrated east from Chicago to the Maryland suburbs. As we settled in, our transition included plenty of visits to my grandparents’ McLean home not 15 minutes away. This meant a decent dose of bonding time between my father and grandfather, as my brothers and I hung out with neighborhood kids we had become acquainted with during past visits.
A decent chunk of those new friends were part of a very large family of at least ten, their house just down a small hill in my grandparent’s back yard. I enjoyed playing basketball with John and Pat on another neighbor’s court. They were good and we challenged each other in round robin one-on-one marathons during sultry summer days. Their father, John Sr., ran a heating and air conditioning company out of the residence. Ruddy and mean, his disposition was betrayed by the fear his children exhibited toward him.
One ritual my father and his father-in-law enjoyed sharing was shucking and devouring a bushel of oysters with my dad’s special cocktail sauce. Of course, no oyster feast would be complete without a few and a few more cold ones. Once, John Sr. invited them to bring everything down to his place, where the three of them shucked and guzzled into the evening.
At some point my mother decided it was time to head home and dispatched me to go get my father. Heading down the hill I could hear John Sr. stridently slur a point within the spacious but dark front porch. Something along the lines of “Bill, a n****r is a n*****r. I’ll call them any damn thing I want.” I froze and listened near the screen. My father never raised his voice, and spoke even lower during confrontations, so I couldn’t hear what he said. However, when my grandfather implored him to “put your glasses back on, Bill,” I knew things were intense. Suddenly the idea of my dad fighting John Sr. terrified me. What if Grandpop got hurt?! I decided to interrupt and yelled into the dark that “Mom said it’s time to go.” When my dad calmly replied he’d be right up, I breathed easier and headed back. I mentioned nothing of the incident to my mom or grandmother, but when we got home I asked my dad what happened. “Billy, some folks aren’t very nice” was all he said. And that was that.
Three plus years ago the US slid backwards and allowed the horrible flailing backlash against eight years of honorable service by its first black president to empower the worst strain of regressive populism. What we thought was dead and buried merely lay dormant prepared to metastasize if permitted. Despite Trump’s vile rantings fully promising what we could expect, somehow enough of us equated the frailties of Hillary Clinton with the disgusting depths of his divisive gibberish.
At no time did Trump ever beguile anyone with anything but his ignorant bigotry; yet white America simply shrugged what the hell. After eight years of Jackie Robinson in the White House, a stint with Ben Chapman won’t kill us; after all, remember that e-mail server?! Now we all pay a very steep price for our reckless apathy, but none more than the black community.
From dog whistles to Karens, documented brutality to literal executions, tase first/worry later to SWAT team horrors, MAGA embodies the very essence of John Sr.’s raw hatred, his one-size-fits-all bigotry. Something had to give. Now it has. November will be nothing but us vs. them – exactly what the Bunker Boy has been hissing for from day one – and nobody with eyes and ears mistakes the make up of each side.
The “deplorable” moniker HRC coined for the wretched core who carried Trump to the White House is still relentlessly cited by Fox/AM minions as a turning point for MAGA unity, fighting words that galvanized their shared grievance. The other day Joe Biden was less ambitious than HRC, merely noting 10-15% of US voters were “not very good people.” He’ll get no argument from me…. except about the numbers. And were my dad still with us, and Biden shared that observation with him, his glasses would surely have stayed put. BC