The Wave

Heard of Juneteenth?

On June 19 in 1865 the Union Army, led by Major General Gordon Granger, marched onto Galveston Island, Texas to take possession of the State from the Confederates and to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation which had legally abolished slavery in the US two years earlier. When they heard the news, former slaves danced in the streets. The next year, former slaves celebrated the anniversary of their being free, creating the first Juneteenth celebration.

Here we are 144 years later and so much has changed for African Americans that it’s almost breathtaking to consider, i.e. an African American President; more African Americans in the middle and upper classes than ever before and most recently just two days ago, the US Senate – APOLOGIZING for slavery!  I’m hoping you heard about this, even if you may not know about Juneteenth.

The Senate resolution was sponsored by Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, and it "acknowledges the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery," and "apologizes to African Americans on behalf of the people of the United States for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow laws."

Wow.  We’ve come a long way baby. But please remember, we’ve got a long way to go: African American unemployment and high-school dropout rates are twice that of whites, to list just two examples.  Happy Juneteenth!

Killing Time?

Three highly visible “hate” murders of Americans by Americans in the last ten days…

1. Dr. George Tiller, who performed late abortions, shot while attending church by an extremist anti-abortionist;

2. Pvt. William A. Long, a soldier, shot while on a recruiting assignment at a Little Rock mall by a man who’d converted to Islam as a teenager and who claimed to be angered by the killing of Muslim civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and

3. Stephen T. Johns, a security guard, shot while on duty at the Holocaust Museum by a self-professed white supremacist with a long record of violent tendencies.

I will not, out of respect for those killed, promote the murderers by mentioning their names here.

Mainstream media commentators on the Left such as Keith Olbermann, Paul Krugman and Judith Warner have used the murders of Dr. Tiller and Mr. Johns as just the latest examples of how right-wing media commentators – most specifically Rush Limbaugh and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck – can incite the kind of hatred that leads to violence.

But little mention by these same commentators has been made about what precipitated Pvt. Long’s murder.  Of course, the right wing media would have us believe that Pvt. Long’s murderer was driven by a perceived “hate America first” bias they claim is being spouted by MSNBC and The New York Times.

If only either explanation were that simple.  Rather, I would argue that while the media can play a supporting role in the kind of hatred and anger that leads to murderous violence, it is not the primary driver.  Intolerance of anyone or any opinion different than our own is the driver – and we are all, on the right and the left, guilty of it.  The media – in an effort to drive ratings – merely fans the intolerance, until someone believes the time is ripe for killing.

As I see it, each of the three murdered men are symbols of ideas that some people find intolerable.  In his murderer’s mind, Dr. Tiller symbolizes abortion; Mr. Johns’ murderer was attacking a museum about the Holocaust which he considers a myth and Jewish conspiracy; and in the mind of Pvt. Long’s murderer, the US military symbolizes the killing of Muslim innocents.  Now, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t hold strong opinions on these three issues: abortion, the Holocaust and killing Muslim civilians.  But I also don’t know an American who would deliberately pick up a gun and kill another American over these issues.  If I did, I like to think I would report them to the proper authorities.

There is no question in my mind that intolerance, and violence fueled by intolerance done by Americans against Americans, is on the rise in this country.  The Government issued a warning about this trend last April.  Now, media commentators certainly do loudly underscore that intolerance. But so do poorly enforced gun control laws filled with loopholes that allow mentally unstable people to get their hands on lethal weapons.  And so do any of us who don’t call media commentators to account on their biases, lies and hate-filled speech.  It's time we started focusing on the news and the facts, rather than blowhard commentators.  (This is why you'll find me listening to NPR and watching the News Hour on PBS - they're about as down-the-middle, fact-driven media as you can possibly find. And their audience is split 50/50 on either side of the aisle.)

But, regardless of the commentator, if we just stand idly by, nodding at whichever talking head spouts intolerance that we happen to agree with, then we are part of the problem too; we're making it killing time.