life in the desert

The Taklamakan Desert may be the most hostile place on the planet to live.

By day the sun hangs overhead like a hot coal that burns the eyes and the skin, and scorches the earth below the traveler's feet. There is no water to be found, and sand dunes stretch in every direction. At the end of the desert lies another desert. The Taklamakan's name may come from the Turkish phrase “The place of ruins.” When he set a story there in 1992, Neil Gaiman offered a more picturesque name: If-You-Go-In-You-Won't-Come-Out-Again.

The worst part of the Taklamakan is its winds. During the summer temperatures pass 100 degrees, and during the winter, they can drop below zero. During the spring, as the ground begins to warm, the air begins to move and gale winds arise with the force of a hurricane. Sand and dust blow and fill the air, creating a fog of dirt that reaches heights of 13,000 feet.

In these conditions, the sky can get so dark that visibility is imaginary. Your only hope of survival is to stay together, and your only hope of staying together is to affix bells to the camels and to one another so that you can hear how close you are to one another. The sand dunes constantly rearrange themselves, so your only hope of staying on your path is to set up a sign each night before you go to sleep so you can be sure to continue in the same direction when you waken in the morning.

Try to imagine living in those conditions. Try to imagine crossing a desert like that. The Taklamakan is a no man's land. It is a nowhere that lies between two places, an empty space that no one claims for their own. If you go in, you won't come out again.

Deserts come in all degrees and varieties. Far to the north are deserts where rain never falls and plants struggle to grow, but the ground is cold and frozen year-round. There are deserts where rains come often enough for cacti to grow and to bloom, and even for trees and animals to grow that have adapted to the climate.

Other deserts used to be green and fair, until men came and felled the trees and overgrazed their flocks until there was nothing left but wasteland. These deserts may be among the worst. Their desolation bears silent witness to the violence we have done to the land and to ourselves because we refuse to see what we are doing.

And then there are the deserts we make of our own societies, spiritual wastelands where we strip away justice and allow those with power to wield it with only a pretense of accountability. Executives loot the pensions of their workers and never face jail time or admit their wrongdoing. Government officials cut support for the needy and refuse to require a living wage. Power exists to serve the powerful and not the powerless.

In this desert, the victims of police violence are legion. Philando Castile. Alton Sterling. Walter Scott. Tamir Rice. John Crawford. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. The list of names is too long. It goes back too far to remember, and it joins the names of others martyred to white fears of a black country. James Byrd. Emmett Till. Greenwood, Okla.

Justice denied fuels anger, and as violence begets violence the body count begins to rise, and the voice of God rises in reprimand. “What have you done?” he asks, as he has since the first story was told. “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.”

In the desert we rally to support a man who ridicules the disabled while he belittles and savages women. We rush to elect a man who lies outrageously, encourages violence, and incites hatred of Muslims and Jews, Mexicans and blacks.

In this desert, our nation's most avowedly religious Christians support this man, while we make a tremendous point of displaying our piety around the flagpole and at the National Mall, and everywhere we go. We shout our faith to the heavens, but heaven is a place that demands justice first and foremost.

From the book of Amos:

“I hate, I despise your feasts,
    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings,
    I will not accept them,
and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts
    I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Justice. That word sounds threatening, but it doesn't need to. What is it that makes the Taklamakan so dangerous? It's not the wind, or the sand, or the soft geography. It's not even the sun. It's the lack of water.

The Taklamakan lives in the shadow of the Himalayas, mountains so tall that they block rain clouds from ever reaching the Taklamakan or the rest of the Gobi Desert region. About an inch-and-a-half of precipitation gathers in the West, and less than half an inch in the East. Even cacti find the Taklamakan too extreme. Most of the area is barren.

Most, but not all. Even that inhospitable desert comes to life where the water rolls down. Around the edges of the desert region are river valleys and deltas, and places where the groundwater comes close enough to the surface to ease the oppression of the desert sun. Herds of gazelles run free through these open spaces, and wild boars live among the river valleys, where even wolves and foxes hunt.

Justice is not a force of destruction. It is an agent of renewal. Where the river flows through the desert, trees put down roots. They grow fruit when it's the season, and even in the summer heat their leaves do not wither. The trees that line the river provide shade for the weary, the grass along the river is easy on the feet, and there is food to eat.

In the desert, an oasis like this is a place to rest, to recover, to heal and to stay a while, perhaps even to put down roots of our own. The justice of God is a shelter in our society, a place where black lives matter as much as white lives, where everyone is welcome to be themselves, and where no one is viewed with suspicion because of race or color.

Here in our desert, Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour of the week. Perhaps we don't know the burdens people of color face in our society because too often we still haven't taken the time to let them share, nor believed them when they've told us.

Hate evil, and love good; establish justice in the gate.

Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Let it begin with me.



Copyright 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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blaming the victims of police violence

Have you heard about Steven Hildreth Jr.?

Hildreth, a resident of Tuscon, Ariz., was featured in an October 2015 news story in which he describes an encounter with the police that did not end with him being shot, tased, arrested or otherwise turned into the latest statistic of police violence aimed at black Americans. In fact, the story notes, after he was pulled over for a broken headlight, he told the police that he had a license for a concealed firearm, which he was carrying on his hip.

The encounter doesn't go badly; in fact, the police let him off with a reminder to fix the broken headlight and to get his up-to-date registration card, since the registration is valid but the card is old. “Because you were cool with us and didn’t give us grief, I’m just going to leave it at a verbal warning," the officer says.

Here's how Hildreth ends his comments, which he originally posted on Facebook:

I’m a black man wearing a hoodie and strapped. According to certain social movements, I shouldn’t be alive right now because the police are allegedly out to kill minorities.

Maybe…just maybe…that notion is bunk.

Maybe if you treat police officers with respect, they will do the same to you.

It's no surprise that every time there is another police shooting of a black man, particularly when it ends in the black man's death, Hildreth's comments go viral. Coming from me or Sean Hannity, these comments easily could be dismissed as whitesplaining, but here they are, from a black man. To some, this constitutes compelling evidence that Black Lives Matter is about disrespecting our police, who are doing a dangerous job and whose lives are imperiled whenever we express concerns about the potential for racism.

I'm glad that Hildreth had a pleasant encounter with the police who pulled him over, as I'm sure everyone else is. That doesn't make his experience normative, though. I twice have been pulled over by police who were so friendly and professional that I didn't mind getting a ticket from them, and left the encouner in as good a mood as when it started. That doesn't mean I expect police to be that friendly when they pull me over and when they aren't that it's because of something I said differently.

I've seen Hildreth's story in my Facebook feed many times, and here's the truth: I don't like it. It blames the victims of police violence for that violence, and it's also incredibly condescending. (Also, every Facebook friend who has shared it has been white, so maybe there is something to that charge of whitesplaining after all.)

Hildreth is correct that we should treat police officers with respect, but the implication of his comments is that if something goes wrong, then the fault lies with the civilian. In fact, that's pretty much exactly he point spells out. The problem is that too many black Americans have found this to be exactly not the case. Most recently Philando Castile, who reportedly was shot while doing exactly what the officer on hand said, who by all reports was a respectful person, and who even informed the cop that he was had a license for concealed carry.

In other words, he acted just like Hildreth did, but he was shot and killed anyway.

Admonitions to respect police are rather like calls to have faith that God will answer prayers. Having faith is a good thing, but if God does not answer your prayers, it doesn't you failed to have enough faith. It's important to respect police, but unfortuantely for far too many black Americans, that hasn't been enough to save their lives either.

Let's stop blaming victims of police violence, and let's stop pretending that black people don't know that they should respect police.

We need instead to address the problem from the side of the police. A number of the cops who have been involved in these incidents were let go from previous departments because of incidents that left their superiors concerned about their fitness to be cops. And others have shown overt signs of racist attitudes and behaviors, including racially offensive comments. Departments need to start vetting these people out, no matter how much experience they have on the force.

I knew a cop once on my journalism beat who felt free to talk trash about Arabs, Jews, black people and, well, just about anyone. He was the second highest-ranking officer on the force, and then two years later he was chief. I don't care how good a cop he may have been otherwise, this man didn't belong on the force. Even if he never went on patrol any more, his attitudes still infected the department.

Get rid of cops like him, make an effort to hire so that the police departments resemble their communities demographically, and give training like they were having success with in Dallas, and then we might start to see progress.



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'Black Like Me'

There are times I feel that my public education denied me important parts of my education. This is one of them.

"Black Like Me" is the true account of journalist John Howard Griffin and his journey through the South as a black man during the days of jim crow justice and segregation. Through a combination of melatonin pills, ultraviolet light treatments and a dye, Griffin made himself appear to be black, in order to better understand racism and how it affected society. The idea alone is incredible. That someone actually did this and then wrote about it, is nothing short of mind-boggling.

Griffin's book is written as a series of journal entries detailing his experiences as a black man in the South. Much of this details things that are textbook segregation: not being able to eat at white restaurants, not being allowed to drink from white water fountains, and not even being allowed to use white restrooms. What raises this above mere textbook knowledge is the immediacy of the narrative. Reading the book, you get a real sense of the indignity of having to walk for more than a mile just to go the bathroom, of not being given a drink of water on a scorching hot day, and of being subjected to what Griffin calls "the hate stare."

Beyond the obvious racism and racist attitudes, there were a few things revealed in the book that I found disturbing. One is that, in the afterword, Griffin notes that once the Civil Rights Act was passed, a number of white Civil Rights advocates felt that the work was finished. Blacks were guaranteed the right to vote, segregation was over, and things were looking up, What else was needed? Further demands by blacks for advancement and opportunity were met with incredulity and anger.

Right now there is a lawsuit headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, calling for a repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which ensured that states that had practiced segregation and jim crow justice would need to receive approval from the U.S. Department of Justice before they made any change to their voting laws. The argument is that, with a black president now elected to a second term, surely we have put this sordid chapter of our past behind us.

At the same time, a number of state legislatures have tried to pass voter ID laws in a sometimes brazen attempt to give Mitt Romney the upperhand in the election; and other states have gerrymandered their voting districts so that a Democratic-leaning state consistently elects Republican representatives. (Stop and think about the racial implications of this.)

Have we really come as far as we think we have? The white majority thought we were fine in the 1950s, thought we were fine in the 1960s and thinks we're fine now. I'd suggest that the white majority doesn't really know what it's like for the black minority, and should find out from the people who do know.

Secondly, Griffin had some illuminating thoughts on black achievement and the attitudes Southern whites had on that subject. As he traveled the South, Griffin noted the substandard living conditions many black families had, and noted that many whites attributed this to the overall shiftlesness of black culture, and the lack of desire on the part of blacks to get ahead and achieve for themselves.

At the same time, blacks routinely were being denied economic opportunities, funding for their schools was low, and their overall access to culture in the form of theater, concerts, and even libraries was minimal. And why should the wealth be taken from hard-working whites, and given to people who haven't worked for it?

It's not much of a stretch to see some disturbing parallels between those attitudes from the late 1950s and views recently expressed in the contemporary political dialogue about the 46 percent, and about people who benefit from safety net programs like Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment.

In the past 25 years, we've seen the wealth of our nation aggregate into the hands of an increasingly small group of people. Right now public schools and teachers are under tremendous fire, and the Republican Party has made a lot of noise about freeloaders trying to live off the hard work of others.

Have we really come as far as we think we have?

Right now we're at a crossroads in American education, where our standards are being adjusted to stress nonfiction reading, to "improve work-readiness" and to make us "more competitive in the global job market" and a lot of other things like that. There are a lot of books that are being cut from the national standards that shouldn't be, like "To Kill a Mockingbird." This is another book that should be part of our national curriculum, because it should be a part of our national conversation.

We have made some progress since the 1950s in terms of race, but we still have more to go. As we make that progress, "Black Like Me" should be a part of our discussion.



Copyright © 2013 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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