January 15, 2021
I had the pleasure of giving a talk to the community of the College of St. Rose today. It was a community conversation to provide perspective on the January 6th insurrection in Washington D.C. and to provide guidance on moving forward as a community. Below are my remarks.
The audio of this talk can be obtained from this link.
Fair warning: this is a not short read.
It is important to acknowledge that this past year has been one of loss. A loss of lives. A loss of stability. A loss of rituals that ground us in ways we don’t even realize until we lose them. A loss of trust – in our government – and for some of us, in each other.
This has also been a year of reckoning. The veil is finally beginning to drop around the outright lies we’ve been led to believe. And buried truths we’ve been denied are finally being revealed. We are now being forced to see the injustices and the indignities that too many of us ignored or dismissed for too long. This past year has also been one of reckoning with the fragility of our society and our communities.
And of course, the siege of our nation’s capital on January 6th force us to reckon with the illusions that had been comforting for a lot of us. There are so many things that that many of us took for granted. There are people all across this country who are seeing their families, their communities, and their faith in the stability of our society splintering before their eyes. Or they are finding people burying their heads in the sand waiting for things to go back to a normal that created this problem in the first place. You may not yet find yourself in this position, but there is undoubtedly someone you know who is.
I am certain that every single one of us has a lot of questions. There are good answers to only some of them right now. Those of us who read about and study right wing extremism, White supremacy, White nationalism, how it developed and operates are be able to shed light on some pieces of what happened and is happening. However, even as someone who does that kind of work, I can assure you that what we are witnessing is way more complex than many of us appreciate right now. To fully understand what happened, how we got here, and who was involved, we will just have to be patient. Patience is needed with the very complicated investigations that will likely take years to come to any resolution. Patience is also needed because there is a lot of learning many of us have to do about the systems, the history, and the ideological roots that motivated and supported this insurrection. Patience is hard. I know. Patience isn’t exactly my strength either. And my desire for instant gratification has been fed by TikTok videos with 30 second storylines.
What I want to speak to in this moment is the one thing we can say about the attempted coup: it was a planned attempt to destroy our very imperfect democracy as we know it AND an attempt to destroy the society that we are trying to create. A society that accepts and welcomes the wide diversity of peoples as they are; a society that cares for people even when they look different, love differently, or pray to a different god; a society that thinks seven generations ahead rather than simply next quarter. This is the society that those of us committed to social justice have been trying to create for generations. And that is what we will lose if they are successful next time.
The violent siege on the Capitol didn’t just target our society writ large. The attempted coup was the result of efforts that operate in our communities and have been eating away at our communities for a very long time. Yes, some of us had seen it and even tried to warn others about it. And some of us looked away, not knowing what to do. But the siege on the Capitol is forcing us to reckon with some ugly truths. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past week comforting, supporting, and advising people who did not realize that their family member, neighbor, coworker, fellow parishioner, their mortgage broker, daughter’s piano teacher were involved in the attack on our nation’s democracy. That it is so close to home is scary for a lot of us.
So let’s talk about community. Especially the inclusive community that St. Rose wants to create and maintain. At its core, community is simply a web of relationships. Some communities exist in physical space and others are created by shared interests. Some of the relationships in any given community will be stronger and others weaker. Some of us had to fight to be included in our communities while others have long been entitled to belonging.
What holds communities together are shared values. Some of those values will be fundamental and almost absolute. Violate them and you risk banishment. Some will be flexible, contingent on context and in relation to other values.
The thing about community is that it is hard to sustain. Staying in relationship across difference or disagreement – which exists in every community – is not easy. During times like these, when you look across the table or across the screen and find yourself wanting to ask, “Who are you? Who have you become?” that is when it is hardest to stay in a community when you value inclusivity. It takes an enormous amount of strength and courage, and a large dose of humility, to be able to have the kind of hard conversations that we need to learn to have with each other so that we can live our values together even across our differences and disagreements.
Now, I am not saying that you should accept behaviors that violate the community’s values. I am not saying you should accept or excuse abusive behavior or behavior that reinforces oppression and domination of any kind, either through action or inaction. I am definitely not saying that you have to accept or excuse any claim that questions your worth, undermines your dignity, or denies your full humanity. St. Rose’s own values of inclusivity could not accept this.
I’m also not saying that you must stay in every community you find yourself in. You may find meaning and affirmation of who you are someplace else. And that is ok too. I can’t promise it will be painless, but it’s ok if that is what you need to do to live a full and dignified life.
What I am saying is that sometimes, we have to remind each other what the values of our community are, who we really are as people in all of our complexity as human beings. This requires practicing some level of non-judgmental compassion.
It’s important to remember that people have been made to feel angry and resentful. And we know there is a lot to be angry about. But the people who participated in the attack on our democracy have also been told not to trust anyone, and certainly no other source of information, other than the one that is feeding that anger. You may not yet understand that anger or have experienced the kind of echo chamber that leads people to seek to lynch the Speaker of the House. To maintain or restore your community, you will need to at least start trying to understand it. And the conversations that we will all have to have in the coming days, weeks, and months will require practicing some level of non-judgmental compassion.
With that said, non-judgmental compassion does not mean no consequences. Repairing our community – repairing our relationships – absolutely requires accountability. Truth and atonement for the harm one has created must always come before reconciliation. This is something we should have learned after the last major rupture in our nation.
After the end of the Civil War, the leadership in the US – the White leadership – decided we needed to get to unity as quickly as possible. There were some who pushed for accountability for the sedition and justice for formerly enslaved people. It was a rocky start because of Andrew Johnson who, it is safe to say, was not a great choice for vice president by Lincoln given what happened. Eventually, after Johnson’s impeachment and a new president was elected, the radical Republicans, as they were called – I like to think of them as the original Squad – were successful in getting the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments passed and ratified. Without getting into the details, let’s just say that these are crucially important laws if you are committed to social justice.
Sadly, the children of the abolition generation did not follow in the footsteps of their ancestors. In hindsight, I think we can say that we shouldn’t have expected them to. Black equality wasn’t actually a value even within the White abolitionist community. Instead of seeking accountability and justice, reunions between White northern soldiers and Southern Confederates seeking reconciliation started in 1875, just a decade after the end of the war and right at the end of Reconstruction. They were practically annual events throughout the 1890s and they continued until the mid-20th century.
What was buried in this process of reunification was the reason the South seceded in the first place. The cause of the war, let’s remember, was slavery. And only slavery. But when that truth was removed from collective memory, it was replaced by the Lost Cause myth.
This myth, chock full of lies that slavery was a benevolent institution, lies that the South seceded over state’s rights, and lies that Reconstruction was oppression of the South, lies that have been the standard history of the US Civil War for over a century and are still the standard history in too many parts of our country. Embracing that lie as a means of reconciliation is among the many things that has prevented this country from turning away from White supremacy and other forms of bigotry. It is why some of us have had to fight, and have to continue to fight, for full inclusion in this nation.
The lesson that we need to take from that history is that accountability for the attempt to destroy our democracy, our society, and our communities is a prerequisite for healing. We have accepted cheap grace for too long. And this is where it has led us. So, while we should try to practice non-judgmental compassion, we must do so firmly within the boundaries of clearly articulated values of mutual respect, inclusion, and care.
There’s a couple of things you should know about the hard conversations you will be having with each other and others over the coming days, weeks, and months in this process of understanding and healing. First, making sense of all of this will take time. There is a lot to learn from what historians and social scientists already know. And the investigations into the attempted coup will take time. Practice patience and remember to breathe. Second, as you have these hard conversations and practice non-judgmental compassion and mutual respect, you will make mistakes. You will disappoint people and you will be disappointed by people. Give yourself and each other some grace. Stay committed to your community.
It sucks that we have to do this. Some will argue that we shouldn’t have to do this. I understand that feeling. In reality we have little choice. We can let our loved ones and other members of our communities sink further into an abyss that was purposefully created to exploit their anxiety and our White supremacist socialization. And all that will do is continue to empower those who profit from the anger and resentment and disillusionment that fed the insurrection on January 6th. We will harm ourselves, our community, and our fragile democracy by not trying. Staying in community is hard and it’s really the only way to be fully human.