We Hold These Truths … to be Offensive

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/20/21

            Seventeen centuries before Jefferson asserted in The Declaration that certain truths were self-evident, Cicero remarked, “If truth were self-evident, there would be no need for eloquence.”

            Nor for debate nor even for courts of law, one might add. But we understand what Jefferson meant. You won’t find me quibbling too much with either one of these intellectual giants, but truth often has to be searched out, hammered out, and explained. Despite my admiration for Jefferson, I’m with Cicero.

            Today in America truth is on the scaffold. It always is, but dear Lord, how many more biological and sociological truths are about to be denied by the political/cultural left? I started to use the word “discarded,” but it’s impossible to discard truth. It can be scoffed at or ignored, but not discarded, no matter how much we dislike it. Truth stands, though often alone.

            One of America’s greatest poets, James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), wrote. “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide / In the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side.” But what can a dead, white poet offer us?  Although Lowell was addressing the evil of slavery when he penned those words, he is just too yesterday for today’s youth and for the publishers of their literature books. Lowell is essentially canceled.

            I rue that fact because every single day we learn that yet another truth is being canceled, replaced with such lies as: we are not just male or female; spanking injures a child’s psyche; capitalism is inherently racist; life doesn’t begin at conception; all whites are privileged.

            How intellectually vacuous and soft we have become. How tenderly we treat our children, thus retarding their movement into responsible adulthood. In high school, at age 17, I was a substitute school bus driver. Two other senior boys were full time school bus drivers. Not even in rural areas would that happen today. Why not? Because of the cultural softening of everything from parenting to schooling to policing. Because of the mystique we’ve built around teenagers.

In the words of feminist writer Christina Sommers, “Our helping culture is eroding self-confidence.” Yes, we lavish children with praise and go gentle with correction. We send grief brigades to our schools in the wake of the smallest tragedy. We’ve replaced “Know thyself” with “Esteem thyself.”   Sommers, parting company with her feminist sisters, rejects “the triumph of the therapeutic.”

            Oh, for a modern Martin Luther to nail truth to the cathedral door of our modern culture. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal is now requiring its reporters to refrain from using the words, “illegal immigrants,” words that Senator Schumer, President Obama, and Vice President Biden were using barely a decade ago.  But no more. Now eschewing truth, they have succumbed to a lie. Soon shoplifters will be called “non-buyers.” If truth offends it must be reworded.

Consider the term “white privilege” and the following name pairs, Whites on the left and Blacks on the right: Tom Brady/Lebron James; Taylor Swift/Beyonce; Peter Trottier/Ben Carson; William Faulkner/James Baldwin. We could go on and on in all fields of work, pairing successful Whites with successful Blacks. My good doctor, Peter Trottier, is not successful because he is White and Ben Carson is not successful because he is Black. Both men are successful because they dreamed, then hit the road, and achieved their dream. Neither viewed himself as a victim.

            The American dream puts the lie to white privilege. How privileged were Lincoln and Truman, or Obama and Clinton for that matter? All four of these originally non-rich Americans chased their dream and caught it. Sadly and ironically Obama and Clinton have since taken the side of those who cry white privilege, racism, and victimhood. Both of them know better.

            In the recent past “offensive” was a word employed for scatological humor, vulgarity, and profanity. Today it’s used to describe Dr. Seuss. Dear God. “Victim” in the recent past referred to the down and out. Today it’s used to describe Meghan and Harry. Some claim politics and politicians are the incubator of all such cry-babying. I say it’s parents and the university.

            C.S. Lewis wrote, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue.” Lewis understood truth.

            And so did James Russell Lowell. He ended his beloved poem with, “Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the Truth alone is strong / Though her portion be the scaffold and upon the throne be wrong / Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown / Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.”

            For such we best pray, especially when cultural relativism is the prevailing belief.           

 

Roger Hines

March17, 2021

              

             

           

 

        Black History Month Matters and Should not be Sullied

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3-9-21

            During the month of February this newspaper rightly celebrated Black History Month. In the words of the editor, “To recognize Black History Month, the MDJ asked 20 community leaders how they will celebrate and what BHM means to them.” The paper went on to draw testimony day by day from Black leaders in Marietta and Cobb County.

            Reading these testimonies was uplifting. Permit me to describe two growth experiences which caused me to revel in them.

            I was ten. I always beat my younger brother and older sisters to the graveled road to await the school bus. One particular morning appeared to be a normal school day. For instance, looking west toward Forest, Mississippi I observed once again the ten or so Black teenagers and small children walking the two miles from the edge of town to their school which was a shack just beyond our house. The shack, badly needing paint and repair, was a mysterious place. I peeped into its windows on many a Saturday to find it almost bare of furniture and supplies.

            But this spring morning wasn’t normal. Fronting the group of Black students was a new child who had never been with them. Walking far ahead of the group, he appeared to be my age. My siblings and I never spoke to these young people nor they to us. Instead they and we looked down as they passed by. But this morning when the new child reached our mailbox, with a bright smile on his face he chirped, “Ya’ll rich, ain’tcha! Ya’ll got cows!”

            “Nuh uh,” I replied. “Those are Mr. McMurphy’s.” Before we could continue talking, all of the others rushed forth and one of the teenage girls pushed the excited lad forward. Truth is they and we were not supposed to talk to each other. Believe me.

            Because of the joyful innocence on my potential friend’s face and its deep contrast to that of his friends, I began to wonder why I rode a bus to a good school in town while he walked to a shack out in the country.

            Twelve years later my career path and an internal convicting spirit had led me to George Washington Carver Jr. High School. A white man surrounded by all Black co-workers, the finest of teachers, I wallowed in their excellence and their dedication to improving the lives of their charges. Science teacher Ernestine Ross, Diana Ross’ first cousin, kept me up-to-date on the emerging Supremes during our common planning period. Little Emmett Jones, one of my seventh graders, looked exactly like the child who had stopped to talk to me twelve years before. At Carver my awareness of injustice grew.

            Recently Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, Harold Melton, announced that he was retiring. This news catapulted my mind to Melton’s 10^th grade year when he was a student of mine at Wheeler High School. Intentionality was writ large on Melton’s face. One of only a very few Black students in the school at the time, Melton was characterized by teachers as “a prince of a guy.” A reunion with Melton a few years ago when he spoke at a Chattahoochee Tech graduation was a great thrill.

            A child my age whose name I never knew, a splendid collection of Black educators who exhibited personal and professional excellence and a former student showed me that Black citizens who comprise hardly 13% of the nation deserve to be recognized and celebrated, particularly those who have contributed so much.

            Sadly though, we sully race relations and halt progress when we fall for divisive expressions such as “systemic racism” and “the bigotry of Whiteness.” Sulliers like Al Sharpton have lots of explaining to do, given the success and good will modeled by Blacks like Clarence Thomas, Alveda King, Ben Carson, Herman Cain, Candace Owens, and Harold Melton.  Materially, Sharpton isn’t doing too badly himself.       

School systems, corporations (listening, Coca Cola?), and universities are requiring workshops and training on “overcoming whiteness,” and “how to be less white.” Such preachy wrongheadedness divides people. The cure for liberal guilt is for liberals to take action themselves, instead of foisting indoctrination workshops on those of us who have fought injustice all of our lives, but just happen to be conservative or white.

            One wonders how a CEO, a school system superintendent, or a university president got to where they are if they could fall for reverse bigotry. It’s past time to let go of shaming. Let’s all just determine to meet people of a different race and make friends. It’s always time to honor, in a dignified way as this newspaper has done, our Black fellow citizens. Finger pointing and guilt-laden videos we can do without. 

 

Roger Hines

3/3/21