Light/Breezes

Light/Breezes
SUNRISE AT DEATH VALLEY-Photo by Tom Cochrun

Monday, January 18, 2016

AFTER KING & SEAN PENN'S FAILURE

MLK ANGER
     Anger.  The ML King Memorial speakers provoked an anger.  I was angry that a university cross culture staffer was also angry enough to rail against cultural bias.
     Angry that an African American woman student confronted the kind of racism mostly borne of ignorance. Micro aggression she called it, white boys would date her, but only in private, never in public. Insidious racism in questions about how often black students wash their hair, or did she have any thug buddies?
     Angry that a pastor who grew up near Selma and who worked in Birmingham said even all these years later "we still have work to do."
     Angry that indeed the battle is far from over. Angry that prejudice and racial intolerance are still enemies of the Republic.  Too many battles, too much suffering, too much residual poison, too much anger for too long. All of this should have been fixed decades ago.
     I wondered as speakers pointed to old enemies, that should have been vanquished, if Dr. King would not now be pointing to the enemies of economic disparity, sexual and gender discrimination as well as the kind of racism seen in police murders of black citizens, or voter registration entanglements or a Mitch McConnell saying on day one of the Obama administration his job was to prevent the president's re-election.
      Hats off to Pacifica Radio Archives for finding a "lost" Martin Luther King speech.You can link here to learn about and listen to a 1964 speech in London, just days before he received the Nobel Prize.
       By April 1967 Dr. King had grown angry. If you are interested you can hear the address delivered at historic Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967, a year before he was murdered. The speech was called Beyond Vietnam: Time to Break the Silence. It is considered the most controversial speech of his life.

SEAN PENN'S FAILURE
   Sean Penn told CBS's Charlie Rose he considered his interview with the Mexican drug kingpin a failure, because it failed to foster a wider conversation about America's own failure, the long and tired War on Drugs, being waged since the Nixon administration.
    Some have attacked Penn for doing the interview, faulting him for his lack of journalistic perspective. Penn challenges what he says is a failure in American journalism. 
     What Penn offered up in Rolling Stone was a personal piece, his experience with and his take on the drug Lord.  It was not meant to be a thorough and full examination of the Mexican cartel, its leader and his violence. It was however the first public comment from a twice escaped international fugitive in hiding. That he got him to speak, even under conditions is better than anyone else has done. Did his interview offer great illumination? Probably not, but it offered more than we knew previously. 
       It is not the kind of journalism being celebrated in the Academy Award nominated Spotlight, but it was a snapshot of a public enemy while on the run. Penn may have wished for more.  Envious journalists and embarrassed law enforcement may take their shots. Still on balance, Penn risked his own well being, displayed a curiosity and produced an honest account that on balance brought up the information level on a legitimate story. No great success perhaps, no Pulitzer winner, but neither was it a failure. At the very least Penn deserves credit for giving it a shot.

    See you down the trail.


10 comments:

  1. I wonder if it would have angered MLK more that now there are presidential candidates that are fairly open with their racism, as much as Wallace was, back in his day, perhaps even more so.
    I trust your judgement on Penn's interview, you are certainly qualified to know.

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    1. It would be quite something to hear Dr. King respond to Donald Trump. It would be revealing to learn how he would approach the incarceration rate of African Americans.

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  2. A good friend of mine, told me of traveling from LA to Louisiana for a family Christmas, his father using the Green Book to know where it was "safe" to buy gas, to eat and to spend the night on the road. He told me of his father getting stopped out side of Dallas by a Texas Highway patrolman, it was raining and he, his mother, two brothers and a sister stood alongside the car in the cold December rain while his father was questioned and then made to unload the car, while the Texas cop went through their luggage and opened family Christmas presents. When they got back in the car, the patrolman leaned in the window of the 2 month old 59 Chevy wagon and said, "Our Texas Niggers don't drive nice, new cars like this, y'all have a nice Christmas, hear." America, America.

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  3. btw, my friend's dad was a WWII vet of the Famous Red Ball Express and a skilled machinist at MacDonald Douglas. Ray said his dad was so angry he thought he was going to twist the steering wheel off the Chevy and his LA school teacher mother wept the rest of the way across Texas.

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    1. When we read or hear of accounts such as this, I gain an extraordinary reservoir of respect for the men and women who endured such hideous behavior and who kept their cool. So many "heroes" of character in these awful chapters of American history.

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    2. I told my friend's story to a guy we both know. His response?

      "So what, that's just the way things are."

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  4. I keep hoping that as generations roll past, racism will die out, but not so. I guess there will always be hate; part of the human condition. All it takes is a few rotten apples.

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  5. I've been plagued by that concern, for a long time. Why can't we humans finally leave those lesser behaviors and thoughts behind. The human stain must carry a nasty ink.

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  6. Oh my. It had to be early in my senior year at high school, 1967. Word got round that Rev. King was coming to Sacramento State College. That day, 5 or 6 friends piled into my '62 Chevy and we cut school to be there. So glad we did. Followed the crowd out to the soccer field and sat on the grass. Dr. King delivered a speech that filled us with hope. He was just a man, we noticed --mansized, mancolored, looking a little tired but full of the moment. He was not paved-looking like the b&w images we saw on tv --or later, on commemorative statues. He was real and human. That is still with me, like the overwhelming assurance of his speech and presence, the assurance that he was right. To their credit, administrators at my hicktown high school issued no demerits to any students who skipped classes that day. They knew the world was ready for change. Of course, it still needs change but that day introduced me to a faith that it will change, is changing, must change.

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  7. That was an excellent reason to cut class. Pleased to note your administrators understood. King was and remains a clarion of conscience and change.

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