ALLISON BOLAH

Full audio of Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

Excerpt:

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States’ influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem’s methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing — in the crushing of the nation’s only non-Communist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Letter from Birmingham Jail was first published in The Atlantic on April 16, 1963.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action. We have gone through all these steps in Birmingham…

We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community. Mindful of the difficulties involved, we decided to undertake a process of self purification. We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” “Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?”

—

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth… The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”

But could a dream send up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?

We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!
Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,
We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

Teaching taught me to:

• Show up; being there and ‘there’ makes all the difference in the world,
• Continue to show up,
• Take care of myself,
• Genuinely think about the roles and responsibilities of adults in children’s lives and how to negotiate the spaces between protecting them and supporting them on their journeys to adulthood.

As a student, I’ve learned that:

• Knowing how to type is, in this environment, liberating,
• Intellectually – it is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

In general, I’ve know to:

• Play to win and play to win (and figure out what ‘winning’ is),
• Play it as it lays – which is tricky, because I sometimes find that I have to get out of my own way to read the playing field accurately,
• And, as REDACTEDREDACTED said Nego Gato said, “Play your own game.”
• And, as my mother said, “As my Grandmother said, “It takes all kinds.””

SOS

Calling black people
Calling all black people, man woman child
Wherever you are, calling you, urgent, come in
Black People, come in, wherever you are, urgent, calling
You, calling all black people
Calling all black people, come in, black people, come
on in.

Sometimes, when I notice that – the world over – the middle class is reading and doing and buying (oh, god buying) the same things, I get the willies. Like, why should ‘everyone’ be thinking about Noam Chomsky or talking about Theaster Gates? Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with thinking or talking about them. But, the names ‘we’ hear and the things that compel ‘our’ validation… It’s creepy, no? Like, I could make a list of the things ‘we’ all have in common:

• Single family homes in ‘nice’ neighborhoods (be they urban or suburban, gated or not…)
• European automobiles – or Subarus
• We’re all so well-read
• Up-to-date electronics (iPhones, HD TVs…)
• Kefir was a ‘thing’ that was everywhere in my corner of the world last year
• College
• TRX
• Meritocratic scholarships
• Art
• Steve McQueen (both)
• Social Justice

None of these things is inherently bad – in fact, they’re mostly good (at least to me, although not kefir or iPhones). But there’s something Orwellian (is the ‘right’ word [he’s been everywhere lately, too], but really ‘Huxleyan’ which [my computer is telling me] is not a word) about the near-perfect lock-step life phasing of, you know,

natural/water childbirth, Montessori pre-school, arts and music magnate elementary school, IB/Cambridge/performing arts middle and high schools, cute (but well-regarded) liberal arts colleges or honors programs in state schools, grad school/marriage, travel! foreign languages! ‘How do we not put mom and dad in a home?’ ‘Let’s take REALLY good care of ourselves (organic food, yoga, meditation, hiking, bicycling) so we age better than they did’ (and die peacefully in our sleep surrounded by loved ones at 120 on our everlasting retirement funds)…

It’s everywhere I’ve been, it’s everyone – I mean EVERYONE – I know. And maybe it’s just a thing, like we only know people like ourselves. Ok. But every once in a while, I look up from my critical theory (!) and freak out a bit because, you know, it’s a little insidious.

Right?

I am fascinated by how both Ta-Nehisi Coates and Cord Jefferson leverage their respective platforms, Coates at The Atlantic and Jefferson at Gawker, to vigorously discuss the construction/experience of race in America. Both are heirs of James Baldwin, but their expressions of that lineage diverge.  Here, Coates – ever the bookish striver – takes on the Duck Dynasty debacle:

That the enemy is us, is never easy to take. Yesterday, Confederates routinely accused Northerners of attempting to reduce them to slavery. Today, men who convene with Confederate flags at the White House, accuse the president of racism. Yesterday, the civilized man accused you of barbarism, while practicing sophisticated human sacrifice to the God Of Nations, while reducing his lordly estate to a house of the dead. Today, the homophobe accuses you of sexual immorality and damns you to hell, while preaching a gospel which would make wives of children.

Less lofty – I think he has a lot less to ‘prove’ – , but no less indignant, Jefferson looks back at the year in racism. The paradox that validates the following two paragraphs is, indeed, a marvel:

This is a specific kind of blinder worn by racists: If an abuse happens to white people also, it’s not racism, it’s just life. White people go to jail, too, so the justice system isn’t skewed against minorities. White people were indentured servants in early America, and black Africans participated in the slave trade, ergo slavery wasn’t as racist as some make it out to be. Unlike with white presidents, nobody’s even fired a gun at President Obama, and so Oprah must be speaking disingenuously when she says there is a special hatred for Obama in the nation’s air.
…
From 1980 to 2008, 84 percent of white homicide victims were killed by other whites, and 53 percent of gang-related killings involved white offenders. Last month a white 27-year-old was arrested for walking up to an elderly black man he didn’t know and punching him out. But “white leaders” are never asked to account for white criminality, because in America race isn’t a contributing factor when white people behave badly. A person’s skin color as it relates to crime only becomes pertinent when that person’s skin is dark, the implication being that a white criminal is an aberration, while a black criminal is indicative of a larger threat. A truth, that blacks and liberals of all colors will not face: A white guy runs up behind someone and sucker punches him, as has happened countless times in history? He’s an asshole. A black guy sucker punches someone? He attacked from behind; it was to be expected; and there are lots more where that came from, because the blacks are playing a dangerous game and it’s coming to a town near you.

I love this clip because of the subtext of Charlie Rose’s question; something about Toni Morrison’s response to Bill Moyers’ question in a previous interview must have seemed too… sharp or critical and put Moyers and other whites like him – including Rose – on the defensive lest they fall into the ‘bad guy’ category for being misunderstood when discussing or seeking to ‘move past’ the issue of race. Morrison’s response is fantastic! I especially like what she says from the 4:19 mark onward.