People like me

People like you. May you reap what you sow.

A “friend of a friend” responded to me on Facebook in a way that has become all too familiar across social media platforms. Instead of dialoguing on the merits of their own viewpoint, they pivot to a personal attack.

People like me...

I am a Christian.

I am the granddaughter of an Army combat engineer who served his country for more than four decades, including two World Wars and the Korean War. I am the daughter of a career Army Infantry officer who deployed twice to Vietnam and once to Iran. I am the spouse of an Army Signal officer who spent multiple tours in combat zones defending our country after a plane barely missed his office in the 9/11 Pentagon attack.  I am the mom of two daughters and the “gigi” of four grandchildren. I am a cybersecurity professional who has made a career supporting the Department of Defense in protecting our country’s networks. My family has sacrificed much defending another person’s right to be ugly to me on social media.

I have lived in eight states and one foreign country. I have traveled to another 23 states and five countries. This has exposed me to a multitude of people from a variety of backgrounds and shaped my tolerance for political viewpoints that do not align with my own. I have seen firsthand that my problems are not the same as my neighbors’ problems. I try and understand that their needs and drivers can be very different from my own. I believe diversity in people and opinion should inspire us, not divide us. 

I have voted Republican and Democratic. I have spoken for and against the current president, as I have for our previous presidents. I stand by my principles, not by a political party. 

I am a person who seeks to spread harmony in this world, but I am finding it harder and harder to do so against a backdrop of an injustice that cries out for revolutionary change. I have seen disparity in how my black friends are treated in our world compared to my white friends. I have seen the harm caused to them by unchecked racism. I cannot turn a blind eye to injustice to keep the peace, but I  will not foster further division by repaying hatred with hatred. 

As a Christian, I am called to love my neighbor as myself. Even if that neighbor and I are very different; even if that neighbor is unkind to me; even if that neighbor sows hatred.

I hope someday to reap what I sow—understanding, grace, love, equality and peace.

A lesson from Vietnam

My dad served in the Vietnam War. It was not a “popular” war. Many Americans believed we fought for the wrong side. Our military was ill-prepared for guerilla warfare, which resulted in high rates of injuries and death. Drafts were necessary to fill the ranks, but coerced soldiers did not make committed soldiers. Long deployments, resentful soldiers, and brutal conditions led to lack of discipline. This environment became an accelerant for angry men. Brutal attacks on civilians stained the entire military. When my dad returned home, despite his honorable service, his uniform was met with scorn, derision, and disrespect. These combined experiences fueled years of heavy drinking. It took two rounds of rehab, before he was able to conquer his demons and overcome the damage from that painful period in his life.

My husband served in the war on terrorism. He deployed twice – once to Afghanistan and once to Iraq. He returned home from these deployments carrying the weight of battlefield experiences we still do not discuss. While most Americans supported the initial foray into Afghanistan, the move into Iraq was less popular. As casualties rose, calls against the war increased. Despite rising disapproval, my husband returned from his deployments to praise, parties, and overwhelming gratitude. Strangers regularly walked up to him in the street to shake his hand and thank him for his service. Businesses offered discounts and free services as a token of their appreciation. Sometime between Vietnam and the war on terrorism, our country learned to separate the soldier from the system waging war. My husband did not have to carry the added weight of a disapproving nation.

We are in desperate need of bringing this same understanding to the men and women who comprise our police force. Our anger and dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system’s militarization of our police force is justified. Our demands for change must continue, but we need to save our condemnation for the policemen who earned it and point our anger and demands towards the system that created and enabled these men to do harm.  

It’s here we feel the depth of your sacrifice.  And here we see a piece of our larger American story.  Our Founders -- in their genius -- gave us a task.  They set out to make a more perfect union.  And so it falls to every generation to carry on that work.  To keep moving forward.  To overcome a sometimes-painful past.  To keep striving for our ideals.

And one of the most painful chapters in our history was Vietnam -- most particularly, how we treated our troops who served there.  You were often blamed for a war you didn’t start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor. You were sometimes blamed for misdeeds of a few, when the honorable service of the many should have been praised.  You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. (President Obama, May 28, 2012)

We cannot ignore the horrible atrocities we have seen committed against Black men and women at the hands of policemen. We owe their victims justice and systemic change. But we also cannot turn a blind eye to the many policemen and women who show heroism, valor, and a selfless disregard for their own personal safety. These men and women deserve recognition. They deserve gratitude. Vietnam taught us what happens when we choose a principle over people. The war on terrorism taught us we can choose people and principle. We do not have to choose between disavowing the institution and the people doing right within that institution. We can defend policemen and women and still push for police reform.  We can support the Black Lives Matter movement and still support the men and women in blue.

Let us learn from our mistakes; let us keep moving forward; let us strive for our ideals but let us stop doing it at the expense of good people. Inequity cannot be righted by contributing to further inequity. 

The Scarlet Letter

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers—stern and wild ones—and they had made her strong but taught her much amiss.  – Nathaniel Hawthorne

I published my first blog, A Skinny Girl’s Quest to Get Healthy, in 2010. It was a way to create a community of accountability partners and motivate myself to work out. I like writing. I do not like to exercise. Starting my blog worked incredibly well to kickstart my first long-term journey to get healthy. A few years later, when my work location moved from a five-minute to an hour-long commute, I found it challenging to maintain a regular exercise schedule, and I began to falter. When my daughter was diagnosed with moyamoya disease four years ago, my efforts at working out stopped altogether. In those rare moments I had to myself, I found myself on the couch watching Lifetime Movies and researching the next doctor, the next medical treatment, the next hope. I had no time or energy for exercise. Self-care went out the window.

I lost my father almost a year ago. He became a lesson for what happens when we do not place a value on exercise in our lives. It began with a knee injury. He went from walking several miles a day to inactivity. By the time he was diagnosed with cancer, he had lost most of his strength and was only able to walk short distances. Inactivity prior to his diagnosis left him with few physical reserves. He moved quickly from walking slowly to a wheelchair, from being independent to dependent. His last year was spent confined to a lazy boy recliner. By the time he passed, I knew I had to start moving again. I knew I had to prioritize my own health. But recognizing what I ought to do and doing it were two different things. It took eight months, a pandemic, and an accountability partner to motivate me to do the right thing.

Life presents us with these types of situations. We know what we ought/need to do, but doing it is hard, uncomfortable, or has potential for pain. A friend cites black advantage; instead of leaning into the conversation, we change the subject. The politician we support is crossing ethical and moral lines; instead of demanding accountability, we keep silent. Our minister is preaching that love is not love; instead of walking out, we stay seated.

Some days we are better at meeting these moments. Some days we avoid these moments and some days we fail miserably at our response to them. In a world where our lives are on 24-hour display across social media feeds, however, these failed moments can define us.

Recently a video went viral of a woman in Central Park who was asked to leash her dog by a black man. Instead of respecting the request, she argued with the man and then called the police. That five-minute failure has forever branded the woman with the scarlet letter “R.” She has been publicly shamed, had her dog taken away by the group she adopted it from, lost her job, and has most recently been charged with false reporting. Even the victim has said he is unwilling to participate in her prosecution.

Social media has fostered an environment where we feel compelled to quickly brand each other right or wrong, deserving, or undeserving, good or bad, racist or anti-racist, Trumper or anti-Trumper, one of us or one of them. We shame, we point, we “righteously” expose. But shame and accusation rarely serve to change a person’s point of view or make the world a better place.

Will our viral condemnation move this woman’s heart from hate to love? Will this societal reaction deter future racist behavior? Perhaps... Or perhaps our “righteous response” will push her and others further into the corner of hate. 

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Romans 2:1 NIV

It is easy to sit on our pedestals and think, I would never... But we all fall on a spectrum between good, bad, and human. EVERYONE fails at some point in their lifetime. When failure finds us, we can only pray that we have someone standing on the opposite side of that moment offering accountability, respect, and dignity, not just a mob of angry people building an insurmountable wall of shame.

Jesus has shown us that everyone deserves grace.

Revolution

Value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but to interests of others. Philippians 2:3-4 

More than 125,000 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 over a four-month period in the United States alone. Medical research supports that wearing a mask reduces transmission. Reducing transmission saves lives. Wearing a face mask poses zero health consequences for the majority of people and only minor problems for the minority of people. Why is this a debate?  

Absentee ballots have been an accepted and reliable form of voting for decades. Our military has voted by mail for years. Many of our current politicians protesting the use of mail-in ballots today, have, in fact, mailed in their votes. In the midst of a pandemic, mail-in ballots provide a much safer voting option for our neighbor. Why is this a debate?  

With the advent of social media grandstanding, We the People have given ourselves over to We the Party. We have attached ourselves to political camps and lost sight of the people and principles behind the issues we originally joined those political camps to help. We have bought hook, line, and sinker into the Us versus Them narrative, so much so that we have sacrificed individual ideals for a collective agenda.  

We blame the news media for manipulating information, but we react to it. We point to social media for distributing bad information, but we share it. We denounce politicians for driving negative campaigns, but we reward them with our vote. At some point we must acknowledge that the real problem is not the news media, social media, or even the politicians. The problem is the people feeding those institutions. The problem is us.  

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you have a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity. Colossians 3:13-14 

How do we find our way back to We the People in a society that is being told 24/7 it is us against them? Instead of attacking each other, we need to listen to each other. Instead of judging each other, we need to start asking what we can do to help each other. Jesus did not start a revolution by dividing people; he started it by inviting people – inviting people to change, inviting people to put their neighbors before themselves, inviting people to a communal table where the least of us is equal to the best of us in God’s eyes. God asks us to be revolutionary in defense of our neighbors, but he has shown us revolution does not always have to look like war.

Gone with the Wind

I first read Margaret Mitchell’s book Gone with the Wind in my teens. The southern novel drew me in. I was enthralled by the romance, seduced by the imperfect characters, captivated by the tension and the struggle. If you had asked me in my early twenties, which books made my favorites’ list, Gone with the Wind would have risen to the top. 

Thirty years later, I see the book very differently. Instead of a love story, I see a slave story. Instead of heroism, I see racism. Instead of resilience, I see human frailty. Where I used to see right, I have grown to see wrong.  

          Do the best you can until you know better. Then do better. – Maya Angelou 

There has been an outcry this week against the decision by Pepsi-Co, the company that owns the Aunt Jemima brand, to change the name and rebrand these products. People are sharing pictures of Nancy Green, the first model who was selected to be the face of the Aunt Jemima brand. The terms “too far” and “erasing history” are being tossed around.  

Quick research reveals that the original Aunt Jemima pancake mix was created by two white men who owned a failing flour mill. To sell more flour, they created a different product—a pre-mixed pancake mix. Sales did not raise enough capital for them to stay afloat, so they sold their company to another white man, Randolph Truett Davis. He refined the product further.  

In 1890, he hired Nancy Green as a model to portray the face of Aunt Jemima. She proved to be a popular “face” for the brand; she did not start the company nor inspire the product. While her story as a successful black model deserves recognition, it misaligns as a black empowerment story tied to Aunt Jemima—a fictional character inspired by a white-sided view of the “mammy” in slave culture.  

To read more on this, please refer to this link: https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/mammies/ 

While those who grew up eating Aunt Jemima pancakes, reading novels that glorified the confederacy, and attending schools named after confederate generals, understandably hold some level of nostalgia for these memories, this is not an acceptable excuse to keep defending a narrative that harms others. Romanticizing a history of brutality and inhumanity has only served the people who wished to perpetuate that inhumanity. 

Aunt Jemima branding merits a museum; it does not deserve a place on our grocery shelves. Robert E Lee’s story needs to be relegated to history books; it does not deserve to be aggrandized in a memorial statue. The history of the confederate flag should remain required teaching as it relates to racism in this country, but it should not be proudly flown over state capitals or any government institution. When we know better, we must do better.  

The Bible and BLM

“But whoever hates his brother in the darkness, walks around in the darkness, he does not know where he is going, because the darkness blinds him.” 1 John 2:11 

I was heartsick yesterday after reading comments on a Facebook post that a Methodist minister made advocating for the Black Lives Matter movement. A person responded to his post by saying “All lives matter.” When he gently pointed her back to the part of his post where he discussed why this narrative can be harmful right now, she went into a dialogue about black-on-black crime and how statistics proved that blacks already had more privilege than whites. She related that she had been treated badly in a black neighborhood growing up. She stated that despite her bad experiences, she did not feel hatred to anyone of color.  She treated blacks and other races all equally, which is why she advocated for “All lives matter.”  

It was clear by her passionate defense; she could not see the hatred she still held in her heart. She did not understand that her defense was not for all lives, but for her own life. It was evident that she believed that black gains would be her loss. The message may have used the words “All lives matter,” but what she was saying was “White lives matter.” 

“Anyone who claims to be in the light, but still hates his brother is still in the darkness.” 1John 2:9 

My grandchildren are biracial. After three generations of interracial marriages, their skin is fair, their eyes are blue, and they turn pink on a sunny day. People who do not know my family, only see white children.  

The sad and ugly truth is I felt relief when they were born. Not because, I would have loved them differently had they been born a beautiful shade of cocoa sporting deep brown eyes, but because I knew their lives would be easier and safer, if they could pass as white.  

My grandchildren should not need to “pass as white” to be afforded the same opportunities, to garner the same respect or to feel safe in this world, but the undeniable fact is being white in America, gives you a leg up.  

So, I ask you, if you are a white person who is still saying “All lives matter,” would you trade your skin with the skin of a black person?” If the answer is “No,” please reconsider your narrative. If the answer is “Yes,” please consider if you are being honest with yourself.  

“Anyone who loves his brother lives in the light and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” 1 John 2: 10

At the heart of those answers lies an unarguable truth—being white comes with privilege. We need to stop denying that privilege exists. We need to start using it to empower our black brothers and sisters. We need to stop saying “All lives matter.” We need to start showing they matter by supporting black lives.  

Enough

Ten days into protests, there has been a shift from solidarity surrounding the events that led to George Floyd’s death to increasing calls of “Enough.” People are seeing the destruction and want it to stop. They are seeing the violence and want it to end. And they are seeing the images of fires, destroyed businesses and violent confrontations, and getting angry. How can this be ignored? 

I want the looting to end. I want the destruction to stop. I am concerned about the innocent lives and businesses caught in the middle. I feel unsettled and conflicted. I feel angry. But I am also keenly aware, if this is how I feel after only witnessing ten  days of unchecked violence, how must my black brothers and sisters feel after four hundred years of unanswered violence?

The truth is, instead of saying “enough” to racial injustice when it could have made a difference, we said “enough” to protests honoring Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, and too many others to name. We said enough to kneeling in protest during the national anthem. We said enough to requests to remove Confederate monuments and flags that only serve as stark reminders of past oppression. We said enough to equal opportunity, affirmative action, and “reverse racism.” We said enough to “Black lives matter.”

When is enough, enough to justify civil disobedience?

We are at a pivotal point for our country and race relations. While I, too, long to end the chaos we see livestreaming across our social media feeds, I know that we need to approach resolution differently this time. Our goal cannot be simply to quiet the problem; our goal must be to address the problem and resolve it. Peace cannot continue to be attained at the expense of our black brethren.

It is more than time to say “Enough.” Enough to a justice system that disenfranchises people of color. Enough to those who enable that system through action and inaction. Enough to those who care more about suppression than de-escalation. Enough to racism in America.  

 Which side of “enough” will you stand on?