Make America Mature Again

What follows is an adapted, re-edited version of a Facebook post from today that seems to have struck a nerve, attracting dozens of likes, comments, and shares. As a result, I concluded that perhaps I should add it to this blog.

 

No pictures here, just observations:

We as a nation come from ancestors who nearly starved to death at Valley Forge but stuck it out to ensure the success of a revolution that created a new nation built on liberty, imperfectly at first, but expanding its range over centuries.

Some of the toughest Americans come from ancestors who endured slavery over centuries to help build upon that legacy of liberty when they finally won their freedom.

We come from ancestors who endured four grueling years of civil war to ensure that liberty and equality retained a fighting chance to become this nation’s hallmark.

We come from ancestors who endured long passages across sometimes rough seas to reach a land that promised them a better life, and when they arrived, many endured hard work and, often, discrimination to assert their role in building our democracy.

We come from ancestors who, toward the end of World War I, endured endless months of influenza pandemic, with shutdowns and deaths and illness comparable to those we are experiencing now, until the danger passed and lives could be rebuilt.

We come from ancestors who, just a decade later, underwent the grueling agony of the Great Depression. We elected a president who, riddled with polio, understood the virtues of patience and perseverance in solving problems that seemed daunting by any measure, then entered World War II to help save the world from some of its most vicious tyrannies in modern times.

I could go on. But . . . .

Someone forgot to teach these lessons to a narcissistic president with the attention span of a fruit fly, a spoiled upper-class brat who has never faced serious challenges in life until now, a man who never learned much history, judging from the evidence of his comments.

Someone forgot to teach those lessons to protesters who, after a single month of one of the greatest public health challenges in anyone’s lifetime, refuse to learn that life never promised them that everything would turn up roses at the flick of a finger, and who never learned to analyze and understand a problem to find out whether the reopening they say they want might produce more harm than good, that a temper tantrum never solved anything.

Millions of Americans, probably most, of course, despite everything, understand that sacrifice will be part of the solution. But others have never, apparently, been steeled by a personal Valley Forge and just want what they want. Isn’t it time for a little maturity to settle in? Thank God for some governors and mayors out there with common sense and fortitude.

This is America. We’re supposed to be tougher than just throwing temper tantrums. Let’s prove it, people.

 

Jim Schwab

 

Small Gestures Matter

Last week was for me an eventful time, including a four-hour trip to Dubuque, Iowa, on Thursday for the Growing Sustainable Communities conference, an event the city sponsors every year. I spoke in a session that afternoon, October 24, on community planning for drought, but mostly what I remember was the combination of keynote speeches that addressed the major issues of our time, notably including a luncheon talk on Friday by Dr. Katherine Hayhoe, of Texas Tech University, on communication about climate change. It was impressive and inspiring but underscored how much work lies ahead to reverse damaging trends affecting our planet.

But the week started out differently, with smaller actions that I think are extremely important in setting the tone for the way all of us relate to our fellow human beings.

My wife and I are members of Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park, in Chicago. Situated catacorner from the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago on E. 55 St., our church enjoys the benefit of the knowledge that abounds among the LSTC faculty. I serve as coordinator of the Adult Forum, an adult discussion group that meets during the Sunday School hour. That makes me responsible for finding speakers, programming discussions, and promoting the events. On Sunday, October 20, we discussed actions we could take following a five-week series covering the World War II Nazi death camps, visited by Dr. Esther Menn and her husband, Bruce Tammen, in August during a trip to Poland and Ukraine, which fed into considerations of how we treat immigrants and minorities in our own time.

Our pastor, Rev. Nancy Goede, told me about an incident that occurred the prior Tuesday in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, at Lincoln United Methodist Church. Lincoln has chosen to become a sanctuary church out of concern for the safety of undocumented immigrants, but a man shouting Nazi slogans came to the building in an angry confrontation with church staff. It was not the first time the church had been targeted for its actions. The man proceeded to smash the front window.

There is little we can do directly about an incident that is already past, but we decided that we could establish a supportive relationship with the congregation in the face of this hate crime, so we composed the following letter, eventually signed that day by at least 25 members of Augustana:

To the Members and Staff of Lincoln United Methodist Church:

We are very sorry to hear about the incident on October 15, in which a man shouting Nazi slogans smashed the glass window on the front door of Lincoln United Methodist Church.  We have learned that you have been targeted by right-wing groups for your stance in establishing Lincoln UMC as a sanctuary church.  We support your efforts and pray for your safety as you continue to follow your consciences in doing the Lord’s work.

Your Brothers and Sisters in Christ at Augustana Lutheran Church

Indeed, part of the purpose of this letter is to reassure Lincoln United Methodist Church that its members are not being left to handle this attack in isolation from the rest of the Christian community. We had learned a great deal about the high cost of silence during the Holocaust, as well as the need to forcefully address racial equality as we commemorated the 100th anniversary of Chicago’s race riots in 1919, a story detailed well in Claire Hartfield’s recent book, A Few Red Drops.

But that is not all we chose to do. Esther Menn then noted the American Jewish community on this past weekend would be commemorating the first anniversary of a violent anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, in which eleven members were killed, and seven others wounded, by a man apparently inspired by right-wing rhetoric. Robert Bowers, a truck driver from Baldwin, Pennsylvania, was arrested for the massacre, and authorities said he used social media beforehand to post criticism of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which has been supportive of the human rights of immigrants to the U.S.

In solidarity, Augustana announced that members of the congregation, as well as people from LSTC and McCormick Seminary, would gather last Friday evening to walk to nearby KAM Isaiah Israel congregation in Hyde Park to join its Friday evening shabbat service. Once again, Augustana would make a simple statement in opposition to hate crimes and violence against religious and ethnic minorities and immigrants. Because traffic on the way back from Dubuque that afternoon obviated the possibility of my own participation, Esther related to me that 27 people from Augustana and the two seminaries joined the effort, plus others who met them at the synagogue, and that their presence was greatly appreciated.

Supportive visitors at the doors of KAM Isaiah Israel synagogue. Photo provided by Esther Menn.

Sometimes, it is worth remembering that the simple act of reaching out to say we care and stand behind others is enough to establish lasting and meaningful bonds between otherwise disparate groups of human beings. It certainly is a place to start.

Jim Schwab

If You See Something, Say Something

National Park Service photo

We have become so accustomed to a certain Homeland Security phrase since the events of September 11, 2001, that we have never seriously contemplated its larger meaning. “If you see something, say something,” for most people simply means that, if you notice something strange, someone leaving a package on a train platform and walking away, for instance, you need to call 911 or point it out to a nearby security official. Having done our civic duty, we can go on about our lives and hope for the best. We may save someone’s life, or we may simply be exercising caution. Check it out.

But suppose we interpreted that phrase in the context of our duties as citizens of an endangered, or even potentially endangered, democracy. Suppose the threat were to our democratic institutions and not just to the lives of those in a single public place. Suppose the threat involved policies that affected thousands of people threatened by racism, ignorance, or hatred? Ought we not to speak up? How different would the history of the world have been if millions of Germans had spoken up about what they saw even in 1933? How many Russians in the past two decades have risked their lives and their careers to speak up about the threats they see to a democracy being strangled in its cradle? In the past year, the people of Sudan have arisen against a brutal military dictatorship and forced remarkable changes. Are we Americans somehow so special as to be free from such obligations? Do we not eventually lose our moral authority to speak for democracy in the world if we fail to speak for it at home?

If you see something, say something. Let me tell you what I see:

I see children housed in filthy cages at the southern border by the U.S. government, separated from their parents, their eyes full of fear and bewilderment, when their only alleged crime was to be brought here by parents from Central America who sought to remove them from gang warfare, violence, crime, and corruption in desperately poor countries. I see a U.S. President, as a form of retribution, cutting aid to those countries that was meant to promote reform and economic opportunity to reduce people’s need to flee such chaos in the first place.

I see Temporary Protective Status (TPS) denied to survivors of Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas, a neighboring country with deep ties to the U.S., even as that nation struggles to rescue and house its own people in the face of mind-numbing devastation. The rationale from the President was that “very bad people” would harm our country if this were allowed, although TPS has been standard practice in the past in the very same circumstances. It is unclear, other than being people of color, what makes the Bahamians especially dangerous in his eyes.

I see neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Ku Klux Klan members marching and chanting “Jews will not replace us” through the campus of the University of Virginia and the streets of Charlottesville, defended ardently by a President who sees “very fine people” on both sides while an innocent young woman is run over and killed by a young Nazi sympathizer with his car. I see this rhetoric emboldening an ever-widening circle of mass shooters who sow terror in American cities with unlimited access to weapons of war, but I also see a widening circle of brave citizens rising to demand effective action against such terror.

I see America losing the moral courage of the Emma Lazarus poem at the Statue of Liberty, pleading for the world to “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” and nearly mocking Lady Liberty as she seeks to lift her lamp beside the golden door. The Golden Door is becoming instead the Great Border Wall built with money never legitimately appropriated by Congress, and members of the President’s own party unable and unwilling to stop him or even raise the weakest of objections lest they be expelled from the halls of power—or are they becoming halls of obeisance, like the Roman Senate in Nero’s time?

I am telling you what I see because I understand the moral and civic obligation to say something. We must all be whistleblowers for the future of democracy. What do you see? Are you prepared to say something as well? And what shall we do once we have spoken?

Jim Schwab

Ghosts in the Schoolyard

In 2013, the board of education of the Chicago Public Schools succeeded in closing 50 neighborhood schools, an action fully supported by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Of these, 90 percent had a majority of African American students, who comprised 80 percent of students in the closed schools. These, in turn, comprised fully one-fourth of the city’s schools with a majority of both African American students and African American faculty.

Chicago is not a city where people take abuse and discrimination lightly. Predictably, many parents in the affected neighborhoods rose up in civic rebellion. At Dyett High School, they launched a hunger strike to make their feelings known. Protesters succeeded in keeping Dyett open, but overall, little of this had any effect because Chicago has the only unelected school board in the state of Illinois. Instead, courtesy of special state legislation, the mayor appoints the members, who respond to the mayor, not the voters. Recent mayors have liked it that way.

If you imagine that this might be a political issue, you are exactly right. In the mayoral election that just last month culminated with the election of Lori Lightfoot, both she and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle vowed support for creating an elected school board. These two had emerged as the leading vote-getters from a mayoral field of 17 in the nonpartisan primary after Emanuel declined to seek reelection. As with many such things, the details will matter greatly in negotiations with legislators in Springfield, but Lightfoot’s 73 percent mandate unquestionably gives her considerable elbow room in the discussion. But such an outcome of the often harsh and certainly vigorous debate was hardly on the horizon when the closings occurred. So, too, was the explosive controversy over the police murder of Laquan MacDonald in 2014 until court-ordered release of the video exposed the official police explanation of the 17-year-old’s death as highly inaccurate. That set the stage for Emanuel’s exit from City Hall.

But back to the story of the school closings. This set of events helped to poison relations between Emanuel and much of the black community in Chicago even before the MacDonald shooting became the linchpin for relations with the Chicago Police Department. Lightfoot’s claim to fame—and she rose to challenge Emanuel even before he decided not to run—was her role in police administrative reform.

With permission from University of Chicago Press

In her new book released last year, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side (University of Chicago Press), Eve L. Ewing, assistant professor in the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, tackles the 2013 events to share with us why this was not just a one-off mistake by some misguided board members and school administrators, but part of a long history of institutional racism in the Chicago system. The closings did not happen in a vacuum; there was no blank slate. There was, instead, a powerful legacy of devaluing black students and their neighborhoods that played a significant role in the clash of world views between the powerful and the disempowered.

History matters. Ewing takes time to elucidate the migrations of southern blacks between the world wars to northern cities including Chicago. This was the origin of what has become known as the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side. Ewing notes that the black population in Chicago grew 360 percent in just two decades. However, while many other ethnic groups immigrating to Chicago developed enclaves by choice, blacks were forced to do so through a segregation enforced not by law, but by bombings and violence. Blacks attempting to move into white neighborhoods faced serious retribution. From 1917 to 1921, she notes, 58 bombs “struck the homes of black residents, of bankers who gave the mortgages, or of real estate agents who sold them property.” This was an average of one bombing every 20 days. It is not hard to imagine how this produced an intimidating effect for all concerned. The result was a ghetto in which blacks were confined in increasingly dense concentrations, eventually culminating in the infamous housing projects that lined the major corridors of the South Side. But we get ahead of ourselves here. In order to squeeze growing numbers of the southern arrivals into the same housing stock in a geographically confined area, landlords began to carve up existing units into ever smaller ones that came to be known as “kitchenettes,” often violating building codes and safety standards. Gwendolyn Brooks, the famous African-American poet laureate of Illinois, memorialized these housing atrocities in her poem, “Kitchenette Building.”

Ewing discusses her book in an April lecture at DePaul University.

That, in turn, led to overcrowded schools in the affected neighborhoods, accompanied by the morally constipated unwillingness of powerful school officials to consider integrating schools or allocating substantial resources to those neighborhoods to allow their schools to work. Instead, Superintendent Benjamin Willis took over in 1953, in an era when schools did not systematically collect racial data and he could somewhat disingenuously proclaim himself color-blind. As Ewing observes, “Local black leaders were not convinced.” This was, after all, also the time of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which the United States Supreme Court ordered desegregation of public schools and overturned the philosophy of “separate but equal.” In time, Willis implemented a policy that placed black students in overcrowded schools in temporary aluminum auxiliary trailers that were soon derided as “Willis wagons,” while students attended for half-days while the affected schools ran double shifts.

By 1961, Ewing states, “tensions were flaring,” and a coalition of civil rights groups undertook efforts to enroll black students in white schools, where they were turned away despite vacancies. Operation Transfer served to expose the inherent discrimination in the system. Other forms of direct action followed, including black mothers visiting white schools to document open spaces (they were arrested for trespassing), and lying down in front of bulldozers preparing the ground for more trailers. Finally, the stage was set for a mass walkout on October 22, 1963, “Freedom Day,” in which more than 220,000 students boycotted school.

In short, the protests of 2013 had plenty of precedent, and the closings struck black parents not as an attempt to improve the education of their children—in areas losing population largely as a result of the demolition of the same public housing that once confined them—but as the destruction of families and networks that had grown in those neighborhoods over time. The full story is more complex and richly textured, but you begin to get the idea. Yet, the denial of this impact of history, and the insistence that new policies under Emanuel were somehow part of a clean slate to give disadvantaged students a fresh start, even as many had to cross gang lines and lost their lives to gun violence as they attended newly assigned schools, persisted.

That brings us to Barbara Byrd-Bennett, a black school superintendent chosen by Emanuel, who led the school closings. The fact that she was later convicted and imprisoned for taking kickbacks from a former employer and CPS contractor, escapes only those who suffer from a deprived sense of irony. Confronted at a public meeting with accusations of racism that touched a raw nerve, she reacted: “What I cannot understand, and will not accept, is that the proposals I am offering are racist. That is an affront to me as a woman of color.”

Ewing goes on, after quoting Byrd-Bennett at greater length, not only to examine the personal umbrage that Byrd-Bennett expressed, but the larger context of institutional racism, and the underlying question of why the schools in question were “underutilized” and “under-resourced” in the first place. After all, someone had made critical decisions to reallocate resources to charter schools and away from the very schools that were now being criticized for underperforming despite the clear history of policies that had helped make them so. The feeling of betrayal among parents and students in the schools facing closure was palpable, and the emotional commitment that led to a hunger strike was real. The fact that, yet again, the system found a way to turn a deaf ear to those who pleaded with the board to reconsider its approach spoke volumes about where power resided. There were numerous factors that led to this year’s election outcome, which also produced a growing progressive caucus in the City Council, but these battles over schools were surely among them.

The richness of Ewing’s book is much deeper than I can portray here, so I urge those interested in the topic to read it. Chicago is not alone in facing serious issues concerning the future of its public schools and fairness in the distribution of educational resources, so this book is not just for Chicago. It is for America.

Now, time for full disclosure: First, I was on a panel of three judges for the Society of Midland Authors that chose this book for honorable mention in adult nonfiction in our annual book awards context. That award will be bestowed at a banquet on May 14. Second, my wife is a retired Chicago Public Schools teacher and Chicago Teachers Union activist who wrote about the Dyett hunger strike and other actions against the school closings at the time they were happening. Her concern for students is not abstract and policy-driven but visceral and personal after decades in the classroom. There are many opinions about education policy in Chicago, but after three decades in the classroom, she has earned a right to hers.

Jim Schwab

Housing the Needy after Disaster

This post will be brief. Rather than ask you to read my thoughts, I want you to listen–hard. It has long been known among disaster recovery planners that lower-income citizens are considerably more vulnerable to disasters largely because of the marginal resilience of most low-income housing. The affluent can afford to build fortresses, some of which may still be lost to the elements, but those in second-rate housing, poorly maintained multifamily buildings, and most certainly the homeless, face life-or-death dilemmas when disaster strikes in any form. They live with mold without the resources to make expensive repairs. They face shortages of affordable housing. Federal programs designed to help them often fall short.

Few people have worked harder to remedy these problems than John Henneberger, a 2014 MacArthur Fellow and the executive director of Texas Housers, a nonprofit advocacy organization that has been working with low-income communities in tracking recovery from Hurricane Harvey. This link will take you directly to a podcast page on the American Planning Association website to hear a 46-minute interview with Henneberger about this experience.

The podcast, the first in a series called Resilience Roundtable, is the product of collaboration between the APA technical staff in Chicago and the Professional Development Committee (PDC) of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, of which I am currently chair-elect. In that capacity, I organized and have led the PDC. More such podcasts will be released in coming weeks, but this is the first, and we are very proud to introduce John Henneberger to a new audience. His message is detailed, highly informed, and eloquent. Please check it out.

Before I leave the soapbox, I wish also to provide you to a link to a recent study detailing why minorities are more vulnerable to the impacts of wildfires, a subject that has not been explored widely in the past. “The Unequal Vulnerability of Communities of Color to Wildfire,” available online as linked, was printed in the journal Plos One, and enriches our awareness of equity issues in disaster.

Jim Schwab

Why I Agree with Mother Jones

Personally, I would rather be learning or teaching than shouting on any given day.

Last night, I read one of those publisher columns that are often boring and laborious, but this one nailed it. Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein recounted a conversation with a veteran editor she admires who inquired about the partisan bias he perceived in the monthly magazine. Unquestionably, the magazine is known for a left-wing tilt, but it should be better known for its investigative reporting and willingness to ask hard questions. Over the years, after all, Mother Jones has not gone out of its way to spare Democrats, but it certainly is riding herd on President Donald Trump.

And for good reason, although Trump is a symptom of a problem and not its origin. He is exploiting deep divisions and tribal instincts in a nation that seems unsure what it wants, but much of which is troubled by the extent of the deception, corruption, and amorality of the current administration. Bauerlein insists that the media can “stand for something” while remaining fair and accurate in its reporting, and I agree. She also notes that trying to report from the middle while merely relaying contrasting statements from “both sides” of the political spectrum is really reporting from nowhere because it lacks a moral anchor. There are multiple reasons for asking tough questions and engaging in investigative reporting, but two stand out: 1) Public officials often, but not always, cut corners, lie, or shade the truth to advance their own ambitions or protect the tribe; and 2) such questions are the ingredients of serious analysis that gets to the bottom of a problem and advances the quality of our national dialogue. Surely, the latter has been hitting new lows in recent years.

So, my title for this post does not mean that I always agree with everything I find in Mother Jones, nor does it mean that the magazine expects that all its readers will do so all the time. The real point is to advance the quality of the dialogue. And in that respect, I think publications like Mother Jones are essential to the survival of American democracy.

The subject of the purpose of the news media has always intrigued me, in part because, in addition to my M.A. in urban and regional planning from the University of Iowa, I also earned a second M.A. in journalism, way back in 1985. I recall a class conversation with one local newspaper editor. He clearly adhered to a school of thought that held that reporters need to be objectively neutral at all times. When someone asked him about news coverage of third parties, he noted that they got little coverage because they had such limited followings, so the focus was on the “two sides”—the Republicans and Democrats. When that person followed up by asking how third parties would ever get a hearing if all the news media followed that logic, he had no good answer. What we heard was mostly pre-Internet circular logic. We will cover such movements when they matter, and they won’t matter until we cover them. The shallowness of the paradigm of “two sides” immediately struck me: The media seeing itself as impartial mediator was an inadequate framework for finding the truth, which is not always or necessarily located in the middle. (Anyone still believe in slavery?) As Bauerlein observes, the middle moves, depending on how the two sides are defined. It matters whether the right is John McCain or Steve Bannon, whether the left is Nancy Pelosi or the Socialist Workers Party. And no, they are not the same. Where was the middle in Hitler’s Germany? Where was the middle in the segregated, Jim Crow South? Where is the middle when voter rights are being suppressed, so that some less privileged citizens are denied a voice through the ballot box? Whose voice matters (or should)?

Ultimately, it is not partisan to insist on accuracy, truth, human decency, and honesty. It is simply good for democracy and good for society. It is not helpful, on the other hand, simply to accept undocumented Twitter-fed nonsense from a President, a Congressman, or any other public figure without subjecting it to some standards of accuracy, which is why the Washington Post has maintained its inventory of more than 5,000 false or misleading statements by Trump since he took office. It may not be feasible for the Post alone to maintain such an inventory for everyone in a prominent political position, but he is the President, after all, and there are other Internet platforms for tracking political honesty among lower candidates and office holders of all parties at the federal, state, and local levels. These are not partisan sites, for the most part, but they are important tools for voters and activists who want to assess the accuracy of what they hear and read.

One reason I chose to react to Bauerlein’s comments is that they also touched upon  much of my own philosophy regarding this blog. When I launched “Home of the Brave” in April 2013, I had no idea who would be reading it, or how many, but now there are nearly 19,000 subscribers, and probably some smaller number of regular visitors who have not yet chosen to register a subscription. I get virtually nothing out of the enterprise except the deep satisfaction of sharing knowledge and perspectives, but being a veteran planning professional as well as a trained journalist, the quality and reputation of what I publish is central to my identity. I also recognize special responsibilities once a readership grows to that size. While I certainly have a point of view on numerous topics, I have sought to emphasize research and analysis over advocacy. Indeed, given my penchant for taking readers deep into the subject matter in my own areas of expertise, while insistently using plain English, I have been pleasantly surprised at how many people have chosen to read this blog on a regular basis. I would rather slake a popular appetite for truth than simply express opinions. If I get something wrong, and someone can prove it, I want to hear from them. To that end, my reading diet is aggressive, and I try to share what I learn when I think I have discovered something that matters. I am always open to recommendations regarding new books and research reports. All the best journalists I have ever known have been equally ravenous readers. It is their best defense against “fake news.” They are not only not the enemy of the people; they are vital resources for a thoughtful public.

If only we could retrain more of America to step outside its current groupthink and exercise their mental muscles to question, not just react, to be open to new information, and to value independent thought, we might get past our current bumper-sticker debates and engage in some serious, rational conversation. And we might learn to show more mutual respect for what we all have to offer.

Jim Schwab

Stop the Madness

I am angry on Father’s Day. I am deeply disturbed by what I am seeing. I am a Christian who is insulted by the use of the Bible to justify the separation of children from parents who brought them to the U.S. border in search of safety and political asylum. First, it is a policy decision of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration that the United States will not consider flight from violence and gang warfare a reasonable excuse for seeking asylum. The families now being torn apart with minimal ability even to find out where their parents or children are made a dangerous trek across hundreds of miles in the belief that this country would treat them with some sort of dignity once they surrendered at the border with a request for asylum. Few, if any, expected the treatment now being imposed upon them.

The news reports are now widespread and, however painful to read, I encourage readers of this blog to follow them. The tactics in practice by U.S. border authorities remind us of horrors long ago that we thought this nation had put to rest—slave fathers and mothers sold away from their children, never to see them again, while auctioneers were deaf to their pleas for mercy, American Indian children removed from reservations to be sent to distant “Indian schools” where they punished for speaking English. Are we still no better than that?

I have been a father for decades. My wife and I became foster and adoptive parents in the 1990s, and we know firsthand the difficulties of locating children in a new environment when the state has determined that the birth parents have failed in their duties through neglect or abuse. It is difficult even then but often necessary to protect children whose health, safety, and welfare are in jeopardy. That is and long has been a primary state responsibility. But even then, courts and social workers provide notice of what is expected and give parents an opportunity to improve before taking more drastic steps. And yes, it is true that convicted criminals are removed from their spouses and children when they are incarcerated, but if the convictions are just, we can at least say that the crime was a choice made by the parent, not the state. And despite all this, my heart aches when it becomes clear such intervention is necessary.

It aches even more in this situation because very young children are being pulled away from their parents with no idea why, no idea where they are going, and no idea when or whether they will ever see them again. Even in cases of convicted criminals, the family can visit the prisoner and knows where he or she is and the length of the sentence. In foster care, parents typically have visitation rights. None of that appears to be happening with these refugees.

I find myself all the angrier when I hear people justifying the current Trump administration policy by comparing asylum seekers to these situations by saying the parents at the border are breaking the law. International conventions on asylum do not at all contemplate that asylum seekers will be treated by democratic nations as criminals upon arrival. They need a fair hearing to demonstrate their claim for asylum. In the vast majority of cases, their clear motive for making the dangerous trip across Mexico to the U.S. border from nations in Central and South America and elsewhere is not to commit a crime but to protect their families from political and gang violence and, in some cases, sexual and physical abuse tolerated by a foreign government that is either unwilling or incapable of preventing it.

Quoting Bible verses about respecting the law is no defense of unjust laws and never was, even in Biblical times, when St. Peter once stated, “We must obey God rather than men.” His assertion was the very basis of the insistent rise of Christianity through what was effectively a form of civil disobedience because Christian faith was illegal in the Roman empire, which required primary fealty to the emperor. I do not wish to engage defenders of administration policy in a battle of Bible quotations because such battles generally involve short passages taken out of context amid a larger failure to understand the comprehensive message of Jewish and Christian scriptures, but if there is one passage that may highlight that larger message of Jesus, it is in Matthew 25, and for that reason I have used it before because it goes to the heart of Christian morality:

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

Jim Schwab

Power, Perception, and Pilate

On May 10, my wife and I attended a matinee performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Lyric Opera in Chicago. Coming a month after the Easter evening (April 1) NBC broadcast of this ground-breaking rock opera by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, it allowed some comparison of how the show is staged and presented, which was summed up by a woman behind us at the Lyric: “Never the same way twice.” Composed in 1970 and first presented on stage in 1971, the show’s lasting impact can, I think, be traced, like any other vintage composition, to its versatility, universality, and the way it probes deep themes in the human experience. In this case, that involves a search for the meaning of divinity and exactly where the Gospel stories fit into that experience. What could it possibly mean to be human and divine at the same time? How did those around Jesus relate to him in real life? Rice and Webber gained fame by packing a lightning bolt of musical interpretation into a two-hour show. Curiously, in the 47 years since the show’s debut in New York, this recent run, which ended May 20, was the first time the Lyric had chosen to stage Jesus Christ Superstar.

Seeing this performed twice in consecutive months prodded me to think a little more deeply about a question that has been roaming around in my brain for a while already. As a Christian, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I have maintained both an intellectual and spiritual curiosity over many years concerning the life of Jesus of Nazareth and the Bible generally. I am anything but a biblical literalist. I feel strongly that the route to some meaningful truth involves a healthy skepticism and a good deal of reading between the lines, so I have little patience with the fixed and sometimes even cartoonish scriptural interpretations that some people cling to. I do not believe that politics and faith are or even should be completely detached, but I am not an ideologue, either. I am a firm supporter of religious freedom and tolerance because I think Christian faith calls on us to be considerably humbler in our relationships with others than some people wearing the label have sometimes been. And that brings me to my topic.

One thing I noted in the Webber-Rice spectacle is that the narrative hews relatively closely to the core of the Gospel stories of the Passion, Christ’s last week of life on Earth—at least within the broad framework of artistic presentation. One question that has dogged Christianity for centuries concerns how Jesus was delivered into the hands of the Romans, which leads to the question of the nature of his startling interaction with Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. It is clear enough, according to the Gospel accounts, that Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane by agents of the Jewish high priests, and clear enough that they were upset with his preaching because it challenged the established order in profound ways. After interrogation by both the high priests and King Herod, who ruled Galilee under Roman sovereignty, he was turned over to Pilate. The interactions at this point become much more powerful, given the fate that we all now know awaited Jesus. And this is the point that I wish to explore.

I am not a professional biblical scholar, but my perspective here does not depend on being one. It is rooted more in a lifetime of observing the behavior of the powerful, usually at a distance but occasionally up close. It is an analysis of power relationships in personal interactions. I am not sure most biblical scholars are any better at that, and I will certainly not assert that mine is necessarily the most accurate set of observations possible. I hope only to shed light and spur further thinking by those willing to join me in this search for deeper meaning in one of the more remarkable events in human history.

First, I must note that bad or oversimplified interpretation of these events has led to a good deal of bad blood between Jews and Christians over two millennia. Some of this continues, but none of it is appropriate or necessary. Anti-Semitism, like racism, contradicts the fundamental tenets of Christian morality and respect for others. The fact that Jews were involved in the arrest of Jesus does not change the fact that everyone else in the story is also Jewish, except for the Romans. On the eve of Christ’s crucifixion, Jerusalem was a dangerously divided community. Sympathies ran in all directions. Rome had maintained control for years with unrelenting brutality, including many other crucifixions of real and perceived rebels, and challenging Rome was no one’s route to survival. Jewish leadership was understandably concerned with national and institutional survival (deeply intertwined in their world view), and thus wary of the spiritual challenges this unconventional preacher presented. Christ’s message gained a following in this religious and political tinderbox and thus inevitably triggered a reaction by officials concerned about maintaining control. Ultimately, it was the Roman Empire that maintained control, and Rome was never very subtle in its methods. Crucifixion was a form of state-sanctioned terrorism to achieve such control. It was intended to be both demeaning and terrifying.

We should not be surprised. We need merely look around at the actions of dictators and oppressive regimes in our own time to see how this works. Much of the artistic achievement of Jesus Christ Superstar is to take a story from 2,000 years ago and reframe it with modern music and sensibilities that allow us to reassess its relevance in a modern context. That is the job of any good artist with such a story.

And that is precisely what makes the personal interaction between Pilate and Christ so powerfully intriguing. What I would deem naïve interpretations of Pilate’s reaction and response to Jesus have led over centuries to the unfortunate perception that this Roman governor believed Jesus was innocent but was afraid of the crowds that called for his crucifixion. As many scholars have noted, Pilate had already sent numerous others to their deaths by the time he encountered this itinerant preacher. Assigned to maintain control of a difficult province that most Romans viewed as a backwater, Pilate generally had little hesitation about sending to their doom anyone he saw as posing a threat to Roman hegemony, and such movements persisted for decades until the destruction of Jerusalem by Roman troops in 70 C.E. This history is very clear. As for the crowds and Pilate’s offer to free one criminal for the Passover to placate Jewish opinion, it is not hard to believe that a man like Pilate knew how to manipulate such crowds and play vicious mind games with his opponents. The overriding goal for anyone like Pilate was political survival. Just a generation later, in 66 C.E., notes John Dominic Crossan in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, the Roman governor Florus sent no fewer than 3,600 of Judea’s leading citizens to crucifixion after mass arrests intended to forestall rebellion, which ultimately led to the Jewish diaspora. Empathy with the oppressed was no more part of the empire’s perspective than it is that of Kim Jong Un in North Korea or Vladimir Putin in Russia. Suppressing and destroying any following of any movement independent of the state is part of the standard playbook for modern totalitarian regimes.

Still, there is this haunting interaction between Pilate and Jesus. We must keep in mind that, in the end, Pilate sent Jesus and two other men to their deaths that day. If he was deeply troubled by his prisoner’s innocence, he could easily have spared him, but at most he went through the empty gesture of washing his hands. It is worth noting the conversation in the Gospel of John, which provides the most detailed report of the exchange between the two men:

Pilate: Are you the king of the Jews?

Jesus: Is that your own idea, of have others suggested it to you?

Pilate: What? Am I a Jew? Your own nation and their chief priests have brought you before me. What have you done?

Jesus: My kingdom does not belong to this world. If it did, my followers would be fighting to save me from arrest by the Jews. My kingly authority comes from elsewhere.

Pilate: You are a king, then?

Jesus: “King” is your word. My task is to bear witness to the truth. For this I was born; for this I came into the world, and all who are not deaf to the truth listen to my voice.

Pilate: What is truth?

Pilate then offers the release of Jesus to the crowd, which demands the release of Barabbas; Pilate then has Jesus flogged, the soldiers place a crown of thorns on his head, and he is mocked and belittled. A further exchange between Pilate and the crowd occurs in which the demand is that he be crucified. It seems obvious to me that Pilate knew how to use the crowd to advance his own ends. Then comes the final exchange:

Pilate: Where have you come from?

Jesus: (No answer.)

Pilate: Do you refuse to speak to me? Surely you know I have the authority to release you, and I have authority to crucify you? (Note that, at this point, Jesus has almost surely been beaten within an inch of his life.)

Jesus: You would have no authority at all over me if it had not been granted you from above; and therefore, the deeper guilt lies with the man who handed me over to you.

What I want to offer at this point is a question that, I think, is often missed or underemphasized in both scholarly accounts and religious interpretations of this powerful dialogue: Why did Pilate take pains to react in this particular manner? Aside from riling up the crowds, why not just sentence Christ and be done with the matter? Surely, Pilate did not take such pains with most prisoners.

But if we take seriously the nature of men like Pilate, we might realize that the horror of the means he would use to eliminate most perceived troublemakers would make most prisoners squirm in terror. He was probably used to, and even enjoyed, making subjects squirm in his presence, the high priests and prominent local citizens included. Absolute power tends to bestow on most human beings a perverse and even sadistic sense of superiority over others.

But at no point in this or any other New Testament accounts does Jesus squirm in the face of political power. He certainly knew what awaited him and was aware of the torture and physical agony involved. Yet here he is, still challenging authority to the point where Pilate may have thought him a madman. Zealots (Jewish rebels of the day) might simply have been defiant in such circumstances, knowing that all was lost once they were captured. They would not have engaged in any philosophical repartee. There is no indication of Jesus seeking mercy or anticipating a way out of his dilemma. Why does this matter?

Because Pilate’s reaction could very well indicate that such a fearless confrontation with his authority, which Jesus even effectively denies, leaves him utterly perplexed. Who does that?

Well, some people do, you may answer, and I suggest this: Jesus’s unflinching insistence on spiritual authority, combined with almost unflappable acceptance of the consequences of his stance, left Pilate temporarily flummoxed, groping for a means to reassert his accustomed sense of psychological dominance over those around him. One does not need even to be Christian to perceive the dynamics of the situation. But it does add some clarity because we know, as Pilate did not, that this nascent religious movement would survive three subsequent centuries of intermittent but vicious Roman persecution. Much of that would occur because of the courage people drew from the story of Christ’s confrontation with Pilate—and, of course, an abiding belief that Pilate did not have the last word.

I will also suggest that the serenity of Jesus in the face of a looming horrific end to his life has become a model that inspired numerous others to challenge unjust power by calling upon a higher morality. These included Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, who faced potential burning at the stake; Nelson Mandela, who suffered years of imprisonment by the apartheid regime in South Africa; Martin Luther King Jr., who challenged racist violence with peaceful protest and was assassinated; or the Mirabal sisters, who were killed for challenging the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic (the subject of a novel by Julia Alvarez). And then, there is the powerful case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed by the Nazis after challenging their authority. One can name many other examples.

However, honesty demands a recognition of other sources of such profound witness. Jews, for example, may point to a line of prophets who preceded Christ, some of whom faced dire crises of faith and provide inspiration. Mohandas Gandhi used pioneering methods of nonviolence to challenge British colonial rule in India, only to die at the hands of a fanatical Hindu assassin. His primary inspirations arose from Eastern traditions, although he seems to have blended what he considered the best of Christian spirituality into his Hindu practice, even as he expressed distaste for many of the barnacles that had attached themselves to organized religion. But he clearly faced persecution with an equanimity that put his adversaries to shame.

Of course, like all of us, each of these heroic figures had their human shortcomings. But in each case, their serene courage drew inspiration from a deep well of faith. That faith includes a resolute refusal to cede moral authority while acknowledging political authority. It includes the integrity of one’s belief system with a focus on love, mercy, and peace. And it always includes a recognition of the power of one’s conscience, but that conscience must be driven not just by passion, but by compassion, a clear recognition of the value of others. True conscience involves not just a personal set of beliefs but clarity about one’s moral commitments and their potential consequences, and the acceptance of those consequences. That anyone meets that test is a testament to the capacity of the human spirit to unite itself with divine wisdom. How that occurs is a story I will leave to saintlier souls than mine to tell.

Jim Schwab

Author’s note: The lack of images in this post is deliberate in order to maintain a focus on the ideas presented.

When School Reform Falters (if You’re Black and Poor)

Ashana Bigard. Photo by Jean Schwab

While I was in New Orleans April 19-24 for the American Planning Association’s 2018 National Planning Conference, my wife, Jean, was also there. A retired Chicago Public Schools teacher and retiree delegate for the Chicago Teachers Union, she has remained active on educational issues and in 2014, on a prior trip to New Orleans, interviewed Ashana Bigard, an advocate for students’ rights and leader in the Education Justice Project of New Orleans. Jean decided to interview Bigard again, producing the somewhat condensed interview below. At a time when Paul Vallas, former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, and the post-Katrina architect of school reform in New Orleans, has recently declared his candidacy for mayor of Chicago, the consequences of that reform take on new importance—not that schools in New Orleans were great before Katrina (they were not), but one hopes that reform is a step forward, and Bigard’s critique suggests serious and troubling issues of racial and social equity remain unaddressed.

I wish here to add a personal mea culpa. Readers may have noticed a more than one-month gap since my last posting at the end of March. Part of that was due to travel. In addition to six days in New Orleans, I spent three days immediately prior to that at a Federal Emergency Management Agency meeting in Richburg, South Carolina. Life was also full of some other turbulence, and this blog is essentially a one-man show. Since launching “Home of the Brave” five years ago, I have always preferred, as a professionally trained researcher and journalist, to put quality ahead of speed, to produce thoughtful commentary and to dig deeper. Sometimes, time does not permit this, in which case I prefer to write nothing than to write hastily for the mere sake of publishing something. There will be much new material coming in May. I guarantee it.

Jim Schwab

 

Interview with Ashana Bigard

What is better and worse about New Orleans since 2014?

Bigard: It depends on from whose perspective. So, I think better for young white people in the city of New Orleans, absolutely.  But if we are talking families and communities of native black New Orleans, no, they are much, much worse because the voices of the community, parents, and students continue to be unheard.  We have been erased. Our mayor talks about how much better New Orleans is doing, how it has recovered, meanwhile child poverty is at 39%, mostly black poor children. The wage gap between white and black families has widened since Katrina.  Of course, we had $76 billion come to the city after the storm, and the native black population has 18% less wealth.  We’ve had a gigantic land grab.  Things are worse in education because our city, just the Parish of New Orleans, has been experimented on.  What is the problem with experimenting? First, no one has been taking data to see what works and doesn’t work.  Second, the experiment was done in the only black parish. That would be a red flag to anyone. We are almost at 100% charter schools except for McDonogh 35. Parents have less choice. Parents apply for pre-school only to find that there are no pre-school spots available. One parent reported that she made eight selections and did not get any of the eight selections. Parents want a school near their homes, so they can catch one or two buses to reach the school, but the schools are not close to students’ homes.  Parents with children with asthma, [who] need epi pens, or [with] special problems are literally afraid because charter schools do not have full-time nurses, or full-time counselors.  Nurses are in the schools twice a week.  The schools are not near their homes, so parents can’t get to them.  We’ve had an epidemic of children traumatized, partly because of the storm. We had problems before the storm, but there were full-time nurses and counselors at the schools. We had children who had nervous breakdowns, and the schools were close to their homes so parents or someone could come and pick them up.

Now with the schools far away from students’ homes, no full-time nurses or counselors, there’s been an epidemic of students’ nervous breakdowns for two reasons. First, our kids have had a lot of trauma which was not  addressed after the storm. Some of this is [former] Governor Bobby Jindal’s fault because, after the storm, he gutted our mental health budget and closed our Adolescent Hospital [a psychiatric facility]. Jindal gutted the mental health budget when people needed it so much. Our new Governor John Edwards is trying to repair that by opening the Adolescent Mental Hospital again. The second reason is that schools are operating like mini prisons as if they could discipline trauma out of kids. A lot of schools have no recess and quiet lunches. During quiet lunch students are not allowed to talk. So, we do the opposite of what children need after being traumatized. These children need a lot more social interaction, talking, touching, art, and music to really deal with their emotions and express themselves.  Our school system is the opposite of what children need, which leads to children that are on the edge, we have mini bombs (explosive), and we continue to reinforce that. Students are in pre-school and not allowed to sing, talk, dance, play and nap. A lot of our children suffer from sleep deprivation because, if you need to be on the bus at 6:00 a.m. and you need to be out there 30 minutes in advance, then you must be outside at 5:30, and if you must be on the bus at 5:05 a.m., [that] means you must be up by 4:30 a.m. That is exactly what happened to a five-year-old girl in kindergarten that we advocated for. She arrived at school at 8:30 a.m. and was back home at 6:00 p.m. Her school had no recess, quiet lunch, and no nap. I bring this up to point out how insane the schools are. We know that children that are in kindergarten need more sleep for brain development.  We know that children need from 13 to 14 hours of sleep. However, apparently schools have decided that they can go against brain development because apparently poor black children do not have human brains. The little girl got suspended off the bus for three days because she ate three crackers on the bus on her way home. We advocated for her by going to the school to discuss the suspension. At first, the school said it was a bus policy, but later admitted that the suspension was a school policy, and they offered to reduce the suspension to one day. We felt like one day was too much for eating three crackers. How about no-day suspension because a five-year-old girl ate lunch at 10:00 a.m. and was hungry on the bus home? They expect our children to be non-human.  This correct behavior is not correct behavior for human beings. I asked, “Should you be running a school? Who do you want to make them into? A person who ignores their personal needs for bathroom and food like that is not healthy.  If a person does not take care of their own needs, how can they have compassion for others?”

(Bigard described going to Science and Math High School to talk to the principal about bathroom privileges. “The students could go to the bathroom during lunch period every day and were given three bathroom passes each month for emergencies. We asked the principal if he had any teenage girls at that school and he answered, yes they did, and that is why the three passes were given.” I told him that three passes a month was not enough for the girls or any of the other students.”)

Why do they feel the need to be so strict?

Bigard: Conditioning and control. If you go into a school district and you believe that the people you are working with are out of control, and that they are savage and animals, the first thing you do is get them into control and compliance.

If a student has a brown belt instead of black, then that student may get a detention or after-school suspension if they have too many violations. If they lose the belt, they can’t just go out and buy another. Kids [in] k-1-2-3 grades don’t buy their own clothes. So, when you hold them responsible for what their parents put out for them, they don’t have any control. You are punishing them for being poor. The response from the school is that they are teaching them to be responsible. How many colleges have uniforms? Are students put out of college for not having a tie or black belt?

We have all these schools where they have 60% suspension rates, and when you start to dig, you come up with things like an A-B student who during tests needed to chew on a straw because he was so nervous and could concentrate better when chewing on a straw. It didn’t bother anyone else, but we had to put him on the 504 program  (accommodations for lesser learning disabilities), so he could chew on a straw during tests. Or the girl that twists her hair or the student that did not track the teacher with his eyes. Many of the administrators want to greet each child with a handshake every morning. A child that was uncomfortable with touch–one-third of our children have been inappropriately touched, and others fear germs and did not want to shake the school administrator’s hand.

(The interview then shifted to the question of how schools handle students who cannot provide money for school lunches, a subject covered by The Louisiana Weekly in a very recent article by reporter Kaylee Poche about state legislation to resolve the issue of “shaming” regarding inability to pay.)

The Senate Education Committee on Thursday (April 19) voted 4-2 to reject a bill that would have prevented schools from punishing students with lunch debt even though the bill had easily passed the House earlier this month. Rep. Patricia Smith, D-Baton Rouge, authored the so-called “lunch-shaming bill,” which also was supported by Gov. John Edwards. It would have prevented students with unpaid lunch bills from being publicly identified, required to do additional chores, or excluded from any school privileges. “I’m just trying to make the change to the law so that we can continue to feed our children in our schools and make sure that the person who is actually responsible for the debt pays the debt,” Smith said. Students who owe money currently eat cheese sandwiches for lunch at school. (Bigard explained that middle school and high school students with a school debt do not receive lunch.)

The bill also would have allowed schools to notify parents that they would have to contact the Department of Children and Family Services if they failed to pay for 10 or more school meals. Also, lunch money could be collected through income taxes and the Louisiana Department of Revenue. The bill would cover only families that do not receive reduced or free lunches. Smith’s bill failed.

Donald Trump’s Racism Diminishes America

Depiction of Du Sable taken from A.T. Andreas’ book History of Chicago (1884). Reprinted from Wikipedia

Greetings from the U.S. city founded by a Haitian immigrant.

Sometime in the 1780s, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, reportedly born of a French father and an African slave mother, who had gained some education in France and made his way from New Orleans to the Midwest, settled with his Potawatomi wife on the north shore of the Chicago River. He developed what became a prosperous trading post before eventually selling it for $1,200 (no small sum in the early 1800s) before relocating to St. Charles, in what is now Missouri, where he died in 1818. According to the best-known assumption about his date of birth (1845), he would by then have been 73, a ripe age on the early American frontier. You can learn more about the admittedly sketchy details of his life here as well as through the link above. However, Chicago has long claimed him as part of its heritage, and his origins speak volumes about not only Chicago but the diversity of the American frontier despite the attempts in some quarters to continue to paint a much whiter portrait of the nation’s history than the truth affords. His story, and those of many others, can be viewed at the Du Sable Museum of African American History on Chicago’s South Side.

Du Sable Museum of African American History, photo from Wikipedia

What does this have to do with President Donald Trump? As almost anyone not living in a cave knows by now, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) has said that Trump, while Durbin was at the White House for a meeting with the President and several Republican members of Congress to discuss a possible compromise on legislation concerning immigration and border security, began a verbal tirade asking why the nation was allowing so many immigrants from “shithole countries” such as Africa and Haiti. Yes, Trump now denies saying it, but there were other witnesses, and even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) acknowledges it and reports confronting Trump personally about his remarks. Moreover, the sad fact is that such remarks are consistent with a much broader pattern of similar comments ranging from his initial campaign announcement decrying Mexican “rapists” to provably untrue tweets to his infamous praise of “truly fine” people among the neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Ku Klux Klan members protesting the pending removal of Confederate statues in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer. Since those comments last August, Trump has continued to lacerate the Twitterscape with new gems of disingenuous absurdity.

It also betrays a disturbing lack of depth of any historical knowledge that might ground Trump in the truth. There is surely little question that Haiti is one of the poorest and most environmentally beleaguered nations in the Western Hemisphere. But it helps to know how it got there, which takes us back to what was happening in Du Sable’s lifetime. Emulating the ideals of both the American and French revolutions, including the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, deeply oppressed African slaves rebelled in 1791. An ill-advised expedition sent by Napoleon Bonaparte to suppress the revolution—Napoleon was more interested in financing his European wars with Haitian revenue than in honoring liberty among Africans—failed miserably when nearly 80 percent of 57,000 French troops first fell victim to yellow fever before being pounced upon by Haitian revolutionaries in their weakened state. Only a small contingent ever made it back to France alive. As time went on, however, Haiti found itself isolated in the New World. The United States, under presidents from Thomas Jefferson onward until the Civil War, refused to recognize the new republic, fearing a similar uprising among its own growing population of slaves in the South. Recognition finally happened in 1862, with the Confederacy in full rebellion against the Union and with Abraham Lincoln in the White House. The story gets much, much worse, including Haiti’s long-time mistreatment by France, its former colonial overseer, but those with more intellectual curiosity than our current U.S. president can read about it in a variety of books including Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution by Laurent Dubois; the fictionalized but brutally vivid and historically accurate trilogy (starting with All Souls’ Rising) by Madison Smartt Bell, whom I met 20 years ago at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference; and the more modern history of exploitation, The Uses of Haiti by Paul Farmer. There is much more; just search Amazon or your local library. It is all there for the learning. We are at least partly responsible for helping to create the historical pattern of misery and poverty in Haiti. Its people have suffered through vicious, greedy dictators like the Duvaliers and yet bravely insisted on creating a democracy despite all obstacles.

Why do I review all this? Because, especially as we celebrate the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday and the ideals of the civil rights movement, history matters. For the President of the United States, at least a respectable knowledge of history matters, as do an open mind and a willingness to learn what matters. Little of that has been in evidence over the past year. And that remains a tragic loss for the nation.

Instead, we have a President who, before taking office, spent five years helping to peddle the canard that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and thus not a native-born U.S. citizen as required by the U.S. Constitution. Based on his recent comments, one might suspect that, all along, he regarded Kenya as among the “shithole countries.” It is small wonder, then, that he holds Obama’s legacy in such low regard. (Several years ago, while in Oahu, my wife and I met a Punahou School high school classmate of Obama, working as a tour guide, who said he knew Obama’s grandparents. “I was not in the delivery room,” he mused, but “I think I would have known” if Obama had not been born in Honolulu.)

The problem, as millions of Americans seem to understand, is that, despite Trump’s claim that these nations “do not send us their best,” our nation has a history of watching greatness arise from humble origins. Abraham Lincoln, in fact, arose from starker poverty in Kentucky and southern Illinois than many immigrants even from African nations have ever seen. Major League Baseball might be considerably diminished without the many Dominicans who have striven mightily to escape poverty and succeed, more than a few making it to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. (I worked in the Dominican Republic in 2000-2001, organizing HUD-funded Spanish-language training on site planning for design professionals working on reconstruction after Hurricane Georges, and can attest first-hand to the national pride Dominicans feel about their achievements in the U.S.) How many Americans visit doctors who emanated from India, Nigeria, and other countries who saw opportunity here to expand their talents and contribute to this nation’s welfare? And, lest we forget, Steve Jobs, who created more and better American jobs through Apple than Trump ever dreamed of creating, was the son of Syrian immigrants.

Only willful ignorance and prejudice can blind us to these contributions and lead us to accept the validity of Trump’s vile observations. As adjunct assistant professor, I teach a graduate-level seminar (Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery) each year at the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning. Since this began in 2008, I have taught not only Americans but high-quality students—in a few cases, Fulbright scholars—from places like Zambia, Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. They do not see themselves as coming from “shithole countries,” but they do perceive that they are availing themselves of excellent educational opportunities in a nation they have typically seen as a paragon of democratic ideals. Now we are undermining that perception at a breakneck pace. These students, whose full tuition helps undergird the finances of American universities, know there are viable alternatives for a modern education in Britain, France, Germany, and Canada, but until now they have believed in the promise of America.

Meanwhile, Europeans—the very people whom Trump apparently would like to see more of among our immigrant ranks—are watching this charade with alarm and dismay. I know this evidence is anecdotal, but my wife and I, as noted in recent blog posts, traveled to Norway last July. We encountered New Zealand, South African, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, German, British, and Norwegian citizens, among others, as we traveled. Almost no one we met was impressed with Trump. This is a new development in European perception of American leadership. Moreover, our perceptions then are supported by reporting in the last few days on reaction to Trump’s comments. Despite Trump asking why we cannot have more immigrants from Norway, NBC News reports that Norwegians are largely rejecting this call as “backhanded praise.” If we want more European immigration to the U.S., we would do far better impressing them with our sophistication and our commitment to the democratic ideals we have all shared since World War II.

Beyond all this, it must be noted that thousands of dedicated Americans serve overseas in the nations Trump has insulted, wearing the uniforms of the Armed Services, staffing diplomatic missions, and representing their nation in other ways. No true patriot would thoughtlessly place them in jeopardy and make their jobs more awkward than they need to be. It is one thing to face the hostility of Islamic State or other terrorist-oriented entities because of U.S. policy. Those who enlist or take overseas jobs with the U.S. government understand those risks. It is another to engender needless fear and hostility among nations that historically have been open to American influence and leadership. How do we mend fences once they perceive the U.S. President as an unapologetic bigot?

That question leads to another, more troubling one. Silence effectively becomes complicity, but far too few Republican members of Congress have found the moral backbone to confront the reality that both their party’s and their nation’s reputation will suffer lasting damage if they remain too timid to stand up to the schoolyard bully they helped elect. A few, like Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Mitt Romney, and members of the Bush family, have demonstrated such integrity, but most have not. It is one thing to recognize that you badly misjudged the character of the man you nominated and helped elect. It is another entirely to refuse to speak up once it is obvious. Admittedly, Democrats right now have the easier job. But this problem transcends partisan boundaries. It is about America’s badly damaged license to lead in the world. We either reclaim it, or we begin the long, slow torture of forfeiting it.

Jim Schwab