“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
Winston Churchill

“The ‘white race’ thus becomes the chief victim of its own myth.”
Harry Edwards

1968 was a pivotal year in American history. It was also the year I received a powerful, disturbing and disheartening lesson about American journalism and the effect it has on the society it serves. I know, I know, many reading this are tired of and impatient with cultural relativism rants from old farts that came of age in the ‘60s, but sit down and listen. 2016 was also a pivotal year in American history, and that same disturbing lesson of mine from 50 years ago has been in the forefront of the news every day for the past couple of years. I refer, of course, to the unexpected, unbelievable, powerful and disturbing campaign and election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. So far, the words, actions, personnel and stated intentions of the Trump administration are terrifying for those who care about the whole of humanity, the environment of Earth, social justice, compassion, common decency and freedom. The affects Trump and cadre will ultimately have on the world are, at this writing, undetermined. It can be safely assumed they will make the influence of Agent Orange on the flora and fauna (including those humans who happened to be present) in Viet Nam in the ‘60s seem like benign organic fertilizers used in the backyard home gardens of today.
I was 29 years old in the spring of 1968, a recent graduate school dropout, who, like others of my social/political/psychedelic persuasions, was adrift and searching to find a suitable place even on the fringe of the mainstream. One of my varied sources of income was writing a column for the major newspaper of a western city of some 70,000 souls. The column was well received and I enjoyed free rein to write about whatever I thought appropriate until I wrote a column that I thought pertinent, timely and socially relevant to every American. That column changed my perception of America and my life, though it was never published.
The column was about Harry Edwards, a sociology professor at San Jose State University, and the movement he was leading called the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR). The intention of Edwards and OPHR was to organize an African American boycott of the upcoming 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City to expose the racist policies and practices of America and the hypocrisy of the white washed image of itself America presented to the world, in opposition to its reality perhaps best explicated by the great American writer James Baldwin: “The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world’s most direct and virile, that American women are pure. Negroes know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents—or, anyway, mothers—know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way. And perhaps this attitude, held in spite of what they know and have endured, helps to explain why Negroes, on the whole, and until lately, have allowed themselves to feel so little hatred. The tendency has really been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.” In addition, OPHR had four demands: Restore Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight boxing title; remove Avery Brundage from his long time position as head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC); hire more African American coaches for the nation’s athletic teams; and bar South Africa and Rhodesia from the Olympics because of their racist policies.
OPHR and Edwards seemed to me timely topics just months before the Olympic Games in Mexico City and their message to American society significant. I put my best efforts into writing a good column and turned it in. The editor refused to publish it, though he conceded it was well written and its message relevant. His reason for not publishing it was simple and direct and I’ve never forgotten it: “This community is not ready to hear this message,” he said. I disagreed and said so and it ended my relationship with the newspaper and altered my relationship with the editor, an old friend. Less than six months later Edwards and OPHR had not accomplished all their goals, but they did raise their voices into the collection of myths to which white America clings. OPHR and Edwards were responsible for the most significant and published athletic photo of the 20th century which stripped those myths to naked, porous, racist bone: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, black American runners who finished 1st (in world record time) and 3rd respectively in the 1968 Olympic 200 meter race on the podium after receiving their medals raising their black-gloved fists in the air, their heads bowed, their feet bare. Their friend and silver medalist, Australian Peter Norman, wore an OPHR badge on his chest in support and solidarity. Smith and Carlos were shoeless to protest black poverty as well as beads and scarves to protest lynching. Their gesture was reported all over the world as a “Black Power Salute” though Smith, Carlos and Edwards referred to it as a “Human Rights Salute.”
At the time my editor told me the reason my column wouldn’t be used I attributed my disappointment to his personal flaws, a journalist’s moral/professional failure of public trust and public service. But after the photo was published all over the world it became evident that both failure and flaw were much larger than one editor. It was a failure of the (almost) entire profession and industry of American journalism, not just one editor. The Los Angeles Times described Smith and Carlos’ gesture as a “Nazi-like salute,” apparently unaware of the irony that IOC head Brundage had, in 1936, defended and approved of German athletes raising their arms on the podium in the real Nazi salute to the real Fuhrer in the real capital of Nazism, Berlin. Time magazine put the Olympic logo on its cover, replacing the motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger” with “Angrier, Nastier, Uglier.” The Chicago Tribune termed Smith and Carlos “renegades,” and called their gesture “contemptuous of the United States” and “an insult to their countrymen.” And a young reporter for the Chicago American who later became an iconic sportscaster, Brent Musburger, described the two Olympic medal winners as“…a pair of black-skinned storm troopers.”
It would seem that most of mainstream American journalism agreed with my editor and for several years after 1968 I believed that American journalism as a whole was failing the community. That was and is true, but gradually so gradually–it became clear that the “collection of myths to which white Americans cling” clouded the perception of American journalism itself for the simple reason that it clung to and was part of those myths. As a white American male, my upbringing was within those myths and clouded my own perceptions, though even as a boy and young man it was clear that many of the myths were simply not true. Some of the voices of the 1960s and 70s rising into the myths—Dalton Trumbo, Martin Luther King, The March on Selma, Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Jane Fonda, Dennis Banks, Russell Means, Leonard Peltier, Ken Kesey, Dick Gregory, Gloria Steinem, Tom Hayden, Stephen Gaskin and many others—created enough heat and energy to help dissipate more of them. Like every sincere critical thinker who knows that all things are connected and that changing the world starts with each person (you and me), I’m still working on separating the collection of myths and alternative facts from the organic reality that America is and always has been a racist, sexist, misogynist, imperialist nation built on the genocide of its indigenous peoples, the backs of slaves and the institution of slavery, all justified by the religious delusion that white males are God’s chosen people and superior to all other races as well as the females of their own race.
Harsh words, yes, but they are rooted in a long and venerable tradition of voices both harsh and maternally kind rising into the myth. One of the first was from abolitionist Thomas Day in 1776 commenting on the Declaration of Independence, just written by Thomas Jefferson. The second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” (The first draft of the Declaration was worded “…all free men are created equal…” and the removal of the word ‘free,’ a message the fathers of the constitution apparently were not ready to hear, or, at least, did not think the community was ready to hear, was the beginning of the myths.) Jefferson and George Washington were among slave owner fathers of the constitution (Jefferson also fathered children with his slaves) and Day responded to their hypocrisy: “If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.”
The myths were built into the Constitution from the beginning. The voices rising into the myths were present at the beginning as well, and they have been and continue to be the home of hope for America and the only reason the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence creeps ever so slowly out of myth towards reality. It took nearly a hundred years before the Civil War ended slavery and in theory gave slaves freedom and the right to vote, but in reality it was not until the 1964 Civil Rights Act made it possible for the descendants of slaves to vote in America. Native Americans were not granted citizenship by Congress until 1924 but in many states could not vote until 1957. Even white women could not vote until 1920 when the 19th amendment to the Constitution was passed after 70 years of the voices of organized women’s groups led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and others (and, it seems likely, individual pillow talk voices) created enough heat and energy to dissipate the fog of myths enough so that even the morally challenged couldn’t hide within them. As everyone reading this knows, the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in America are not the same for white males, black people, native Americans, people of any shade of color, females, those who believe in the wrong religion or private sexual preferences that tweak the image of the world’s most direct and virile men and pure women. Still, over the past 50 years the volume of rising voices and the pace, slow as it is, to bring these inalienable rights to all the equal people of America have raised dramatically compared to the previous 200 years. That is, there is hope and there has been progress and human rights are better in America than they were 100 years ago. That snail pace came to a screeching (literally) stop with the election of Donald Trump, but the voices rising into the myths have never been louder, higher or hotter. Nor have they ever been more necessary or grateful for each new voice.
Which leads to an issue that many Americans, starting with Donald Trump, believe the community is not ready to hear: Since two of the last three Presidents of the United States lost the popular vote and still became President, democracy itself is another in the collection of myths America tells itself and anyone else who will listen. The Electoral College circumvents the democratic process of voting rights and, like slavery, racism, sexism, bigotry, misogyny and religious intolerance, destroys equality in the name of the nation it mocks which needs voices rising into the myths of its usefulness as a tool of democracy.
As self-encouragement to raise your own voice, take some time to contemplate how different our country and the world would be if Al Gore instead of George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump had become President as the population had voted them to be, if democracy of the people, for the people and by the people had prevailed instead of the myths of the slightly mad victims of our own brainwashing.
Raise your voice, friends and fellow citizens. Raise your voice. Loudly. Clearly. Respectfully. Truthfully. In the venerable tradition of Thomas Day and those who came before and the many who followed. Raise your voice. Dissipate the myths. Make your Mother proud.