We Can’t Breathe: On Reforming America
When I started graduate school in the autumn of 2000, I badly wanted to meet Dr. Cornel West, the larger-than-life public intellectual and activist who is still influential today.
I had just finished reading Race Matters and was really taken in by the sheer force and emotive eloquence of his writings.
I wanted to attend his class but when I got there, the room was so packed that students were camped out in the hallway furiously taking down notes.
I couldn’t even catch a glimpse of him.
I remember occasionally seeing Dr. West having drinks at an inn across the street from where I lived in Cambridge, Mass., but never mustered the courage to introduce myself.
Finally, one day I called his office and put my name down to see him. There was a long waiting-list, but I was patient.
3 months later, I got my chance.
He was dressed in his usual attire: a black suit, tie, embroidered vest, formal white shirt with elegant cuff-links, and a scarf tightly wrapped around his neck. The scarf, I learned recently, symbolizes the lynching of blacks and the denial of their right to speak.
I was in awe. He was (and still is) a magnificent exemplar of a dying breed: the public intellectual. He was a throwback to the days when America, indeed the world, cared about what learned people had to say, a time when scholars were also influential activists.
There was an official delegation from an African state waiting to see him after our meeting, so I was conscious not to take too much of his time.
After exchanging pleasantries (and the man radiates nothing but pleasant, positive energy), I asked him how movements for liberation and human rights, particularly the Palestinian struggle, could draw lessons from the African-American experience. But I slipped up and added “now that it [meaning the Black struggle] has succeeded.”
Dr. West’s eyes grew wide and his demeanor suddenly changed. “See that’s where you’re wrong Brother!” he chided me.
Dr. West then proceeded to explain to me how the struggle was far from finished and how white supremacy was still deeply entrenched in certain segments of U.S. government and society.
As a relatively young, international student from the Middle East who hadn’t spent much time outside of the protected confines of American academia, I didn’t grasp the extent of African-American suffering.
I knew a lot about slavery and about the civil rights movements of the 1960s. But I didn’t know enough about the oppression of blacks in more recent times. As a teenager, I saw the video images of Rodney King being beaten up by police officers, but I thought -mistakenly- that such incidents were aberrations.
Over the years, as I spent more time in different parts of the United States, I came to understand what Dr. West meant a lot better.
Still, I find it hard to explain to friends and family abroad some of the complexities of culture and politics in the U.S. today.
In these conversations, I find myself in the awkward position of being both a critic of American power and injustice and an advocate of American achievement in science, technology, entertainment, literature and higher education.
The multiple disasters that have recently befallen the United States at roughly the same time make such explanations even more difficult. These include the singularly horrific presidency of Donald Trump, the failure to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in optimal ways, and the murder of George Floyd.
These events have exposed a painful truth for all to see: the United States is more polarized and divided than at any time in its history since the Civil War (I believe the country is more polarized than it was during the 1960s period).
To be sure, there are still powerful common denominators that unify people across the United States: pride in the founding fathers and the constitution; respect for the flag and the national anthem; a strong collective work ethic; similar cultural interests in entertainment, sports, music and cuisine; and, finally, a sense of shared identity and solidarity with all Americans and with people in disparate parts of the country.
The last of these commonalities, probably the most consequential, is the one in the most serious jeopardy.
Over a period of just over four months, there have been 1,831,821 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States and 106,180 deaths. The enormity of this number in such a short span is perhaps best illustrated by a comparison with the Vietnam War: 58,202 Americans died due to the conflict in Vietnam from 1956 to 1975 (this also includes conflict-induced deaths after 1975).
And yet despite the virus’ horrific toll, many Americans continue to be apathetic, some depicting stay-at-home orders as a “liberal” assault on their freedoms.
Even simple actions, such as wearing or not wearing a mask, or maintaining distance from fellow shoppers at supermarkets, are now used to divide people.
Donald Trump’s campaign was predicated on the slogan “Make America Great Again” without ever providing a forthcoming view of what made America great.
The foremost pillar of American greatness, in theory, is the country’s promise of inclusiveness, equality and upward mobility.
As a representative of the assault on this spirit, Trump is both symptom and cause.
The very fact of the election of a man so openly insensitive to others, especially to women and minority groups, and so viciously hostile to reason, facts, and science is telling. It is telling of the limits of unbridled capitalism and greed. It is telling of the decline in American democracy, justice and education. It is telling of the gradual dumbing down of news, TV shows and even movies. It is telling of the failure of American institutions, including both major political parties and all branches of government, to resist the influence of big money.
The people who suffer most, as always, are those who are already the most vulnerable. People languishing in inner cities who cannot afford expensive lawyers and who rely on criminal justice reform. People in poor rural towns who do not have access to quality healthcare and need more government assistance. People stuck in exploitative jobs who cannot buy their way into college let alone pay for college. People who cross the street fearing getting shot because of the color of their skin.
People who can’t breathe.
African-Americans are probably the most vulnerable group. Racism, as Dr. West told me that day twenty years ago, is still very much alive in America in both institutionalized and normative forms.
Vulnerable groups also include, among others, and in no particular order, the poor, women, Native Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans, Muslims, Jews, Asian-Americans, LGBTQIA+ communities, the homeless, the elderly, people with activity limitations, immigrants, prisoners, and anybody else who does not fit into the hateful politics championed by Fox News.
Trump’s slogan Make America Great Again, a frightening mix of modern social Darwinism, infotainment and Klan-speak, will probably fail. But it has already further fanned the flames of unrest. It will take an incredible effort to defeat Trump in the upcoming election, but a greater effort still to return to, and improve upon, the real values that made America great.
