Extremism in Defense of Liberty...and Oppression

Lately, I've been reading Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion by Herbert Aptheker (1937/2006).  It's the first serious (second generally) history of the rebellion Nat Turner led in 1831.  It's an incredibly easy read, and I highly recommend it.

Needless to say, many things stick out to me from the book.  More posts may come...

For now, Aptheker's writing about "the effects" (i.e. social and legal reactions) of Turner's rebellion captures my mind.  Our best guess is that 60-80 black people joined the rebellion, yet at the time whites estimated as many as 800 armed revolutionaries actively participated and nearly every southern state legislature convened to deal with whites' mass hysteria following the revolt.  After his capture, Turner pleaded not guilty (because he had done nothing wrong) and never said he was mistaken in believing God led him to revolt.  Those facts lead me to my two initial thoughts:

1. Oppressors Live in Constant Fear

We, the people willing to act for social justice, severely underestimate our influence.  One of the false lessons of the Civil Rights Era is that "a movement" requires mass numbers.  I am convinced that movement requires little more than a few people willing to move.  People imposing injustice tend to freak out when directly confronted with resistance.  I am reminded of three biblical stories.  One where Elisha showed his chief disciple the invisible chariots and horsemen of Israel.  The second, when Gideon took a very small army (~300 men) and defeated a much larger army when the enemy soldiers turned on themselves.  And a third, when three lepers marched into the enemy camp only to find it deserted because the enemy soldiers mistook their footsteps for the sound of a large army.  My point, God seems to be suggesting the power of small numbers often in the Bible.

My larger point from Nat Turner is that all oppressors live in constant fear of resistance, even resistance from groups that cannot possibly overthrow systems by force alone.  Men live in constant fear that they will be exposed as vulnerable and not masculine.  Whites live in constant fear that the logic of white supremacy (i.e. justified domination because of superior intellect/morality/numerical majority/etc) will be exposed as a lie [thus The Bell Curve, the Minute Men, the Tea Party, etc].  The rich are petrified of labor coalitions.  The Christian Right is obsessed with "creeping Sharia law." Bush began a war against terror itself.  

We don't often pay enough attention to the fact that emotion is an integral part of every social structure.  Specifically, fear is an inevitable part of every oppressive structure.  That means that one of the contradictions inherent to any system of organization is the emotional vulnerability of the dominant group.  Oppressed people thus always have a structural avenue of resistance, even in the most oppressive and closed systems.

Nat Turner demonstrated that.  For months and even years after his rebellion, whites openly claimed that they could not sleep, were filled with anxiety, and were in failing health due to fear of slave rebellions inspired by Turner.  In fact, several southern governors explicitly stated mass anxiety among whites as the reason for calling emergency legislative sessions in fall of 1831.  This mass anxiety despite there being no clear evidence that a single subsequent rebellion was directly connected to Turner or his co-conspirators.  That oppressors were convicted by their own guilt is proven by two facts: 1) Turner "passed-over" the houses of whites who "did not think themselves better than blacks."  His army only targeted open bigots and slaveowners; and 2) there is some evidence that many poor whites supported the rebellion.  Whites were not afraid they would be targeted for being white; they were afraid because they knew they were targeted for being active oppressors.


2.  Retrenchment Is Not Evidence of Failure

After the Turner Rebellion, whites reacted extremely harshly.  They not only assassinated Turner and his fellow rebels, they also mutilated and murdered innumerable black people (slave and free) with and without trials.  Whites killed at least as many innocent black people as the total number of rebells in Turner's army.  In some cases, white militias lynched black people on the mere accusation of white overseers.  Whites tortured, lynched, and murdered black people without any evidence or even reason for suspicion in states as far from Turner's rebellion (in Virginia) as Louisiana and Kentucky.  Whites tortured innocent black people to the point that whites themselves began criticizing the brutality and fearing they would lose the moral ground in the slaveholding South!  [I cannot imagine the savagery that would move slaveholders even that small step toward compassion.  Our black ancestors are beyond heroic!]  Bunches of municipalities and southern states passed a host of laws tightening restrictions on free blacks and making life even more difficult for slaves.  ... None of this is a surprise, but it leads me to my next point...

For black people, the most obvious immediate result of Turner's Rebellion was increased white oppression.  In other words, black people's lives got worse; in some cases much worse.  Turner, his fellow warriors, and potentially hundreds of uninvolved black people were tortured and killed by whites.  In addition to the rampant mass murder, black people lost [i.e. whites took] the few civil rights they had.  Black people couldn't even legally have church without whites present.  Again, biblical parallels come to mind.  The Egyptians made crazy laws against enslaved Israelites (e.g. making bricks without straw) out of fear of growing Israelite numbers and fear of slave revolt.  Moses left Egypt after reacting to Egyptian cruelty, and the Egyptians reacted harshly to subsequent Israelite resistance once the Exodus began.  ... I bring up the Bible to show that the patterns are old and unchanging.  Oppressors oppress, get scared, generate resistance, clamp down, and ultimately lose.

And here, I think, is another false lesson we have drawn from the Civil Rights Movement.  Activists hesitate too often for fear that their efforts will make life harder for the very people they are fighting for.  This fear among activists is one of the main causes of "analysis until paralysis" and splits among coalitions.  We should understand that activism never causes oppression.  Oppressors do that.  We should not assume that harsh retrenchment is a sign that we did the wrong thing.  Often retrenchment is a sign that mobilization meaningfully challenged oppressors.

Again, the immediate aftermath of Turner's rebellion was death and increased white-on-black terrorism throughout the South.  Not only so, but nearly all the southern abolitionist organizations disappeared following the rebellion.  They reformed in the North, but that meant the thousands of free blacks in the South and millions of enslaved blacks had much less local white support after 1831.  But nearly 200 years later, we see that Turner's Rebellion was a positive and critically important part of the liberation struggle.  If we judged him by the lives of black people in October and November of 1831, we would conclude his efforts a failure on every level.  Now we praise Turner and name city parks after him (e.g. in Newark, NJ).  We recognize Nat Turner, John Brown, and other antislavery rebells as national heroes--certainly heroes among people of color.

Selah.

Capitalism Run Amuck: The Ben Rothlisberger Suspension and the Need for Big Labor

[I began this over a month ago.  Sorry for the dated info.]

Capitalism has run amuck.  There are many, many, many examples that make my point.  (Just look at how brash the oil industry is right now.  They're publicizing multi-billion dollar profits and defending "drill-baby-drill" while spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico daily and ruining the coastal economy.  You might also notice how hesitant most politicians are to upset Big Oil and cancel offshore drilling projects; President Obama is promising only a fuller review.  Big capital knows neither shame nor limits.)

In this post, I want to focus on an over-looked example.  If you're not a sports fan, you may not have seen the news about NFL star quarterback, Ben Rothlisberger.  Rothlisberger has been accused of rape and sexual assault by two young women in separate incidents.  The first incident is the subject of an on-going civil suit.  Prosecutors recently announced that although "something happened," they are unable to prove a criminal case.  Last week, NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, announced a conditional six-game suspension of Rothlisberger.  The Commissioner may reduce the suspension to four games if Rothlisberger completes a "comprehensive behavioral evaluation."

Let me say off the top, I believe the young women.  Statements to police by witnesses to the second incident are consistent and very credible.  As a feminist, I recognize how difficult it is for women to make accusations of rape/sexual assault--all the more difficult when very powerful men are the assailants.  Relatively underpowered accusers (e.g. women, racial and sexual minorities, poor, children and elderly) deserve the benefit of the doubt, even if we must request supplemental evidence in court proceedings.  Specific to the second accusation against Rothlisberger, the combination of testimonies from multiple sources is compelling on its own.  That being said, Rothlisberger deserves much more than a six-game suspension and probably substantial jail time.

The problem is not that Rothlisberger is being punished, but that the punishment is coming from his employer. There are several potential sanctioning entities here: government/police, NFL, NFLPA (the players' union).  Unfortunately, though they believe Rothlisberger committed a crime, the government cannot successfully prosecute for lack of an airtight case.  In my view, the NFLPA should step in and discipline their fellow worker.  His actions embarrass and endanger the reputations and livelihoods of all NFL players.  Instead, the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, issued the punishment.  Goodell went so far as to mandate personal behavioral counseling for Rothlisberger because he (Goodell) felt it was necessary for Rothlisberger conducting his life properly.

The whole thing illustrates the severe problem we have as laborers in the United States.  When we enter the job market (i.e. labor market/force), we sell our labor power in the form of time, skills, and production to a capitalist/employer in exchange for wages.  The capitalist is buying our labor, for a limited period of time.  That is all.  The capitalist/employer is NOT purchasing control of my life.  The employer cannot punish me because s/he does not like my extra-office activities.  An employer should not be able to punish workers for their political activities away from the job.  Nor should employers be allowed to comment on or sanction workers for their sexual activities away from the job.  Again, employers buy our labor and production.  They do not buy us!  The employer/laborer relationship is simply transactional.  Giving employers the power to control our lives beyond work, especially to the point of mandating behavior counseling, is outrageous and dangerous.  It is as ridiculous as giving the grocery store cashier control over how you raise your children!  The cashier is a party in a transaction.  So is your employer.

That so much talk around this incident has been around "protecting the shield" (i.e. the reputation of the NFL) illustrates just how far we've gone toward thinking that capitalists somehow own us; that capitalists' willingness to exchange money for our labor means they have a vested interest in every part of our lives, that which is part of labor production (e.g. activities at work) and that which is not (e.g. how I spend every other part of my day).

There is so much more to say, but I must stop here so that I don't end up writing a permanently unfinished eternal treatise.  Thank God, Karl Marx already did that for us.  :)

Sociologizing Sin

[I wrote this a few years ago. It wouldn't be identical if I wrote it today, but I still find it interesting. Hope you do, too!]

Sociologizing Sin

Coming to understand my place in the world has caused me to completely reconsider my understanding of sin. Recognizing myself as a frequent oppressor of others--whether consciously or unconsciously, individually or corporately, personally or through social structures, intentionally or unintentionally--I have come to realize that avoiding sin is pretty much impossible. Depending on your theology, one of two conclusions will be the logical result of the insights I am about to share. Either one will take this message to further demonstrate our constant dependence on Jesus' payment for our sins and lead a more relaxed Christian life that does not consider it possible to never be guilty of sin ever again (this belief leads many to modern aesthetic practices and is burdensome on us all, especially when it is politicized). Or one will conclude that a personal relationship with Jesus is a poor and illogical solution for a crime that is both individual and corporate. One may futher conclude that judging people as individuals, rather than as social groups, and sending individuals to heaven or hell is fundamentally unfair. I have not thought down these paths yet. Neither am I steering one direction or the other. I simply want to share how understanding my social identity and status has broadened and deepened my understanding of many concepts, including sin and the intractiblility of our dependence on God for forgiveness.

Before I fully understood and considered my social identity, I basically boiled sin down to dichotomous, individualized actions and decisions. Each option presented to me was essentially a choice between doing what God wanted (e.g. telling the truth) or sinning against God (e.g. lying). Regardless of where one stands on the doctrine of original or imputed sin, after salvation, sin is generally understood to be an individualized choice.

But now I think of things differently. I know that I daily actively oppress and/or benefit from being a member of a group that is oppressing others. For instance, I know that my ability to attend graduate school inexpensively is dependent upon Texas A&M University and the state of Texas deciding to financially exploit custodians and other low-wage workers at the institution. I know that the relatively low gas prices I enjoy as an American are due to the American government using its military and financial might to pressure and exploit people in oil-producing countries. I know that, as a man, I participate in and/or fail to stop sexist activities (including joking and objectifying women as sexual objects rather than whole human beings). In so doing, I help to create the social climate we have now. One in which most women experience sexual harassment at some point in their lives. If memory serves, over 20% of American women have experienced some sort of sexual assault, including rape. I am at least partially responsible for that.

These are just a few examples. Just because I don't have the nuclear codes, doesn't mean I'm not responsible for my government's oppression of people around the globe. We all know very well that if the US engaged in fairer military and economic practices and the American economy suffered, the great majority of us would vote for candidates who would restore "the good old days." We would pretend not to know how they did it.

As an active participant, passive (or intentional) beneficiary, and structural party to the oppression and exploitation of countless others, I am constantly in a state of sin from which I cannot and do not extricate myself. No amount of physical, mental, or spiritual self-chastisement will free me from some exploitative relationship to others. And even if I could find a way to have no structural or relational exploitative power over any single other person on the globe, I would not do it. Sin has its enjoyable season.

I never knew how much I was asking God to forgive when I asked God to remove my sins from me and impune them to Christ Jesus. I cannot imagine how much sin of mine God is constantly forgiving (or storing up, if God is judgemental and Christianity is untrue). It's frightening and humbling all at once. For me, it is a beginning to understanding grace, mercy, forgiveness, and the character and omnipotence of God. Forgiveness of this magnitude is far more impressive to me than any of the miracles mentioned in Scripture. No human can even imagine giving that kind of grace.

This is by no means an excuse for our sinful actions or for not trying to end oppression of all kinds, everywhere, regardless of the sacrifice.

It is actually an attempt to bring these kinds of sins to our attention and to bring glory to God for God's mercy, grace, and love.