Evening thoughts. May 31, 2020

Evening thoughts. May 31, 2020

Cumming, Georgia 2020

 

Right after yesterday’s post I learned that the daughter of one of my African America neighbors was stopped by two other neighbors. They cut her off while she was practicing riding a motorcycle in the neighborhood. Given that they were white, in Forsyth County, in a pickup, and felt they had the right to pull over a young, black female doing nothing at all wrong, I’d say there was a better than 50/50 chance there was a gun in one of the two cars involved in pulling her over. America. In 20fucking20.

 

Continuing my listening to James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son during my running. Baldwin describes the shooting of an unarmed black soldier by a white NYPD cop in a Harlem hotel lobby in 1943 and the ensuing riot. He describes the looting of stores as “inefficient” and that they the rioters had to smash something…”even if it was themselves.” That scene is playing out now, minus the cell phone video. How can we imaging that same despair and rage is not present nearly 80 years later. If James Baldwin is not on my son’s American lit reading list next year, I’m going to try and get it there.

 

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again. – Let America Be America Again. Langston Hughes

 

Seems trivial to mention it, but I had my first 100 mile running month of the year in May and I’ll cross 400 miles for the year tomorrow.