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.
