Facing History with Courage and Hope

When I first started teaching high school students in Connecticut, back in 2003, I remember discussing the realities of racism in America with my students, and the horrific--and lasting--legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow era. My students were shocked to learn that the KKK was still active in 2003, and I recall many of them saying that they had thought racism was long gone.

No.

Today, I doubt any high school student in America would dare to believe that there is no such thing as the KKK. Because of the repulsive acts of cowardice among white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, students today are realizing a harrowing truth: racism was never defeated nor dead--it was merely in hiding.

I grew up in the town of Windsor, CT--a town just north of Hartford, where there is still a beautiful diversity of people. In all of my public school years, I had friends of many races, and I recall listening to the speeches of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. on my Sony Walkman as I did my paper route. The speeches riveted me--their clarion calls for justice and equality, their evocation of America's ugly past towards African-Americans, and their hope for a more just future.

Listening to those speeches, though, and going to school every day where my classes always seemed to be 50% white and 50% black, I thought America had come a long way.

But when my best friend in high school, an African-American, and I created a dream to hike the Appalachian Trail together, I was somewhat shocked when he confided in me that he wasn't sure it was the smartest idea anymore. "Why not?" I recall asking--noting that we had trained with great discipline already. "Because there have been some racist attacks on the Trail lately," he said.

He was worried for his safety. As a young black man, he had to deal with a reality that I never did.

In more recent years, in my teaching in the 7th grade classroom, I saw a glaring ignorance. On the walls of my classroom were such notable figures as Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughes, and Toni Morrison. Students could only recognize King, and even then, many of them inquired, "Didn't he end slavery?"

However, I think my own initial ignorance, and that displayed by so many students, is evidence of America's hiding of its past. So many want to pretend that racism is over and done with--dealt with by passing a few laws and some slip-shod apology for slavery.

It is not.

So, my 7th grade students read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. In conjunction with these books, my students explored the racist voting literacy test Louisiana gave in the 1960's after the Voting Rights Act was passed. We read and discussed Ta-Nehisi Coates' "The Case for Reparations" and we watched footage from Eyes on the Prize.

Just last week, my wife and I welcomed out third child into the world: Joshua William Reynolds. We have both long believed in raising our sons to be kind, compassionate, gentle, and loving. Ever since we watched Jackson Katz's powerful documentary about the horror of male bravado and cowardice that masquerades as courage, Tough Guise, we have tried to create a family that aims for honesty, emotional-openness, and facing our hopes and our fears.

We grow as a family when we talk openly and vulnerably. We grow as a society when we reveal our wrongs, not when we hide and disguise them, pretending that they were not really all that bad. We heal when we make amends, not when we make false moral equivalencies.

The high schoolers and the 7th graders I taught evidenced something beautiful as they learned more fully about America's past: action. They wanted to know what they could do, how they could help change our country for the better. They didn't become America-haters, as so many seem to fear. Instead, my students became America-changers. They wanted to try to work to fulfill America's promises to all people--to the many, not just the few.

I am a highly imperfect man: imperfect as a father, as a teacher, and as a writer. But I long to try my hardest to live compassionately, to love deeply, and to stand witness to injustice and do whatever small part I can to try and stop it.

The middle school kid who heard powerful words on his Sony Walkman is now a Daddy. I want to make those words real to my sons. I want to help them see that courage is about making amends for wrongs, about facing history honestly and trying hard to do whatever we can to create a more just society.

Red Underwear

Jennifer and I sometimes look at one another longingly whenever Tyler now roars out, "I am Superman--to the rescue!" Because it was a brief six months ago that Tyler's favorite show was the quirky, tender, violence-free Charlie and Lola.

Now?

Goodbye, Charlie and Lola.

Hello, red underwear.

At Target last week, the three of us giddily shopped the clearance rack in pursuit of a few necessary items: ties and a couple of pants to wear to work, some maternity clothes for Jen, and long pants and shirts for Tyler. As we approached one of the clearance racks in the boys sections, Tyler's whole face lit up.

Red Underwear!

With a Superman logo right in the front!

"Daddy! Mommy! LOOK WHAT I FOUND!" Tyler's who body began to do a dance, and he held the sacred red underwear in his hands as though it were something for which his little soul had been searching all his life. Finally! 

I looked at the price tag, exploring the first measure of a viable reason for saying No. But the price tag afforded me no such easy departure into the land of No-Superman-Status. It read: $1.96.

In my mind (yes, for real) flashed Jackson Katz's incredible documentary Tough Guise, which explores the very dangerous and deplorable ways we teach boys how to be men: through violence, bravado, and toughness. I though of the incredible and momentous readings in Critical Race Theory, which challenge us to explode the myths of equality-already-reached and instead see the severe structural inequalities, dominance, and racism built into our society.

And, yes, I thought of Charlie and Lola.

And I looked down into the bright eyes of my soon-to-be-five-year-old son holding red underwear with a Superman emblem right in the front.

"Please, Daddy? I can rescue people with these!"

And, okay, I caved. It wasn't so much that I chose the macho male route (at least I hope not) but rather that I wanted to allow Tyler to explore everything he wants to explore, rather than trying to hold him at a stage or a place that that brings Jen and I delight and glee.

Immediately upon returning home with the $1.96 red underwear with the Superman logo in the front, Tyler ran to his room, put on his blue pants, and then pulled the red underwear on top of them.

He then ran back out to the living room, "Let's go to the park because I AM SUPERMAN!"

At the playground, we saw two children we've played with before, Inian and Chandrini. They are delightful, kind, thoughtful children, and immediately they asked Tyler if he wanted to play with them. And he did.

I sat alongside their mother, explaining about the red underwear. She laughed and smiled, then said., "My kids don't even notice it, see?"

And it was true. They didn't. The three kids walked balance beams, played tag, played Octopus (a game they made up whereby an "octopus" tries to reach up onto the play structure and gran the swimmers' feet! Ah!), and then created an obstacle course.

I watched my son in the red underwear--watched how he giggled, held hands with Chandrini, giggled some more--when it was finally time to go--gave both kids massive hugs. And something in me calmed down. Just because he's in a Superman stage doesn't mean he's going to start acting tough and cool (and we especially hope not, because, hey, lets' face it: he's got a Dad for whom traditional notions of toughness are about as familiar as rubbing Crisco all over oneself and subsequently taking a trip to the Moon).

At lunch today, Jen was explaining to Tyler that on this very day nine years ago, "Daddy asked me to marry him, so today is our anniversary.

"What did you say when Daddy asked you about that?" Tyler wondered with anticipation and excitement written on his face.

"I said Yes." Jen looked at me and I looked at this beautiful, strong, loving, kind woman. Then Tyler interrupted our little reverie and said, "HAPPY UNIVERSITY!"

The thing about red underwear is that maybe it doesn't have to be what society says it is. Maybe it doesn't have to be about bravado and fighting and a one-size-fits-all definition of masculinity. Maybe it's possible to remake Superman into something other than a fighting machine. Because at some point we come to the conclusion that everything is flawed--all of it. There's no film, television show, book, interpersonal connection, article, essay, political stance that is flawless. There is bias and cruelty and ignorance in everything we create, because there is bias and cruelty and ignorance inside each of us.

But there's also love.

There is incredible love. And what is love if it's not the power to remake something, to rename and recreate and redeem? It happens in the small moments when we take one of the world's symbols and we transform it to mean something different--to allow love to so overwhelm that thing that it ceases to signify whatever it once did.

It happens when Superman becomes a stand-in for gentleness and thoughtfulness, and when the rescuing he's doing doesn't involve intense violence but instead involves intense connection. Maybe it happens when red underwear streams across a playground with giddy giggle and lots of hand-holding.

Transforming and renaming and redefining seems to be what Jesus was all about. You thought religion was about rules and standards and judgment? You're wrong. It's not. It's about grace and surprising forgiveness and love. You thought love was being nice to people who look and act and talk just like you? It's not. Love is hard, love is work, love is bravely caring for someone so hard that your caring breaks open the concrete doors of their own pride, fear, self-righteousness, guilt. Seems like Jesus had a never-ending list of You thought it was like that, but it's really like this. 

Like all of us, I am (of course) still learning how to navigate the cultural messages my son receives--and those that I receive. What to allow, what not to allow? How to explain certain things, how to teach certain things, how to transform certain things--in my own heart and in the world's? And while Jen and I both explore how to do this at each new stage Tyler approaches, we're holding on to one firm hope: that love trumps everything, and that nothing--not even Superman's red underwear--can long resist transformation in the face of love.

The Darkest Day of the Year

Today in England, the sun set at about 11:25 am. Okay, seriously: the sun set at 3:30 in the afternoon. (Though it sure felt like 11:25 in the morning.) But it rose at about nine o' clock, and for those six and a half hours, we looked up at a sky that drizzled us with mocking rain and then laughed through a thick layer of clouds.

For other reasons than the fact of absolute minimal sunlight, today--and this past week--has been very dark. I grew up in Connecticut, and hearing the news about Sandy Hook rattled me. Like many people, I found myself weeping.

In the flurry of articles that have come out in this past week, none is able to articulate exactly why this kind of tragedy is pepetuating itself over and over again. But one area that continues to go unexamined by most social theorists and also those in the media is the area of gender. Jackson Katz and Byron Hurt are doing their part to discuss why of the 62 mass killings on American soil, 61 of them have been commited by men. Katz powerfully reasons that if the opposite were true, and 61 of the 62 mass killings had been perpetrated by women, all we would hear and read would be about the gendered nature of the crimes.

As a society, the way we socialize men is dangerous and we see this over and over again. The 61 mass murders are the highest form of the tragedy, but every day we see lesser versions--no less horrendous to the victims, however--of gendered violence: we see men killing men in gang warfare; we see men fighting men for pride, revenge, or to prove their masculinity.

In essence, we see men learning repeatedly--from father, from film, from heroes and mentors--that the only way to be a man is to be tough, violent, and aggressive. Men are not revered for their compassion, gentleness, empathy, and their tears.

I think one reason why Harper Lee's Atticus Finch stands so tall after all these years is that Lee artciluated through fiction an idea of what genuine strength in masculinity could look like.

It could look like going against the bullying culture so many men are bred into and indoctrinated towards. It could look like self-reflection rather than blame. It could look like an end to attacks and harassment (whether through words or actions) and a commencement of authentic listening--asking what it's really like to walk in the shoes of other people, whether minorities, females, homosexuals, or transgendered people.

Until we come face to face with a fraction like 61/62, we are going to be missing an underlying cause of the violence we continue to see in every city of every state of our country. Masculinity does not have to be defined by aggression, violence, tough-talk, and lack of empathy.

After the sun had set today, Jennifer and I watched Tyler run back and forth through our kitchen and hallway as we blasted Enya's Winterland CD. He was laughing, running, laughing, running, giggling.

Tyler is four years old.

He is my son.

The question I am faced with as a father, and the question we are all faced with as members of an American society, is this: How we can we teach boys that to grow into men does not mean to lose one's ability to giggle, to weep, to show compassion, empathy, tenderness, and vulnerability?

It is time we make heroes not only of those who hold a gun--whether in films or in real life--but also of those who hold a hand. If we can learn, as men, to move forward hand in hand--vulnerable, honest, authentically strong--rather than as aggressive lone rangers, I think American society will see massive shifts. Our darkest days--no matter when the sun sets--may yet transmogrify into our brightest possibilities.

What Love Does

There's an awful lot in our world telling us what can't happen, what isn't possible--feeding us an endless progression of stats, probability, facts, past occurrences. And we tend to bank our lives on these numbers. These narratives. We give a heck of a lot of credence to what's been done, in other words.

And we often make a throne to disbelief. Consider: to discredit something, to critique something, to interrogate a text or a person or a dream or an idea--all these are afforded high regard. Respect.

When James Meredith attended the University of Mississippi as the school's first black student--enduring relentless attacks both verbal and physical--there was no fallback. There was no past occurrence of this event. No stats other than this one: zero percent of the university was black.

When Dave Eggers wrote his heartwrenchingly beautiful A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, there was no example of a literary work that came before like it: a memoir that read like a novel which was searingly honest, ironic, and postmodern.

When Anita Hill demanded the right to defend her own dignity against male oppression and power, there was little evidence of this kind of speaking truth to power. Few statistics that would tell her it was okay to speak so openly, so boldly against that ever-present and deeply forceful institution of power the world over: patriarchy.

The thing about love is this: it doesn't bank on stats. Love doesn't calculate cost-effectiveness or probability of success or even cultural laws and norms. In the words of Lewis Smedes in his powerful book Love Within Limits: "Love shatters disbelief."

As a young man, I felt the constant pressure that a lot of young men feel: to be tough, to hide emotional truth, to pretend. When I became an (older) man, teaching high school and middle school students, I saw the very same tendency in the young men I taught: towards a fake stance of power rather than an acceptance of who they really are. Jackson Katz documents the horrifying cultural norm of violent masculinity, patriarchal power in his documentary Tough Guise.

And for young women, Jean Kilbourne has movingly documented the absurd pressures women must face every second in her Killing Us Softly documentaries.

In a sense, we're trained from a young age to disbelieve: to disbelieve ourselves, to disbelieve the possibilities for different paths, different ways of being and living and working and growing. Instead, fear pressures us into a very narrow life-journey--fear that's abusively proffered by people like Rush Limbaugh. In his recent attacks on women (and, his historical attacks on women, which have been ongoing for decades), he urges people to disbelieve: don't think men can change; don't think the world can change; don;t think there are other narratives to tell, other ways to live.

The beauty of novels by remarkable writers like Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Gary D. Schmidt, Neesha Meminger, Harper Lee, A.S. King, and so many other fabulous writers is this: they're telling stories about other possibilities. They're sharing the narratives of the lives we know are possible--the belief that we long to embody in ourselves--and they're doing it in the face of a culture that pressures the status quo relentlessly.

There is little more beautiful in life than watching someone love or be loved. And one way love happens, I think, is when we come across a narrative that echoes something in our soul. It might be something we sensed as kids, but which got buried by pressures to act certain ways as males or females, as members of a certain culture or race or religion. It got buried by people who peddle fear, knowing that the marketplace looks so favorably on that wizard of oz.

But love shatters disbelief. And one place love emerges for us is in the imaginative narratives that haven't historically happened yet--but might. Love leaps off pages of novels where we find characters taking the chances we long to take, rejecting the norms we long to reject, and becoming the people we long to become.

When I first met Atticus Finch a decade ago, his journey leapt like that for me. It showed me a different way to be a man. Not by trying to attain patriarchal power, but by following the cause of justice in the world. Not by violence, but by defending the rights of the marginalized and the silenced. Not by bravado but by inner strength of conviction.

Not by disbelief, but by faith. Because the work of love, if it does anything, shatters disbelief.