Pride, Deadly or Alive

Let’s talk about being proud. It’s something Americans are exceptionally good at. Sure, pride is the first deadly sin, but what the hell, pride is always a matter to shout about, and proud rhymes with loud, right?

I don’t know where the pride mania came from, but it resonates in opposite corners of the political wrestling ring. Raucous Proud to Be an American rallies feature duded up cattle-ropin’ cowboys, while June, Pride Month, gathered bellowing LGBTQ+ folks in equally colorful costumes, including the cowboy variety. Not that there’s any contradiction there.

Pride is clearly a popular notion enjoying a high level of social approval. Except perhaps among Trappist monks and the Amish, although I’m betting even they worry about it when they learn that they prosecute the purest form of their faith.

First, a definition. Pride as a culturally affirmed phenomenon refers to the conviction that I need not be at all shy about some aspect of myself, that this aspect is to be celebrated, that people who do not realize this are the lesser for it.

When I come upon other members of my “pride,” people like me who are also proud of the alikeness, I high-five them and shout witty epithets, like, “Yeah!!” with at least two exclamation points. I might even hold up a placard proclaiming the pride I feel. Or wear a baseball cap with a similar proclamation. I might appropriate a color or a rainbow of colors to signify my pride.

When theologians talk about pride, the deadly sin, they set it opposite humility, because pride the sin is a declaration that I am special, extra deserving, super endowed, and I’m totally worthy of all that. Humility is seen as a recognition that this declaration is false. I’m not a special recipient of God’s favor; God’s grace is showered freely.

When LGBTQ+ folks or black folks talk about pride, they do not see its opposite as humility; they see its opposite as shame. This turns out to be a significant difference. Pride here is a potent way of saying, “I don’t care if you like what I am or not, I won’t be feeling bad about it.” More positively, I am professing that it’s actually pretty wonderful being who I am.

This self-affirming sort of pride can coexist with pride the sin, but it is also consistent with the virtue of humility. I can be black and proud and yet humbly acknowledge my debt to fighters before me who made my pride possible, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, John Lewis, countless ancestors who endured and rebelled and made the strides that have brought us here.

I can be LGBTQ+ and proud, yet humblhy gaze down to see those on whose shoulders I stand, the Stonewall rebels, Harvey Milk, Megan Rapinoe, Pete Buttigieg, whose courage make pride not only possible but impossible to contain.

Still, pride, the sin, can slither into the picture. Any concept that ends up with “I am better than you” runs the risk of going deadly. From such tendencies evolve evils like white supremacy and heteronormative hegemony. The truths we hold as self-evident involve the idea that we are all created equal, all endowed with rights from which no one can be alienated, all granted access to justice at every moment of our lives.

Those principles drive from my life any sense of shame clouding my self-portrait and leave ample space for humility as I contemplate my equal, not superior, status with all humanity. Of this I can be proud, proud that I and my kind have finally grown to the mature acknowledgement that our common bond is far stronger than any deadly saber or deadly sin can divide. Out of many, we are one.

Not to Understand Is to Understand

I was in my twenties when I asked my mother this question: How is it that all my family are prejudiced, and I’m not? Exasperated might describe the look she shot my way as she raised her voice to answer.

“You are as prejudiced as the rest of us.”

I do not know what response I expected, but that wasn’t it. I saw myself as an outlier in my family. I had marched for civil rights. I even organized and spoke at a memorial procession at my alma mater, Villanova, the day after Dr. King was killed.

Mom, as always, saw the deeper reality. I have pondered the truth of her pronouncement throughout my life and have recently had cause to ponder anew.

Cops were an integral presence in my childhood. I knew the Darby police by name. Two of my favorites were Howard and Ted. Yes, we called them by their first names, a remarkable practice in a world where my best friend’s mom was Mrs. Courtney, my teacher was Sister, priests were Father. None of their first names were even known to me.

But the cops were Ted and Howard. It was their last names I didn’t know. I spoke often to them as they manned the intersection at Main and MacDade, manually working the busy stoplight. A different time, definitely.

Both were tall, but while Ted was beefy and sported a pugnacious Jay Leno chin, Howard was trim well turned out, handsome. Both smiled readily. Both made friendly conversation as I stopped at their corner on my way to school.

Ted was white, and Howard was black. To me these were descriptive facts, like Ted’s chin and Howard’s ready smile. The first name basis implied a kind of intimacy but not an absence of respect. To this child these men were symbols of a world determined to keep me safe, secure. If they told me to do something, or not to, I was convinced it was only to protect me. They were guardians of my well-being.

I would not have called them heroes. That silly word would await our era where we must prove our appreciation with inflated honorifics. Still, to me cops meant protection, freedom from worry, freedom from fear. Freedom. I certainly did appreciate them, welcome their presence and constancy.

As far as I knew, everyone felt the same.

I know better (or worse) now.

Even then, I knew about disparate treatment at the hands of police. An incident occurred when I was perhaps 11 or 12 that confirmed for me that black suspects were frequently beaten by police as punishment for getting caught. Whites, of course, experienced no such retaliation. I didn’t know the word “systemic” back then.

Dr. King tried to explain to us, us whites. He didn’t have to explain to black folk. Did anyone have to explain to my young self what it’s like to feel protected by the police? It was my daily experience. Likewise, no one has to describe to black men a world where the police are a potential life threatening presence.

These are wildly different views of the same societal reality: local law enforcement. Both views are rooted in lived experience, mine of safety affirmed, theirs of danger imminent. I am amazed that I cannot relate to someone seeing a cop as a direct threat to life and limb.

More amazing is the thought that a black man cannot know what it is like to approach a cop and experience a feeling of security and protection, will never say, “Hi Ted” or “Hi Howard.” After viewing the video of the Nine Minute Murder, I can see how impossible such a thing might be.

Robert C. O’Brien, the president’s national security advisor, claimed that the president wanted “peaceful protesters who have real concerns about brutality and racism…They need to be able to petition their government and let their voices be heard.”

This is false. A group of high profile black men, not long ago, did exactly as O’Brien wished and staged the most peaceful protest in our nation’s history to call attention to “brutality and racism.” These men simply knelt for two minutes in complete silence. They were unusually large men who, in a different context could be seen as quite threatening.

They were NFL football players, protesting exactly as O’Brien recommended. The president then expressed his views on their peaceful two minute kneeling demonstration. He called them thugs. He demanded their bosses fire them and taunted the bosses as cowards for not doing so. He said the protesters were un-American because they used the playing of the National Anthem as the setting for their protest.

If they were heard instead of reviled, perhaps further deaths could have been prevented. Perhaps the Nine Minute Murder of George Floyd would not have happened. We’ll never know, of course, because the bosses caved, the organizer of the protest was indeed fired and blackballed from the game, and, once again, the networks went to commercial during the playing of the National Anthem, as was their practice before the protest.

Now peaceful protest coexists with violent actions. The president and his Attorney General blame weak-willed Democratic leaders in beleaguered cities. They blame vague left wing groups like “Antifa.” They blame thugs. Not a single member of this administration thus far has taken any responsibility for the unrest.

I understand, Mr. Trump, Mr. O’Brien. I am guessing your experience of cops was similar to mine. The Nine Minute Murder by a uniformed policeman, surrounded by a phalanx of fellow cops, is utterly unthinkable. You would have denied it was possible right up until you viewed the video.

In O’Brien’s telling, bad cops like those four comprise literally .1% of all police on the force. He might be convincing to people like me whose experience of local law enforcement is as benign as mine has been. It is exactly what I want to believe, what I wish were true, what was in fact true for me. Nothing systemic going on here. Just a little aberration. Erase that terrible video and go on about your lives. Remember, folks, there are black cops also serving on those forces.

I think of Howard the cop, the black man I admired as a child. I knew nothing of him beyond his warm smile, inviting small talk, comforting uniformed presence. I saw him as a “colored man,” but that was solely because of the color of his skin. I mainly saw him as a policeman, and that was because he behaved with dedication and honor.

What I’ll never know is the daily price he paid to remain dedicated, to retain his honor, in a world far less dedicated to his well-being than he was to mine. Long after his passing, I learned how revered he was in Darby’s black community. Of course, what I wasn’t aware of they knew all too well.

I suppose in some cases, the word hero isn’t hyperbole at all.

Before the Hovering Helicopters

-->

Before the Hovering Helicopters

Orlando R. Barone

My daughter called the other day. Her 11-year-old son was experiencing troubles with his travel team swim coach. Parents in the know are already alerted. He is a very good swimmer; he is on a travel team, which means his parents chauffeur him long distances to meets.

The travel team habit is also expensive. Membership is exclusive and not cheap. Kids are expected to perform in a highly competitive environment. Participation trophies are nonexistent. If you’re not good enough, you sit the bench.

This notion of youth sports is the polar opposite of my boyhood experiences. If I felt like engaging in youth sports, I’d grab my scuffed, worn football and head up to Johnny’s house, then to Mike’s and Moose’s, then off to the 14^th Street playground to find similarly inclined kids for a game of two-hand touch.

We used shirts to mark the sidelines and goal lines, did a finger throw (odds or evens) to determine who’d receive the kickoff, reviewed the rules (count to 5 before rushing the quarterback etc.), knelt for the National Anthem, and started the game!

OK, I lied about the National Anthem, but the rest is accurate. We played hard, uncoached. In fact, adults or any authority figures would be nuisances. That’s the one constant from that time to the present. The difference is that in our time the nuisances were entirely absent rather than oppressively ever-present.

Rules were passed down; older kids had taught us. The rules were malleable, though, and we often had to negotiate with the other team, who could be guys from different neighborhood with different traditions.

Who calls tags? The tagger or the tagee? In my hood, the athlete making the tag called, “gotcha,” meaning that the one tagging certified that both hands touched the runner’s body at the same time, and the runner was thereby “tackled.” Other teams left the decision to the runner. We had to hash this out, or there wouldn’t be a game.

We improved by playing with older, better players. It was not unusual for a member of the high school varsity team to drop by and offer pointers. Those guys also played choose-up games with kids their own age. In high school I joined them.

Much that is good happens in organized youth sports. Dedicated adults coach and provide solid role models, while parents show up in their children’s lives, a gesture of love and accompaniment that my own children cherished deeply.

A lot of good also occurs when youngsters are given space to enter a world comprised solely of peers, where we had to navigate uncertain terrain and negotiate ways to play the game, solve conflicts, celebrate accomplishments, face losses, and respect the rules needed to keep the contest going.

We played hard and competed passionately, but this world was not one that assigned any particular significance to a win or a loss. I cannot remember a single instance of regret the day after one of those games. Or of exhilaration, for that matter. All that emotion was unleashed on the field, and then left there, permanently.

It was a bracing world where things were not prearranged by adults, so we had to organize ourselves. It was a world where no one got participation trophies, but also a world where no one got any trophies at all. Therefore, the game itself, the joy, the camaraderie, the fights, and the laughs were all there was to motivate us.

It was more than enough.

Lonnie Barone is a consultant, college instructor, and writer. His articles appear regularly in Lonnie Out Loud (https://lonnieoutloud.blogspot.com/). He can be reached at lonnie.barone@gmail.com. Lonnie lives in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

The Hand of Mercy

Take a look at my latest Inquirer article, from March 29, 2015

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20150329_Extending_the_hand_of_mercy.html

Spock, Nimoy, and Logic

“You gotta watch Star Trek,” this friend insisted. It presented an optimistic vision of the future and was attracting a loyal cadre of fans who would one day be called Trekkers. The show had already finished its undistinguished three season run and was in reruns on UHF channel 48, the Philly station largely credited with reviving the now legendary franchise. It still thrives after 50 years. UHF is an unknown acronym for anyone with a Twitter account.

And Leonard Nimoy as the stalwart Mr. Spock has been at the heart of that phenomenon for every one of those years, including in 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness. Zachary Quinto is a creditable younger version, but we all know he is not just playing Spock, he is playing Nimoy playing Spock. There is no other access point to that role.

Spock is a cultural fixture in part because of his alien origins — his father hailed from Vulcan, a planet of savages who saved themselves by turning to the discipline of logic. More importantly, he represents the lofty vision of reason guiding behavior, as well as the flawed vision of reason shunning emotion.

In the Star Trek universe, Spock’s strictly logical approach is set against the passion of Dr. McCoy who vociferously decries the Vulcan’s disparagement of emotion, empathy, and caring. Captain Kirk plays the referee, trying with mixed success to get the right mix.

In business consulting, Spock is referenced frequently, especially during personality assessments like the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. The MBTI suggests that people tend to make decisions based on one of two criteria: logic and feeling, objective reason and personal values. Spock is often channeled as the paradigm of decision-making based on logic.

Today the Spocks and McCoys are feuding as volubly as ever. Sometimes the earth itself seems caught up in a pitched battle between those who contend that the victory is to the furious, the violent, the uncompromising and those who want to work it out calmly and rationally.

Leonard Nimoy had a distinguished and varied career as a stage, screen and TV actor, movie director, author, photo artist, and humanitarian. It is his half century of portraying a pointy-eared alien that has earned him immortality.

Vulcans looked down on us poor humans, even bullied Spock, a half-human who had to work twice as hard to conceal his depraved emotional side. Their path to peaceful coexistence was simple submission to the dictates of logic. The price was utter repression of feeling. Spock embodied the promise and the price. His was a tortured soul paddling logically across the surface, sporadically aware of the seditious undertow of friendship, loyalty, and love.

Leonard Nimoy transmitted that inner conflict exquisitely. In an early Star Trek episode he assumes command of the Enterprise and is befuddled that his perfectly rational decisions are ultimately rejected by a crew of humans who require infusions of human feeling from their leaders, even at the cost of the most efficient course of action.

Great leaders in their greatest moments marry clear thinking and deep feeling in ways that stir us, unite us, and carry us through unimagined moments of crisis. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address confronts a civil war’s field of blood; Roosevelt’s First Inaugural confronts a Great Depression; King’s Dream Speech confronts a history of injustice; Reagan’s Challenger Disaster Speech confronts a day of shock and mourning.

Without Spock’s clear, calm logic, all those speeches would have been howls of rage, sorrow, despair, or desolation. Spock’s logic marshals emotion, gives it purpose, and confers nobility and hope.

Through his singular portrayal of a singular character, Leonard Nimoy has left us this legacy, a road to purpose, nobility, and hope. They give his famous salutation its ultimate meaning.

Live long and prosper.

Brian Williams the Hero

Here is an article I wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20150215_When_our_embellishments_go_too_far.html

The Pope in Manilla

Here is an Inquirer article I wrote, appearing in the January 21, 2015, Philadephia Inquirer. You might like it.

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20150121_In_Manila__a_papal_audience_unlike_any_other.html