Needed: Justice, Not (Just) Friendship or Even Money

Just as in 1968, racial tension in the U.S. has been rampant these last few months in 2020, and, again, just like back then, one presidential candidate is calling for LAW AND ORDER. But what is the most pressing need for People of Color, and how can the current unrest best be addressed?  

Are Reparations the Answer?

There have been strong calls by some for the U.S. government to provide reparations to the descendants of Black people who were formerly enslaved. In his long, oft-cited June 2014 piece in The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a strong appeal for reparations.

If it could have been arranged, this month would have been a fitting time for reparations to be paid, for it was 170 years ago on September 18, 1850, that the Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the U.S. Congress, making the enslavement of Blacks in the South even more secure—and more odious.

Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849, but then her daring work freeing other slaves by means of the Underground Railroad was made even more dangerous and challenging after the Fugitive Slave Act took effect the next year.

But there are many problems with reparations: how could it be satisfactorily determined who is eligible for reparations after all these years, and how could adequate funding be provided? With the massive expenditures on covid-19 relief this year, there is no possibility of funding being provided now, even if there were the will to do so.

Reparations are most likely not the answer to the problem of racial unrest in this country for the foreseeable future—or ever.

Is Friendship the Answer?

There has been much talk over the last sixty years about the need for racial reconciliation and for eliminating the segregation of Blacks and whites.

Near the beginning of “A Segregated Church or a Beloved Community,” the sixth chapter in his 2016 book America’s Original Sin, Jim Wallis recounts how in the 1950s Martin Luther King, Jr., sadly said, “I am [ashamed] and appalled that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in Christian America.”

Then Wallis went on to lament that still now “the racial segregation of US churches is nothing short of scandalous and sinful” (Kindle ed., pp. 97, 98).

While I strongly believe that churches should never be segregated because of unwillingness to accept people of different races/ethnicities and have long regretted not being a part of a church here in the U.S. with a significant number of People of Color, I now think that integration is not the primary goal we whites should seek.

Last month, Jennifer Harvey, a religion professor at Drake University in Iowa, wrote a powerful opinion piece for CNN. While her piece was largely in support of reparations, I was struck by her disparagement of all the work that has been done for “racial reconciliation” and the emphasis in recent years on “diversity and inclusion.”

Harvey insists that “we need to be clear that friendships are never a substitute for justice.”

Thus, while definitely important, friendship/reconciliation is not the primary answer to the problem of racial unrest abroad in the land.

The Need for Justice/Equity

In her highly acclaimed book Caste (2020), Isabel Wilkerson writes, “We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago. But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today” (p. 387).

Accordingly, rather than focusing on reparations for the past, what is needed most now is the creation of a more just, equitable society.

If we whites want to help People of Color (PoC) have better lives in this still-racist society, we need to focus most on legislation and law enforcement that, among other things, combats police brutality against PoC; corrects the inequities in the prison justice system; and eliminates discrimination in housing and discriminatory finance charges for both houses and cars.

To do this we can support various nationwide organizations, such as the ACLU, for example, which urges us to Demand Justice Now.

Defending Freedom: The Meritorious Work of the ACLU

So, if you are a USAmerican, do you highly value the Bill of Rights? If so, you might be, or might want to be, a supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which was born 100 years ago, on January 19, 1920.  

What’s the ACLU’s Purpose?

According to Samuel Walker’s nearly 500-page book In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (1990), the “essential feature of the ACLU is its professed commitment to the non-partisan defense of the Bill of Rights” (p. 5).

From its very beginning, the ACLU has had many critics. In his Introduction, Walker recounts how in the 1988 presidential election campaign, George Bush attacked Michael Dukakis, his Democratic opponent, for being a “card-carrying member of the ACLU.”

Twenty-five years later, Jerome R. Corsi, who (among other things) is a conspiracy theorist, published Bad Samaritans: The ACLU’s Relentless Campaign to Erase Faith from The Public Square.

On the opening page of his book, Corsi (b. 1946) cites these words from the Pledge of Allegiance, “. . . one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.” Because of their support for the rights of atheists also, the ACLU objects to those first four words that were added to the Pledge in 1954. But clearly, their main emphasis is, literally, “liberty and justice for all.”

And “all” means, well, all, even those who may harbor mistaken and/or wrongheaded ideas.

The ACLU has been the target of stringent criticism for defending, for example, the free speech right of Communist sympathizers in the U.S.—but also for defending the right to free speech by the KKK and Fred Phelps, the notorious pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.

In a 2010 article about Phelps (1929~2014), an ACLU spokesperson wrote, “To be clear: the ACLU strongly disagrees with the protestors' message in this case. But even truly offensive speech is protected by the First Amendment.”

She went on to say, “It is in hard cases like this where our commitment to free speech is most tested, and most important.”

Why’d the ACLU Start?

The ACLU was formed largely because the freedom of people in the late 1910s to speak out against the movement of the U.S. toward participation in World War I was being suppressed.

The primary founder of the organization was Roger Baldwin, a pacifist whose conscientious objection to “the Great War” was not recognized by the U.S. government and in 1918-19 he spent nine months in prison.

After the ACLU was formed in January 1920, Baldwin remained the executive director until 1950. Even though he retired from that position when he was 66 years old, he remained active in working for the civil liberties of all people.

In 1981, seven months before his death at the age of 97, Baldwin was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Carter.

Who’d Be Against the ACLU?

Through the years the ACLU has supported many noted people/causes, including John Scopes in the “monkey trial” of 1925, Japanese Americans after they were placed in internment camps in 1942, African Americans in the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit of 1954, the “reproductive freedom” of women since before the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, and gays/lesbians in the Obergefell v. Hodges lawsuit of 2015.

So, who would now be opposed to the ACLU? Well, among others, those who think a literal interpretation of the Bible ought to be (en)forced on all U.S. citizens in spite of the principle of the separation of church and state as well as those who think that it is acceptable to discriminate or legislate against minorities, gays and lesbians, immigrants/asylum seekers, and (desperate) women seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Those who cherish the Bill of Rights, however, are deeply grateful for the meritorious work of the ACLU over the past 100 years.

In Honor of Fred Korematsu: A Civil Rights Hero

While not exactly a household name, Fred T. Korematsu (born 100 years ago today, on January 30, 1919) is becoming increasingly recognized as the civil rights hero he was.

Born an American Citizen

Kakusaburo Korematsu emigrated from Japan to California in 1905. In 1914 a young woman named Kotsui Aoki came from Japan to become his wife. Five years later their third son was born; they named him Toyosaburo.

Since all the Korematsu children were born in the U.S., they were American citizens. When Toyosaburo started to school, though, his teacher also wanted him to have an easier-to-pronounce American name—so she started calling him Fred, and the name stuck.

Fred went to a public high school in Oakland and was a regular American student. Things began to change for him, however, in the years shortly afterward.

Born with a Japanese Face

As the war clouds began to grow darker in 1941, Fred and three of his good friends, all patriotic Americans, went to enlist in the U.S. military service. His three white friends were given the necessary papers, but Fred was refused. Even before Pearl Harbor there was strong prejudice in California against people with a Japanese face like Fred’s.

And things got worse, of course, after December 7. On Feb. 20, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in about 117,000 ethnic Japanese people, the majority of whom were American citizens, being forced to live in internment camps.

Fred didn’t leave for the internment camp with his parents, though; he was going to try to “beat the system.” He failed. On May 30 he was arrested and put in jail. Angry about being treated like a criminal, he vowed to fight his arrest.

Help expectantly came from Ernest Besig, a lawyer named who worked with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Besig paid the bail to get Fred out of jail—but then Fred was forcefully taken away to the internment camp where he was a prisoner again.

Born with a Sense of Justice

Fred had a strong sense of justice—and a strong sense that he and other Japanese-Americans were being treated unjustly. He cooperated with the ACLU, which took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In Dec. 1944, Fred learned with great sadness that Besig had lost his case before the Supreme Court.

Forty years later, Fred received a telephone call from Peter Irons, a law professor. Irons said he had found new evidence related to Fred’s case and wanted to take it to the courts again. Fred agreed.

In 1983, Fred’s 1942 conviction was overturned. Five years later, Congress passed a law giving $20,000 in reparations to each surviving detainee in the Japanese internment camps.

Happily for all those involved, in 1998 President Clinton awarded Korematsu the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor given in the U.S.

And Now after His Death (in 2005)

On January 30, 2011, California celebrated the first Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution. Now Fred Korematsu Day is being celebrated “in perpetuity” by Hawaii, Virginia, and Florida in addition to California. 

Most recently, in June 2018 the SCOTUS finally reputed Korematsu v. United States; Chief Justice Roberts called that 1944 decision “morally repugnant.’

Unfortunately, however, in that decision the high court upheld President Trump’s Muslim ban. That was a painful irony for many people, including Karen Korematsu, Fred’s daughter.

Karen, who founded the Fred T. Korematsu Institute in 2009, lamented in a June 27, 2018, Washington Post article, “Racial profiling was wrong in 1942 and racial profiling is wrong in 2018. The Supreme Court traded one injustice for another 74 years later.”

On this special day honoring civil rights hero Fred Korematsu, let’s make sure that we realize—and that we help those within our circle of influence realize—that prejudicial attitudes and/or actions against racial and religious minorities are just as wrong now as they were in 1942.

A Loving Relationship

As many of you know, June and I married 60 years ago, in May 1957. But another young couple who were very much in love at that time couldn’t be legally married in Virginia where they lived, for they were of different races. The law against miscegenation was finally struck down 45 years ago this month.

Meet Richard and Mildred

Richard Loving (1933-75) and Mildred Jeter (1939-2008) grew up in Center Point, a small village in Caroline County on the eastern side of Virginia.

Richard was white and Mildred was of mixed race: African-American and American Indian. In Center Point the three prevalent racial/ethnic groups socialized freely, very different from the county and the state as a whole.

Their story is told in one of 2016’s top movies, the historical drama film “Loving.” Ruth Negga, an Ethiopian-born Irish actress, won an Oscar nomination for her sparkling performance as Mildred. June and I greatly enjoyed watching the movie in April, soon after it came out on DVD.

Then, earlier this year Loving vs. Virginia, a “documentary novel” by Patricia Hruby Powell, was published, primarily for high school students. I found it to be a delightful read. Powell’s story starts in the fall of 1952 and ends in the summer of 1967. Here is a picture of Richard and Mildred in 1967:

Richard and Mildred’s Marriage

Since they grew up in the same community, Richard and Mildred knew each other earlier, but their romantic relationship seems to have started in October 1955, about the same time June and I started dating. But they had to face issues we didn’t. For example, a couple of months later when they drove to a nearby town to see a movie, they had to go up to the dirty balcony, for that was the only place where “coloreds” were allowed.

By September 1956, when June and I were engaged, Mildred realizes she was pregnant—but marriage was not an option for them in Virginia. In January 1957 their baby was born—and Lola Loving, Richard’s mother, was the midwife who delivered her own grandchild. 

The next year the couple finally went to Washington, D.C., to be legally married there on June 2, 1958. (Marriage between blacks and whites had long been legal in D.C.; two years after his first wife died, Frederick Douglass legally married a white woman there in 1884.)

Richard and Mildred’s Troubles

Five weeks after their marriage, Richard and Mildred were staying with her parents. At 3 a.m. the Caroline County sheriff broke into the bedroom where they were sleeping and arrested them. This was the beginning of jail time, trials, and their “exile” to D.C.

In the summer of 1963, the summer when MLK, Jr., publically orated about his dream, Mildred Loving also had a dream. She deeply desired for her marriage to be legally recognized in Virginia, for she was tired of living in the city and dreamed of going back home to Center Point.

So, Mildred boldly wrote Bobby Kennedy, who was then the U.S. Attorney General. Kennedy’s office recommended that she contact the ACLU—which she did. Two young lawyers, Bernard Cohen and Philip Hirschkop, took the Lovings’ case.

Even though they were still in their 20s, the lawyers took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously in favor of the Lovings on June 12, 1967.

From the mid-1950s until his tragic death in a car accident caused by a drunken driver, Richard and Mildred seem to have had a very loving relationship (pun intended). And they paved the way for other people in love to be able to marry legally in spite of racial differences.

ACLJ or ACLU?

In my recent article about Jane Addams, I mentioned that she was one of the co-founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920. That organization, now 95 years old, has been much appreciated by some people and much maligned by others.

According to their Twitter page, “The ACLU is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public interest law firm and advocacy organization devoted to protecting the basic civil liberties of everyone in America.”

The ACLU has had a long and meritorious history of advocating for basic freedoms—especially freedom of speech and freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion—of individuals and groups in the United States.

Yet, some Christian groups, such as the Liberty Institute, charge the ACLU (along with the federal government) as being “aggressive opponents of religious freedom.”

And in June of this year, Ken Ham, the founder and CEO of the ultra-conservative Answers in Genesis, wrote on his blog that the ACLU “have consistently showed that they are hostile towards Christians and Christianity.”

These are just two of many examples that might be given of conservative Christians criticizing the ACLU—and that criticism goes all the way back to 1925, for the ACLU was behind John Scopes challenging the law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the public schools of Tennessee.

To counter the ACLU, in 1990 the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) was founded by Pat Robertson, an ordained Southern Baptist minister whom Wikipedia refers to as a “media mogul.” (The similarity of the acronym was intentional.)

As you know, or would guess, the ACLJ is a politically conservative organization linked to the religious right. From the beginning it was associated with Regent University School of Law in Virginia, also founded by Pat Robertson

Since 2000, though, the ACLJ has been headquartered in Washington, D.C., and when I visited there I was impressed with its proximity to the Supreme Court Building, whose entrance is just a four-minute walk away.

Since 1992 the leader of ACLJ has been Jay Sekulow (b. 1956), who has an undergraduate and a J.D. degree from Mercer University, which was associated with the Georgia Baptist Convention until 2006.

Sekulow is a sharp, articulate spokesman for ACLJ. I have heard him speak, and chatted with him briefly, a couple of times, and I have also heard him a (very) few times on Bott Radio, where he has a 30-minute program five days a week.

His program is called “Jay Sekulow Live,” and Bott Radio calls it “a bold half-hour program addressing the problems of Christian rights in the workplace, school and marketplace of ideas.”

Through the years, most of those active in the ACLJ have reaped the benefits of “white privilege,” and it seems that they are now doing all they can to maintain “Christian privilege” as well.

That is a major difference between these two organizations: whereas the ACLJ primarily is an advocate for the religious freedom (as they understand it) of Christians, the ACLU is an advocate for the civil liberties of all Americans.

Recently, the ACLU of Kentucky has been quite active in the Kim Davis dispute that has been in the news so much. In early July they filed the initial lawsuit against Davis, the marriage license-refusing county clerk.

(I have been surprised, though, that the ACLJ has not become directly involved in the Kim Davis affair, as I expected them to.)

So, which most deserves support, the ACLU or the ACLJ? The former, I believe, for they seem to be the ones more actively seeking to love “neighbor” as “self.”