Panhandle peanut gallery.

I wore a neon green Rice t-shirt on a run in the park after work today.  Comments received:

“Jerry Rice—he was a good, good friend of mine muttermuttermuttermutter”

“You run to burn calories, but you wear rice on your shirt!  HA HA HA HA”

“Rice!  It’s what’s for dinner!”

“You don’t eat a lot of rice—I like you have no belly.”

WOW THANKS EVERYONE RICE FIGHT NEVER DIE

Public service announcement.

A British friend recently informed me that “blob” is slang for “period”.  So if someone were to, let’s say, name a blog “Claire Blobbing” or perhaps “THE BLOB”, others might infer this blog is somehow related to Claire’s menstrual cycle.  Given the semi-regularly scheduled bitching that may occur on such a blog, some might even think it a clever, if vulgar, title.  Any resemblance to such cleverness, however, is purely coincidental.  Longtime readers may recall the rationale for this blog's name back from episode one.  I apologize to my British readers and friends if I unwittingly distressed their polite sensibilities.  We all can now share in the awkward terminology commonly employed here ON THE BLOB.  GOD BLESS.

Harvey who?

I find myself in a familiar scenario—I fly tomorrow for the Dirty Jerz, my suitcase stubbornly remains unpacked, and I decide that now, 11:00pm, is a good time to sit down and blob.  At least I’ve packed the two critical items—my everything bagel and cream cheese making kit and my terry-cloth bathrobe. Whatever else I need I can probably steal from my sisters.  This has worked in the past.

But now I feel compelled to share some big, cheesy love for the first city that stole my heart—HOUSTON, you big, ugly, beautiful, delicious sprawl of a city.  Just writing the word “cheesy” made me hungry for the queso only you can provide.  Look what you’ve done to me.  I have you to thank for some of my best friendships and best memories.  I miss you, I love you, I’m proud of you.  The images from the hurricane boggle my mind and break my heart, so I went back through my own images of Houston to cheer myself up.  I hope they’ll do the same for you.

First, literal cheer.

Second, comfort food.

Third, weather you used to think was a disaster.

And fourth, the kind of downpours we prefer.

Please be mindful of your safety.

And know we've got your back.
(Friends, please consider donating to YES Prep Family Flood Relief fund. I used to coach at YES Prep--they are wonderful people.)

PS. Current presidents need not apply...

...Houston has enough dopey big heads!

Turn around, bright eyes.

I am the first to admit: from time to time, I poke fun at our president on this blog.  One, it’s just too easy, and two, he is always such a good sport about it.  In the spirit of generosity, I would like to cut the man some slack for something the internet is blowing WAY out of proportion:

 

Donald stares directly into eclipse.

I know.  You’re surprised.  Claire, you say, of course we believe in your magnanimity, but why won’t you join the fun and heap scorn onto our blithering idiot of a president?  Well, it’s definitely not because I did the exact same thing.  Because I didn’t do exactly the same thing.  I was inside…looking up…at the sun…during the eclipse…without the glasses.  FOR A SPLIT SECOND.  JUST DON’T THINK ABOUT HOW FAST LIGHT TRAVELS.  OR ABOUT HOW DELICATE AND WONDERFUL OUR EYES ARE.  BECAUSE THAT’S DEFINITELY NOT WHAT I DID FOR THE REST OF THE DAY.  I have not been fretting about premature blindness in my left eye.  I am not one of those people who googled “How fast will I know if I damaged my eyes by looking at the eclipse”.  (I googled, “likelihood of cancer from UV radiation directly into eye”.)  I didn’t immediately make an eye doctor appointment.  (Because I already have one next Monday.  A lucky stroke of advance planning.  Should I tell her what I did?  Or see if she can figure it out?)

So listen…we’re all human.  We make mistakes.  We fly too close to the sun.  I'm with you here, Donnie.  I will ask St. Lucy, patron saint of the blind, to intercede for us.  (Might help with more than the literal blindness!  Who knows!)

(Fun story—I always remember St. Lucy is the patron saint of blind people because we had these little books of saint biographies in my second grade classroom and I WILL NEVER FORGET ST. LUCY’S PAGE BECAUSE SHE IS HOLDING A DISH WITH HER TWO EYEBALLS IN IT BECAUSE THEY GOT PLUCKED OUT WHEN SHE WAS BEING TORTURED FOR BEING A CHRISTIAN.  SECOND GRADE.) 

Cheers, y'all!

Robert E. Lee is Deplorable: A Treatise on Charlottesville

One reason I’ve been bad about keeping up with the blob is that I’m exhausted and speechless at our constant deliveries of fresh bullshit from Trumpworld.  This is not sustainable.  This shit is piling up and reeking.  America’s existential question seems less “will we drown in shit?” and more “how quickly will we drown in shit?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Robert E. Lee.  We have a Robert E. Lee problem.  We don’t think of Robert E. Lee as the guy who led the fight to keep black people enslaved.  We remember him with a sort of apologetic romance—the guy who was personally opposed* to slavery, but could not take up arms against his beloved Virginia, who would rather oppose the Union than sacrifice his sacred Southern honor.  We felt sorry that he died without his American citizenship restored, so our Congress posthumously awarded it to him in 1975.  Bless his heart.

What is that all about?  I don’t feel sorry for this guy.  He used that classic “but it’s the Southern way of life” line to excuse some pretty awful shit.  I’m glad they turned his family’s ancestral home into the premier cemetery for the war’s dead.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee was faced with a serious moral decision—fight for your country against slavery and your home or fight for slavery and your home against your country.  The item that defines the morality of that decision is slavery, but the item that steered General Lee was his home.  A sentimental choice?  Yes.  A morally correct choice?  No.  He picked the wrong side.  I see no honor, Southern or otherwise, in his choice.

Why am I going on about this?  This is not an argument about the statues.  Take them down, get over it, assholes.  Chances are, your beloved statue got put up by white people trying to assert their dominance over bIack people during Jim Crow or the civil rights era.  Is that the heritage you want to celebrate?  Congrats.  I’m talking about the morality of our choices.  Many of us chose to vote for a man who now (unsurprisingly to others of us) cannot whole-heartedly disavow white supremacists and anti-Semites.  A man who declared there were “fine people” in the group that marched into town wielding torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us.”  Friends and family who voted for this man, can you condone this?  What are the limits of our excuses for vile behavior? for race-baiting and dog-whistling?  Will we not stand up while he perverts our democratic values?  while he spits on the sacrifices made by our grandparents to defeat Nazis and fascism?

I ask you to think about what defines the morality of your choice to condone or disavow the words of this man.  I’ll give you some hints: it’s not your party affiliation, it’s not the “alt-left”, it’s not your pride, it’s not how much you hate Hillary Clinton.  None of that will justify (or has ever justified) your choice to support him.  The defining element of Donald Trump is the hatred he spews and promotes. If you support him and condone his words, you are complicit in his hatemongering. 

-

One of my biggest regrets about Hillary Clinton’s campaign is that she did not double down on her “deplorables” comment, referring to that contingent of Trump voters.  She wasn’t wrong and it wasn’t a mistake.  I wish she had said to the squeamish Trump voter, “I dare you to tell me those people who would resurrect the KKK and who would dare to carry a swastika are not deplorable.  Do you want to be in their camp?”  You didn’t believe it then, but it’s still true—you’re in their camp.  And they are making the rules.  How long do you want to stick around?

I promise next post will not be so doom and gloom.  Maybe we will explore possible reasons my dentist and I always end up talking about prison. (?? it's so weird.)

All's quiet on the western front.

Reporting live (for the time being) from the West Coast, apparently within striking distance of North Korean missiles.  Isn’t this fun?  Ben and Jerry’s 2 pints for $6, yes please.  If I’m gonna get burnt to a crisp or have my taste buds radiated off, I’m having Half-Baked TONIGHT.  BALLS TO THE WALL, Y’ALL.  THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE ELECT A MAN WHO ONLY UNDERSTANDS REALITY TV AND LOVES TO SAY “YOU’RE FIRED”.  REINCE PRIEBUS?  YOU’RE FIRED.  NUCLEAR MISSILES?  YOU’RE FIRED.  ISN’T THIS GREAT.  I’ll eat my communist ice cream and await my destiny.  At THE VERY LEAST we can be thankful we don’t have a lady president with email troubles.  Having a competent woman in power would obviously be MUCH WORSE than nuclear holocaust.  BenghaziemailsradicalIslamicterrorism, am I right?

Because this is a normal thing to do, I considered my last will and testament while walking home today.  Fortunately for all of us, I have Marie-Kondo-ed most of my shit in the last few months (thank you for your service), so nobody will have to dig through this stuff and feel bad about throwing it away:

It was important work.

But here go the crucial items:

If Minnie survives the nuclear blast, I entrust her to Trish.  Hugging Minnie for the last 26 years has contoured her perfectly to my body.  Trish and I have the same body.  Therefore, Trish gets Minnie and her wonderful hugs.  You’re welcome.  Treat her well.

My pearl earrings will go to Molly and my diamond earrings to Rose.

Give all my money to Kelsey Gleason.  Girl, have a killer wedding.  Or, elope and use my money for a down payment.

Will, you may keep my TV, wine, and coffee table.

In the event that my death is murder by an illegal immigrant, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT ALLOW MY DEATH TO BECOME AN OBSCENE TOOL OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. I’m pretty sure having my name repeated over and over by Paul Ryan and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity will not allow me a good rest in peace.  I do not want any Claire’s Law unless it has something to do with forcing all grocery stores to function additionally as full service liquor stores EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN DAY. 

If I die in a freak accident or of some crazy disease, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT TURN MY FACEBOOK PAGE INTO A BIZARRO MEMORIAL WHERE YOU ALL WRITE NOTES TO ME.  GUESS WHAT.  I’LL BE DEAD.  I WON’T BE ABLE TO READ.  IF I HAVE SOME MAGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE AFTERLIFE, I WON’T HAVE TO LOG INTO FACEBOOK TO SEE HOW YOU’RE FEELING.  Instead, please direct your lovely thoughts and memories in notes to my parents.

As for the rest of my stuff, have at it, y’all.  Go crazy for that Ikea.  First dibs to sisters, cousins, and friends.  Now, I have some ice cream to attend to.  Please remember me as a lover of truth, humor, and peanut butter cups.   If I am granted more time on this fragile planet, I will be more attentive to this blog.  Godspeed.

And we're back.

2017 is not turning out to be my favorite year ever, but I’m not looking for a pity party.  Ladies and gentlemen, I am newly single and have already continued my rampage of breaking hearts across San Francisco (sorry to Sergei, my brief Muni romance).  As he said after I texted him that it turns out I’m not into 40-year-old Ukrainians, maybe we will meet again another rainy day on the Muni.  (We won’t, because I changed my commute.)

For the first time ever, I understand Taylor Swift.  I, too, feel compelled to fill my art (blob = art) with Starbucks lovers.  But then, the lilting voice of an old English teacher creeps into my head—girls, do not sell your souls in the marketplace.  I won’t, Mrs. O.—at least not more than I already have.

And thus, The Blob returns.  I leave you with one more bit of wisdom, from Sergei’s final text—don’t waste the pretty.

What did I miss?

Good night, sweet prince.

The Blob has been on hiatus, but I thought I’d check in to let you know that I planned this vacation sometime last fall and it has nothing to do with the sexual harassment claims against me.1  Unfortunately, the same may not be true for Mr. Bill O’Reilly, whose vacation became permanent today.

The Blob sends its heartfelt regrets.

What a world we live in—a world where a powerful man at the top of his game, making millions of dollars for himself and his company, can get fired because he’s suddenly not making as many millions for his company and because humanity is disgusted by allegations of him sexually harassing female coworkers.  How sad. 

Bill laments this world in his latest book, Old School.  He never would have lost his job back in the “old school” work environment.  As the book description says on his website, “It’s a values thing.  The anti-Old School forces believe the traditional way of looking at life is oppressive.”2  Bill might refer to agents of the anti-Old School forces as “pinheads” or “snowflakes”.  He wasn’t creating an oppressive work environment for all those women—it’s just tradition for a man in power to comment on a female coworker’s cleavage, or to masturbate while on the phone with her, or to threaten her career unless she visits his hotel room.  What woman doesn’t want that sort of attention from her saggy old boss?  Where’s the respect? 

Not that those allegations are true, of course.  Women are always looking to make a quick buck off sexual harassment claims, aren’t we?  It’s just such a fun and easy way to put our careers and reputations on the line, and maybe get a million dollars. 

My heart goes out to Bill.  He’s been through so much.  To have the President of the United States vouch for your character, and you still lose your job—what a blow.  I’m sure the left-wing media has something to do with this.

Keep your head up, Bill.  The rest is silence…for you…we hope.

---

¹ This is a joke.

² Other gems from the book description: 

"Do you look for something to get outraged about, every single day, so you can fire off a tweet defending your exquisitely precious sensibilities? Then you're a Snowflake."  ...Or the president.

"This book will explain the looming confrontation so even the ladies on The View can understand it."  And why don't women love this guy?

April fools.

A very happy April Fools Day to the Trump White House, the one day of the year we honor the whole darn team. 

Not just April fools.

 In tribute, I will perform “The Don” at a piano bar in San Francisco on Monday night.  Wish me luck.

A horrible, monstrous beast.

I saw Beauty and the Beast in the theater last night and was inspired to rewrite Gaston's song.  If there is any way we can get SNL to perform this, I think we should because it would be a big hit.  Please enjoy and feel free to sing along.

The Don (in bathrobe):

Who do they think they are?

The media’s tangled with the wrong man!

No one makes fun of the Don!

Le Spicy Fou:

Darn right.

The Don:

Dismissed!  Rejected!

Big-ly humiliated!

Why, it’s more than I can bear.

Le Spicy Fou (offers remote control):

Fox News?

The Don:

What for?  Nothing helps.

Everyone hates me.

Le Spicy Fou:

Who, you?  Never!

Don, you’ve got to pull yourself together.

Gosh it disturbs me to see you, oh Don,

Looking so down in the dumps.

Every guy here’d love to be you, oh Don,

Even those CNN chumps.

No one in the world’s as admired as you!

You’re everyone’s favorite guy!

Everyone’s awed and inspired by you

And it’s not very hard to see whyyyyyyyyy!

Noooooooooooo oneeeeeeee lies like the Don,

Thinks he’s spied on like Don,

Spreads conspiracy theories as blithely as Don!

How he bullies and growls he’ll get even,

And he will, sure as I’m Spicy Sean.

You can ask any Jeff, Reince, or Stephen,

And they’ll tell you whose team they prefer to be on!

Chorus:

No one’s rich as the Don!

Likes to bitch like the Don!

Tramples on laws and norms in the ditch like the Don!

The Don (swings around lamppost):

Yes, my tax returns are so incriminating!

Chorus:

My, what a guy, he’s our Don!

Give five “Heil Dons!” Give twelve “hip-hips!”

Le Spicy Fou (shakes podium menacingly):

The Don is the best and the rest of you are shit!

Chorus:

Noooooooo oneeeeeeeee’s mad as the Don,

Uses “Sad!” like the Don,

Wants to sleep with his daughter as bad as the Don!

For there’s no one so gross and so lonely.

He’s a narcissist pig, it’s no lie.

It’s no wonder Mel stayed in the city,

As she patiently waits for her husband to die!

No one tweets like the Don,

No one cheats like the Don,

Who grabs pussies with hands so petite as the Don’s!

The Don:

I’m especially good at retaliating! Sad!

Chorus:

Ten points for our Don!

The Don:

When I was a lad, my dad showed me no love.

My complexes blossomed and grew.

So now that I’m old, I’ve no shame to speak of,

And I’ll force all my wrath upon you!!!!!!

Chorus:

Noooooooo oneeeeeee’s orange as Don,

An abhorrence as Don,

Who will ban anything slightly foreign as Don.

The Don:

I use gold leaf in all of my decorating!

Le Spicy Fou:

Say it again!

Who’s a man among men?

Did we make you forget

You’re the worst president?

Who’s a super success?

Screw the Muslims!  The press!

Ask his minions and goons who is boss!

There’s just one guy in charge

And his name is writ large!!!!

And it’s V-L-A-D....

V-L-A-D-E….

V-L-A-D-I……..

Chorus:

The DON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Meditations.

Will has gotten very into meditation.  My experience with meditation almost exclusively involves snoozing during guided meditations in my high school theology class (“You’re walking along a beautiful beach.  You see a stranger in the distance.  Oh!  It’s Jesus!”)  Mrs. Choa (our teacher) would begin the meditations with deep breathing exercises.  These proved counterproductive for me, because I quickly discovered that slowly inhaling and exhaling made it much easier for me to burst out laughing.  Instead I had to bite my lip and concentrate on not peeing in my pants laughing, which was very stressful and defeated the purpose of a calming meditation.  Sleep was my best option, and thankfully, (then as now) never difficult for me to accomplish.

Will’s knack for meditating may be rubbing off on me, however, because I recently found myself meditating on a particular image.

Enter meditation sequence.

There was once a time of universal consensus, when men, women, and children of all backgrounds and persuasions could join hands and agree: surely this image is photoshopped. 

Buffoons.

Before this image was just a twinkle in Vladimir Putin’s eye, we believed, as children believe, in the resilience of our democracy.  When we heard the words “Kid President”, we did not picture an orange 70-year-old having a tantrum.  We thought of this charming fellow:

When we heard the words “Donald Trump”, we thought “you’re fired”, not “yuge pussy-grabbing tiny hands”.  

Can we go back to that time?

No!  You are terrible at meditating.  BREATHE IN DEEPLY.  Nostalgia is not the way forward.  The time to be awesome is now. Go pack for your ski trip.

Meditation—still not my strong suit.  I should probably go back to running into Jesus at the beach.  Or just take a nap.

Lent prep.

It’s definitely a big fat Tuesday.  At 11:00 this morning, I was shocked to see that it was indeed 11:00, as my subconscious had led me to believe I had already eaten lunch and we were well into the afternoon.  And then I remembered it’s Tuesday.  And not just any Tuesday.  Tuesday of a five-day work week.  Life is hard.

Lent begins tomorrow.  I am giving up Facebook because it’s annoying and Twitter because it turns me into a rage-against-mostly-Paul-Ryan-but-also-others-machine.  Don’t worry, I will continue to blob, but I won’t be posting to Facebook.  Allow me, then, to shamelessly beg you to subscribe to my blog.  If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you will see a box where you can enter your email.  I’m pretty sure it won’t spam you.  Blogger is a Google operation, so if you have problems, take them up with Will.

As our President would say, a blessed Lent to all the haters and losers.

Drastic times.

Listen, I really am trying not to interpret everything as signs of looming World War III/American implosion via class warfare/anarchy/eventual nuclear holocaust.  But suddenly preppers seem a lot less crazy.  (Don’t worry, I’m not building a bunker but our storage room may serve, so that is where we keep our bottled water and canned tuna.)

I’m not the only one freaking out:

Catchy new tagline.

I’m just very disturbed at how faithfully Orange Julius is following the authoritarian playbook.  The scapegoating of particular religious, ethnic, and non-heterosexual people, for instance, was an old standby for another thin-skinned dude who liked to yell and had bad hair.  (Ok, you caught me.  I’m not above a Hitler-Trump comparison.)  NEWS ALERT: Muslims aren’t killing us by the thousands (guns are), Mexicans aren’t stealing our jobs (automation is), and transsexuals aren’t grabbing your daughter’s pussy in the women’s room (she should watch out for our President though).  Picking on minority groups and the vulnerable may make some (miserable) people feel better, but it does not solve problems.  It actually creates them.  Stop me if I sound crazy.  Oh right, you can’t.

Here’s a problem created by the dogwhistling and hateful rhetoric that spewed from the Trump campaign, and now spews from the White House:

 

In case your preferred news source didn't cover this, vandals desecrated 100 graves at a historic Jewish cemetery in St. Louis this week.

As it turns out, bad people are empowered to do bad things when we do not actively embrace tolerance and respect, when we elect people who do not actively embrace tolerance and respect.

One of the most moving places I have ever been is the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague.  For over 300 years, it was the only place the city’s Jewish people were allowed to bury their dead.  The graves are stacked layers upon layers, making “ground level” something like thirty feet above the current street. Up to 100,000 people may be buried there.  Seeing these graves all crammed together sparked a major understanding in my brain when I visited with my family a few years ago.  The Nazis didn’t cook up anti-Semitism in the 1930s—it was hundreds and hundreds of years in the making.  Passive cruelty and episodic violence were the norms.  Europe was so primed with anti-Semitism that it required just one particularly evil man to twist prejudice into holocaust.

Photos can't really capture this place. 

I’m not saying Donald Trump is plotting to murder all the groups he recklessly scapegoats.  But I am saying he is too cozy with authoritarian methods of exploiting fear and prejudice.  People like David Duke, Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer, and cowardly grave vandals should not feel encouraged by the President of the United States.  But they do.

I’m still hopeful our nation's history has primed us to love and defend freedom.  But I fear this slippery slope we’re on.  I love you, America, but I don’t like you a whole lot right now.  We need to open our eyes to reality.  Democracy dies in darkness.

My fellow Austrians.

Good evening.  You may have noticed the Blob’s small hiatus from its regularly scheduled cutting commentary.  My apologies.  We’re living in a reality show conducted by King Man-Child and Mr. Bannon-Goebbels and it is exhausting.  I’m so exhausted that upon waking up to a rare San Francisco peal of thunder recently, I assumed we were getting nuked by North Korea and was surprisingly okay with it. 

But this is the tactic of our Orange Overlord, right?  Inundate us with bullshit from all angles so we are stuck spinning in excrement, all while he dances around tearing down democratic norms?  Our free press, our independent judiciary—nothing is safe from his vindictive incompetence.

I can hear some of you thinking, “Oh Claire, you’re being dramatic.  Can’t we go back to the fun, non-political times of the Blob?”  NO WE CANNOT.  I attempted to write a light-hearted post last week but it turned into a real tearjerker about how I feel like CAPTAIN VON TRAPP SINGING EDELWEISS TO HIS DEAD AUSTRIA.  I need you, Julie Andrews.  And right now, I’m sparing you the very poignant lessons we could learn from the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague (but don’t worry, I’m saving it for later).  It seems that all my blob brain is wired for right now is finding parallels between our current state of affairs and the rise of the Third Reich.  THANKS, OBAMA.

And now, we breathe.  During the hiatus from substantive blobbing, I had the great fortune of attending two meet-ups of strong lady friends (Feminist Fight Club last Tuesday and Babes Brunch yesterday).  We discussed current events, brainstormed ways to get involved, and ate delicious food.  I recognize my tendency to sit at home and fret, so it was good to meet up with smart, kind women and plan for action.  I highly recommend it.  It’s healthy to get out of social media world.

Womankind, arise!

That’s all I got for today, y'all.  Good night.  God bless.  Call your senators.  Tip your waitresses.

Though we adore men individually,
we agree that as a group they're rather stupid.

But Bob Loblaw no habla español.

Above: Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto
Below: Bob Loblaw, as portrayed by Scott Baio.

Thanks, Obama: A Treatise on Race in America

More book review than treatise.  Not actually much about Obama.  Just felt like a good title.

Few books have altered my understanding of history and of the present moment as profoundly as The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  I want every person in the country to read this book.

The Warmth of Other Suns is the story of the Great Migration, the exodus of six million African Americans from the South from around WWI through the 1970s.  I remember learning about this in high school history, but mainly as a simple chain of cause and effect.  Jim Crow was bad, black people moved away, demographics in northern cities changed.  I completely missed the big picture.  This was the largest and fastest migration of people in American history.  I’m not sure my italics can convey how huge that statement is.  How about This was the largest and fastest migration of people in American history.  The sheer number of migrants dispersing at such a rapid rate from one region to the rest of the country fundamentally changed most, if not all, aspects of our nation—our economies, our politics, our culture.

Isabel Wilkerson weaves the stories of three distinct migrants together with the overall picture of the Great Migration.  The personal accounts of Ida Mae Gladney, Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, and George Swanson Starling give the story of the Great Migration something I missed in history class—the power and emotion of our common humanity.  We learn not only of the indignities they escaped and the challenges of their new homes, but also what they felt at those moments.  We can feel Ida Mae’s nerves as she and her husband quietly prepare to leave Mississippi, without alerting their sharecropper for fear of retaliation.  We can feel Robert’s humiliation and delirium as he pleads for a place to sleep for the night on his drive from Texas to California.  We can see ourselves in these people.  They make us ask, “What would I have done in their shoes?  What if I had to flee the place I’d always known and start from scratch in a foreign city?”

This is not a political book, but it has clarified my views of civic responsibility.  As President Obama said in his farewell address,

[if our democracy is to work] For white Americans, it means acknowledging that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow didn’t suddenly vanish in the ‘60s…

Ms. Wilkerson expertly draws the lineage from slavery to the Jim Crow South to the Great Migration to the present, illustrating the compounding, deleterious effects of slavery on today’s African Americans.  We can’t pretend the wealth gap between white and black people is the result of one group’s hard work and the other’s laziness. Black people began in this country as slaves, were kept subject through sharecropping, denied rights and respect, forced to leave their communities to start again elsewhere, where they faced the same prejudices and earned less than their white counterparts.  While at the same time, white people were free to build their wealth over generations, free to attend the better half of “separate but equal” schools, free to buy homes where realtors forgot to tour their black clients, where those homes would appreciate in value and prove a good return on investment.  We cannot pretend institutionalized racism is a made-up phenomenon, when almost 9% of black men in their late 20s are in prison.  When, at the same time, a young white man convicted of raping an unconscious woman walks free after only three months in jail. It’s dishonest to pretend we all start on the same playing field.  We just don’t.

I’m not shaming white people for our ancestors’ wrongs.  I’m asking us to recognize how our whiteness has eased our paths through life.  If we truly believe all men and women are created equal, we have to acknowledge the injustice of the fact that one’s mere skin color either enhances or threatens one’s ability to pursue happiness.  The Warmth of Other Suns opened my eyes to so many ways that is true.

I would like to end this treatise and step off my soapbox, after a quote Ms. Wilkerson included in her Notes on Methodology, from the 1922 Chicago Commission on Race Relations report The Negro in Chicago.

It is important for our white citizens always to remember that the Negroes alone of all our immigrants came to America against their will by the special compelling invitation of the whites; that the institution of slavery was introduced, expanded, and maintained in the United States by the white people and for their own benefit; and that they likewise created the conditions that followed emancipation. Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro’s making.  No group in our population is less responsible for its existence.  But every group is responsible for its continuance; and every citizen, regardless of color or racial origin, is in honor and conscience bound to seek and forward its solution.

Raise a glass to freedommmm