Category: Blog

A Sad Time In History

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Could-the-South-Have-Won-the-Civil-War

I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. Nobody in my family ever said much about the Civil War or my family’s part in it so I just assumed that my ancestors had fought for the Confederacy. I had a rather childlike attitude about the whole incident with the exception of feeling a bit uncomfortable about slavery, a practice of which I did not have a great deal of information. To say I was naive about the whole thing is an understatement.

When I was a bit older my paternal grandmother gave me some documents that had been handed down to her from my great grandmother. They were the discharge papers of my great grandfather, John William Seth Smith, who had served with the Union Army. I was rather surprised to learn that my relations who had almost always lived in the south had supported the Union. As I did more research I learned that Kentucky, where my great grandfather enlisted, was a state that was quite divided in allegiance to one side or another. I found myself wondering what had prompted John W. S. Smith to choose not just to stand with the Union but to join the battle. Secretly I heaved a sigh of relief that he had chosen to fight for the preservation of the nation. He became a kind of hero to me even though I know little about him and don’t even have a photograph to picture how he looked.

Being a peacemaker at heart and someone who encourages free thinking I have tended to be rather forgiving of those who so foolishly decided to secede from the Union. Like many I have romanticized the battles of Americans fighting one another and I have been rather magnanimous in forgiving the Confederates for the reasons that they tried to set up a government of their own. Over time I have found less and less reason to support their cause not just because some of them may have been shooting at my great grandfather, but because the foundation of their reasoning was based on the ugly existence of slavery.

Economics and states rights are often cited as the basis for the anger that lead to a break from the United States of America. Even given that bit of moral latitude the discussions always came back to the financial aspects of slavery, an argument that was used even at the beginnings of the country as a reason to allow slavery. To think that finances came before human life is upsetting beyond reason. Not only was the cause a foul one draped in phrases about freedom, but the act of declaring war was in itself outright treason. As I critically assess the incident I can say that the only good thing that came from it was the freeing of the slaves and no matter what any sons of the south may say, the northern states were rather magnanimous in their forgiveness when all was said and done.

Sadly many of the heroes of the Confederacy had once been soldiers in the United States military, educated and trained at West Point. Try to imagine how we would react today if a group of American soldiers allied to declare war on the rest of the country. We would no doubt consider them to be terrorists attempting to launch a coup. There would be few of us who would even think to support their cause.

So this makes me wonder why we have been so understanding in allowing the Confederate flag to continue to fly and for monuments to be built in adoration of the heroes of the Confederacy. In many ways our permitting such things is akin to letting people fly the Nazi flag and put up monuments to Hitler and his allies in the town squares of German towns. We would surely think that such a thing would be crazy.

Some argue that Confederate memorials are simply a part of history and even a culture that should be honored and allowed. Statues should be about people who are worthy of glory, not those who had a very misguided attitude about slavery and the importance of continuing as a nation. The Confederate leaders were determined to leave the Union, keep slaves and even allow the expansion of slavery to new states. There was nothing particularly noble about any of that.

The fact is that the Union held. The Confederates lost and Lincoln wanted to welcome them back into the fold. The slaves were freed and that should have been the end of that, only it wasn’t. We know that many of the southern states enacted Jim Crow laws that segregated Blacks and limited their freedoms including the right to vote for another one hundred years.

I am all too aware of egregious things that I saw as a child in the 1950s. I remember the Blacks sitting at the back of the city buses. I vividly recall the signs designating water fountains and restrooms for “Coloreds” and “White.” I all too often heard the “N” word being bandied casually about. I knew that there were certain parts of town where Black citizens were forced to live. I even have a memory of hearing a man explain that Blacks had to depart from certain areas where they worked at maids and laborers before dark or risk being arrested.

During the time from about the 1890s to the 1950s treatment of Black citizens was horrific. In the same era many of those statues and monuments were erected. Schools, streets and even military bases were named after the so called heroes and while those honors proliferated people mostly looked away. Few dared to suggest that it might have been in poor taste to do such things and so there was an implied if not spoken agreement that those who attempted to destroy the United States were not really so bad after all. They had been forgiven and if people wanted to honor them for their service in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States surely there was no problem.

We have reached a point of maturity in our thinking. We have begun to understand that the silent message of all of these memorials is that those who lead a civil war had an honorable undertaking despite the ugly aspect of using it to keep slavery flourishing. Little wonder that those symbols have made some of our citizens feel as uncomfortable as constantly driving past a statue of Hitler in Times Square might make World War II veterans or Jewish citizens feel.

The time has come for us to be mature enough as a nation to take down, rename and move on from the darkest chapters of our history. We certainly must continue to learn lessons from what happened, but we should not keep making excuses for those who were unwilling to rid our country of the scourge of slavery and then use war to keep it. There is nothing noble about what they did. Many citizens of the south who had never owned a slave in their lives were forced to fight battles that should not have occurred. They were used as cannon fodder for an inglorious and lost cause. It’s time that we rid ourselves of the stain that has stayed with us far too long. Let’s rename our military posts after other real heroes who fought for this country, not against it. Let’s do it in the name of respect for our flag, for our veterans and for all Americans.

A Time To Share

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Unemployment

I have had many different lives during my seventy one years on this earth. When my father was our family breadwinner I enjoyed luxuries that many of my cousins never realized. We always had a relatively new luxury car. Our home was modern and filled with beautiful furnishings. After he died things changed drastically. Suddenly I learned what it was like to be continually worried that our family might run out of food before the next check came. My mother was masterful at stretching our meager income and somehow always found a way to keep us supplied with the basics of food, shelter and clothing but there was always a specter of losing it all looming over us. I suppose that because of that experience I never again took any good fortune for granted.

When I became an adult I worked alongside my husband to provide for our family. Neither of us ever made a great deal of money but we almost always had what we needed to enjoy a comfortable life. We were able to purchase a home and pay for our daughters to attend college. We even managed to prepare for our retirement years and have enough to take some wonderful trips here and there. Nonetheless I never quite got over the anxieties that I often felt when as a child I would look inside our refrigerator and see bare walls with a day or two left before we would be able to replenish our larders at the grocery store.

Living from check to check is stressful and so I have always had a clear understanding of the students that I taught who were living in circumstances even more dire than the ones that I had experienced. I knew that one small emergency or illness or needed repair can turn into a major disaster for anyone whose economic situation is precarious. I also understood that once someone is in such a situation even with very hard work it can be challenging to move up the economic ladder. For that reason I have never felt beset upon when my taxes were used to help others in need. Instead I have been grateful that I have enough to share for without government help and that of my community I don’t know what would have become of my brothers and me.

I have always lived with a sense of appreciation and a feeling that those of us who have more should help with those who have less. I have never begrudged the social programs that give people an economic boost even if they result in individuals like me paying the government a bit more to keep them running. I am a person who knows what it is like to wait all day long in a free clinic to get inoculations for school. I am someone who benefitted from the social security payments that kept my brothers and I alive after my father died.

With the scourge of the pandemic and the bust of the oil industry there are still millions of American citizens who suddenly find themselves unemployed. These are people who only months ago had great jobs and plans for the future. With little or no warning they were suddenly informed that their positions were being eliminated. It was a kind of insult added to injury as they scrambled to cope with all of the inconveniences of the pandemic. In some cases both husbands and wives faced unexpected job loss, so when Congress voted to provide an additional six hundred dollars a month to their unemployment checks it was a godsend. In may instances it was literally the needed assurance to keep their homes. Nonetheless I also learned of people that I know who became homeless in a time when we were supposed to huddling in our domiciles. 

There are many unfortunate souls who are now in a state of anxiety because those extra payments are slated to end soon and they have yet to find new jobs. Even as many in the retail and service industries are opening back up and lowering the numbers of those without work, large corporations like BP are announcing plans to lay off ten thousand more. Sadly both the president and many in the general public are reluctant to extend the unemployment benefit past July. They even cruelly suggest that those who are still hunting for jobs are just lazy slackers who need to get off of their behinds and get back to work.

That would be all well in good if everyone had a position waiting for them to go back to work. I personally know highly educated, brilliant and hard working individuals who have been unsuccessfully attempting to find jobs for over three months. In a good economy they would have been snapped up in a week or so, but our present situation is still fragile and employers are reluctant to begin a hiring frenzy. The more likely outcome is that there may be even more layoffs in the coming weeks. Knowing that, the unemployed people that I know have expressed a willingness to relocate anywhere in the world if necessary. They will uproot their families and venture far away from the lives they have built if that is what it takes. In the meantime they need help because for every job that materializes there are thousands of applicants.

Most of us have only been slightly inconvenienced by Covid-19. We may be bored and desirous of resuming our normal lives but we are not wondering what we ill do when our savings are gone and we have no new leads on work. We should all be insisting that we take care of our fellow citizens in these unprecedented times. Even if it takes a pinch out of our own comfortable lives we should not mind. Americans are known for generosity. Now more than ever we need to think of the people who are lying awake at night worrying and provide them with the reassurance that we will not let them down.

Ironically when I was writing this blog I made a cup of tea and reached for a fortune cookie that came with a takeout dinner that we enjoyed a few Fridays ago. The message inside seemed to say it all, “Pure love is a willingness to give without  a thought of receiving anything in return.” We have to get through all of this together. The weight of sacrifice should not be limited to a few. Demand that Congress continue to take care of people still struggling to find work.

What’s In a Word?

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

old-brick-one-room-school-house-c-wayne-hennebert

I often spend a great deal of time attempting to find the exact word that I need to convey a particular message. Given how many times people have misunderstood my intent I suspect that I not quite as proficient at selecting the appropriate phrases as I would like to be. The written word is static and subject to a thousand different interpretations so it helps if ideas are described in as simple and and understandable form as possible.

I’ve been writing a great deal about the Back Lives Matter movement because I truly believe that we are in a moment of living history. The protests are far greater than the sum of their parts and if things go well there will be significant changes that may help to move the dial of justice closer to equity. Because change is wrought with many concerns not everyone is on board with what is happening which makes it more imperative than ever for there to be clear goals that clearly outline what might be done. Unfortunately the nebulous catch phrase “defund the police” is being bandied about and causing a great deal of confusion even among those of us who agree that we must face problems of race squarely in the face and make important changes.

To be honest when I began hearing of defunding police forces it sounded way too extreme. Usually when something sounds hyperbolic I find that I have probably misinterpreted it’s true intent so I set to work finding out as much about the defunding movement as possible. While nothing about the concept is set in stone it appears to revolve around the idea of taking some of the duties that now belong to police officers and shifting them to persons and agencies better trained to handle them. It is a way of allowing our police officers to handle crime and still have time for more community involvement. The hope is that police will be able to become known and beloved members of the fabric of society. Doing this means taking a number of current duties off of their plates. For example, police are often called to assist with mentally ill citizens and these incidents sometimes escalate into violence. Instead it would make more sense to send people trained and certified to work with mentally ill persons. They would be better equipped to calm persons who are in a state of distress.

I began thinking about the potential of such changes by considering how teaching has evolved from the one room school houses of old to the modern day classroom. At one time a teacher was all things to all people. Eventually auxiliary professionals began to provide teachers with the ability to concentrate their efforts on teaching subject matter. Schools began to hire librarians, counselors, technology specialists, social workers, coaches, music teachers, nurses and so on instead of leaving all of those duties to a single individual. Today’s teachers continuously receive specialized training and certifications. The educational experience has had to adapt to ever changing challenges and so too should the policing efforts of our cities and towns.

Nobody expects us to exist without the men and women in blue who put their lives on the line to keep us safe. Instead, as I comprehend it, the idea is to create a more highly trained and specialized force that is not buried under the weight of more and more duties that might very easily become the purview of other specialists. I would think that this might actually make the life of the men and women in blue a great deal less stressful. I can only imagine how exhausting the present demand must be, making it little wonder that some officers reach a boiling point that leads to trouble in an emotionally charged situation.

As things changed for teachers in the classroom some ideas were not so good but most made life far easier and helped to lower the stress levels considerably. I see nothing wrong with beginning a concerted effort to find the best law enforcement practices and use them to create greater equity for both our police officers and the citizens that they serve. There are already locales that have had great success with restructuring and we should be studying them.

There is nothing radical about continuous improvement. A few years back when Ford Motor Company was on the verge of bankruptcy and was producing inferior automobiles experts descended on the plants and recommend sweeping changes that revolutionized the way the cars would be made. The approach was a last effort to save the dying manufacturing plants and they resulted in happier workers and customers. Ford now consistently produces some of the most reliable cars and trucks in the industry. The company’s willingness to take a hard look at problems and try new methods to repair the damage of years of clinging to the status quo has now become a business model that is studied in graduate schools.

Our world is constantly changing and the organizations that take the time to adapt and be flexible not only survive but grow and prosper. The so called defunding concept may not be the best way to repair our criminal justice system but we should not be too quick to toss out the entire idea. I sense that there is something quite interesting doubt the methodology. Perhaps with a better moniker and a bit of retooling it can lead to a modern police force that becomes an integral part of every community. 

Searching For Truth

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

feathers

In the long ago when my husband was in graduate school he was often invited to small gatherings at the homes of his professors. The evenings usually consisted of academic discussions of the past, the present and the future. There was always a great deal of emphasis on data, theories of social science and outcomes of common human behaviors. Such evenings were intellectually exhilarating. My part was almost always just to listen and learn after which my curiosity would lead me to do more reading on the various topics of discussion.

Of late I have been reminded of the excitement that comes from considering varying points of view to explain the workings of the world. In Zoom conferences with my nephews who live in Chicago and with my grandson and granddaughter who are still in the process of furthering their educations I have learned by listening and then continuing my research later. I have also delighted in garnering information from some of my former students who now hold posts as teachers, college professors, economists and the like. In the spirit of intellectual fairness they take great pains to investigate the credibility of claims before accepting them as gospel. They are wary of any kind of particulars that appear to have a taint of undocumented truth.

I am now an old dog who is still listening quietly and learning new tricks. Among them is the ever more pressing need to check sources before accepting their authenticity. Social media platforms and modern technology have created rumor mongering factories. Those feathers that Jesus talked about with the gossipy women are now flying at us at warp speed and once they are out there they are exceedingly difficult to remove. They are flying through the avenues of communication like a blizzard of fakery.

The pandemic, economic uncertainty, and the Black Lives Matter movement have all collided with an election year to make the prevalence of false information more and more common. A couple of quick examples illustrate the problem. One is a side by side photo of President Trump waving a Bible and Adolf Hitler doing a similar gesture with the holy book. The truth is that the Hitler photo was manipulated. It never happened and yet it has no doubt circulated around the world millions of times as valid proof of President Trump’s facist tendencies.

In the same vein there is an image of Nancy Pelosi tearing the Bible in half in protest of President Trump. It’s similarity to a real picture of her tearing up the president’s State of the Union address alerted me to do some homework where I found that the creation was a satirical effort by somehow wanting to inject some levity into the anxious political environment. The problem is that the people posting the photo were all proclaiming their disgust with Congresswoman Pelosi and anger at her audacity in destroying such a sacred volume. In other words they believed that she had actually ripped a Bible asunder.

I could go on and on and on. I have seen screeds about damage done by rioters in the present time which were accompanied by photo “evidence” from four years ago. One video I watched showed rioters tearing down the statue of a slave trader with the indication that it was happening in the United States when in fact it was in the United Kingdom. People were becoming enraged over incidents that had absolutely nothing to do with the BLM protests.

If there is “fake news” in the world it is mostly to be found on social media platforms and the sources of such misinformation are almost always disreputable. Sadly few people have the time or the inclination to check the veracity of everything they see before reacting to it. While it is rather easy to see the falsehood of some propaganda, other examples are quite cleverly produced to appear rational and valid. For that reason we all need to guarded in our acceptance of everything we encounter as truth.

I have generally found that if something appears to be hyperbolic or audacious it is quite likely to be either being absolutely false or at the very least an effort to propagandize the public. So too when statements or solutions are seemingly too simplistic they merit a closer examination. We hear about “defunding” police departments and immediately jump to conclusions about what that actually means regardless of which side of the BLM movement we lean toward. The reality is that defunding does not mean ridding ourselves of a police force but rather re-allocating some of the functions of those organizations to agencies that are more meaningful. For example, right now our police officers are answering calls regarding people with mental illnesses. Our jails are filled with the mentally ill. The defunding idea would appropriately outsource those duties to mental health professionals. Persons who are suffering from mental illnesses would free up jails and decrease time spent by police waiting in hospital emergency rooms with buses full of prisoners waiting to be evaluated.

While I was in the United Kingdom I learned that many of the duties of our American police officers are the domain of other groups in that country. They have meter maids for example to give parking tickets. By allocating funds and functions to more suitable agencies our police force can concentrate on the heavy duty crimes rather than the petty infractions. A man using a counterfeit twenty dollar bill should not have merited the attention of four police officers. If this incident had been investigated in more fitting ways we would not have been sitting where we now are.

Other concerns swirling around police departments include the increasing use of military style equipment by police as well as the quickness to resort to harsh techniques. Departments must consider their current tactics and begin a process of training all of their officers in de-escalation techniques. In cities where that is already standard practice there are fewer occurrences of misguided overuse of force. Finally police unions need to be willing to admit when their own have crossed the line of decency and admonish members who give policing efforts a bad name. They cannot automatically defend bad behavior and then expect to maintain the respect of the public. The Catholic Church is feeling from backlash for the many years that pedophile priests were protected. Police unions should take note of how such inaction destroys credibility. 

We all need to consider that the world is complex and neither our reactions nor our solutions from problems should be denied the time it takes to make reasoned decisions. Searching for the truth should be a common occupation for all of us. That means that first we have to listen and then we must take the time to ferret out the truth without blindly following anyone.

It’s Time We Get Started

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

Problem-Solve-750x354

I saw a post that suggested that if we just turned off the media for thirty days and went about our business we would soon find that everything would suddenly get better. Sadly like anyone else I would surely love for the problems facing our nation with regard to Covid-19 and race relations to evaporate just by not thinking about them, but experience has taught me that ignoring difficulties does not eliminate them. In fact doing so tends to only make them worse.

We will be facing a number of issues in the coming weeks and months that will require our attention. All of them are complex and won’t be solved with quick fixes or wishful thinking. We can’t just run to the beaches or out to the malls and think that our economy will suddenly begin operating at full throttle or the the virus will go away as mysteriously as it appeared. We won’t cure the racism that we’ve recently seen by insisting that it isn’t there either. We’ve got work to do and we will get the best results by facing the pain and the hardships that our country has endured. We are far from being ready to pat ourselves on the back because if anything is somewhat certain it is that we have been far too complacent in thinking that the status quo has been as good as we need to be.

All of us should be insisting that we be better prepared for future national emergencies. The honest truth is that we were blindsided and forced to move without a real plan or sufficient supplies. It matter less who or what caused the virus to enter our country than to determine why we spent so many precious days and weeks fumbling to identify and address the issues. Certainly this virus and its impact on the world seems to be unprecedented, but in truth such pandemics have occurred before and we have been warned about the possibility of such a thing happening again many times. In fact, when George W. Bush was president he decided to form a commission to design a framework for addressing possible emergencies like the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. Unfortunately a Republican Congress bent on lowering taxes reduced funding for the program during the Obama administration leaving a major hole in the nation’s safety net.

Since we can’t relive the past our only option is to proceed from this day forward to create a well funded pandemic plan that is run by experts in infectious disease and virology, The group should also include supply chain specialists, representatives from medical manufacturing and pharmacists. There should be generous and permanent funding from Congress that cannot be randomly taken away in political power struggles. We must treat it as the national security issue that it is.

We also need to look at how to coordinate responses to pandemics across states and within cities so that the confusion that occurred during the past few months will not be repeated. We know that there are countries with populations as dense or even denser than ours that had fewer cases and deaths from Covid 19. We need to study the behaviors and operations that they followed to get such favorable results. We might learn from them if we are able to determine what decisions elicited the better outcomes. We can’t be too proud to learn from other countries because in this case we were not number one or even in the top ten.

It is imperative that we have ongoing discussions about how to best serve our students during emergency situations. When the new school year rolls around there will be multiple problems to face. We would do well to gather teachers across the nation right now to brainstorm ideas regarding how to keep our faculties and students safe while also providing the best possible educations. We may have to think out of the box and be willing to try methods that are untested. The efforts will demand flexibility and a willingness to react quickly to changes as they arrive. At the same time we owe it to parents and students to be as honest as possible about what to expect so that they will not be surprised at the last moment. It’s not fair to anyone to make promises that may never be kept so if there is a chance that school life as we have known it is impossible, then we need to tell people the facts. Then we must prepare them for what they will experience. 

We have millions of unemployed persons. I would like to submit that we urge large corporations and smaller businesses to come up with ideas that might get the men and women without jobs back on a payroll quickly. Perhaps there might be a job sharing program or even a temporary lowering of salaries across the board to allow businesses to hire new workers. I think that sharing the sacrifices rather than putting them on the shoulders of only those unfortunate enough to be left out in the cold is a humane and very American thing to do. I know that if each person lost a few thousand dollars so that others might be hired it would be a grand show of support for those who are fearful of losing their homes and their self respect. The government can only help so much. Ultimately it will be each employer finding ways to get people back on the payroll that will help to turn the economy back around.

Finally, and most importantly, we must quit pretending that racism does not exist. If we are not minorities who have experienced such things we have to admit that we don’t know how it feels to be continually targeted simply because of the color of our skin or other features that have nothing to do with who we are. The fact is that if we have not walked in that other person’s shoes all we can do is believe them when they describe what their lives are like. A good beginning for fixing the race relation problem that seem to be enduring  should begin with better training for our police officers and public servants, and most especially with those who make our laws.

No, we can’t just turn off the news and pretend that all is well, because it is not. Our best bet is to move past finger pointing and recriminations and begin a process of fixing what is broken. We have much work to do. It’s time we get started.