To Infinity and Beyond

Dear Yolanda

This week I went to see Toy Story 3. My eldest sister was visiting along with her two youngest children who are each within nine months of my own daughter. Our three little ones are 9, 8, and 7 years old. We spent the week swimming, swinging and giggling. On Thursday we decided to see a movie.

I have long loved the Toy Story series. Toys like the Etch-A-Sketch and Mr. Potato Head evoke childhood nostalgia, but favorite character has always been Buzz Lightyear. The first Toy Story film was released when I was a PhD student transitioning from course work to independent research. Somehow the story of Buzz Lightyear captured that transition for me. Buzz was a very self-confident (i.e., delusional) toy. He believed that he was a space ranger on a special mission and fully believed in his ability to fly and to shoot lasers. He was impervious to criticism and lived as though the very fate of the world depended on his ability to continue his mission. Later in the film he discovers that he is not "real." He is only a toy and he has none of the powers he believed himself to have.

I don't know about you Yolanda, but this was exactly what graduate school felt like to me. I entered with all the bravado of a successful undergraduate only to discover that I was not on a special mission and I did not have superpowers. Rather I was simply a struggling student trying to make a tiny contribution in a small corner of the academy. The crisis of confidence and of self that Buzz experiences was profoundly familiar.

Buzz rallies at the end of the first Toy Story. He discovers that superpowers are not required for a good life. Friendship, meaningful connection, courage and a little style are enough to return his sense of self and allow him to do the thing he had longed to do throughout the film--fly. Silly as it sounds I have drawn encouragement from Buzz Lightyear's journey as I have navigated the often confidence-crushing academy.

The latest installment of Toy Story once again spoke to the life moment in which I find myself. In this movie Andy is heading off to college and has to decide what to do with his childhood toys. The toys, including Buzz, must face the reality that the they have grown irrelevant with age. In the first film Buzz abandoned his hope of intergalactic greatness, but found fulfillment in his ability to be a beloved toy. As Andy became an adult, that role was no longer available for Buzz. Once again the little toy faced a crisis of confidence.

Girl, I cried. I know..I know... but it just really got to me. There I sat with my niece, nephew and daughter and thought about how, as moms, we often choose to be a little less of a super hero in the world so that we can be a little more of a beloved fixture for our kids. It is a choice worth making, but one that will undoubtedly leave us somewhat irrelevant in a few short years. I thought of the fact that I'd seen the first Toy Story 15 years ago with my eldest nieces. Both are now in college and making their own marks on the world. Seeing Andy go off to college made me think of the day in the not-so-distant future when I will watch my daughter do the same.

In its own sappy Disney way the movie reminded me of how hard, how necessary, and how inevitable change is. It reminded me that sometimes when we think we are heading toward destruction all we can do it grab the hands of those we love. It reminded me that sometimes we are saved even when it seems there is no hope. It reminded me that relationships end but that love never does. It reminded me that if we let go there might be something spectacular waiting to embrace us and give us a second chance.

Right now I am working to release many of the roles, titles and accomplishments that I have long believed were critical to my sense of self. I long ago learned that I am no super hero, but even without special powers I am shoring up faith to make a big leap into the unknown. I know I can't fly, but I still believe I can fall with style...to infinity and beyond.

Melissa

Listening to America's Youth

Melissa,

It was so good to see you this weekend and see the excitement that was still radiating after your trip to Tennessee. I love knowing that the young people you met during Freedom School left such a wonderful impression on you. Those moments are always a powerful reminder of why we do what we do: by being educators, we can help change the world.

I've had a few occasions this year to really listen to young (and not so young) people as I've traveled for various church functions. I had one burning question that I wanted answered: where are all the young people in church? And by "young," I mean the population over the age of 18 and under the age of 45. While I am specifically asking my audience in the African American church tradition, the demographics apply more broadly: once young people can make the decision of their own volition to attend church, many do not. And most will not return until they have children of their own. My question was "why?"

The answers I received from young men and women in both urban and suburban churches, in the Northeast and Southeast, were so similar, it was startling. Most indicated that the hypocrisy found in religious institutions turned them away from church. Many pointed to the numerous scandals from so-called religious "leaders" as examples of the inconsistency between what is preached and what is practiced. Some of the folks I talked to mention the increasingly irrelevance of churches and houses of worship: their social lives were located in secular places and they were learning ethics and values from other sources. Others offered even more personal anecdotes: stories of abuse or neglect at the hands of churches and religious authorities.

Melissa, what could I do but listen to America's youth as they pointed out the brokenness they encountered under the banner of religion? How could I not help but agree with their all-too-accurate assessments? Church was boring and irrelevant for young people...and many indicated they felt this way about the educational system as well. But there was one critique that was offered that really troubled my soul. Several of the young people who were willing to engage in dialogue with me indicated the church was too much about the past, too much about "tradition," and what "was" - rather than what "is."

While there is no mythic past in which I would rather live, ignorance of that past is so profoundly detrimental to all of us. If we don't know about a past in which African Americans could not own property, then we fail to take seriously the plight of small inner-city churches desperately trying to hold own to their 150 year old sanctuaries. If we don't know about a past in which women were not allowed to vote, then we fail to grasp the importance of contemporary women's political participation. And if we don't know about a past of slavery, confederacy, and racialized legal challenges, then we don't see the harm of emerging neo-confederacy movements. We need to teach this past; we need these reminders. If schools will not do it, and churches don't know how to do it effectively, generations of American children will miss crucial pieces of their history.

Melissa, some of those citizens that you indicated were present at the wreath-laying for Jefferson Davis probably don't even know who he is. It fails to even mount a protest because many simply don't know what this gesture indicates. And others know exactly who he is, and are trying to create a modern movement they believe is based on his principles. Either way, that past is ever present for us. And we are doomed to repeat a past of racialized violence, largely because we know so little about the history of it. So my final question is two-fold: how do we actively listen and respond to the cares and concerns of America's youth - who are bored with tradition, but clearly need to know more about the past? And how do we ensure (in the face of decisions like the Texas school boards) that there is enough accurate information about history, in order to make judgements for the present?

Yolanda

Teaching America's Youth

Dear Yolanda,

It was so terrific to see you this week and to celebrate your daughter's "graduation" from 4th grade. I know we both laughed at the idea that 4th graders have graduated from anything, but I embrace almost any chance to positively reinforce even the smallest achievements of our young people.

This week has afforded several opportunities to reflect on some of the challenges facing our young people. I spent a couple days in Knoxville, TN with the Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools teacher training. It was an incredibly uplifting experiences to see hundreds of college students preparing to teach literacy skills and love of learning in underserved communities throughout the country. CDF begins each morning with Harambe. It is a celebration of song, dance, chanting and affirmation of self and community. I left Knoxville feeling like our future was safely in the hands of a smart, energetic, ethical generation.

On the flight home I reviewed the forthcoming book of my friend and mentor Cathy Cohen. The book, Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics is an insightful, but troubling look at the difficult realities facing contemporary black youth. Cathy shows how our young people have been relegated to a second-class status, often seen as dangerous pariahs in our communities rather than given opportunities for meaningful participation in the life of the nation. After the emotional high of the CDF program, it was incredibly sobering to read this text. As I finished it I felt that we were starving, rather than nurturing the generation who are preparing to inherit leadership.

Yolanda, as teachers and parents we both think often about issues of youth empowerment and education. I'm interested in knowing whether you think we ought to be generally optimistic or pessimistic about our national future?

As an initial answer to this question I'm offering to TKT readers my latest column in The Nation.

I spent Memorial Day in New Orleans, where I watched a group of citizens lay a wreath at the foot of a statue of Jefferson Davis. It was a jarring reminder of how the South understands American history. Memorial Day was founded after the Civil War to honor Union soldiers. When Southerners choose to memorialize Confederate leaders, it is an act of subversive historical revision and an indication of the unresolved political and cultural anxieties that stir just below the surface of the "New South."

The white New Orleanians paying their respects to Davis made me nervous. Few things disgusted Confederates more than property-owning women, free blacks and evidence of miscegenation. I am all of these, so I feel the very legitimacy of my citizenship is challenged by their nostalgia. But I noticed that those gathered at the monument appeared to be mostly senior citizens. In contrast, young New Orleanians were hanging out in integrated groups in the park, listening to music, drinking beer and worrying about how the impending hurricane season would affect the BP oil disaster.

The generational divide in how these Southerners spent Memorial Day was jarring and instructive. In May, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill cutting state funding to schools that offer classes "designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group" or "advocating ethnic solidarity." The law aims to ban ethnic studies curriculums and implies that classes in African-American history or Latino literature are dangerous and discriminatory. Then the Texas State Board of Education voted to introduce a considerably more conservative slant to the social studies curriculum. In the revised Texas version of history, there is an increased emphasis on Phyllis Schlafly, segregationist George Wallace and the National Rifle Association, while the United Nations is presented as an enemy of American sovereignty and the separation of church and state is reduced to an ideological suggestion rather than a constitutional mandate.

The celebration of Confederate traitors as American heroes, the whitewash of school curriculums and the conservative reinterpretation of national history are weapons in America's decades-long culture war. These policies reflect an impulse similar to the Cultural Revolution of Communist China: an attempt to gain authority by controlling the very definitions of truth available to young people. After all, it is among young Americans that conservatives are losing this war, and if they are serious about taking back their country, the education of American youth is the critical terrain where they plan to make a stand.

Young Americans are significantly different from their older counterparts. At the end of the Clinton administration a majority of young Americans strongly supported multicultural education and believed that the government should ensure integrated schools and workplaces. In the year George W. Bush was re-elected, an overwhelming majority of young Americans believed gay men and lesbians should have equal protection in housing and employment and should be protected under hate crimes legislation. Barack Obama garnered two of every three votes cast by people under 30. Across parties, ideologies, regions and religions, young people are less likely to subscribe to racial stereotypes, more likely to support legal equality for gay Americans and more likely to believe tolerance is an important ideal. These enduring generational trends have prompted some observers to question the long-term viability of the GOP—which seems to be growing older but not grander.

These statistics are comforting for progressives, who tend to believe that generational replacement will be enough to usher in a new liberal majority. They wax poetic about how the Obama generation—young people coming of age with a black president, female secretary of state and Hispanic justice of the Supreme Court—will undoubtedly extend the social safety net, end discriminatory state practices and create a more just nation. But the differences between younger and older Americans are neither automatic nor inevitable; they are the result of demographic, policy and curricular changes that occurred as the result of protest and struggle in post–civil rights America.

Although poor urban minorities continue to suffer the effects of hyper-segregated communities, young white Americans live in a more diverse world than their parents did as children. More than ever, white children learn in integrated classrooms, have mothers who work outside the home, encounter racial minorities in positions of authority, learn about different religious traditions, read literature by diverse authors, encounter same-sex families as a routine part of the popular culture and have technology-based access to a dizzying array of opinions. These experiences are widely seen as necessary components for contemporary citizenship. In fact, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Bollinger decision, the state's compelling interest in ensuring diverse educational environments is the last legal standard on which affirmative action rests.

Social conservatives shudder with apocalyptic anxiety about these generational trends. They understand that the best defense against this frightening, changing world is to wrest control of the historical narrative. To retake the country, they must first reshape young people's reality by revising the meaning of their daily lives. They must make traitors into heroes, erase the contributions of marginal groups, decry self-knowledge as sedition and reinforce fear of those who are different. I'm reminded of the lyrics of a song in South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein's controversial 1949 musical: "You've got to be taught to hate and fear,/You've got to be taught from year to year,/It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear—/You've got to be carefully taught." Arizona and Texas policy-makers seem to be using the lyrics as a guide to curriculum development, but they may find that the world has already moved beyond their fearful grasp.

How Ella Checked My Ego

Dear Yolanda,

My favorite part of your story is the fact that is was your daughter who asked the question, which caused you to pause before making a purchase you did not need. So often young people are the ones who help us to see the things to which we are otherwise blind.

It happened to me tonight. I am in Knoxville, Tennessee. I came here to serve on a panel for the Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools Ella Baker Training. I was asked to come and share my insights and expertise about politics, literacy and community change. When I walked in the room I realized I had not been led the this place to teach, I had been led to this place to learn.

A few days ago I reopened The Kitchen Table with my "Dear John" letter to New Orleans. In it I expressed my frustration, disappointment, and anger about my partner's recent election loss and my sense of wanting to give up on the city. Many of the comments I received (positive and negative) were reactions that I was expecting. But a few were not.

If you read the comments section of that post you will find that several New Orleans citizens were deeply angered by my comments and particularly irritated with what they perceived to be my arrogant dismissal of a city they have long called home. My reaction was to defend myself. My move was to rebuff the criticisms and to assume that personal, rather than political anxieties motivated their anger.

Then I walked into the Ella Baker training room of the Children's Defense Fund Freedom School tonight. Within five minutes I realized just how wrong I was and just how much I needed to heed the comments left here at The Kitchen Table. I have written of Baker: Ella Baker is the inspirational activist who set the course of every major Civil Rights organization of her time. It was Baker who kept refocusing the movement on organizing rather than oratory. Baker's work showed that when citizens are given the skills to organize on their own behalf rather than relying on charismatic leaders to show them the way, real change happens.

Seeing her name was an instant rebuke. I know that Baker would tell me that if a community is telling me to shut-up and listen, then the worse thing I could possibly do is keep talking. If a community has decided to take a path, then the work of community servant is to facilitate that path, not to try to convince them that they are wrong.

I knew Baker did not want me up on the stage speaking to the students gathered in the room. She wanted me sitting in the audience, listening to them tell their truths. But our academic and media settings are too often structured on a model of experts spouting knowledge while everyone else is just supposed to listen. That academic and media world hs rewarded me with many opportunities for speaking in this kind of hierarchy and there is no question that affects the ego. When people keep asking you to speak, you begin to assume that what you have to say is necessarily meaningful, accurate, and good. It is easy to forget that our limited, emotional, human selves can make our analysis faulty and best and destructive at worse.

Rarely does anyone invite me to listen. And although the commentators on the blog were sometimes harsh in tone, they were absolutely offering me the opportunity to listen. So tonight I tried to do some listening.

Tonight each panel participant was introduced and elements of their bio were read. What colleges we attended, the cities where we teach and live. Every school, every city received loud cheers and applause from the young people who represent those place and institutions. It was an immediate and visceral reminder that where you are from matters deeply. It gives shape and direction and meaning to the world you encounter.

There was a large contingent of students from New Orleans in the audience. I apologized to them. I did not apologize because I believe my campaign analysis was inaccurate. I did not apologize because outsiders have no right to offer perspectives or opinions. I apologized because when I was invited to listen I had refused. I apologized because it turned out my ego was much bigger and more easily bruised than I was willing to admit.

Just as you listened when your daughter took you away from the iStore; it is time for me to be quiet and let the young people lead.

Melissa

On Personal and Corporate Greed

Melissa,

I'm so happy The Kitchen Table is open for the summer! I miss all the folks who enjoyed pulling up a chair and dining with us. I hope that you and our readers will appreciate my IPad story:

Two weeks ago, I took my daughter to the Apple Store to see the new IPad. Melissa, you know that I'm not a big tech person, but that machine is a thing of beauty. As I played with it at the store, I think I heard a chorus of angels rejoicing in its speed and memory capacity. The sales person was a true believer...you can tell he would work at the Apple Store for free. He showed me all the bells and whistles as I stood there contemplating if my budget could handle the cost. It was my daughter who finally asked the question that interrupted my IPad-induced haze when she wanted to know if someone who already had an IPhone and MacBook also needed an IPad. I wanted to shout "yes," but she knew and I knew the difference between "need" and "want." I don't need another gadget - I just really, really want this one!

Melissa, I was humbled by this brief experience because I do not think of myself as a greedy person. But in that moment, I was both greedy and myopic: the bells and whistles of a new gadget seemed so enticing that I gave little thought to the longer term consequences of my actions. Where do we derive the materials that power our cell phones and laptops? Whose labor makes it possible? Where did we get the arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, copper, and lead that go into circuit boards and microchips? And how much oil was used to ship that product from its origins to a mall in New Jersey?

It is easy to think about the BP oil spill and blame corporate greed. And no doubt, corporate greed is to blame for much of this disaster, along with governmental inefficiency, lax environmental regulations, and our general disregard for the planet that we inhabit. But it is much easier to blame the faceless bureaucrats at BP than it is to see what role we play in depleting the earth's resources and harming the environment of a place we claim to love. It is much easier to throw our hands in the air and ask "where is President Obama?" than it is to admit that our daily actions lead to such an overwhelming demand for oil, corporations are willing to risk defying environmental protections in order to deliver it to us. In other words, while folks are (still!) trying to figure out how to stop this spill at the source, are we working on ways that can reduce our unfettered need for more and more oil?

I am not advocating a life without its joys and luxuries, nor a life-style in which we live like the Flintstones. (Melissa: if that IPad makes it way to my office - I will be sure to use it in service to the environment! ) But I do believe that the moral questions raised by the BP spill are manifold: how can we be better caretakers and stewards of the earth? How can we better incorporate environmental justice into the work of social justice? How do we ease our consumption levels?

And finally: how do we really begin to care about catastrophes that seem far away and unconnected to our everyday lives? There's no cute polar bear or bald eagle or baby seal associated with the BP spill to stoke our empathy levels. But the pictures of that formless slick mass should tear at our hearts, just as it tears away at the Gulf of Mexico.

Yolanda

The Moral Questions of BP Oil Disaster

Dear Yolanda

Ok, so it was unfair to reintroduce The Kitchen Table with a post about my partner and his election in New Orleans. After all, TKT is a conversation and I am not sure how you could have responded other than saying, "yeah sister he seems like a good guy, sorry he lost." So in order to get us back into an area of shared interest I would really like to hear from you about the moral and ethical questions associated with the BP oil disaster in the gulf.

This current disaster is Biblical in its proportions. Eleven people were killed in the initial explosion. More than five states have been directly affected by the oil sludge washing up on the coast. Countless marine and wildlife are threatened. Fragile barrier islands are being destroyed and the effects on hurricane-vulnerable communities will not be fully known for decades. But these are the most narrow and understated effects of this disaster. It is hard to fully comprehend the devastating impact of the oil which is still pumping into the gulf.

There are many political, technical and economic lessons to be learned. But I would really like to hear from you about the ethical and religious stories that are swirling around this disaster. You recently wrote about your frustration with Christian churches that seem to have so little to say about the pressing ethical issues of our time. And while neither of us subscribe to the view that "the black church is dead," we have both written about our desire to have a more robust and responsive religious response to the political and social issues faced Americans. I am wondering, what do our churches have to say about this disaster?

I've heard a few different stories. In one version, the BP oil disaster is the fulfillment of biblical prophesy of the end of days. In another take, this oil spill is indicative of our collective failure to act as good stewards of creation. Yet another version suggests that the failures of technology to stop this spill mean that we must turn earnestly to prayer as the only possible solution to a problem for which there seems to be no human answer.

Each of these responses seem insufficient to me. Surely there is something about our belief in the Divine and of the relationship of God to God's people that can help us to understand and respond to this moment.

Melissa

Falling out of Love

Dear Yolanda,

I left The Kitchen Table nearly a year ago. It was a tough decision, but a necessary one. My teaching, writing and media responsibilities made writing at TKT impossible. But I have missed this place. Although I have been writing for many other outlets, there is no other place that allows as much room for me to indulge my personal ideas, share my personal triumphs and wallow in my personal disappointments. That is why I have returned to the table for this moment.

I am falling out of love.

You know that after several years as political allies, I fell madly in love with my dear friend, James Perry. Our relationship has grown more solid, real and nourishing every day. Loving him is the easiest thing I have ever done. But our love was never just between us; there was always a third party involved: the city of New Orleans.

James is a lifelong resident of New Orleans and we first met when my research brought me to the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Our initial friendship was built on shared advocacy and our love blossomed as a result of our joint political efforts.

In February, after a year of tough campaigning, James lost his bid to serve as mayor of New Orleans. It was a tough loss, but not a surprising one. We mounted the campaign with few financial resources and little name recognition. We were matched against candidates with tremendous personal wealth and overwhelming political connections. Despite the loss, the mayoral campaign felt like a success. It gave James an opportunity to sketch a vision of a safe, racially just, environmentally conscious and economically fair city. In the days following the loss we made a choice to continue and expand our individual and collective commitment to New Orleans.

As part of that commitment James decided to run for a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. The campaign began just four weeks after the end of the mayor’s race. We were both exhausted and financially depleted. Selfishly, I was not initially supportive of this particular bid for public office. Serving in the state legislature would promise a tiny salary, a significant daily commute, and frustrating battles with Louisiana’s conservative majority. But after much discussion we decided to embrace the sacrifices necessary to mount another campaign. We did so because the state legislative seat was a real opportunity to serve.

James enjoyed a clear victory in the primary, but went on to suffer a painful defeat last weekend in the run-off. I have written before about how ill-suited I am to the role of political spouse. Campaign insiders and political intimates are never supposed to engage in public post-mortems. Writing about a political loss can rarely be received as anything other than bitter complaining or self-serving historical revisions. But I also know that The Kitchen Table has consistently been a space where we have broken the rules of polite public discourse, opting instead to tell our personal truths even if they make us vulnerable to heightened criticism. In that spirit I offer the story of my disappointment.

In the aftermath of this election I am falling out of love with New Orleans. It is not the loss itself, but the terms of the loss that are difficult to bear. After pledging to run a clean and issued-based campaign, James’ opponent sunk to racialized and personalized attack.

During the mayoral campaign James spoke openly and repeatedly about having being arrested for minor traffic violations. He used his experiences to illustrate the misguided efforts of a police department whose focus on traffic-based arrests diverts resources from meaningful criminal incidents. James talked about how hard it was to pay substantial fines for parking violations during the years that he was going to law school and simultaneously directing two non-profit organizations. He discussed how these experiences made him empathetic to the plight of poor and working class New Orleanians who so often find that they are victimized by, rather than assisted by, their city. He spoke about these incidents directly to the local press. But he was never a front-runner in the mayoral campaign, so this story was not widely known beyond those who heard James speak in person.

Despite his openness about these violations, James’ opponent effectively convinced the local press that his traffic and parking violations were explosive new discoveries. At the start of the run-off his opponent had earned no significant endorsements. No local organizations, press outlets or political party felt that her ideas or experience were worthy of recommending her to voters. Backed into a corner by her own inexperience, she generated an aggressive campaign to recast James as dangerously criminal.

In a move unprecedented for a state house seat, she mounted a television campaign that portrayed James a goggle-eyed, out-of-control public menace. Complicit in her efforts and despite their previous knowledge of James’ driving record, some local press withdrew endorsements and mounted their own attacks against his character and judgment. The narrative of black male criminality was irresistible and easy.

Later, when our opponent’s driving record revealed that she was involved in a traffic violation that included a fatality, she complained that she was being “abused” and promptly refused to engage in any substantive debates.

Politics is a brutal business and definitely not an endeavor for the faint-hearted or thin-skinned. During both campaigns James' team launched our own criticism of opponents. Therefore, I harbor no hard feelings toward our opponent per se. In fact, her strategy was brilliantly effective. As a former TV journalist she had no real public service accomplishments to counter James’ decade of organizational leadership, his multiple Congressional testimonies, his leadership during the mayoral transition, or his effortless command of the substantive issues facing the district. Those were the reasons he secured a near consensus of Democratic endorsements. Unable to rely on substance, she needed a strategy that took advantage of her youth, beauty, and well-spoken demeanor. She executed her strategy perfectly. Despite her misleading attacks, our opponent cast herself as the victim of an abusive black man. Rather than being held accountable to offering a clear legislative agenda for the district or submitting her ideas to public scrutiny through open debate, she was rewarded for her race-baiting and personal pouting.

And so it is not our opponent’s strategy or even the loss itself that has so ruptured my affection for New Orleans. Instead I am deeply disheartened by the forces that made our opponent’s win possible. Our campaign made many mistakes, but chief among them was underestimating a political climate in New Orleans that seems determined to return to a racial clientalism of the past.

I am in awe of how quickly James was recast as someone unrecognizable to me. In a few days the most gentle man I know was branded an abuser. The most honest person I know was portrayed as a liar. A man who was repeatedly shamed and harassed by police throughout his youth was told that he believed himself to be above the law. The most humble public servant I have ever encountered was labeled an egoist. One of the most promising young leaders in the city was called fatally flawed.

I suspect that many who supported our opponent were not fooled by her attacks. I suspect that did not believe James was dangerous, abusive or criminal. Rather, they accurately assessed the real danger James poses. He poses the danger of substantive change.

We don’t live in an uptown mansion or a downtown condo. We don’t live behind gates or with a security guard. We live in a poor, black neighborhood afflicted by crime. James knows how difficult it is to navigate New Orleans without a Creole last name, a trust fund, or political connections. He is empathetic to the struggles of the least privileged. If he had won he would have been politically accountable to Treme, Central City and the 7th ward, which are the poorest and blackest communities in the district. He would have continued his work as an advocate for those communities. James is not a threat to public safety. James is a threat to the status quo. Our opponent’s attacks provided safe cover for all of those looking for a reason to protect their privilege and turn away from a path of progressive change.

And this is why I find myself falling out of love with New Orleans. Five years after the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has resuscitated its white political leadership and with it a forgetful fantasy of its racial and economic problems. Even while oil poured into the Gulf, the city’s new mayor announced during his inaugural address that New Orleans is no longer a “recovering” city.

This new New Orleans power structure is marked by a dual and unequal school system, an aggressive new police chief, a predominately white city council, a decimated urban core, and a racial and economic divide that is palpable and politely endured. It is dynamic made possible by a complicit black political elite grasping onto its last corners of power by making unholy alliances with conservative interests. It is a power grab made possible by an unmotivated black electorate exhausted from years of unrelenting struggle. It is a dynamic made rooted in by decades of black political corruption that betrayed the sold the faith of a struggling people to profit a few unethical politicians. Through his dedication to public service rather than self-service, his demand that the public good outweigh narrow interests, and his attachment to disenfranchised rather than powerful communities, James, and other community leaders like him, are a threat to this emerging structure.

Ours is a tiny story in the corner of the political world. It won't make national news and probably only matters to a few people. But in the aftermath of this brutal and deeply personal election I have felt my heart turn cold toward New Orleans. The day after the election I was prepared to pack up our shared New Orleans home and ask James to move permanently to Princeton where I enjoy a life of much greater privilege and ease.

But there was James, doing what he always does, reminding me of what love really is.

There was James reminding me that love is not just an emotion, but an ethical commitment to remain in relationship despite difficult times. There was James reminding me that only 200 votes determined this outcome and that many in New Orleans had seen through the distortions. There was James reminding me of all the citizens we met while knocking on doors who desperately needed an advocate for their needs. There was James reminding me of our committed volunteers who gave up so much to help on the campaign and who still needed someone to speak for them. There was James reminding me of the courageous and visionary elected officials who stood by him and by the community throughout the campaign. There was James reminding me that he had not chosen to seek office for personal gain or glory, but only to fulfill a calling to serve.

There was James, reminding me that our love affair is not only with each other, but also with this city. A city who still beckons us to serve, to sacrifice, and to love.