Blood Done Sign My Name

I want to strongly recommend a great book, Blood Done Sign My Name, by Timothy Tyson. He’s a professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and this is a memoir of growing up white in the small-town South.

Tyson’s father was a socially liberal Methodist minister who acted bravely in opposing racism in the church during the Sixties. His son tells some moving stories about that. Ultimately, that benign liberalism proved inadequate for the hard-core racism in another North Carolina town where Tyson went to elementary school. The centerpiece of the story is a murder. A storeowner killed a black man in cold blood, before multiple witnesses, and then was acquitted by an all-white jury. Firebombs subsequently torched some of the largest buildings in town. It’s hard to believe this all happened in 1970, long after Birmingham and Selma and the March on Washington.

Tyson’s purpose is to bear witness to the gritty, violent changes that took place in America over race. These are very different from our heart-warming memories of a truth-telling preacher Martin Luther King and his embrace by a conscience-stricken white America. Tyson wants to remind us that Southern blacks had plenty of guns, which they sometimes used to defend themselves, and that many were far too angry to stick to King’s creed of nonviolence. Nor, on the other hand, were whites changed by their recognition of the sin of racism. Almost all whites, Tyson maintains, chose tribe over creed, whether they went to Sunday school or not. They only developed a conscience about race when they realized their society and economy would be destroyed if they carried on the status quo.

The book is remarkable on several counts. One, Tyson witnessed some extraordinary events, and he has done some hard investigative history work to fill in what he did not witness. Second, he is a very good writer and storyteller. Third, as a serious historian he puts these events in a broader context. Some of what he tells about the history of the South in the late 19th and early 20^th century is new to me and will be to most readers, I think.

Tyson obviously has a soft spot for his father’s patient, Christian idealism, but he wants to say it’s not enough. Societies change when somebody makes them change, and hard-nosed politics is needed. (In some way or another, too, guns are the hardware for which politics is the software.) He has more questions than answers, but his own urgent idealism, tied to his intimate knowledge of people and places, made this a great read for me.

The Impressionist Revolution

The DeYoung Museum in San Francisco has a wonderful special exhibition, Birth of Impressionism, which uses French paintings from the late 19^th century to provide a kind of social history of the impressionist movement. As is well known, the impressionists were shut out of the classic Paris salons because of their unorthodox subject matter and style. Rejected by the art establishment, they became a school of their own. The exhibition shows many of the paintings that were accepted by the official shows; and it offers early impressionist paintings that reveal how the painters interacted with each other as their movement took shape.

For example, there’s a painting of a painter painting. His model is a dead bird. Displayed next to this painting is another of that same dead bird. But this second painting is not the one portrayed in the first painting, it is by a third painter, who happened along to the studio, saw the dead bird being painted, and set up his easel to paint alongside. Three artists going at it in a kind of art incest.

Two comments. First, the official salon paintings that the impressionists reacted against were often magnificent paintings. They weren’t all stiff, tired, and mannered, as art history would sometimes seem to suggest. Also, it’s not hard to see that they shared some of the impressionists’ approach. In fact, one could easily mistake some of their paintings for impressionist art.

Revolutionaries tend to overstate their reaction against the status quo. Really, the New Age owes a lot to the reviled Old Age.

Second, the impressionists became a “school” mainly because the official salon rejected them. They had widely different ideas and styles, and no one might ever have thought to group them had they not been driven together by their rejection. They met together, often. They met in cafes on a regular basis to talk and argue, and they often disagreed strenuously. (At one such meeting Manet fought a duel with Duranty, and wounded him. Afterwards, their friendship continued.) The cafes gave them a place to work out their ideas and to be part of something bigger than themselves. Revolutions require fellowship. And rejection can create it.

Where do would-be revolutionaries find fellowship today? On the internet?

The Discovery of a Lost Religion

I’ve been reading my way into the works of Charles Allen, one of those Brits who knows far more than anyone should about far too many things. My latest read is an arcane and fascinating book, The Search for the Buddha: the Men Who Discovered India’s Lost Religion.

When I mentioned this book to my brother-in-law he was appropriately puzzled. What do you mean, Buddhism “discovered?” Discovered by the West? But the sense of discovery is far more comprehensive. By the 18^th century Buddhism was almost entirely forgotten in India, the land of its birth. Curious Brits kept stumbling on ancient ruins, monuments and coins with inscriptions that no one could read. They had no idea what they were looking at, or what period these artifacts dated from, and neither did any of their sophisticated Indian informants. Eventually they learned that a few Buddhist monks from Burma and Sri Lanka retained some memory (and some manuscripts) from the past. Mostly, though, it was entirely unknown that Buddhism had any connection to India. Even the fact that Buddhism was shared by countries throughout Asia, including Tibet and Japan, was obscure. They had lost the once-strong links to each other and did not recognize each other as cousins. It took considerable patient and scholarly detective work for British scholars—who were essentially amateurs, using their spare time—to recognize that all these diverse traditions stemmed from one tree, that they were all Buddhists. Only over the course of decades was the history of Buddhism reconstructed and tied to the specific locations where Buddha lived, preached, and died, and where his followers (especially the emperor Ashoka) systematically set out to spread his message.

It’s a fascinating story, which matches up with the June National Geographic’s “Caves of Faith” (here). Hundreds of caves in Mogao, a treasure trove of Buddhist monuments in western China, lay buried in sand for centuries and then were found (and looted) by European scholar/explorers.

It’s hard to grasp how little people understood their history—even when they were living on top of monuments and ruins. Slowly, patiently, scientists and scholars have pieced it together. The process goes on in the attempt to understand human evolution by studying fossils and prehistoric tools.

Such historical inquiry is an often-neglected aspect of the Enlightenment. It shone light not only onto the physical world—geology, biology, astronomy, physics—but also into the past. As a consequence our lives have changed unimaginably. We can see.

We once lived in a single room where the candlelight barely reached the walls; now we are masters of a castle with a thousand glittering rooms. Our reach and our mastery have been vastly extended in many different directions. It’s a heady reality. Tempered, of course, by the stubborn facts that we are no better morally than we ever were, that it doesn’t make us happy, and that we all die. (I’ve been reading Ecclesiastes, too.)

After the Prophet

I just finished a very interesting book, After the Prophet: the Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton. Hazleton presents the first few generations after Muhammad’s death with dramatic flourishes. She tries to convey not just the facts but the way these facts and interpretations play out emotionally in the Islamic psyche.

She suggests that the tragic quarrels between Muhammad’s successors have the same kind of emotional resonance that the events of Good Friday and Easter have for Christians. In particular, the emotional extremes of the Shia celebration of Ashurah—days of moaning and self-flagellation—represent something very like Gethsemane.

Hussein, Muhammad’s grandson, could have avoided the battle of Karbala. He was vastly outnumbered; most of his allies had deserted him. Knowing full well he would be killed he went ahead. He represents, Hazleton says, the noble, ethical remnant of Muhammad’s household sacrificed at the hands of the cruel. For the Shia in particular his death sums up the bitter disappointments and brutal unfairness of the world. No wonder it touches something so deep in the Muslim soul.

As Hazleton describes the detailed memories and legends of Hussein’s death, one can’t help thinking of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. The similarities are unmistakable. There’s also an obvious contrast to Gethsemane, though, which Hazleton does not bring out. Hussein went to his death on a white charger, brandishing a sword. He had gone to Karbala seeking military conquest. He was a noble warrior, facing hopeless odds. Jesus waged a very different kind of fight. Perhaps he shared many of Muhammad’s and Ali’s and Hussein’s hopes for peace and holiness and communal unity. But he sought them in a very different way.

The Realism of Hope

Quite an impassioned and inspirational column in the NYTimes this morning by Roger Cohen. (here) It’s about Poland and all it has overcome–about the real commitment to reconciliation in spite of everything. The plane crash at Katyn inspired Cohen, particularly the way in which Polish government carries on unimpeded, and the way in which both Russian and Polish leaders have joined together in the tragedy.

What Cohen really addresses is hope. He sees Poland as a sign for people without hope–those in the Middle East, particularly.

His message resonated with what I wrote last week on Most Influential Books. Thinking about Parting the Waters, a book I love, I realized that the example of the Civil Rights movement makes me believe that life in this world can be improved. Not easily, not perfectly, but really, when people motivated by the right principles are determined to make it so. Hope can be naive. People who hope can make life worse, by taking actions that aren’t well grounded and that crash into disaster. But hope can be realistic, too.

Cohen quotes Adam Michnik: “My obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.”

We need that kind of hopefulness in America right now too. It was the hope of the founding fathers–not utopian at all, and not naive about the difficulties facing the nation, but determined to do something for the good of the people of America. Such hope is never loved by people at the extremes.  Its optimism is so modulated, so cautious, that it hardly makes a bow wave. But if it flows from realistic principles, it can make an immense difference. See Poland. See America.

God’s Terrorists

I just finished a terrific book, God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad, by Charles Allen. Allen traces the roots of Al Queda and the Taliban back into medieval times. It’s a complicated tale that moves back and forth between India and Saudi Arabia. You can trace linkages in people and organizations for at least three centuries. In a nutshell, here’s what I learned:

–Al Queda and the Taliban did not spring up out of nothing. On the contrary, they have roots going back into the 13^th century with a Syrian theologian named Ibn Taymiyya. In the 18^th century his belief in violent jihad against all infidels, including Islamic “heretics,” was taken up by leaders in both India and Saudi Arabia who possibly met and certainly studied at the same period in the Arabian peninsula.

–This extreme version of Islam has never been generally popular among Muslims, because it is highly intolerant. In fact, its hatred toward other Muslims who do not follow its theology burns fiercer than that extended toward Christians, Jews and Hindus.

–However, there are communities, particularly in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in Saudi Arabia, that have been linked to such extreme and puritanical versions of Islam since the 18^th century. The Bedouin and Pashtun concept of hospitality has provided safe havens for the warriors of these sects during extended periods when they were under military pressure. Sound familiar?

–The rise of these groups has often seemed inspired by a loss of prestige and power for Sunni Islam. This began with the Mongol invasions of the Middle East in the 1200s—the time when Ibn Taymiyya taught–and carried on with the extension of British power in India and the Middle East in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

–The modern prominence of this ancient, minority view has been largely fueled by the post-1967 riches of Saudi Arabia. Oil revenues enrich a monarchy that is officially committed to this intolerant theology of jihad, and these views are spread by Saudi money that goes to build and support schools and mosques throughout the world. Ironically, American money spent on Saudi oil has fueled our most dedicated enemies.

Allen hints at three conclusions: 1. Extremist Islam has never had lasting popularity within Islam because its violent intolerance is fundamentally unattractive. 2. The linkages between American money and Saudi monarchy and Al Queda/Taliban organizations are fragile and could well break down. 3. We are unlikely ever to eradicate this plant, because it has deep roots, but with patient and skillful diligence we might well succeed in reducing it to its regular status as a small, fanatical cult. That has happened before.

God’s Terrorists is a good read, with plenty of fascinating stories.

First, Do No Harm

Practically everyone I know has read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, and as a result feels deep sympathy for Afghans trapped under the Taliban. That widespread feeling allowed President Obama to portray Afghanistan as “the good war” during his election campaign, I suspect. The Taliban is a vicious and ignorant movement. But it does not follow that we are doing good because we fight them.

As I have pondered our war in Afghanistan, I have thought often of Imperial Reckoning, a book I read earlier this year. It chronicles the British government’s fight against Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s.  I have read other troubling books about colonialism, such as King Leopold’s Ghost, which tells of the Belgian Congo and its exploitation. I had thought British colonizers were more enlightened. That turns out not to be true.

The Mau Mau were violent terrorists, who murdered and intimidated anyone who failed to fully support them in their campaign to drive out the British. The British government thought to create a well-ordered apartheid in Kenya, much like South Africa, where whites and blacks lived in unequal peace. Determined to fight for their vision of law and order, the government made a great deal of Mau Mau brutality and savagery—of which there was certainly much to be made.

The fight did not go easily. The government found itself enmeshed in a battle not just with a few revolutionaries, but with the entire Kikuyu population. Many thousands died in concentration camps (about which British authorities apparently destroyed the evidence.) Ultimately the government locked up or detained the entire Kikuyu population, tortured anyone accused of Mau Mau sympathies, and allowed vigilantes to murder at will. In a way they made themselves the mirror image of the Mau Mau. The government prevailed, but only by turning over Kenya to Jomo Kenyatta and leaving the country. Imperial Reckoning suggests that Kenyatta and his political heirs (who still rule the country) have followed in the British tracks.

Historical parallels are slippery. I am not suggesting that America in Afghanistan is anything like Britain in Kenya. The two are vastly different. What I do suggest, though, is that you can focus so much on the awfulness of your opponent, whether the Mau Mau or the Taliban, that you fail to see what you are doing yourself.

The question we have to ask ourselves is not whether the Taliban is bad for Afghanistan, but whether we have the means to offer Afghanis something better. If we fight for ten more years and kill a hundred thousand more young men, will it end well? Will Afghanistan be better off? Will we? Those are very difficult questions, but we have to answer them in the next few weeks.

How Polarized Are We?

Observing the political carnage over health care reform, I am struck all over again at what a polarized country we have become. Health care is incredibly complicated, but that ought to create opportunities for compromise and collaboration. Re-engineering a machine with a million moving parts, there are probably ten million approaches that have some claim to plausibility. But no, the debate continually narrows itself into a shouting match over a single detail-“death panels,” or “public option.” (It will be something else next week, if the whole effort doesn’t fall apart before next week.) It’s hard to get anything done on such a complex subject when you have two sides that so deeply distrust each other.
It is not the first time in American history that we have been so polarized.
In 1800, when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson competed for the presidency, the election was marked by rabid distrust between Federalists and Democratic Republicans. Both sides fought as though the fate of America lay in the result, as they sincerely thought it did. Rhetoric was at least as strident as today, and all news was reported in highly partisan newspapers that made no pretence of objectivity. Yet, when Jefferson was elected he governed in a far more moderate way than the Federalists had expected. The only violence to come out of the election was the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. (Edward Larson’s A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign tells the story well.)

On the other hand, Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 resulted in the Civil War. Then, too, the nation was deeply divided, and rhetoric was extreme. When John Brown raided Harpers Ferry in 1859, he was condemned as a terrorist by much of the nation, but lauded as a saint and a hero by a significant part of the rest. With such absolutely polarized opinions, there appeared to be no option but to fight it out with guns.
The difference between 1800 and 1860 seems pretty obvious: slavery. There was no political compromise on slavery-no way to split the difference, no way to be a moderate.
Compare the split reaction to John Brown’s raid with the unified horror over Timothy McVeigh’s assault on the federal building in Oklahoma City. McVeigh acted on an extremist version of the Republican distrust of government, the sense that control from Washington, D.C. must be fought ferociously. (We hear echoes of this in the health care debate.) But nobody lauded McVeigh as a hero. We have not reached polarization of that level yet, and God helping us we won’t.
Right and left certainly do have different overarching visions of society, but I believe the differences are more like those of 1800 than those of 1860. I’m hoping we’ll eventually get past the divisive rhetoric and manage to get some business done. No sign of that yet.

Lewis Tappan, A Man for Our Season

Nineteenth-century anti-slavery activist Lewis Tappan had the disadvantage of a biographer who disliked him—so palpably disliked him that it is difficult to imagine how Bertram Wyatt-Brown managed to complete the arduous task of a scholarly biography, with all its hours in dusty letters and papers drawn up by the man he despised.

If I had spent that much time with Lewis Tappan’s memory who knows, I might dislike him too, but after reading and re-reading Wyatt-Brown (Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery) I find myself admiring Tappan. He seems more a model for our times than the mercurial, clever and highly articulate anti-slavery activists who usually get our attention, such as William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld or (in Britain) William Wilberforce. Tappan was square, but he was not unimaginative. It was just that his imagination ran in a different direction.

Fundamentally he was a businessman—a very successful one—who became an evangelical Christian and then an abolitionist. He never wavered from those convictions, nor did he expand on them much. He was a radical on a very narrow field, that of anti-slavery. He knew the world was sin-sick but didn’t see the cure as radical social innovation. Anti-slavery wasn’t radical, to his way of thinking, slavery was—and the end of slavery, far from being a social innovation, would be the end to a contrived and artificial arrangement.

Unlike Garrison or Weld he wasn’t disappointed that the world didn’t become the kingdom of heaven in his lifetime. He just wanted to see the slaves freed.

Tappan was an ingenious businessman. He and his brother Arthur built one of the most successful stores in New York by trading on the innovative idea of “one price.” There was no haggling; everybody paid the same. This increased the level of trust among traders—no inside dealings, every trade transparent—and decreased transaction costs. It worked because the Tappan Brothers were known to be scrupulously honest. The Tappans made a lot of money, lived frugally and invested most of their profits in the anti-slavery cause, especially publications and the hiring of “agents” who traveled throughout the north making the case for anti-slavery. Lewis worked hard at business but worked at least as hard after hours at his reform causes. Southern slavery advocates wanted to kill him, and pro-slavery rioters trashed his New York home, but Tappan shrugged it off. He wasn’t easily scared.

Later on, Tappan Brothers went bankrupt, partly because Southern traders boycotted the business. Lewis started over from scratch and invented the first credit-rating agency, an important business institution that enabled trade to expand beyond the circle of those you knew and trusted personally. (Tappan’s firm survives, under the name Dun and Bradstreet.)

In anti-slavery, too, Tappan was an innovative institution-builder. He was an important founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society (which spread the anti-slavery gospel in the 1830s), a ground-level supporter of the new Oberlin College (first to accept both blacks and women), and the key founder of the American Missionary Association, which would be responsible for starting most of the African-American colleges in the South after the Civil War. He worked mostly behind the scenes, writing letters, organizing meetings, providing funds. Whereas he admired charismatic activists like Theodore Weld, Tappan believed in the power of organization. He was hard-working and got things done. He was the key figure in freeing the Amistad slaves—a story that Stephen Spielberg adapted into his movie Amistad, though he left out all of Tappan’s diligence and substituted the eloquence of John Quincy Adams, whom Tappan hired.

Wyatt-Brown says that “Tappan scored all too well on the familiar checklist of the Yankee do-gooders’ grave defects: moral arrogance, obstinacy, cliquish conformity, provincial bigotry, and abrasive manners.” (viii) Maybe so, though strong-minded people often find similar faults in those they disagree with. Liberals often think conservatives have those traits, and so do conservatives think of liberals. Personally, I like that Tappan lived a long and turbulent life, faced many trials, persevered, and ended with his core beliefs intact.

Tappan’s life is especially relevant today, when business seems closely interlocked with positive change. Google and its “don’t be evil” slogan are associated with exciting and beneficial transformations of society; microfinance has electrified the world of charity; Barack Obama was elected president partly because of innovative uses of the web. Of course we need charismatic and eloquent leaders, e.g. Bono or Obama, but by themselves they are always at risk of marginalization. We also need square people with the imagination to build institutions and get things done.