The American Experience Depends on How You Got Here

Bill,


Forgive my lack of response to you recent string of impressive posts. I've been on service seeing patients and then traveling. Let me take a minute to try and respond some of your insightful, and occasionally provocative observations.


First the easiest. Serena William's outburst at the during the Open Championship was inexcusable, as several of her peers in the tennis world have pointed out. It had nothing to do with sexism, and everything to do with the difficulty of a great champion accepting her own inevitable decline. Like most champions she found it impossible to accept  that she was losing. It was a classless moment that robbed her gifted and compelling opponent, Naomi Osaka, of what should have been the moment of a lifetime.


But her performance does not justify the obscene photograph that one of my colleagues decided was appropriate to slyly show me while on rounds in the intensive care unit. The photoshopped image of a donkey's genitals attached to Serena's bottom is far too disgusting to duplicate here even if I could find it. Such an image follows a century's old meme that portrays African Americans as less than human. Think about this for minute Bill. This man, a senior distinguished doctor, thinks it's appropriate to carry this picture around on his phone and show it to people. I was ashamed that I lacked the courage to confront him. But I forget: racism is dead in America.


The NFL protesters are intentionally using their celebrity and privilege to point out social and political behavior that they consider to be unjust. Lots of viewers find this annoying. The viewer-in-chief, who values no one's opinion but his own, deems it unpatriotic. Others find it heroic. Either way, such protest honors a core American value, and is likely to be effective in achieving its goals. Our history is full of examples too numerous to mention.


Our ancestors, yours and mine, came from two distinct ethnic/religious groups who eventually earned an honored and privileged place in our country. We left behind appalling political and economic persecution to encounter scorn, bigotry, discrimination and eventually, legal exclusion. Still, we came from great cultures, with century's' old traditions of scholarship and achievement. We came from intact families. When we built families of our own no one periodically separated us. When the dominant institutions excluded us we built our own hospitals, places of worship, charities and universities. Today, 5 Supreme Court justices are descended from our 2 groups.


We came voluntarily. Our journey in America was mostly free of violence. But violence has been the central feature of the African American experience. As our guide on the recent slave tour of Monticello pointed out, violence underpinned every aspect of an enslaved persons life from the moment they were kidnapped and transported in chains. Even after slavery ended, African Americans in the South and elsewhere lived in what essentially was a terror state. The last lynching in America took place in 1981. Unlike the Germans, who spent several generations atoning in front of the world for their Nazi past, Americans don't seem to feel we owe our Black citizens anything, not even a fair shake. Indeed we seem to be heading in the opposite direction. Still, they are succeeding.


I like football too as you know. I certainly will be watching my beloved Patriots take on the Chiefs on Sunday. If a player or 2 takes a knee and pisses off Trump's buddy Bob Kraft, it will be fine with me.       
  
Eli