Post-2008-election, I felt as though our country was finally regaining consciousness.  I felt hope and optimism rise and my cynicism roll back ever-so-slightly, breezes of fresh thought dispersing the haze.  As my vision returned, I could once again engage in conversations that did not fizzle into frustrated non-verbal noise.

I began to see glimpses of a cultural evolution of thought through the wider population.  Just glimpses, but they were there, I know it.  I felt the whoosh of tired air as egos fat with imaginary power based on non-existent wealth were deflated by the reality  of financial correction.  I smiled as the facade of organized evangelical religion cracked under self-made storms of condescending hypocrisy.  I grinned with sincere joy every time I heard new dialogue about race and culture in the wake of electing our first minority president.

All in all, I saw daily reminders that people, all of us, are truly equal underneath all the cultural trappings. Eye contact became pleasant again.  The obvious human connections we share – that we all love and laugh and hurt and seethe and wonder and sigh and ache and even hate – I could see those commonalities beginning to connect us again.  We argue and bicker, we debate and discuss, we learn, we teach, we manage, we create, we err and we try.   We help, we care, sometimes we dismiss.  We each react to information and situations from our own perspectives, wrought upon our own personalities by our own life stories.   But we seemed to be listening to each other again.

I hoped anew that as a culture, we were learning that all of those life stories matter.  That each one of us brings a unique self to the cultural table and that even when we strenuously disagree, we do not dismiss each other simply because of it.

Silly me.

Last week, a friend of mine was fired.   Not a big deal, you might think, as people have been laid off in record numbers (including myself) over the past months of economic strife.  Sure, a big deal for him, maybe.  But, well, welcome to the masses.  Except that this friend represented something we cannot afford to lose, and his firing rips further into the frayed fiber of our local democracy.  Sadly, too many will dismiss the loss as no big deal – for the exact reason we so desperately needed Sylvester Brown to stay.

You can read the specifics of the story on his blog.  He tells it better than I; I can only share my feelings about the situation.  You can view his press conference here (video by Erich Vieth).

—

The newspaper from which he was let go posted a brief explanation, and that was that.  He’d violated their ethics policy.  But – he hadn’t.  If his short trip gave the appearance of such, perhaps he deserved a reprimand and penalty.  I have my doubts, but I’ll give the editors the benefit of the doubt here.  Had his “disciplinary action,” as it were, been in accord with what his colleagues received, though, he’d still be there.

But, Sylvester is an activist.  He’s a proud shit-disturber, to put it quite bluntly.  He’s good at what he does – he’s an actual journalist.  When the city mayor and his staff act like thugs, he calls them on it.  When he does, they fuss.  As one poster commented on the newspaper’s online forum, “To the victor go the spoils. Lots of self-satisfied smirking in the Mayor’s office tonight.”  Yup.  I bet there was.

As Erich has discussed here previously, our mayor and several other elected officials sit on a “community advisory board” at the newspaper.  Because this is ostensibly not governance, no legal conflict of interest exists.  I imagine we aren’t the only city with such a board, either.  Doesn’t make it right, of course, and ethically, I find it a slap in the face to the fundamentals of journalism.  The St. Louis Journalism Review covered it well back in 2007 – the timeline from quality to not-so-much is evident.  As the supposed stronghold of honorable free speech and its role as the “fourth branch of government,” charged with the responsibility of keeping the populace informed with all that happens in their locale, including the good, the bad and especially the ugly, journalism should be the vehicle through which we receive the information about why we need to speak up, when and where we need to get involved, who we need to hear and how we can work for better.

How, exactly, with 67 community “advisers” hanging their agendas over these writers’ shoulders, are the journalists able to compile anything of substance and value?

Seems to me that a big city daily really shouldn’t pander to any segment of its readership, powerful or otherwise, as one forum poster supposed it might be doing.  Especially if said daily is the city’s ONLY daily newspaper.  I responded that this rather sucks the wind right out of the whole “journalistic integrity” argument for me.  How can they say they are holding one of their writers to some ethical standard that the paper in its entirety does not honor?  Truly – aren’t the editors, in fact, saying, “Please-oh-please buy our paper and we’ll print whomever and whatever it is you want to hear, fair and balanced be damned?”

As I read the forum, I was startled not so much by the number of posters who labeled Mr. Brown a racist, but that they were so glad to be excused from having to read his “racist rhetoric” any longer.

Apparently these posters didn’t notice that he’d have a hard time being a good racist, really, as by definition, that would mean he believes anyone outside his own race is inferior, yes?  By not paying full attention, these folks missed the fact that his wife is white, his youngest daughters biracial.

What I wish all of these posters and their ilk might understand is that Sylvester sounded racist to some because he had the fortitude to continue pushing for a dialogue about race even as many want to pretend it isn’t necessary.  I admire him for continuing to put it out there, continuing to say not what people WANTED to hear, but what we NEEDED to hear. I admire him for his candor, his integrity, his values and high standards.

Sylvester may be many things, but he is NOT a racist. I know him. I know his family. He speaks from his experiences as a black man, with the unique vantage point of living within a transracial family. He shared with readers the experiences of people of color who often don’t have a voice – certainly not one that many will hear.  He was that voice.  Sure, lots of people didn’t want to hear it, and to that I can only say – your loss, buddy.  But that makes those experiences no less valuable, and makes his views perhaps even more necessary.

Our mayor touts St. Louis as “one of the most integrated cities in the country.”  If only that were true.  We want to believe we’ve moved beyond racism, but just because people of all races live within the city limits does not mean we live together. We still suffer deep racial divides in St. Louis, divides exacerbated by poverty and culture, and anyone who believes we don’t is only kidding himself.  I live here.  I work here.  I see it every day.

My fervent hope for our country and culture is that we acknowledge our remaining racism, even though it exists more insidiously, perhaps, than in the past. I want to see us start TALKING ABOUT IT – face-to-face, gathering for conversations about our racial perceptions and how to disentangle race from culture as we expand our understanding. I’d like to see us be able to speak honestly and listen willingly, including admitting that most of us grew up with racism in our homes, to one degree or another.

Our parents learned it from their parents, and passed it on to us now middle-aged white folk. I challenge anyone over the age of 30 to honestly say they do not remember one single racist comment made by a parent or relative during their childhood. Really? C’mon.

I clearly remember my well-educated father making snotty comments about black athletes, sometimes being downright mean, and joking at the expense of other ethnicities and races throughout my childhood and beyond. I’m proud to say that over the years, he has worked hard to expand his worldview and now, in his mid 70s, embraces his black neighbors and adores his granddaughters, my daughters, who also happen to not be white. But his perspective was impressed upon him throughout his own rural midwestern childhood, and its residue will color the rest of his life. I give him credit for awareness, though, and his real efforts to rise above what he once believed was the truth.

By acknowledging what we truly believe and why, and by hearing from others who believe differently or who experienced a life vastly different from our own, we learn. Our minds open and expand and we find ways to see interest and creativity and20beauty in what we once ignored or even feared.

Sylvester Brown put us on notice that much work still needed to be done, right here in our own little corner of the world.

I would never wish unemployment upon the few remaining valuable writers, both columnists and reporters, at the Post Dispatch. But I have to wonder how long it can continue to limp along without honorable journalistic leadership.  And then I have to wonder, when it finally does go under, will anyone out here really care?