Trying . . .

I’m perhaps older than many, but I think I understand one thing about MAGA followers. This is it: When I was a kid, I lived in a neighborhood with youngsters in a few-block radius who played together–both on the playground of the nearby elementary school, and in each other’s yards. We all looked alike. We were all the same color, nobody talked funny, and most of us went to the Methodist Church, if we went to church. I had one Catholic friend and one of the kids on my block was Jewish, something none of us knew anything about. The neighborhood was our comfort zone–seeing replicas of ourselves every day. I was hardly ever surprised, and I continued in that clueless bliss all through my teens. Segregation laws made sure that I and my friends grew up having to confront the inequities of our lives vs. the lives of the Black students who lived on a different side of town.

I know one of the things I hear in defense of that idyllic life is that “everybody knew everybody else.” And, if you did something wrong, your mother would find out about it before you got home. And, if you got into trouble in school, you’d be in worse trouble when your parents found out. Depending on how strict and/or how lax your parents were, it mostly rang true. In the forties, fifties and into the sixties, we were comfortable in our ignorance, and that, apparently is what some wish to return to. I get it; how can I not? We lived in the bubble of the familiar.

When I went to college–you’ve heard about this already, sorry–the bubble burst. But only because I had an over-developed sense of right and wrong. Right, to me, meant equality and fairness. If I had an opportunity to go to college, especially since I wasn’t a particularly brilliant student, then why didn’t the receptionist in my dorm? She lived in Tallahassee and wanted to be a librarian, and FSU offered a library science course of study. The problem was that she was Black and American-born Blacks weren’t allowed to attend the state university. They had their “own college,” Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, and that school did not offer a program in library science.

Learning about that injustice changed by world. My comfort level was at an all-time low, and once you know something, you can’t un-know it.

You know the saying: “When you don’t get what you want, you often get a learning experience”? It couldn’t be truer. And just to clarify, learning rarely happens in comfort. It’s not until you get uncomfortable that you actually learn something–about yourself, maybe, about life as it is instead of how you want it to be, and about injustice.

This only matters in that I had lived in that glow of a known entity and loved it. I have no problem understanding the desire for a simpler, safer world. But what I also understand is that I can’t have that time back because I lived it while robbing people and forcing them to live without opportunities to better themselves. While I was being told I could do whatever I wanted, certain people were being denied. The message to them, in spite of our obvious similarities was that they were inferior and undeserving because they were Black. It wasn’t fair.

Even today, on race, significant majorities of MAGA respondents, when asked, agreed with statements like “Black people should work their way up like other minorities” and “Black people would be as well off as white people if they tried.” Along the same lines, a majority disagreed with statements such as, “Slavery/discrimination made working difficult for Black people” and “Black people have gotten less than they deserve.”

My ancestors came to this country–the land of opportunity– from England to escape oppression, to live in freedom. They all spoke English. They were mostly all the same color. Black people were brought here in the hulls of slave ships and sold as work animals. I don’t care how many centuries pass, that heritage will hang over their heads forever, and especially because they are still hated by way too many racists. So, see? There I go being unable to truly understand even though I claim to understand. I guess I can identify with the basic want, but as soon as I look hard at the logic of it, I’m unable to stick with it. I know that if I had to live just one day in Black skin and be looked at with mistrust, suspicion, and in many cases contempt, I would be bereft–and angry. Come on, think about it. Wake up tomorrow morning Black. Scary as hell, isn’t it?

In spite of loving certain family members and friends who are ardent Trump supporters, there are so many other things that keep me from being able to walk across that bridge and take their hands in mine and call for a truce. I’ve only touched on this one thing, and I’ve already failed in my mission. I bumped up against my sense of fairness and my brain’s inability to buy into something that feels and sounds illogical and seems to have so little in common with actual facts–even about that so revered past..

How about women’s rights? You want to go back to the days when women couldn’t work without their husband’s permission? Couldn’t open a bank in their own name? Couldn’t get their own insurance? Apply for a credit card? Buy a home or a car or rent an apartment? Have their abuser arrested? Because, listen, you don’t get to pick and choose which things about the good old days you want to keep and discard the ones you know would be limiting.

The biggfest mountain I can’t climb is that MAGA people believe–against all evidence to the contrary–these three things I’ll never be able to buy: the election was stolen, Jan 6th was actually Antifa, and Covid 19 was a bio-weapon from China. Not to mention that Evangelicals believe Trump is the second coming when I find him morally reprehensible. The gap is too wide.

I promised my son I would try to see MAGA followers from a different point of view, and for a moment I almost did. I like feeling comfortable, too. But I know I can’t live there. Time passes and with it comes change. And change is uncomfortable because it forces growth. Growth hurts. Always.