Friday, October 20, 2023

Statement on the Ongoing Violence in Israel and Palestine

At the Ashland Center for Nonviolence, we mourn the violence in Southern Israel and Gaza. Our hearts break over the loss of life, safety, and livelihood in Israeli and Palestinian communities. As conditions appear to worsen and tensions increase, a humanitarian crisis is unfolding.

We stand by the principles of nonviolence now more than ever. Violence should never be confused with justice nor can it achieve true and lasting peace. The dignity of every person is precious and must be upheld by policies and processes of community-building. Every individual has inherent worth regardless of their background, beliefs, or circumstances, emphasizing the need to treat all people with respect and fairness.

At ACN, we are committed to increasing understanding, especially when situations are complicated. This understanding takes patience, humility, and education. We also recommit ourselves to being guided by core principles of peace and justice. These look for shared solutions to problems for building a better future and are not content with only ending conflict—although this is of course no small goal, especially at the moment. Instead, as Martin Luther King, Jr. taught, creating a future situation in which violence isn't needed to protect and avenge can be achieved by meeting human needs and delivering justice evenly. Love names the preference for mutual benefit over retaliation and hostility.

There are no easy solutions to most conflicts, not least the conflicts between Israel and Palestine. The present escalation calls to mind the depth of the historical wounds involved, generations of persecution, pogroms, and displacement; decades of incomplete and sadly inadequate attempts at peacemaking, and ultimately the need for our world to devote sustained energies and resources to preventing the kinds of horrors we are seeing and to ensuring peaceful and just coexistence.

Peace,

Craig Hovey
Executive Director
Ashland Center for Nonviolence

Friday, February 24, 2023

Jennifer McBride Delivers the 2023 Rinehart Lecture in Practical Theology

Jennifer McBride, an author, educator and theologian, delivered the 2023 Rinehart Lecture in Practical Theology at Ashland University on Wednesday, February 22, at 7 p.m. Her presentation, which was free and open to the public, focused on the findings of her book, You Shall Not Condemn: A Story of Faith and Advocacy on Death Row. The event was held in room 115 of the Dauch College of Business and Economics (400 College Ave.). 

The Rinehart Lecture in Practical Theology is an annual endowed public lecture honoring the memory and continuing work of Don Rinehart, who inspired generations of AU students as a faculty member for 46 years. For more information on the Rinehart Lecture series, contact Peter Slade, Chair of the religion department and professor of religion at Ashland University, at (419) 289-5237 or at pslade@ashland.edu. 

Click HERE to listen to the audio from the Lecture, and HERE to purchase McBride's book. 



Friday, November 18, 2022

ACN Attends PJSA Annual Conference

 

From October 14th through October 16th, the Ashland Center for Nonviolence (ACN) participated in the annual conference of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) at the University of Mount Union. Elizabeth Buttil, the Assistant Director of the ACN program, and three Peace Scholars, Josie Brown, Tyler Easton, and Carolina Amparo, spent two days learning about Peace movements, theories, and leaders.
    
The PJSA conference was organized into a series of activities such as roundtable discussions, lectures, film screenings, and poetry readings. On the first day, our ACN team joined a roundtable led by attendees from Berea College about  “Teaching and Learning Nonviolence through Being Nonviolent.” Afterward, we listened to a presentation by one of the members of the ACN programming committee, Dr. Wim Laven, titled “What are They Telling Us?” Dr. Laven’s work was focused on “ the role of forgiveness in healing a divided America” according to a “broad range of responses from students and young adults.” Friday ended with a keynote lecture by E. Ethelbert Miller, who spoke on “Writing Poetry and Asking Questions: The Journey of an African American writer.”


    



Our ACN team presented the following Saturday morning. We spoke about “Peace Scholars as Models for Peacebuilding on College Campuses” and explained the initiatives ACN has held in the past few years, such as book clubs, tutoring programs for local students, peace vigils, and forums. We took a variety of questions from audience members who were affiliated with similar organizations across the country. Overall, the ACN panel highlighted the interests and strengths of our Peace Scholars and displayed the different ways we can promote a welcoming and respectful campus community.


    After our panel discussion, we split up for the remaining two sessions and listened to different topics. Some learned about peace and justice issues pertaining to the “Colonial, Postcolonial, and Decolonial” moderated by Dr. Michelle Collins-Sibley, who is another member of our programming committee. Others focused on topics such as “Exploring Gender, Sex, and Sexuality.” After eating some phenomenal Thai food for lunch, we made our way back to the awards banquet and plenary speech.



 The PJSA conference was an opportunity for educational and personal growth. As Peace Scholars, we were able to practice presenting our work before an audience and, as participants, were free to explore the aspects of Peace Studies that called to us. We are incredibly grateful to our Assistant Director, Elizabeth Buttil, and all other members and donors of ACN who made this experience possible. 







Carolina
Amparo an undergraduate student majoring in Political Science and Political Economy at Ashland University. She is a Peace Scholar with the Ashland Center for Nonviolence, as well as an Ashbrook Scholar and a Diversity Scholar. 



Tuesday, November 8, 2022

October Event Wrap-Up: Dispelling the Myths and Misconceptions

 


 

    On Tuesday, October 25th, Egyptian-American and police officer, Sarah Shendy, presented her Anti-Islamophobic training to the Peace Scholars, students of the criminal justice and religion departments, and AU community members. She mainly explained and corrected common misconceptions about Islam and shared her experiences as an Muslim woman in America. She also emphasized the necessity of understanding Muslims correctly not only for police officers, but for people of all professions because of the problem posed to Muslim Americans by stigmas and misunderstandings by other Americans. Some of the main points about Islam that Sarah touched on in her talk were the Five Pillars of Islam, the Arabic language, and the rights of Islamic women. She also talked about how the Muslim community is growing in America, especially within Hispanic communities in Texas. This was something I had not known before the talk, as I had not realized how widespread the Muslim community is in America, nor that it is growing so rapidly. This further stresses the importance of being educated on Islam. As a female police officer, Sarah is passionate about her job and thankful she was able to pursue the career that she was interested in and well suited for: “I didn’t choose the profession; the profession chose me.” She said that she cares most about helping victims of abuse, and that she even likes to send notes to those she helps and check in with them to see how they are doing. This talk was very informative about both Islam and the perspective of police officers in America, and it was a pleasure to meet and learn from Sarah.






Anne Casey has Philosophy and Political Science majors, as well as History and Ethics minors. She is an Ashbrook Scholar and Intern, an ACN Peace Scholar, and an Honors Program Scholar. She works as a communication coach at the Writing and Communication Center and as a philosophy tutor. She is Vice President of  the Thomistic Institute and is a ballet teacher and chair of health and safety for the AU Dance Company.


Tuesday, October 4, 2022

2022 September/October Event Updates

 The ACN is off to a great start for the '22-'23 academic year! Our programming committee worked hard over the summer to outline a series of events around the theme of Welcoming the Stranger. The following programs have taken place or are upcoming this month. Please stay tuned to the blog for more updates and reviews of all of the happenings at the ACN!


On Friday, September 16th, our Peace Scholars joined with AU's international students for an event entitled Welcoming Our Global Friends: An ACN/ISS Dinner. Students enjoyed pizza and games and spent time getting know each other. This was a very successful kick-off event for us.




On Tuesday, September 27th, the Social Justice Book Club held a special in person meeting with author and AU faculty member Dr. Kelly Sundberg. Participants discussed Kelly's book, Goodbye Sweet Girl: A Story of Domestic Abuse and Survival. The campus advocate from Safe Haven, a local domestic violence shelter, was also on hand. The group was able to hear Kelly's story, learn more about the writing process, and share insights on interpersonal relationships and how sacrifice might or might not play into loving someone. We are grateful to Kelly for sharing her work with us. 



On Monday, October 25th, at 7pm in Bixler 309, the Social Justice Book Club will meet to discuss Notes on an Execution. While this novel is a work of fiction, we hope to discuss the impact of World Day Against the Death Penalty. This is a day to advocate for the abolition of the death penalty and to raise awareness of the conditions and circumstances which affect prisoners with death sentences. A zoom link will be available and any questions can be directed to jbrow106@ashland.edu.





On Tuesday, October 26th from 6-8pm the ACN is co-sponsoring an event entitled Dispelling the Myths and Misconceptions: Interacting with the Middle Eastern and Muslim Population. Sarah Shendy, a Copley Police Officer, will lead this presentation and workshop which will be held in the John C. Myers Convocation Center. 






Feel free to share your experience at any of these events, express any comments, or ask any questions. We hope to see you in October!

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Analysis of Western Media Portrayals of the Ukraine/Russia War, 24 Feb. 2022 to Now: Perspectives from Peace and Conflict Studies, Critical Rhetoric, and Discourse Analysis


On 24 Feb. 2022, Russia’s military attacked Ukraine. Since then, Russia has continued to escalate war in Ukraine, which Russian President Vladimir Putin and many Russians view as a ‘breakaway republic,’ similar to how China views Taiwan.  This bloody conflict has been unfolding before our eyes in real time, with major coverage on television, with Zoom speeches and reports shared via social media.  Ukraine’s plight, as portrayed through mostly sympathetic treatment in Western news media, has riveted audiences worldwide.  My analysis here will examine persuasive appeals evident in social media and televised visual imagery, videos, disinformation and propaganda.  I will focus on the rhetorical interplay of visual symbols across multimedia platforms, which convey contrasting narratives and histories laden with polysemous meanings across Europe, the U.S., and the wider international community.

Ukraine’s outward international messaging has been effective, whereas Russia’s has been stodgy, old fashioned, and mostly inwardly focused.  Ukraine has relied on social media while Russia has used tightly controlled television formats.  Domestically, Russia has limited web news sharing, with many websites shut down and everyday Russian citizens access denied.  In contrast, Ukraine’s social media and televised narrative has triumphed internationally, as its moral appeals from citizen journalists inside Ukraine have proven to be irresistible.  Ukraine appears as the underdog in this fight, the David to Russia’s Goliath.  Many Ukrainians have been posting very persuasively about their plight to social media such as SnapChat, Twitter, and TikTok, galvanizing international support. In recent weeks, the U.S. has approved and begun funneling massive infusions of state-of-the-art ground weaponry for the outgunned, outnumbered, and airplane-less Ukrainian army.

One of the most poignant, persistent and persuasive pieces of media outreach has been the flurry of compelling speeches given by Ukraine’s President, Volodomir Zelensky.  Zelensky has appeared, to date, via Zoom (or a secure equivalent) before political and arts and cultural audiences, including:  the UK’s Parliament, the U.S.’s Congress, Germany’s Bundestag, and Israel’s Knesset, the Doha Forum in Qatar, and the Venice Bienniale.  In all of these portrayals, including scenes of him in the streets, bunkers, and hospitals around Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv, we see Zelensky meeting with his besieged citizenry and soldiers, or appearing alone in empty streets of Ukraine’s capitol, Kyiv, urging courage and solidarity to Ukrainians, and beseeching Western powers for help.  Zelensky often appears in social media that gets repeated in traditional television or print media, standing alone, holding up his cellphone and speaking informally, as you would with a friend or family member on your cellphone.  A youthful former TV actor in his forties who got into politics in a life-imitates-art trajectory, President Zelensky’s charisma and charm comes bursting through our TV and social media screens.  He appears casually, usually wearing a simple army-drab t-shirt or polar-fleece jacket, speaking briefly and seriously, requesting weaponry and a NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) or European Union (E.U.) no-fly zone to be enforced over Ukraine.  While Ukraine eventually received weapons and training for them, the no-fly zone is a request which, at this writing, has yet to have happened.

Meanwhile, in Russia, in stark contrast to the casual immediacy and youthful vigor portrayed by Ukraine’s President Zelensky, in ornate Moscow governmental drawing rooms viewers see a highly formal, stiff, emotionless President Putin.  Putin couldn’t be any more opposite from Zelensky if he tried.  Putin’s media-televised portrayals have shown him most often, wearing a frumpy suit and tie, seated at the end of an absurdly long table across from visiting dignitaries like France’s President Macron, with Putin fending off attempts to broker a peace deal in the early days of the conflict when Western powers hoped a Russian retreat might be possible.  Putin looked like a comedic character of a Saturday Night Live (SNL) skit, and  Internet memes abounded, such as one spoof of an extra-long, narrow, Ikea-styled table, called ‘the Putin.’  Eventually, some weeks later, Putin must have realized both his latest war and his ‘messaging’ were not going the way he had planned, so he then appeared in a Trump-styled political rally in a stadium, this time wearing less formal attire of a turtleneck sweater and puffy jacket, attempting to muster a phoney smile on his bloated, aging face.  

 Russia has rolled out a fact-based news blackout, with a new, ever more draconian law passed to imprison anyone, whether professional or citizen journalists alike, with serious prison time for any reporting on what the Kremlin has called variously their ‘campaign to liberate Ukraine from Nazis,’ or their ‘limited military operation’ or ‘special peacekeeping operation’ in the Donetsk and Luhansk areas of Ukraine’s east (a.k.a. the Donbas), and southern port cities like Mariupol, which, under continuous Russian bombardment, have been reduced to rubble.  Televised and social media posts show villages and cities resembling a Terminatoresque, post-apocalyptic landscape of destroyed buildings and streets littered with burnt out husks of vehicles, and bodies of the dead strewn about or semi-interred in hastily dug shallow single or mass graves.   

All of the combined social and televised media present us with highly potent rhetorical invitations to recall Allied narratives from World War II, making comparisons between Ukraine’s plight today and France’s and other European nations’ occupation by the Nazis in WWII.   While such comparisons are historically and factually inaccurate, they nonetheless constitute potent persuasive appeals that are heightened with gripping viewing on TV and in our cellphones and other hand-held devices.  There is a life-like immediacy to these stories, which appear as modern-day equivalencies to the tender emotional connections readers in earlier generations felt from stories like Slaughterhouse 45 or The Diary of Ann Frank.  As a result, Ukraine’s leader Zelensky has been compared to England’s Winston Churchill at the height of WWII’s Blitz on London. Similarly, his citizens appear on social media, narrating breathily personal stories from apartment-bloc basements and bunkers, building an image of brave solidarity among Ukrainians.  

There is extreme pathos and persuasion conveyed via imagery, voices, and wails of refugees fleeing war, and worse, of Ukraine’s many citizens who were unable to flee, like the elderly and others, especially injured children and pregnant women.  Such sensitizing sights and sounds have clearly resonated widely, rendering European and American audiences malleable, including the U.S. Congress, which just last week approved billions of dollars of expenditures to send Ukraine’s army unpiloted weaponized drones along with additional conventional ground weaponry like Howitzers.  

Underneath all the at turns horrifying and entertaining visuals and stories, in this conflict much has been hidden but, through analysis, may be revealed.  First, Ukraine’s misfortune of its proximity to Russia—a nuclear armed superpower—has been mitigated by the international media’s predilection for Eurocentric news stories.  As critics like Afghanistan’s media owner, Saad Mohseni, have keenly observed, reverse-racism in media’s white privilege operates here.  For it is not the plight of people of color worldwide beset by wars and conflicts, from Myanmar’s Rohinga to Ethiopia’s beset Tigray residents, to Palestinians throwing rocks at soldiers on the West Bank, but rather the majority of Ukrainian people simply being white has guaranteed greater, more sympathetic media attention and audience identification among media viewers in the U.S., Europe, and internationally.  Subject matter of what media covers and how that coverage occurs is driven in part by potent but ‘invisible’ influences like racial and cultural attitudes held by powerful media owners and editors.

Second, another lesson learned is that nukes trump all ground forces.  Indeed, while Western military pundits gloat that Putin’s Russian military miscalculated badly, and have reorganized as a result to Ukraine’s south and east, what bears noting instead is that the Kremlin correctly calculated NATO’s Achilles’ heel is comprised of quasi NATO-protectorate nations like Ukraine or Moldova.  As an aspirational but still non-member state of NATO, until the past couple of weeks, Ukraine has been largely left to fend for itself, with NATO even refusing to grant Ukraine to take up Poland’s offer of two old, Soviet-era MiG jets.  The dithering inaction of NATO and the E.U. reveal starkly its member states’ fears and disagreements.   

To date, despite Zelensky’s repeated appeals, Germany has been unable or unwilling to shut off its Russian oil and gas spigot, which drives Germany’s economy but is de facto a vast income source funding this war. Only time will tell if Western European and U.S. powers were wise (or not) to cave in with belated weapons support in response to Putin-led Russia’s nuclear saber rattling and ground assault on Ukraine and its civilians.  There is much at stake in this conflict:  it is important to pay attention not only to what we easily see in media, but also to ascertain what is being left out of prevalent news narratives, and why.  

About the Author: 

Ellen W. Gorsevski (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication (SMC), and Affiliated Faculty in American Culture Studies (ACS), Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS), and Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program (WGSS) at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). Dr. Gorsevski’s research focuses on contemporary rhetoric of peacebuilding, social justice and environmental justice movements. Research interests include environmental rhetoric and critical animal studies, international/intercultural rhetoric, political rhetoric, social movement rhetoric, media criticism, and nonviolent communication. Her sole authored books include: Dangerous Women: The Rhetoric of the Women Nobel Peace Laureates (Communication and Social Justice series of Troubador Publishing, 2014) and Peaceful Persuasion:  The Geopolitics of Nonviolent Rhetoric (SUNY Press, 2004).  She has published in journals such as Journal of Multicultural DiscoursesQuarterly Journal of SpeechWestern Journal of Communication; and Environmental Communication.  She serves on the Steering Committee of the Ashland Center for Nonviolence.


References

Anonymous.  Do not call Ukraine invasion a ‘war’, Russia tells media, schools. Al-Jazeera.com.  Retrieved 22 April 2021 from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/2/do-not-call-ukraine-invasion-a-war-russia-tells-media-schools 

Anonymous.  ‘Double standards’: Western coverage of Ukraine war criticized. Al-Jazeera.com.  Retrieved 25 April 2021 from:  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/27/western-media-coverage-ukraine-russia-invasion-criticism 

Escalante-De Mattei, S. (22 Apr. 2022). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shows up at the Venice Biennale with urgent message.  Retrieved 25 April 2022 from:  https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky-venice-biennale-1234626319/ 

Halpirin, J. (21 Apr. 2022).  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky makes an urgent plea at the Venice Biennale for the Art World to shine a light on Ukraine. ArtNet.com.  Retrieved 22 April 2021 from: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/ukraine-venice-biennale-volodymyr-zelensky-2103257 

U.N. Meetings Coverage. Describing relentless Russian Attacks against his country, Ukraine President challenges Security Council to act for peace or disband United Nations.  U.N. Retrieved 22 April 2022 from:  https://www.un.org/press/en/2022/sc14854.doc.htm 




Tuesday, May 25, 2021

To See Yourself as You are Seen, As We See You


 


Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, August 7, 1930, Marion, Indiana[1]

 

“’Make America great again . . .’ there [is] a blind spot in this idea of the America that once

was great or this place deep in the historical past where America was great. [. . .]

. . . we only feed into the erasure of the actual history of America and the actual history of

my ancestors by deciding that we would rather not see their images.”

Barry Jenkins[2]

 

On Friday, May 14 Barry Jenkins’ 10-part adaption of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, began streaming on Amazon Prime.  The series, four years in the making, debuts at a pivotal moment in our shared history: just shy of one month after Derek Chauvin’s conviction in the murder of George Floyd, ten days shy of the one-year anniversary of that murder and just two weeks shy of the centennial of the Greenwood Massacre.[3]  If the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend towards justice, this ground breaking visual narrative of our nation’s racial legacy may be understood as yet another point on that trajectory. 

Like Whitehead’s original novel, Barry Jenkins’ series offers another contribution, in powerful visual language, to contemporary neo-slave narrative.  Neo-slave narrative challenges the past in the light of the present while simultaneously challenging our vision of the present by remembering the past; in so doing these narratives reconstruct United States history from the bottom up and through a Black gaze.   His visual neo-slave narrative, also like Whitehead’s novel, intersects with speculative fiction – specifically the New Weird -- and irrealism.  Of the two narrative genres I’ve just named “speculative fiction” is perhaps the most familiar; think fantasy or science fiction. These are works in which the setting is other than the “real” world, involving supernatural, futuristic or other imagined elements and written as commentary on contemporary society.   The “New Weird” emerges from fantasy to overturn cliché and twist the tradition; it has been described as a genre that subverts the fantasy conventions in order to unsettle rather than console the reader as it critiques our current moment.  Which brings us to “irrealism,” that is, fiction inclined toward realism yet engaged with the unknowable, indefinable or unimaginable – think Kafka’s Gregor Samsa who awakes one morning from troubled dreams to find he has been transformed into a giant cockroach.

In the first episode of the series, Jenkins plunges us into a horrific plantation scene: a fugitive Black man – Big Anthony -- has been recaptured and returned to the plantation; as an example to other enslaved people who might contemplate escape he is whipped, hung up by his arms, set on fire and burned alive.  The scene unfolds in the presence of a lunch party at which the plantation owner’s guests eat, drink and are entertained by this spectacle of black pain.  There is something both familiar – sickeningly familiar – and yet uncanny, irreal about this scene. 

These are familiar images from our not-too-distant past: photographs of lynched Black men, women and children transformed into keepsakes or souvenirs in the form of postcards.   The illustration at the top of the page is taken from one such memento -- the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana on August 7, 1930.  I have cropped the image to direct the viewers eye away from the bodies of Shipp and Smith and instead to the onlookers in the crowd.  The photograph offers but a sampling of those in attendance – some ten to fifteen thousand whites were involved in the lynching – a young couple who appear to be on a date, an excited child, an older man who gazes directly into the camera pointing proudly at the two bodies hanging above the crowd.

Jenkins’ tragically familiar scene becomes uncanny, indeed irreal, because the director forces a change in the viewers’ perspectives.  Rather than the white gaze of the guests directed at the spectacle of black pain, after the fashion of the souvenir postcard, we see the crowd of guests through the Black gaze, through Big Anthony’s eyes.  More than that, in this agonizing moment Jenkins gives Big Anthony a voice: he says to the other enslaved people forced to witness his murder “no more masters, no more slaves,” then to his brutalizer, “God damn you, God damns you.”[4] As we the viewers are compelled  to look through this Black man’s eyes, the critical gaze shifts from the racial object – the non-white Other – to what has been, conventionally, the racial subject, the white self.  Object becomes subject and subject, object.

The Underground Railroad has been in production for four years and in it Barry Jenkins anticipates, replicates and reinforces one of the most remarkable events of this last pandemic year.  I refer to the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020.  Former police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine and a half minutes, an agonizing spectacle captured through a Black gaze on the smart phone of a courageous young Black girl.  The video, as is by now typical, went viral but reaction to it was far from typical: it sparked a racial uprising across the United States and the globe; a hitherto unprecedented diversity of people in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps in the millions, rose up to demand racial justice, an end to police brutality.  Videos of Black men, women, and children brutalized or murdered by the police have become commonplace; scarcely a week goes by without news of yet another such recording uploaded to social media – what made this video different?  I suggest that the difference lies, as with Jenkins’ depiction of a Black man’s lynching, in a forced shift of perspective.  We do not see George Floyd’s murder through police body cams, through the white gaze.  We see him die through the eyes of a teen-aged Black girl.  We see Derek Chauvin as he, like so many others have been, is seen, through a Black gaze.  For some of us this was tragically familiar, we know and recognize it; for others it was uncanny, irreal . . . something unknowable or unimaginable.

The uncanny takes that which is familiar, makes it strange and thereby enables critique.  The irreal engages with the unknowable, indefinable or unimaginable and thereby empowers us to imagine it, define it, recognize it.  W.E.B. DuBois with The Souls of Black Folk was said to have drawn away the veil concealing Black experience from the white gaze.  In his reimagining of Colson Whitehead’s novel Barry Jenkins does something equally revelatory: he draws away the veil concealing whiteness and the function of white supremacy from white people.  Just as the video of George Floyd’s murder enabled white viewers to see and to recognize what has long been familiar to Black folk in this country, Barry Jenkins, “virtuosic landscape artist” as he is named in the New Yorker, allows us to see ourselves and our country for what and who we are.    We are a country created and recreated by immigrants.  We are a country that tells immigrants to go back where they came from; a country that says that to anyone who isn’t white, even if their ancestors came here hundreds of years ago or were here before Columbus. We are a country whose citizens have the right to freely assemble and to protest.  We are also a country where there is “no excuse for the destruction of property” but a seemingly infinite series of excuses for the killing of unarmed Black men, women, and children – we call it qualified immunity.  But this is not all that we are, neither is it who we have to be.  If we are to change, to move towards a just and peaceful community we must see ourselves whole.  We must be willing not only to be seen but to see ourselves as we are seen.  Why is this?

While the arc of the moral universe may well bend towards justice that destination is far from inevitable.  Most of us associate this phrase with Dr. Martin Luther King jr.  But King was in fact paraphrasing part of a sermon delivered in 1853 by the abolitionist and Unitarian minister Theodore Parker.  In that sermon Parker says, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe.  The arc is a long one.  My eye reaches but little ways.  I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight.  I can divine it by conscience.  And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”[5]  I quote him here at length as his words convey an uncertainty that Dr. King’s do not.  He tells us that he doesn’t so much understand the moral universe but envision it through the prism of his faith. It is through his own conscience and his own actions that justice may be achieved.  Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad, like the novel it reimagines and so many other works gifted us by Black artists over the generations, offers us a different lens, a different mirror.  Not the mirror of Erised in which we are mesmerized by the deepest and most desperate of our desires but rather the picture of Dorian Gray in which we see the degradation of the soul and the dangerous consequences of sin and excess.

If you are committed to social justice, I recommend the series to you.  It is brutal, beautiful, and offers us a glimpse of the sublime – a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation, that which is unknowable, indefinable or unimaginable – empowers us to know it and moves us to action.

 

 

 



[1] Loewentheil Collection of African-American Photographs, Cornell University Library https:digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:1508533, Creative Commons, May 17, 2021

[2] Terry Gross, “Underground Railroad Director Barry Jenkins Sees Film as An ‘Empathy Machine.’” Fresh Air. May 10, 2021 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/994616279

[3] Also known as Tulsa Race Massacre – May 31 to June 1, 1921 – when white mobs, many of whom were deputized and given weapons by city officials attacked Black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the single worst incident of anti-black violence in American history, the attacks destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the district, leaving some 10,000 Black people homeless and resulting in property damage in excess of $1.5 million in real estate and $750,000 in personal property (equivalent to $32.25 million in 2019).  Some 800 people were hospitalized while some 6,000 displaced Black residents were interned in large facilities. 

[4] Terry Gross, op. cit.

[5] Melissa Block, “Theodore Parker and The ‘Moral Universe’.” All Things Considered. NPR (Sept 2, 2010). For a complete account of Parker’s sermon, “Of Justice and the Conscience,” originally published in Ten Sermons of Religion (1853); the Elibron Classics (2001) edition is a facsimile reprint of that 1853 edition as published by John Chapman, London.

Michelle Collins-Sibley is Professor of English & Director of the Africana Studies Program at the University of Mount Union.  She currently serves on the board of the Peace & Justice Studies Association and the ACN steering committee.