Still at the movies

I realize part of the mania for The Sound of Freedom is that the central figure is a member; that effect will not necessarily carry through with other "faith-based" films. 

There is another one I have seen some ads for, and I would like to explore that for a minute.

After all, my problem with The Sound of Freedom is not that Tim Ballard is a member of the church, but that it is an emotionally manipulative transparent cash grab based on lies. 

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-sound-of-distraction-sound-of-hype.html

I do wonder if the increased scrutiny of the movie is part of what led to Ballard leaving Operation Underground Railroad. If the organization starts doing better work, that's great, but it won't stop Ballard from fundraising or from being him.

Regardless, for any movie that is supposed to encourage faith, (while I might have some reasonable concerns about quality) I am only going to be against that if it is doing so falsely or harmfully. 

If your values are professedly Christian but not in harmony with the words and action of Jesus Christ, then that is a problem, and one that really gets to me.

You can imagine my concern when I saw advertising for The Blind, a movie sharing the love story of Phil and Kay Robertson of Duck Dynasty.

I admit that I don't know a lot about the Robertson family. I remember once a photo going around of what they looked like before the show, when at least the sons were all clean-shaven and wearing polo shirts. Okay, they used to be more preppie, fine; that's not a big deal to me.

Unfortunately, with increasing fame comes increasing opportunities to share your opinion. I still didn't hear that much from father Phil Robertson, but what I did hear was pretty appalling.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/phil-robertson-black-people_n_4473474

Referring to the time before the Civil Rights era:

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person," Robertson is quoted in GQ. "Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.”

Wrong, but honestly wrong in a way that I have heard from multiple white people, including some who are LDS.

On the age women should be married:

https://www.cnn.com/2013/12/31/showbiz/duck-dynasty-phil-robertson-comments/index.html

“Look, you wait ‘til they get to be 20 years old, the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket. You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16. They’ll pick your ducks.” 

He advises the boys to check with the girls' parents first, but not any agency for the girl; not if you want her to be working for you instead of you working for her.

Robertson himself has followed this advice, marrying 16 year old Kay when he was 20 (though apparently a year after the birth of their first child).

Godly.

Anyway, the first ad I saw seemed to imply that it was Kay's love that saved him; others make that less clear. They do show her as a pillar of strength as he yells at her, threatens her, and kicks her out of the trailer toting four little children. 

Maybe the 20 year old was not quite ready for marriage either.

I am not saying that most members want that for their daughters. Also, a big part of their problem appears to have been alcohol, and members might feel safe from that.

However, I am less sanguine that we would not hear a watered down version of that quote, where you do need to be married young, and that is good and right, and not think about the problems that can come with that. 

There is a big part of conservative culture focusing on the importance of women being subservient, not having their own careers and thoughts and feelings, and proudly caring for their homes and children. Getting a teenager married off to an older, domineering man before she has had a chance to come into her own works well for the domineering man, but it's not great for the girls.

And we have two many girls who were at least able to get a term in at BYU and they still know that.

Families are important, and focusing too much on temporal careers is not good for anyone.

It is easy to ignore the privilege in who even gets that option, but my primary concern is how many women have ended up with men who do not respect them, who do not care about what is difficult for them, and who are content to serve without being served. 

I am concerned about the women who will tolerate emotional and even physical abuse and feel that is the way it should be, taking inspiration from another woman whose husband eventually got better.

It's easy to hear a bit of something and think it sounds right without thinking deeper. Both articles about Robertson mention his homophobia, which did get him briefly suspended. There are church members that will agree with that, even though he is talking in a way that the leaders don't.

And it goes along with racism and sexism.

It always done.

There are some really hateful thoughts that are really popular when they are separated by just a degree from that hatefulness, but the hate is still infectious and it grows.

We need to be really careful about that.

The Sound of Distraction; The Sound of Hype

With the past few weeks being about our collective legacies and the country and world that we have today -- and with Pioneer Day approaching -- I wanted to reference a speech of Brigham Young's calling the congregation to supply and rescue the Willie and Martin handcart companies:

“That is my religion; that is the dictation of the Holy Ghost that I possess. It is to save the people. This is the salvation I am now seeking for. To save our brethren that would be apt to perish, or suffer extremely, if we do not send them assistance...“I will tell you all that your faith, religion, and profession of religion, will never save one soul of you in the Celestial Kingdom of our God, unless you carry out just such principles as I am now teaching you. Go and bring in those people now on the plains.

https://www.ldsscriptureteachings.org/2016/12/brigham-youngs-october-1856-address/ 

It always stirs me. Having come across it recently, it stirred me again, and I had that feeling for no matter what changes in circumstances there have been, there are nonetheless so many people needing help, and there are things that we can do.

I can't exhort to that without being very specific, though, because too many members are all stirred up about that stupid movie.

I do not blame anyone for having an emotional reaction to thoughts of children in peril and being abused and being helped; I'm not a monster.

My problem is that Operation Underground Railroad's founder, Tim Ballard, has lied and exaggerated. I don't think all of his lies are conscious, but that doesn't keep them from being damaging.

One of the most notorious lies is the story of "Liliana", notable for being blatantly dishonest and a hugely successful fundraiser:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7a3qw/a-famed-anti-sex-trafficking-group-has-a-problem-with-the-truth

That lack of deep commitment to the truth is the kind of thing that can cause good intentions to lead to bad results. That can included additional trauma for children and creating demand for additional victims, and younger ones at that:

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/05/sex-trafficking-raid-operation-underground-railroad.html

A lack of commitment to the truth also means supporting those who are promoting really false things that are politically motivated. People involved with this movie have ties to QAnon, and believe in Pizzagate and that Wayfair participates in child trafficking. 

Even organizations that are supportive admit that the movie is not particularly accurate:

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2023/july/anti-trafficking-ministries-nonprofits-sound-of-freedom.html

Part of that comes from much more trafficking happening with adolescents and adults than children, but a bigger part of that is how most trafficked people are brought into it by people they know: family and intimate partners. They have been victimized, but not abducted, and getting them to see the value in rescue could be hard. There are trafficking victims who are separated from their families, but in many cases those are LGBT youth who ended up vulnerable because their families kicked them out.  

I deeply want children to be safe, as well as teens and adults. It will not happen by watching this movie and then paying the admission forward.

It's so comfortable to know that the bad guys are all outside and other, but it's not real.

We need to think more about the doting grandfather, or that one family that is so great, except that oldest daughter never could get it together, but the best families have things like that happen, right? 

Yes, I suppose they do, but I know a grandfather who is in jail for molestation, and a good family where there was a sudden divorce and disappearance of that great father because his molestation came out, and other stories, too numerous to go into.

Yes, those feel terrible. It is awkward and uncomfortable, but do we want to protect? Do we want to help in saving and healing?

It may not feel heroic, but it will be what's needed.

Reparations?

Now that we have covered that it is more likely that you have connections to slavery than not, you may still feel very strongly that it is not your fault. Besides, you are barely making it as things are; how can you try and make up for that?

I do not disagree with you.

You are not responsible for the choices of anyone else. 

However, there may be ways in which you are benefiting from the choices of other people.

Keeping the mortgage paid is hard, but the reason I have the opportunity to do it is because my father served in the military and was able to get a VA loan. There were many Black men who served and could not get those loans; were not even eligible to get houses in certain areas, or for affordable rates.

That doesn't make me rich, and I could say a lot about what is wrong with the current mortgage system, but we still have a roof over our heads and don't have to get a landlord's approval for our pets. No one can arbitrarily raise the rent because of high demand (though I do get quite a few predatory offers from buyers).

In my situation, what can I do about the people who have not had those opportunities due to skin color and due to slavery?

That is a good questions and the answer may be "not much", but I do believe that a someone who cares about others, and someone trying to follow Jesus Christ which I can best do by being full of charity toward others, I believe I should be open to those inequities being repaired.

As a student of history, I also believe that these effects have an impact on us, whether we are aware of them or not.

One of the more annoying writers on Black history is Leon F. Litwack, who is always so quick to sympathize with the oppressors. Therefore, in Been In The Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery he spends an inordinate amount of time on white plantation mistresses who were now overwhelmed with caring for such large homes after never having had to work in their lives. 

A life built on exploiting others gave them more than they needed, and more than they could care for with their own resources, but left them resentful, without any empathy for those they had once owned.

Then, of course, the next step was finding ways to re-enslave and continue to control.

Today, in the age of billionaires, there are people who have more than they could ever use. Since it still does not feel like enough, they keep looking for more ways to exploit and wring and grasp, in ways that damage the Earth and many of its inhabitants. I could give examples, but then it becomes more about capitalism.

I can go off on capitalism for a long time, but I think these are the important points for today:

1. The oppression that happens to others moves up. I would hope that we could care enough about others that their suffering would be enough motivation for us to work on that, but if self-interest helps us here, fine: it is in your self-interest to fight oppression even when it does not center you.

2. A society where this oppression is allowed has a bad effect upon all of the members, including a hardening of hearts and a bad increase of pride with a lack of gratitude for the ways in which you have been blessed.

3. Where a sense of fairness and history should be helpful, conservative forces are working hard to obscure that history. They will make excuses like that it will hurt the self-esteem of white kids. No, it may change their view of some of their ancestors or of U.S. History, but that's okay; there can be pain on the way to the truth, but that is also something we believe in.

In terms of the best way to repair, there can be reasonable room for debate. That refusal to even consider inequity, the harm it causes, and how to repair it...

that is not appropriate for followers of Jesus Christ. We should believe in the work of healing, in seeking knowledge, and in humility, even though it is sometimes hard.

Related posts:
 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/09/reparations-happy-hour_19.html

Slavery and me and you

So here's that other thing about my great-great grandfather Monroe Micajah Harris: he owned slaves.

At least, I think he did. I swear I remember a census detail showing three slaves in the household, and it must have been the 1860 census, but I can't find it anymore. Still, it wouldn't be at all surprising. The Harris line landed in Virginia and then out to Tennessee; that's the South.

This post was inspired by this:

 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-slavery-lawmakers-overview/

Reuters found 118 senators, representatives, governors, supreme court justices and presidents with ties to slavery.

If you look down the list, documentation is shown where possible, and you will see excerpts from wills and census records, which is all very familiar to anyone who has done any family history. 

Here is the really important comment I need to make on this article: it's probably a lot more.

Okay, I think I remember one ancestor having three slaves. Since that is my great-great-grandfather, in his generation I have 16 great-great grandparents. They weren't all in the South, so the ones in Massachusetts and New York at that time probably didn't have slaves. My ancestors in Italy at that time definitely did not have slaves. Others in the South -- who married Harris or gave birth to Harrises -- probably did.:Lower economic status could have prevented ownership, but would not have ruled out leasing, overseeing, or patrolling for runaway slaves.

Then there are the generations before them, and that extends beyond the South. Boston did not abolish slavery until 1783.

Some conservatives are weirdly proud that the one living former president without ancestors who owned slaves is Trump, but that makes sense. It was his grandfather that first came to the United States, and that was after the Civil War. If your ancestors are fairly recent immigrants, they may have never participated in chattel slavery. 

Of course, other countries participated in the slave trade, and even after the United Kingdom stopped participating in that specifically, their growing textile trade was interwoven with the cheap cotton exports that slavery made possible.

There were a lot of dirty hands.

You may remember Ben Affleck appearing on Finding Your Roots and trying to get them to leave out his slave-owning ancestor. (I think he also had an abolitionist ancestor.)

https://variety.com/2015/biz/news/ben-affleck-slavery-pbs-censor-ancestors-1201477075/

An interesting thing about that article is that it lists three other celebrities who appeared and found slave owners: Ken Burns, Anderson Cooper, and Derek Jeter.

Jeter's father is Black. It could be on his white side, but given the legacy of rape that came with all of slavery's other abuses, there are probably many Black Americans who have slave owners among their ancestors. 

This includes activist Angela Davis, who did find herself descended from at least one slave owner, as well as a Pilgrim, on her episode of Finding Your Roots, something else that conservatives thought gave them points. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11784945/Black-Panther-Angela-Davis-discovers-ancestor-came-Mayflower.html

Every time you go back a generation, the number of ancestors doubles, and our country has some pretty abominable history. You are probably tied to some of it if you go back far enough. 

That's okay. You don't have to be ashamed of it or proud of it. It can be important to sit with the discomfort.

Then, sometimes things can be pretty amazing too.

You may have seen that President Barack Obama is also descended from at least one slave-owner. Again, that is not surprising. What you may not know is that our first Black president is apparently descended from John Punch, possibly the first American to experience chattel slavery.

Punch was among the first Africans brought to the colonies in North America, but at the time some of them were more like indentured servants. He ran away with two other servants, but his punishment was a lifetime of slavery. The white ones got lighter sentences, only an extra four years. This appears to be the beginning of race-based slavery and permanent slavery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Punch_(slave)

That ancestry is through President Obama's white mother, because that can happen too.

What do we do with this? We are certainly not responsible for the choices of our ancestors, but sometimes the legacies they leave are very real. This can include generational trauma and bad parenting patterns, but it can also include legacies of love and good family traditions, and sometimes generational wealth.

Then there is the collective legacy, with how our society and establishments work.

We do have shared responsibility for those. 

We should spend some time on that.

The people in our past

I had something different that I wanted to write about today. I realized there was going to be some backstory that I would be referring to, so it just made sense to start with the backstory.

Going back on the Harris side, my great-great grandfather was Monroe Micajah Harris. I have had complicated feelings about him, even though he died 64 years before I was born.

It started with things that I heard when extended family was chatting. I don't even know how it came up, but I would have been pretty young. The word was that the reason my great grandfather Jesse moved West and North, from Tennessee to South Dakota, was that he didn't like his stepmother.

When I was about fourteen, a social studies project where I did a family tree led to me submitting various names to the temple. I remember seeing Monroe had three wives, and more children with each wife. It gave me this impression of him as a selfish man who didn't even think of whether he was alienating his children. That's how I thought of him until about 1995.

Some distant cousins put together a family history Monroe's parents, Hannah Wells and Jesse Harris (my great-grandfather was named after my great=great-great grandfather). 

I pored over The Harris Wheel, updating my family information. That data was valuable, but what I remember most was a letter from Monroe's last surviving daughter, Thelma, writing about growing up.

She had spent a lot of time with relatives, because her mother had died as well. I remember the line, "Dad wasn't much of a hand with all of us kids."

It had never occurred to me before how hard it must have been being widowed, and suddenly responsible for all of these children without much idea what to do with them. Remarrying could have been see as something to do for the children, but then it also brought more children. Those children may have been desired and probably were, but options were limited then too.

The next thing happened just about two years ago when I did my genogram.

Here is the other family gossip that I had picked up. Again, I don't remember details, but I know it was not the same time as the part about the stepmother. Someone said great-grandfather Jesse was a falling down drunk; they kept him in a separate cabin behind the house because of that.

When I first started looking at that part of my family, the first thing that came to me was how strong his wife Nellie had to have been, keeping things together under those circumstances. 

Then, when I looked at him, I felt great compassion. 

His mother died the year he was born. I don't know that it was in childbirth, but he got his first stepmother at the age of two. He might have bonded with her. She died when he was fifteen. He may not have liked his father's next wife - who came along seven years later - but it may not have been the only thing going on.

Of course, part of growing up is learning that family gossip is not always accurate or fair, especially with some of my aunts. Of course, that falling-down drunk was their grandfather, so maybe everything was accurate, but I was not there.

There may be something else that I could hold against Monroe, and that will be the topic of the next post, but no one thing can be all he is. That is true for all of us.

Our hearts are supposed to be turned to each other. We say that about family history but I believe has broader meaning. Part of that is going to include being about to see the good and the bad. It does not mean excusing the bad, or trying to call it good, but it can mean finding ways to empathize, love, and forgive.