His Eye Is On The Sparrow

"White is Right" or so we're told

About 2 years ago, I wrote about the mythology of the western expansion of the USA, and the central role that mythology plays in art and in racist thinking. As I look at what will almost certainly be a very nasty election year, I remain unconvinced by the conventional wisdom of the punditariat that the driving force behind all the passionate feeling is the bad economy. I think the extremism that we are seeing this year goes much deeper than current economic statistics. The USA is undergoing major demographic and cultural changes that make a lot of people feel very threatened; especially those people used to being always in charge, and who long took their power and privilege for granted, i.e. White People. Our conflicts are not economic, but tribal. Tribal passions are the most powerful of public passions and trump economic self-interest all the time (how else would you explain the conflicts in the Balkans?). The Achilles Heel of all economic thinking is the assumption that people act rationally in their own self interest. Anyone who's spent 5 minutes in an introductory psych course knows that this is not the case. In the end, old Aristotle was right all along. We are not economic beings, but political beings.

First, I should come clean. I am a guilt ridden Southern liberal. I am painfully unlearning an awful lot that was taken for granted in the world I grew up in. I envy my students who were born and raised in a much more cosmopolitan world than the one I grew up in. They move through a world of cultural differences with an easy confidence and a lack of self-consciousness that I can only envy. And yet, as Molly Ivins once wrote somewhere, noticing and seeing the tangled self-deceptions white folk create around race is the beginning of wisdom for Southerners.

By the middle of this century, white folk will no longer be the majority in this country. No one will be the majority in this country. That demographic prospect terrifies some people and reinforces the very old and very powerful myth of the White Man's Last Stand. General Custer stands defiant to the end against the hordes of swarthy heathens who will overwhelm his tiny band of gallant men. This vision of brave doom haunted the white mind at least as far back as Nat Turner's rebellion; the conqueror's nightmare of becoming conquered in turn. Today that nightmare takes the form of Mexican hordes pouring across the southern border, and loud in-your-face black folk in the living room and in the White House. "I want my America back!" she tearfully cried.

It's no accident that the Tea Party is overwhelmingly white and elderly. Yes, there are black right wingers. That they get so much media attention only demonstrates how rare and exceptional they are. Indeed, supremacism in one form or another appeals to all kinds of people. Despite Herman Cain and Alan Keyes, African Americans remain one of the most reliable of Democratic constituencies and continue to play leading roles in progressive politics.

The Tea Party and the fury of today's right wing politics are the reactions of people who believe that they are the only ones who matter, that they are the only ones who count. They see their legitimate God-given position of supremacy in danger of being usurped (I think this explains part of the emotionalism behind the opposition to gay marriage and gay rights; gays, like Jews before them, are seen as parvenus as well as perverts). This sense of aggrieved privilege drives the revival of apocalyptic fundamentalism. There is a huge element of vindictiveness in visions of The End Times. God will destroy a corrupt and rotten world, but He will save and vindicate His Chosen. The Book of Revelations shades easily into The Turner Diaries. In this, Christian fundamentalism is not much different from Islamic fundamentalism whose prophets like Sayyid Qutb or the Deobandi School preached a similar hostility to modern cosmopolitanism, a similar contempt for other cultures, and an apocalyptic vindication of The Chosen.

I think this sense of threatened supremacy also drives the embrace of market fundamentalism. The right long ago discarded the founder of modern capitalism, Adam Smith. The Cold War attempt to fit this Scottish pragmatist into the role of an ideological prophet along the lines of Marx and Lenin failed utterly. Smith couldn't care less about making an all encompassing philosophy of life. He was looking for the best way to relieve shortages. Unlike the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, Smith believed that a certain measure of taxation and government regulation were necessary to maintain a decent society that anyone would want to live in. Smith even went so far as to assert that labor does indeed have a right to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions. So Adam Smith is now discarded by those who turned his economic philosophy into an ideology. They are now turning to that most radical of anti-egalitarian thinkers, Ayn Rand. Rand took the old "Survival of the Fittest" philosophy of Herbert Spencer and gave it Lenin's ruthless all-encompassing zeal. Now, the Hidden Hand of the Market does the work of God the Father separating out the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats. Those who already have, who begin the race already several paces ahead of everyone else must somehow be especially favored (as opposed to just lucky to be born with a trust fund). The Market now replaces War as God's shakeout of the nobility from the commons. And since White folk (especially white straight men) historically have had all the power and still control most of the assets, then they must truly be superior by the grace of God and of nature, so the reasoning goes. Poverty and misfortune must be the fault of the sufferer, a punishment for weakness and lack of foresight and responsibility, the modern version of the old superstition that misfortune was the wrath of the gods for transgressions. Now White folk have license to treat each other the way they've treated the brown and black folk. The poor must be punished for being poor. The only legitimate solutions to social and economic problems are punitive solutions. In that light, it makes sense to keep the Bible next to Atlas Shrugged on the bookshelf.

Now, we have measures like the recent one in Arizona to repeal Mexican American studies from school curricula, to ban the books for the course, and to punish students who protest with janitorial duty and jail (there's more about it here). There is no other way to explain such actions other than the idea that America The White Christian Republic is in peril.

Exactly who gets included in those sweeping three words that begin the Constitution "We the people ..." is the central conflict of American history. The history of the USA is about the very awkward relationship between a radically egalitarian document like the American Constitution and an always conflicted anti-egalitarian society split along all kinds of lines of race, gender, and class. The Original Intent of the document is a republic for white male property owners. The actual words and ideas on the pages of the Constitution speak of universal enfranchisement, especially in the Preamble (that most important part that states the whole purpose of the Constitution and declares the source of its authority and legitimacy, not from God but by the consent of the people).

My father most of his life was deeply and emotionally loyal to America the White Christian Republic. If he was alive, he would definitely place himself in the camp of Original Intent; white property owners writing a social contract for their own kind.
I am deeply and emotionally attached to The United States, the Cosmopolitan Secular Democracy whose Constitution means what it says, and says now to all people.

What I'm Working on Now

My "Cave of Making," except bears are a lot tidier

So what am I working on now? I'm doing a second version of a series of paintings that I did more than 10 years ago about the artist and writer David Wojnarowicz. I'm 3 paintings into what will probably be a more extensive series than the first one. This time, I'm more interested in showing him as an artist, writer, adventurer, and political activist than a martyr.

I took all of these pictures, so I apologize for the quality. I hope to have Steven Bates make good archival quality photos of these by the Spring.




Painting David, an imaginary scene in which David Wojnarowicz sits while I try to paint his portrait. This painting will probably start the series.

...

The Green Pterodactyl, an imaginary scene of David Wojnarowicz painting one of his large murals in the now destroyed abandoned dock warehouses on the West Side.

...

What Is This Little Guy's Job In the World? This is based on text Wojnarowicz wrote for a photographic piece:

What is this little guy's job in the world. If this little guy dies does the world know? Does the world feel this? Does something get displaced? If this little guy dies does the world get a little lighter? Does the planet rotate a little faster? If this little guy dies, without his body to shift the currents of air, does the air flow perceptibly faster? What shifts if this little guy dies? Do people speak language a little bit differently? If this little guy dies does some little kid somewhere wake up with a bad dream? Does an almost imperceptible link in the chain snap? Will civilization stumble?

His original photographic piece showed his hand holding a small frog. I portrayed him holding a small mouse and asking us directly his question. I'm not exactly flinging out the flag for Free Enterprise here, and neither did David in his piece.

...

And finally there's this bit of Surrealism which is actually a very unfinished picture.



I'm painting a panel of The Risen Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene when she mistakes Him for the gardener. This is part of an 8 panel series being painted by 8 different artists of a proposed "Stations of the Resurrection" for my church. Everyone will eventually have hair, legs, and faces.

Enough Said

Very Old Paintings

While back in Dallas, I did something I've meant to do for a long time. I went through my really old paintings and culled them. I threw away a lot of old junk and photographed a lot of the junk and the youthful prodigies. This is work mostly made between 1972 and 1982 when I was in high school, and when I went to art school in my teens and early 20s. Seeing all this stuff together for the first time in a long time made me realize that I actually learned quite a lot in art school.

1968

I made my first oil paintings when I was 10 on cheap canvas panels using an oil paint set that my mother bought for me. I was taking off the paint-by-numbers training wheels. This is not my first painting, but it's close. It's a painting of the Maroon Bells outside of Aspen, Colorado based on a photo. Well, we all have to start somewhere.

1972

This is a painting in acrylic paint. I painted it in Silverton, Colorado. I used an old board that I found imitating the local painters for the tourist trade at the time. The painting is based on an old black and white photo of Wilson Peak near Telluride.

1973

I'm trying my hand at Biblical and historical subject matter here. This is Christ and the Woman of Samaria at the Well. Bad Sunday school art.

1974

When I was 16, I painted God. Still the Old Man in the Sky, but what did I know at 16?

1975

When I was 17, I painted Huck Finn. We must have been reading that book in school. This was one of my very first paintings on stretched canvas. I used a colored ground for the first time, a coating of an awful Pthalo Blue, why I don't remember.

1976

When I was 18, I painted Indians. My brother still likes these paintings. They got me into art school.

1979

A painting I made in art school, at the Kansas City Art Institute on my own initiative. It's a picture of a fellow student and friend, Dan Ellis, from life. He was a very patient sitter. This painting has its problems, and is very damaged, but I'm still fond of it.

1980

Another independent painting from art school in Kansas City days, Sandra Smith sews a button on her overcoat while sitting on the floor of her apartment. I'm sorta kinda playing around with something like modern form here.

1981

I made a long series of paintings of vertical fragments of the evening sky that year, trying to mix Friedrich and Rothko (what would be the point?). This is one of my better ones.

1982

I made this small painting from life at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. In that historic center of American modernism, I made the fateful decision to be a figurative painter, and to stop beating around the faux-moderne, juste-milieu bush. I got into a lot of trouble. The president of the college, Roy Slade, was furious. He came into my studio and turned all of my paintings upside down and said that they looked like Norman Rockwell (not a compliment in those days). My prof, George Ortman, backed my decision. Nonetheless, I left after a year.


I moved to St. Louis where I studied art history, earning a Master's degree from Washington University in 1986. I started painting again in 1985, and began exhibiting professionally that same year. In 1991, I moved to New York to finally earn that MFA at the New York Academy of Art (1993).

Bill Ferren

Bill Ferren, an old friend to me and to many others at my parish of St. Luke in the Fields here in New York, died this morning at 8AM. He was a longtime pastor, first with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and then with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In his last years, he was part of our Episcopal congregation of St. Luke in the Fields. He was a native of Missouri. We gratefully remember his time with us and thank God for his service.
Though we die, and those who remember us shall die, and our place shall know us no more, we rest in hope knowing that though the world forgets, God shall always remember us and will summon us each by name. May Bill rest with the saints in light.

From John Donne's Meditations:

IF I were but mere dust and ashes I might speak unto the Lord, for the Lord’s hand made me of this dust, and the Lord’s hand shall re-collect these ashes; the Lord’s hand was the wheel upon which this vessel of clay was framed, and the Lord’s hand is the urn in which these ashes shall be preserved. I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul.


All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and His hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to another.

Because I live, so shall you live also
--John 14:19-20

MLK

Instead of the usual "I Have A Dream" speech, here is an excerpt from a sermon he delivered to striking sanitation workers in Memphis, March 18, 1968. It speaks directly to us and to our situation now with the urgency of fire.

You are here tonight to demand that Memphis do something about the conditions that our brothers face, as they work day in and day out for the well-being of the total community. You are here to demand that Memphis will see the poor.

You know, Jesus reminded us in a magnificent parable one day that a man went to Hell because he didn't see the poor. And his name was Dives. There was a man by the name of Lazarus who came daily to his gate in need of the basic necessities of life. Dives didn't do anything about it. He ended up going to Hell.

But there is nothing in that parable that says that Dives went to Hell because he was rich. Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth. It is true that one day a rich young ruler came before him talking about eternal life. And he advised him to sell all. But in that instance Jesus was prescribing individual surgery, and not setting forth a universal diagnosis.

If you will go on and read that parable in all of its dimensions, and all of its symbolism, you will remember that a conversation took place between Heaven and Hell. And on the other end of that long distance call between heaven and Hell was Abraham in Heaven talking to Dives in Hell. It wasn't a millionaire in Hell talking with a multimillionaire in heaven. Dives didn't go to Hell because he was rich. His wealth was an opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus.

Dives went to Hell because he passed by Lazarus every day, but he never really saw him. Dives went to Hell because he allowed Lazarus to become invisible. Dives went to Hell because he allowed the means by which he lived to outdistance the ends for which he lived. Dives went to Hell because he maximized the minimum, and minimized the maximum. Dives finally went to Hell because he wanted to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty.

And I come by here to say that America too is going to Hell, if we don't use her wealth. If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty, to make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to Hell. I will hear America through her historians years and years to come saying, "We built gigantic buildings to kiss the sky. We build gargantuan bridges to span the seas. Through our spaceships we were able to carve highways through the stratosphere. Through our airplanes we were able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. Through our submarines we were able to penetrate oceanic depths."

But it seems that I can hear the God of the universe saying, "even though you've done all of that, I was hungry and you fed me not. I was naked and ye clothed me not. The children of my sons and daughters were in need of economic security, and you didn't provide for them. So you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness." This may well be the indictment on America that says in Memphis to the mayor, to the power structure, "If you do it unto the least of these my brethren, you do it unto me."…

Now you're doing something else here. You are highlighting the economic issues. You are going beyond purely civil rights to questions of human rights. That is distinct…

Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know now, that it isn't enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't have enough money to buy a hamburger? What does it profit a man to be able to eat at the swankest integrated restaurant when he doesn't even earn enough money to take his wife out to dine? What does it profit one to have access to the hotels of our cities, and the hotels of our highways, when we don't earn enough money to take our family on a vacation? What does it profit one to be able to attend an integrated school, when he doesn't earn enough money to buy his children school clothes?

So we assemble here tonight. You have assembled for more than thirty days now to say, "We are tired. We are tired of being at the bottom. We are tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. We are tired of our children having to attend overcrowded, inferior, quality-less schools. We are tired of having to live in dilapidated, substandard housing conditions where we don't have wall to wall carpet, but so often we end up with wall to wall rats and roaches.

"We are tired of smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society. We are tired of walking up the streets in search for jobs that do not exist. We are tired of working our hands off and laboring every day and not even making a wage adequate with daily basic necessities of life. We are tired of our men being emasculated, so that our wives and our daughters have to go out and work in the white ladies' kitchens, cleaning up, unable to be with our children, to give them the time and the attention that they need. We are tired."

So in Memphis we have begun. We are saying, "Now is the time." Get the word across to everybody in power in this town that now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to make an adequate income a reality for all of God's children, now is the time to make the real promises of democracy. Now is the time to make an adequate income a reality for all of God's children, now is the time for city hall to take a position for that which is just and honest. Now is the time for justice to roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Now is the time.

EXTRA:

Paul Krugman gets it.