Book of Lamentation

Double Whammy, Binta’s Lamentation, er, Meditation.

Lamentation, definition: the passionate expression of grief or sorrow; weeping.
Similar: wailing, crying, sobbing, moaning, grief, grieving, mourning, howling, plaint, ululation. A book of the Bible telling of the desolation of Judah after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC

Meditation, definition: the action or practice of meditating. Also, Meditation is a practice where an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.

Similar: contemplation, cultivation, thought, thinking, musing, pondering, consideration, reflection, prayer, deliberation, study, rumination, cogitation, brooding, mulling over, reverie, brown study, concentration, speculation, cerebration. Just an abridged version of.

Double whammy, definition: a twofold blow or setback.
informal: a situation that is bad in two different ways: a situation in which two bad conditions exist at the same time or two bad things happen one after the other.

Double Whammy, Binta’s Lamentation, er, Meditation.
In The Book Of Lamentation

Double whammy, lamentation, meditation, now that we know what we know, how they interconnect should follow, in the composite presentation of Binta’s Lamentation, er, Meditation.

Her goal: a hope, that her lamentation produces a fodder for meditation, to create a clearer sense of things, on why things are the way they are, even as they are so simple, but against the deliberate mechanism to complicate, distract. Yes, there are those who gain from chaos, not so un-similar to when truth dies in darkness. So, Binta hope, with her laments, to bring, shine light on erased history of a people, and by doing so, would by extension, shine light on other oppressed communities, who are so treated. This would also shine light on the pathway to a more perfect union. She hopes it would shine light on how we got here, and how we can possibly get out of it, and own up to the promises made, inscribed in the Document, our Magna Carta. Thus, the lamentation is meant to allow for meditation, ergo clarity of purpose. Helping in finding answers to the question: how did we get here.

It’s an extraordinary moment, and when conjunctures like this happen, they happen almost serendipitously. And since these things have been going on for a long time – decades, sometimes millennia, the times give us the opportunity, a chance to start formulating questions and addressing issues in ways that ought to have happened in the immediate aftermath of slavery, reconstruction. Jim Crow part one truncated this. Jim Crow part two is festering. What to do? Must it be allowed to endure? Must history be told by one group at the expense of the other? The question Binta has is: should everyone be allowed to have a voice at the table, and if not, why? To her, should this question even be necessary? Given the credo, inscribed in the document, the constitution of the land that all men are created equal, and have a God given right to equal treatment for freedom, prosperity and happiness. So, is this question necessary?

We are doing today what should have been started 200 years ago – A review and and analysis of America’s dark history and the potentially catastrophic effects of both the pandemic and the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. She is aware, it is better late than never, she is wont to say. That in order for America to fully live up to its ideals, we have to tell an unapologetic interpretation of American history – told from those who were on the ground and experienced it. She said we should not hide from the darker side of it – because America’s future is predicated on knowing the full history about herself. Which brings the need to move away from the Eurocentric lens and toward a culturally centric lens – this benefits one and all, this makes America the stronger and more vibrant for it. It allows her to compete strongly and powerfully. It benefits all. The zero sum is not the way, she mused. She says that when people say: “we can’t afford to do that,” – she says, wait: we built a middle class for whites. We got them homes and free college. The GI Bill, which built the white middle class, by giving them free college and low-interest mortgage – where African Americans couldn’t get any loans for houses. She says: we built Europe and made Asia a powerhouse in global economy. Why can’t we do it for those whose backs, literally, the nation was built – in hard labor for agriculture and infrastructure and commodification and all.

Through Jim Crow, these were and are ways white supremacy has shaped, erased history, or hide them in dark places, and is constantly working cyclically to create and cause violence toward communities of color, especially Black Americans. And when Binta thinks about the thousand of lives lost because of the system’s failure to protect them. It is, she says, her duty to bring to fore, those who got locked out of opportunities, a space they deserve to sit in. Binta believes that many lives could have been changed if hidden Figures, the history of Africa American contributions, significance had been let known. Perceptions. For example, if we had been told that some Black women, who were so smart, they were the only ones who could get a rocket to outer space and back; young black boys and young black girls would have had heroes of their own to look up to.

She says that there are probably hundreds of Black scientists who don’t exist today because they were denied that existence. Erased or hidden. Those women, part of the hidden figures excelled in spite of the mis-education of Blacks, which still persists till date. And if you do not know your history, and without the knowledge of self, one is bound to be in a perpetual cycle of dysfunction and destruction. And ironic is the fact that as miseducated as Blacks are, so are all folks, of all stripes, who lost out, because of the warped perception they have of the others – especially the kids, children at school and at home. We do not really know each other, because we all do not, did not get the chance to tell all the stories, all of our stories, we do not know all the peoples’ stories. And when you do not know all peoples’ stories, some are categorized as less than who they are, from the one perpetrated by the other. And because of the zero sum game of systemic racism, whose premise is in order for one side to do well, the other has to be denied.

And because the rest of the folks are so deeply miseducated about the Black race, Black people in America and the rest of the folks are just as miseducated, which lends more tools and fertile ground for racism to thrive. Which makes her believe there’s a need for the inherent flaws of American education be discussed further: which is a discussion to have about the education system, the way it is working, and if it was deliberately designed to work that way, where people are taught a certain view of American history: George Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, et all, everything good and noble. And the others, Black heroes are hidden, sometimes erased. Which deprives Black kids their heroes and people to look up to, be proud of, especially in accomplishments. Her goal then is to help change perception, ideals and feelings about a community.

But, as painful and tragic as it is, are we not entitled to know about our heroes, their contributions as well as the brutalities of the stream of tears, which some call Trail of Tears. How about the the smallpox blankets, the Tulsa Black Wall Street massacre, Manhattan Beach’s Bruce’s Beach dislocation – which was the dislocation, forcibly dislocation of the thriving Black population by their neighbors and the city of Manhattan Beach in southern California. Then there was Rosewood, where mob of white thugs unleashed great violence on Black people: these vicious acts of terrorism have never fit into the arc of racial progress that America markets as history and all that happened after reconstruction. They were either erased or glossed over, and for the most part, hidden. The institutional memory of the state, from the arrival of enslaved people on the colonial shores in 1619 Virginia to the unfair treatment, and systemic bias that exist today. Everybody’s history needs to be told, by those who experienced it, for it to be legitimate, for it to be meaningful and just – fair. Thereby eradicating miseducation, misperception of the other.

The pandemic we are in right now, Binta says, has been terrible, and has further exacerbated, widened educational inequality, and exposed myriads flaws in the system, especially between the haves and the have nots, especially as it has to do with technology tools, infrastructure deficiency in the lower rungs. Think about it, she says: what our kids are going through, especially people of color: whose parents are the ones getting sick? Whose communities are most of the dying in? Where are the places kids don’t have the technology to be online, and get optimal distance learning? It’s all in the Black, Brown communities. We are sowing the seeds of the next disparity in education, as we speak, she says. When you look at her analysis, piercing insights, well, they are not that special, they have been with us for a long time, we have become used to them – we have granted them a certain cliche, muddied visuals: we have accepted what we are able to get, given – we have accepted what we are able to do and not do, because, the system is like a hidden hand, knee on the neck, even when it’s invincible, stifles, and allows one just enough room to breathe and stay above the water. Binta’s genius is the quality of attention she brings to life, the discussion ecosystem. Educating us, laying bare on how and why we got here. Therefore shining lights on the road, the path to a more perfect union, where everybody has voice at the table. And everybody listening to everybody’s story, and we all learn and be acquainted with each other’s struggles, contribution and all. We would experience love and happiness, joy and sadness, on an equitable platform, in our common humanity.

We all know we are supposed to expect certain quality of life, protection from governance, and each passing moment, enjoy and savor the fullness of each passing moment, as the “others” do. She shares her quality of attention with us. She bathes us with unconditional regard on why things are the way they are, and why it might take some time to redress all. But she believes the time is now, and that efforts be made that Jim Crow part two is never allowed to take root without their vices exposed. They must be held to account for the messages they put out, to justify their behavior and rational – a premise, in the 21st century America – expose the idiocy in the logic that they are right and the others are wrong. Call them to order, make them explain the virtues of their messages, make them explain and defend it logically, and not the soundbites and coded words that only their cohorts in arms understand. Our common humanity, should be based on how the message benefits all and all.

Then in her characteristic whip-smart, highly skilled, supremely literate on things, exuberant, and self determining way, she segues into another potential consequences of the double whammy. It was of a highly principled, precision-tuned, compassionate to the last, on how we got here, what brought us here. Her narratives have all been about this, but now she wants the world to know, she believes it’s time the world catches up: she puts it in her nuanced tone: about the young men and women who see what is going on, and decide not to be part of those who practice indifference – and she sees how these young kids express their frustration, by getting involved in the mass protest: she talked about a young man, 24, who hitherto had never been part of any protest movement, never taken part in any demonstration, but, just as he was about to start preparing breakfast one early morning, he stumbled on a video he had heard about, but not seen. His anger intensified as he watched the footage of George Floyd begging for his life while a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. By the time the video ended, after he’d watched Floyd, who was Black, call out for his mother and eventually fall silent, the young man had lost his appetite. “ I felt sick to my stomach.” He said. And decided to buy him a cardboard paper, write a sign and joined the protest.

Now, the consequences of being of this young man’s arrested, for taking part in the protest, and he was arrested for breaking curfew, even while others of a different hews were not, even while they are caught in the same curfew – what does that do to his future, employment and all – this is what he might pay for in the future. Still, he says he does not regret his actions. So, how did we get here? These are the reasons we are here, the dark side of our history that have been hidden or erased for so long. Complete lives and incomplete lives. Mistakes and deliberate acts, like prized family mementoes, handed down from one generation to another. Both tend to cause strife and reveal weaknesses, but they are also hard to let go. Ergo, consistent engagement required, not letting anyone forget for a minute, the struggles that led to the so-called woke. How the things we inherit, brains or bracelets, both a blessing and a curse, define our place, station, and all that’s society. Therefor, are both a blessing and a curse.

In the realm of realities that seem so far fetched, inhospitable, palpable realities: Her goal then, to explore the less civilized underbelly of the human psyche and especially to unpack the darker regions of our hearts. Open them up, especially to those, and of those who have access. They experience all these, even when it was of no fault of their own. Binta can tell the story without fear, the way stories are told, when they are told not to hide or highlight certain details without true meanings. She is sweet-hearted, loyal to the cause, but amused to the fallacies that come from all this. She finds time to be cozy, playful, get her sincerity, quiet times for recharging, in a fiercely familial, gloriously kind, like a diamond. She makes narratives, laments that force people to grapple with themselves while also taking herself to task.
She reminds one that the only person that can destroy you is you. Because if one stays the course, remain strong, courageous and prudent, calm and steady. The goal is just out front. She shows us a piece of ourselves that is rarely captured on paper, not because of ignorance, but because it was erased, hidden from us, and she can not say this enough. And right away, one can tell she does not need our approval, or applause, she is too busy planning ahead, relishing her new found freedom to choose her destiny. She knows she was put here to speak truth to power. That freedom is to have no fear. She recognizes that as a human, she has to be mindful and attentive to all things that might generate irrational fears, invasive, to remember to put these fears away, as an aside – and to step out in front of those who are still waiting to be free.

This to her, is like a science. And she believes that only by treating it as a science, viable undisputed facts, based on scientific research, as scientific research can get. Binta knows how to deliver this, nuanced in ways people want to hear them, can understand them: Of all the people I know in my life, the ones I consider wise in my own life, Binta’s words are like that of those people: it’s not the question, insight and inspiration provoking words of wisdom that drop from her lips, it’s the way she receives others and the issues they come with, bring with them: her stories about how we got here, and how we would get out of it: the anecdotes. In our society, often times, wisdom is ancient, derived from ancients, sages of old, reverend and approached with caution, not to make mistakes, play Paladin. Because mistakes in so many ways, portend, echo disrespect, even as we do not mean to.

How did we get here, and what to do to get over to the other side. She’s talking about the double whammy, the original sin, and what needs to be done to achieve freedom. Here, knowledge, she believes plays a great part, for wisdom, as the influential academics voiced: knowledge system, expert knowledge system is the fundamental pragmatics of life. Because of this knowledge, she knows there was no need to apologize, as her people would normally do, or make themselves small, get out of the way to avoid sharp edges from the “other.” Maybe not all people, among the “others,” especially those as highly educated as her father’s “friends.” Who are supposed to be swung by the power of reason – especially as sex is not simply a physical act. Maybe there’s heaven. Maybe Eve tasted the fruit of wisdom before Adam, and maybe she could have left him in the dark about his nakedness by not sharing the fruit she got from the serpent, maybe if Eve had gotten the fruit of wisdom before Adam – And maybe Binta is a true daughter of Eve. For if not for Eve, Adam could have been walking around with his manhood dangling, and not even know it.

Whenever Binta showed up in my life, we contemplated all these and more in the beaten-down apartment that is called home, albeit temporary, not for me, but for Binta, her work makes her more of a nomad. The body of knowledge she brings with her, makes her always a welcome quest. But this is always not the focal point. It has been less of that and more of the interactions of secret codes, blurred information. It is more about a way of relating that is different from my way with others, a way of relating that helps me stumble to my realizations. A cultivation like no other.

As an eminent philosopher, scholar, the one I respect, and Binta respects, rightfully puts it: wisdom is different from knowledge: that one can be knowledgable with another person’s knowledge, and can’t be with another person’s wisdom. Or has to cultivate to achieve it. Because wisdom has embedded moral element, out of the difficulties, challenges come a compassionate regard for the frailties, insecurities of others borne out of the system’s web of mind altering devices of propaganda and coded messages and whistles that incite. And knowing this, Binta describes it as an outright failure, a disservice to herself and her people if she remains docile, demure as those of yore, her people that is.

Binta emerged, not unlike others of her station, from a childhood governed by the detached rationality of her father, his friends and surprisingly, the teenager who is ignited by the passionate candor of those who came before her, into a captivating world of where feelings are what matter most. How did we get here? Binta Likes to quote the eminent philosopher a bit, and reads the exemplary newsman article a bit: she knows that a wise person does not tell others what to do, instead, they abstract situations, they start by witnessing people’s stories, our stories, creating an impartialness to things, allowing us to mine for the answers ourselves, which allows us to take ownership of conclusions, our answers to things. She knows a real strategist is not defined by their accomplishments, but their mind. A benevolent heart is invincible, she says.

Contemplating on the widening gulf that divides the land, with one side accusing the other of being lowlifes who don’t know the truth and the other retorting that at least they are not elitists who hide it. In navigating the politics of her own circle, Binta changes her allegiance based on what serves her in the moment, as her ancients would recommend. She takes anecdotes, rationalizations, and different episodes in her life and what she hears from the seekers to make abstract analysis of things, our noble struggles.

Binta, true to her belief on wisdom, what makes a wise person and all, she takes those who come to her, their narratives both from the inside and outside, as they experience them and from the outside as they cannot. She is a truly multifaceted power-frau, fit for the digital age and resilient to global challenges: global challenges affect all, inequities pervade the world, and especially, as it affects one side over the other. She sees the ways people are navigating the dialectics of life – how they consider intimacy, and how they consider independence, which makes it a struggle between intimacy against independence, control against uncertainty – and she understands that our current self is just where we are at the present moment, part of a long continuum of growth, on our oath of life, our life journeys.

Her faculty for keeping calm and carrying on has helped her face the worst social shock since the beginning of time. And just like other wise people before her, especially the Ancients she reads – when faced with issues brought before her, she prods you to reconsider so you can change your style, your relationship to your past and what comes next, your future. She asks you to examine and clarify what it is that you really want, or what baggage you left out of story, the clean version you gave her. She asks you to probe for the deeper problem that under-guides, underlies the convenient surface you have come to see her about. It is this skillfulness, patient process of walking people to their own conclusions that feel like wisdom, and allows them to take ownership of the resulting realizations. And true to her elegant style and calm temperament, she epitomizes grace under pressure even as she pushes through historical deals for those she cherishes. A piece, pieces of their experiences.

Binta’s aura, spirit, comes with so much composure and self-awareness. One might suspect if she got these products through cultivation, or osmosis, observing, watching other people: to Binta, there’s no invariable law in the world, law is always in variation. Especially as it affects us: individually, collectively. Because, according to her, the ultimate measure of a woman is not where she stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where she stands at times of challenge and controversy. The wisdom she shares, the knowledge that results, are put in context, contextualized and made personal. As before, she lets each individual take ownership of what comes next, the resultant knowledge. thereby helping tamp down the pressure that could have come from it all. She referenced the motto on our Great seal: e pluribus unum: out of many, one, which seems beyond reach, can be achieved. Because the state of our union is fraying, uncertain. And through extensive discussions and bonding, we can begin to repair it. Only if we own up to our failings, what brought us here.

How we got here, should be acknowledged in total. Because in order for a new, the old must be destroyed. What attracts people to Binta is her capacity to display so much composure and self-awareness. She says it is easier to make decisions for others than for oneself. Allowing individuals take ownership lightens things, using her third person thinking skills she has developed along the way, from her adherence to the ancients and some moderns, and apply them to the person in the mirror. The person in the mirror allows her to put herself in other people’s shoes, being herself as if she is someone else.

She has the capacity to factor in many external and internal considerations when working toward a solution. She takes a long view and, where possible, avoids saying too much too soon, when so little would do. I was able to benefit on a number of occasions from her strategic patience. Offering you some distance from your situation, even while offering hope.

With Binta, you have someone who got one more truth seeing eye, truth seeking eye than others. She proves neither a loyal daughter to her father and his friends, nor a fully obedient agent of all things that are fully explained, and presented to her – she learned to lie like an adult, speak like an adult, maneuver like an adult, all these have proven useful in her new role and what she wants to do with the rest of her life: when she says serve the people, she means the “people.” She has gleaned the shoals of brutality that live beneath the surface of outwardly civilized people, they are familiar territory for ilks of Binta, and me. I think we are just at beginning of the next chapter of Democracy history, world history. And in this realm, influence, of course, can be deployed for good or ill, and sometimes both at once.

For this reason, she tries to steer painstaking degree by painstaking degree, in a better direction, deployment for good, and at once. It’s all about how we do what we do better – There could be a question there. How do we do what we do better better? It’s a question at the heart of Binta’s work. The reckoning with racial injustice has changed the conversation about the distribution of power across the geographical landscape we call home, our land and institutions therein. So, like other likeminded citizens, with a hope of meeting the people’s call, demand for change, Binta understands that the work of equity is never finished, just like all noble ideas for change. In this vein, she recognizes the importance of building a coalition of allies, building initiatives designed to override some of the systemic inequities confronting the land and translating building better into acknowledging the shortcomings within the ranks, even within the well intentioned , value-oriented groups.

Binta realizes the need for, and amplifying new voices, into a network of mind melds, that would be able get through, what hasn’t been until now, the structural gatekeepers. We need diverse groups, she reiterated. Because culture shifts, culture changes, and one has to shift and change with it, to move forward. Because, according to her, there are natural forces that are inevitable, inevitably grounded to move us, whether we like it or not. She believes, as she crafts wrenching and mind moving narrative about humanity, our nation’s journey to a more perfect union, a nation that is true to its ideals, ideals engrained in the document that forged us, because once we know better, we do better, so we have to make room for that, as she continues her journey of self-discovery.

She dissects the huge questions about humanity and love through the characters she meets on the way – characters leading ordinary lives. This has left lasting impression on her years of being Binta, as she introduce the country to the many broken promises, many systemic tools embedded in the fabric of governance, that keep one side down, in order for the other side to feel successful, secure – a zero sum game, based on dehumanizing the other side. She celebrates the crucial roles those before her played in this self-discovery. I found it a gripping narrative, that is equal parts lamentation and meditation, all while unraveling events that were buried in the dark, in erasure – brutality erased from history, now just woken to: and those who lived through them are now able to freely talk about. As she introduce the country to the many Displacements, persistence, and heritage, coalescing into a a powerful collection that celebrate the crucial roles these forbears played and all: in racism and white supremacy context. As Binta finds herself in this unexpected and powerful position, she knows she has to navigate the chaos of politicking, as she carefully constructs observations and analysis of things, making right in a narrative what was wrong in life, our life, as we live in this space trudging to a more perfect union.

But she wonders, why we do not manage ourselves smarter, better, and the fact that everybody kind of woken up to all this at once. Even so, one asks: why so long? What made it to take so long? Another subject she believes deserves a good scrutiny. The elements, dynamics that upheld all this? The embedded inequities and systemic bias, racism. She hopes her narrative, even as screwed up as things are, can help amplify and simplify the conversation, because in its simplicity, everyone understands it better and quicker: because, divided we die. It is not an either-or thing, lives and livelihoods matter to all. She is looking for a good solution, rather than to completely pin blame.

Activists often talk about compassion fatigue, as if getting hardened by the horrors of the world is an inevitable result of being routinely exposed to traumatic situations and stories. She knows that the stories and situations come first, and, foolhardy to make herself the story, because she is not the story: this old activist maxims are drilled into her psyche, and she has lived them. She knows that if she allows herself to feel all her feelings, she would not last another day in activism. She also knows that we cannot begin to change the system if we are not talking about how the system makes us feel: a paradox. She recognizes how another “minority,” in this case, white women at a point in our journey, weaponized and abused their power to create their own toxic workplace and space. A learned trait from the oppressors, even when it’s of kin. But then, could it be that it was always there? Bubbling to come out? Because they were once also suppressed? So catalyzed by a new freedom and a result of a game, part of the long game, and decided it’s their station to do unto “other” what had been done to them prior to independence from yore suppression?

Somehow, she learned from them the value of showing up with her heart, mind and ownership of self, rather than just her words. It can be a radical act to allow oneself to be seen, she realized. Which affords her the wisdom to recognize and redefine what leadership looks like. She knows that holding it together is not the only way to earn respect, that vulnerability and empathy are crucial leadership traits. Because stories about Black trauma break, then quickly fade.

She did not spare the responsibility of the media in all this: they helped promote and underscore the politicians interpretation of Black resistance, which is promoted, and become the media’s interpretation of Black resistance, by validation by proxy – they make whole the dog whistles, where protests become a default to violent and riots, oppressed become the aggressors. “Too loud, too combative, too Black,” in the longstanding erasure of Black history, a source of expertise. The Media has played a role in the degradation, dehumanization, disenfranchisement of Black Americans, even as they claim the moniker of “Liberal Press.” It’s a facade, a bamboozle a snow job, a hoodwinking, and one can use more egregious and terrible words to describe the Media’s participation in the oppression of the African Americans, since the founding of the nation.

Binta knows that she does not have all the answers, nor does she have the power to fix what needs to be fixed on our journey to a more perfect union, on her own. None of us does, she recognizes. But what she has learned is that even small actions compound. She has learned to be confident in her perspectives and demand what she deserves, live what she preaches, and abide what she expects from others. Fair is fair. She has learned that she can be a better storyteller if she thinks about how she use the golden rule, rather than trying to vilify the other in her narrative. It’s more about nuanced experience, even while explicit and bold about it. It’s not all about getting it done, but getting it right.

In hindsight, she realized that the pressure she puts on self, is traumatizing. Because we are apt not to recognize such pressures as contributory to the general nature of things, especially health and wellbeing. Because at every corner, she is confronted with a new trauma, and at every corner, she knows she is being critiqued, so she has to be at her best, and not succumb, while going through the motions, to the hum of anxiety, in the same vein that Black people, and their humanity are disregarded when their murders become viral, or when the only reflections they see of themselves in the media involve pain and suffering for the sake of storytelling, expected to be desensitized to the images she sees.

She understands the significance of what she does, and take it seriously, especially of the people and events erased: events she puts forward for consideration, what the nation should consider for redress, because, advocating on behalf her people, and all other marginalized groups, the so called people of color, is not something you learn in school, they are everywhere, staring at her in the face, all the time: Frankly, in her experience, she remembers, it was something that she was discouraged from talking about, forbidden from digging into.
An example, the Tulsa massacre – how come she’s just getting to know about it, after all these eons? Why was it kept quiet for so long? Why was the horrors buried, erased from history Books? To her, these are things you can truly learn only by persistence and digging deeper than those who came before. Up close. These forbears have given her a community to lean on, and a model to ensure that her voice is heard. She argues that the country is stuck in a pattern of talking about racial inequality but doing little to solve it. To her, capturing the solidarity and joy that can be found in communities of color and those of likeminded folks, which are so often depicted by the media through the lens of pain and trauma – the need for that solidarity and its important, imperative, tractions on them, is what keeps her going, in the equity agenda – allows her to compile a list of ways for the U.S. to become safer, become a more equitable nation – make everyone recognize the obstacles to representation and inclusion that exist in all ramifications – these levels of society to be remediated through these efforts. She wants to make sure that her work is valued and remarkable for the qualities it has.

S0, she sees her work as shining light on the American dilemma, the great American lie: the gap between the nation’s ideals and its racial reality. Her goal then, is to help illuminate the effects of institutional racism, inequities built into the fabrics of the nation, even when they are coded, obscured, cloaked in subterfuge, veiled to deceive – to get our attention away from them. She wants to shine light on the frequent and extreme ways these systemic, engrained ways pushed the nation away from its core ideals and constitutional promises: she knows her tasks are onerous, tedious, and if she is not careful, might overwhelm her before she even starts. One thing she is cleared eye about is that, she knows she would not be the last, among others, who have and will continue the work that enriches our understanding of the troubles we face today, in the goal to cut through our fairy tale understanding of ourselves, the American-self. A deep look, lamentation, which produces meditation on the nation’s history, which most Americans remain ill informed about, or not informed al all: histories erased about race and near delusional in their description of its reach and effects. Evidence that is now clear: the ugly scar of American inequality ripped open so wide that few could deny it, or feign ignorance about, or stick to the old used up excuses, so worn-out, it’s rationale no longer works – or able to fool the people: she learned to better talk the talk of needed change, that would help, in our goal, our journey to that more perfect union. To Binta, the problems are clear as ever. The thing is, what America is going to do about it is not.

She continues her work, using the basic information that is open to all, open to everyone who wishes to know, who wants to get informed and become less delusional and indifferent – because in a country founded on the commitment to equity, white Americans have been the only ones to consistently enjoy the full benefits, the measure of citizenship – she’s aware of how settlers drove Native Americans from their own lands and then treated them as unwelcome, dangerous quests. But it was the African Americans, the Black Americans whom the nation enslaved, then completely marooned in every major measure of social, economic or physical well-being – millions would, and still do, remain far behind their white counterparts – virtually, in the whole range of human endeavors, public amenities – from hospitals, health care, schools, libraries, deliberate acts to divide communities, deliberate act in the location of industries and roads, were, and remain much poorer for African Americans than do for whites, including the toxicity that comes from locating these industries, factories that create health, negative health conditions: and especially glaring is the income and wealth gap, transferable wealth to heirs, offsprings. She reminds herself of the disproportionate incarceration and exploitative profit making scheme of the private prison system: in her reconsidering of the meaning of Black deaths caused by agents of the state.

Yet, she knows, in our litany of collective aches, amnesia, there’s almost no arena in which Black Americans have not suffered more than white Americans. Black Americans on average earn less with the same or in some categories more education than white workers. They are more likely to be unemployed and are clustered in industries hit hard by the pandemic. Black Americans are more likely to be born premature and to die younger. It is a known fact that Black Americans remain more likely to die in or just after childbirth than white women. It is a known fact that life expectancy for a Black boy born in 2020 is a full seven years shorter than a white boy’s. Black Americans are more likely to die of cancer than white Americans.

And the ironic thing is, the deaths from cancer is not because of an inherent flaw, but for the most part, because of the carcinogens they breathe from toxic industries located in their communities. To her, the impact of the coronavirus was anything but novel, because the death risks, infection risks, as compared to white Americans, Black Americans are almost two times that of white Americans. And again, these are not anything inherent: some of these diseases are based on where people live, where they work, and again, the location of industries that pollute and make people sick. These diseases are not unique to a particular group, but unique to how they are treated, the weight the communities of African Americans carry – the constant stress and pressure – these manifest themselves into the maladies that are now ascribed as a uniquely Black ailments. They are not.

This is just a tip of the proverbial tip of the iceberg: Black children remain more likely than white ones to attend high-need, low performing schools, low quality preschools, and high schools that offer few if any college prep courses. The African American homeownership rate, as of 2021 is 29 percentage points lower than that of white Americans. It’s also common knowledge that when African Americans do own homes, those properties are often undervalued by appraisers.

She laments the fact that African American incarceration rate outgrow, outpace those for all other groups. The success of the 2020 election, the roles played in the mobilization of groups before now, who rarely, if ever vote, produced the win we are experiencing, celebrated by progressive minded people – even as the big lie tries to denigrate, was produced by women of color, especially African American women in Georgia – shook the other side to their senses and prompts them to go back to the drawing board – just as it happened during or after the reconstruction, producing Jim Crow laws that turned back the clock of recently freed slaves, is now being mimicked, employed to suppress democracy, suppress votes in many states.

Whenever progress is made, they pull them back, in its zero sum model: where one has to perpetually stay deprived, for the other to remain relevant, for them to feel alive, for them to feel happy – from the suffering of the deprived groups, a masochistic elixir. And what’s totally bewildering is the fact that those in power have the shameless boldness to feign ignorance about these vast racial disparities, they confuse the causes of inequality with its effect, push the blame on the victims, question their capacity, dredge up inherent deficiency, question what exactly is wrong with them. Of course, they have to do this, use it to validate, however wrong, their false narrative of their superiority, ergo white supremacy endures.

As unique as the African American experience, myriads of communities throughput the nation have their parallel set of facts. Even as they are pegged “the model minority,” for nothing but to divide the groups, then conquer. The same impulse is a feature in many other platforms, media, especially social media feeds, in one form or the other, as a launching pads to advance their cause. Even now, AI (artificial intelligence,) are designed with inbuilt biases.

To Binta, the obligation to operate with equity in mind will be prioritized above all others, especially profit. She remembered that when the new deal reoriented Americans relationships to their government, officials south of the Mason-Dixon Line made sure that most of the jobs done by African Americans, Black Americans were excluded from the new Social Security system, when program administrators barred African Americans from meaningful access to the homeownership and education programs that covered, that provided for millions of white Americans, thereby guaranteeing their remaining their move and remaining in the middle class.

To Binta, there’s never been a dearth in Black ingenuity, creativity, and grit – producing lives which are multidimensional – study after study showed this – Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, before the Massacre, proved this: Black wall Street was a thriving community of Lawyers, Doctors, Merchants, Churches and Entertainment district, that was destroyed in a 16 hour onslaught, including the first time a US city was attacked by an aircraft, dynamite bombed from the air. It became one of those erased, covered-up, disappeared history of America – the nation’s old and new creative ways that the citizens have developed of telling lies, even when it’s state sponsored: And the other side forget that the people are part of the state, especially when instruments of state, governance, are used against them, these deprived and marginalized communities, the star Ethen shirking its stated responsibilities, as inscribed in the document, the ideals it espouses: on this point, the American creed is quite clear and explicit.

She remains dubious about whether African Americans were and are equipped to function as full citizens. Binta believes the myriads of consequences of inequality are, at this point, unlikely to be impressed by the mildly uncomfortable chatter about race, and systemically woven inequities, that are contrary to the ideals engraved in the document, the document that undergirds our march to a more perfect union. But she does believe that, and as was evident in last summer’s protests and the 2020 fall’s election returns, Americans, particularly African Americans, have and will put in work to make a democracy of equals real, true to its ideals.

Binta remains convinced, knows how scary the so-called economic anxiety can get, when one group’s stranglehold on privilege, instruments of governance and commerce ends – the resultant backlash and its aftermath, can be treacherous. So, she does not expect things to be easy in the new dispensation. She has to shift, and shake the system that have served them well. She knows, and sees how some people that are so used to always winning are having trouble playing fair. But the nation should not expect apologies from African Americans for working to disassemble the vehicles that support racial inequality – in the goal of trying to make the nation into what it is promised to be – which are disproportionately adverse to people of color, particularly American Blacks. She knows that she and her group must continue holding to account those in power, especially the men and women in the government houses. This has been as visceral as it can be – from her findings, from the light shone on facts that were erased, history that was disappeared, completely wiped out as if they never happened – they were disappeared nd wiped out from the History Book of America – and because of groups like hers, are now being woken up to in the 21st century, from circa 1865.

Binta was impressed by, despite the pandemic generated restrictions, she saw how hundreds of thousands of protesters turned out in solidarity and to show a world that racial injustice was not just an American problem. Many in Germany, France, Italy Japan, the UK, Thailand, Argentina to Turkey, and beyond, voiced complaints that sparked the solidarity protest, and show that racial injustice was not local, but global. The murder of George Floyd became a catalyst that woke people up. She can go all the way back to colonial times and its legacies, an era that was also permeated by racism, and till now – the new complaints, unearthed by imperative driven actions like those of her group, and others of like-mind, have led to the building of these movements for social justice that have inspired not only social awakenings but also a driver for concrete legislative change, corporate inclusion and involvement – all as a result of the lamentations, people’s lamentations, leading to meditation, ergo her Book Of Lamentation, er, Meditation, that encompasses myriads of laments of peoples of varied colors, allowing us to find our path, and shine light on the road to the more perfect union, as inscribed in the articles of the Document.

Her goal: shift the system that have served the “Other” well – make the system serve everyone well: and to be a fair deal, serve everyone in the commonwealth equally – all covered that are covered by the constitution and all. And to make sure that those who have been so used to winning, by any means possible, because they can, and because Jim Crow enabled them, who are now having trouble playing in an arena of fairness, are to be constantly reminded of the hypocrisy long overlooked – they should be reminded, because they now act like little kids in the sandlots, some, when they are beaten, when they lose the game, take their ball and leave, for they do not know how to play, do not know or want to play fair, because the systems have supported their zero sum game practice for so long – the system enabled it, the zero sum game, whose premise is: “for me to win, the other has to lose.”

This Binta knows produces a permanent upperclass and a permanently deprived group, who harbor perpetual anxieties, anxieties that create some diseases that are now ascribed to them as inherent, even when they are environmental. Because they condemned to live in an environment they can only afford, or redlined into, or powerless to stop toxic industries from locating in – their neighborhoods then accepts industries, factories that come to toxic-fi them. For some strange logic, inexplicable, some of these condemned communities are sometimes expected to apologize – yes, the enslavers, the group that is responsible for the plight, sometimes expect an apology from the Black Americans, borne of hubris – apologize for the solidarity that formed from other people of color, for working in disassembling the vehicles that support racial inequality.

Her goal and only goal, is to make the country into what it promised to be, because the people out there, who hold the screwdrivers and wrenches – the ones who take the screwdrivers and wrenches with them whenever they leave home in the early hours of the day and other times between, are disproportionately people of color, and particularly African Americans, Black Americans. She believes that if the suffering and loss of the past decades, the past year, are to have meaning, the work of private citizens cannot be enough. And she said: “we must begin to hold to account those in power, especially, the ones who occupy the White House. Talk is cheap, the phrase, has now assumes its truism status, as never before. To her, we have heard enough, now is time, time of deeds. There’s no time for anger – these past sufferings is to be like poison that is made into medicine – anger should be channeled into demands of accountability from institutions she believes have long been complicit in promoting, and perhaps even profiting from racism: Make them look inward for ways to further diversify, promote equity and inclusion in the future of American racial reckoning and the duo burden of performing high-profile corporate roles while also promoting change. Everyone should be made to watch what is happening around the world. Make to understand each other’s perspectives and struggles and be inspired. It is one generation ceding power to a new one – one generation’s ceiling being the next generation’s floor: the underpinning of inequity acknowledged, dismantled and reformed.

To Binta, the supreme thrill of sharing space with others all these years in their quest, has never been so keenly felt, or missed in the past year, a time marked by immeasurable loss, fear, and upheaval, as constant reminders of both our hunger for connection, its current limitations, and the task at hand. Because it was these communities that have highlighted the inequalities of a system that wasn’t built for them but also created spaces that helped provide joy, confidence, comfort and sustenance during these decades and during a year unlike any other, this past year, 2020.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the shared values of care and compassion have largely defined the fellowship of the marginalized communities during these times, giving the long history of stepping up for one another when society has failed to do so, a society that fails to keep its promises – in this legacy of care, solidified in the wake of converging cultural shifts from the pandemic and national and global reckoning over race – they are also defined by shared desire to right the racial injustice in the lack of equitable distribution of capita – all these present opportunities and challenges – the work ahead to be done, and the will to do it, will continue even as the backlash is formulated, and Jim Crow 2, is germinating, festering.

So, the power from the voices, the voices of the people that gives her the elixir to continue, yes, the people’s voices, their elixir is what is powering the movement, producing an incredibly sophisticated and educated group versatile on topics that they care about, and need to know: as knowledge is power in its own right – in unambiguously good way – and she does, and produces all these in her narrative, her storytelling – providing different types of views into a diverse body of people.

She knows that there are many ways we can do this. It’s not just through policy, it’s also through culture. She feels like they have two jobs, their obligation to have to play in multiple hats formations – the one on their business cards, and a completely separate role helping bring about a more inclusive culture in all levels of government and organizations – it’s how the human brain works, in its ability to aspire and absorb new beginnings, while the old is being dismantled, in a transition from one generation to another – In the steward transition from one to the other.
She narrates how to successfully launch this new brand and identity, an imperative, paramount in her thinking – vis a vis interests and purposes – in a landscape where their members, groups have been disproportionately affected by health-related economic and racial inequalities, these cannot be said enough, and these have only been exacerbated this past year, in some cases, experience with such hardships – and again, the method to use is no other than turning poison into medicine, by not worrying about the little things, but using them, turning into strength for the work ahead – this has made them better equipped to face them, all the challenges – manifestations that are from decades of experience, and the body armor built to help survive the onslaught. After all said, she’s cognizant of the fact that everything depends on the nature of our aspirations as well as to the degree of our determination. Here, determination underlined, and courage and prudence in capital letters, she in her self-talk.

She harkens to the lessons she learned, acquired during a stint at the monastery, in the practice of Shikatanza – she knows that the correct temper of mind becomes doubly important: the mind must be empty, unhurried, yet, at the same time, firmly planted, massively composed, must be alert and, stretched like a taut bowstring, a heightened state of concentrated awareness where she knows she can neither be tense or hurried, and certainly never slack. It is the mind of somebody facing death, because, these past decades, millennia of suffering, it was like facing death – and that allowed for survival. And this, is part of the answer to the question: how did we get here, and the lamentation that leads to meditation on all the laments, that would take us, guide us on the road to a more perfect union, a necessity for a thriving union. In this awakening, we are finally able to talk and hear about the history we weren’t taught, the horrors that we weren’t meant to consider. In this telling accurately of the American story.

Juneteenth, a holiday that was just made a federal holiday came about because of greed and the continuation of the brutality against Black people, on the part of the white settlers, farmer, who saw the Blacks as commodities, pieces of properties: greed on the part of slave owners – because even when they knew that slavery had been abolished, proclaimed so, they kept the news from the people, Black slaves, for two years after, in order to use them for more years, for their farming labor, African American labor. So, they told the lies, just as they do now, almost as if built into the fabrics of their being, to hold the people down, just as they doo now, to deprive people of their freedoms. And we now know that racial difference mixes with labor exploitation to produce an explosive mix of profit and atrocity. Even Universities, these higher places of learning that should know better were no exception, they exploited Black labor: these are sophisticated people, are they not? No, their greed and inhuman heart, clouded their judgement. And yes, corporate entities, also participated in slavery, in this exploitation, in one form or the other: servitude and profit, but then, servitude is economic benefits, benefit from not having to pay for the labor, ergo save money, maximize profit, on the back of other humans. Oh, yes, even the churches, that should know better, because they are God’s apostles on earth, took part. None of them had any shame, remorse about their un-Godly behaviors, acts. Greed blinded them all.

To Binta, the response to endemic American racism, requires those of us who have been racially stigmatized cohere around our racial differences, and take what white people hate about us, and convert stigmata into pride, community and power, and demand the same guarantee of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, including all the fantasy and folklore of the American Dream. This, Binta believes, is another form of turning poison into medicine, teaching the accurate version of our history, to galvanize those moments when the ideals that are the foundation of the idea of America, become true to all citizens, and we are all called, and become, on equal terms, fellow citizens. And celebrate it together.

It is only then that we all can become part of the history, the American history. We can then all talk about the good things and the bad things, knowing we have ownership, have taken ownership of our own stories and past and future, our stories, our destinies in our shared common humanity. All springing from the laments and meditation from it, the turning of poison into medicine, which are products borne out of the idea of Binta’s Book Of Lamentation, er Meditation – this is what she had expected from the conduct, lamentation, er meditation: clarity, answers, closure, gleaned from it all, and its empowering nature – the empowering nature of talking about it. Knowing our history, in order to reconcile with our present. It is about reconciling with our past in order to make a more just and egalitarian future.

She reflect on the very notion of freedom itself, as it relates to a freedom delayed, a freedom aborted, a freedom that still remains fragile, in a democracy, we just found out, from the events of January 6, to be fragile – we, according to Binta, we all need to remind ourselves as much as possible, that it is worthy for all this to be fought for, remind ourselves to be vigilant guardians of these freedoms. What you buy must reflect your values, she said, and said again. A metaphor for getting engaged, and allowing your pocketbook to talk for you.

Binta knows that corporations hold the key. Stories abound, from a large chunk of America, theories about Corporations, especially multi national corporations being the power behind the throne, the true power and driver of things. One of her goals then is to identify the real powerful men and women, of corporations and identify the economic elites who drive and shift things around: on jobs, location of industries, those who lobby and maximize profit at the expense of the workers and care nothing about, or for working Americans.

She knows about how these corporations, economic elites, engage in plea deals where there’s no admission of culpability: this has been so offensive to her, galling to know these entities are getting away with heinous crimes, getting away with the equivalent of murder, and plea-deal it out – to acknowledge this reality is far too disturbing. She and by extension these entities, also know that this would be disturbing for many Americans: and because of the absence of information hidden in the plea deal, they resort to blaming some foreign entity, country, for the bane.

This brings to Binta, another history – past and present plights of Asian Americans: from internments camps, exclusionary act, to China flu – these have all Been forms of blaming, in one form or the other, in the blaming and attacks on Asian Americans – yes, just like other oppressed communities, Asian Americans have not forgotten the anti Asian history – even when many would have much wanted to forget, hoping to put it all behind them. Then the pandemic, Covid brings it to fore. And the model minority label, even as it was designed to divide, has a reality check. A myth shattered.

Binta knows that even as some Asian blood, in one form or the other runs through her veins, she and other Asian Americans are caught between the perception that they are inevitably foreign and the temptation to allied with white people in a country constructed, built on the superiority of one group over the other, white supremacy. Because of this, anti Black, Brown and Native Americans racism runs deep in Asian American communities. She and other Asians know that no matter how low they may be on the totem pole, they know that America allows them to stand on the shoulders of Black, Brown and native Americans. She knows that Asian Americans, immigrants from Asia, have, throughout Asian American history have been offered the opportunity by both sides: Black and white people, have offered Asian Americans an opportunity to choose sides in the Black people and white people divide, and she knows that Asians have far too often chosen the white side.

They have not always stood up against anti Black racism, even while vociferously protesting Anti-Asian racism. Frequently, she knows that they have gone along with the status quo and affiliated with white people. Which then results in another form of bias, racism against Black people, from Asian Americans. To buttress her position, she reminds all who may care to listen about Rodney King – his beaten at the hands of LA police officers, a brutality, and its video sparked mass protests in LA: she knows that law enforcement and politicians sacrificed Asian Americans, especially Koreans, were sacrificed by preventing the protests, unrest from reaching the white parts of the city, making Asian Americans bear the brunt of the long-simmering rage of Black and Brown Angelenos over the chronic poverty, systemic racism, segregation, and the abuse built into the policing of the city: police brutality, abusive police treatment. And she is reminded of Dr. King’s admonition: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. She’s reminded that this has now been proven as never before, a truism.

Binta is also reminded of the words enunciated by Dr. Martin Luther King, when he was commenting on the Blacks sent to fight in Vietnam, those who were sent there to guarantee liberties in southeast Asia, which they, the Black soldiers had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. She is asking us to, demanding that we question our society, our whole society, making us take a critical look, demanding that we see the issue of racism – make us see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation and the problem of war are all tied together, as she now sees happening all over again: this time, it s on the battle front of American politics.

Because the American system is still built on war and for war. And we choose to do, when confronted, faced with injustice, nothing. And we are asked to live with ourselves after what we did not do, when we do not speak up and act up, in solidarity. It was between solidarity or complicity – we chose complicity. Even as we know, even as we are cognizant of the game being played by the puppet masters: a game that pits its poor, minority groups of all races and its exploited minorities, against each other – a domestic war over resources and the American Dream. Even when all these are all enshrined in our documents of Ideals, the constitution, some of us do not know enough to defend them. To endeavor and understand the game enough to not fall into the games of exploitation, divide and conquer.

And as we know, racism always offers the temptation to blame the weak, the poor rather than the the rich and powerful. The police was created to defend the white property owners: the propertied and their allies, and she sees the continuation of the same system in place, even as we move deeper into the 21st century. This reckoning, awakening, is to a system built on the nation’s sum, even in its business dealings. She recognizes that the war mentality is also built into business: yes, the business of driving other businesses out of business, because for one to win, the other have to lose in the zero sum dynamic, to them, it is how one wins.

Binta believes that if we profess, advocate one America, we must then claim all of America, its hopes and its hypocrisy, its profits and its pains, its liberty and loses, its aspiration to a perfect union, its imperfect union and all that come with its journey to a more perfect union, as inscribed in the documents of ideals, the constitution.

She does not believe that we have done the necessary, and to the extent as to what we have done, it has been grossly insufficient. We have to endeavor, mandate ourselves to do what is necessary and sufficient. The things that would give us something to be proud of, that we can totally rally around. She knows that she’s the representation she has been seeking all these years, as she recognized life, how she wanted to live it, and what her values, true nature values allow. It’s sovereignty. Autonomy. In all of this, she’s aware of her responsibility – her representation of a group. She will strive to bring awareness to these aforementioned erased, hidden or outright buried stories. She wants her actions and those of her cohorts to be that which would shine more light at what has, what have held us back at arriving at the end of the journey to a more perfect union. In this journey, history is the greatest problem solver.

Binta never talks about racism because she’s fond of it, she talks about racism, systemic racism and bias because it is necessary. Her fight for an embrace of what is needed to achieve these ideals in harmony are recognized: she talks about racism and its accompanying brutalities because it is essential for the advancement of peoples rights and their humanity this is why she talks about racism. Her narratives, which are her megaphone, are her weapons, and they need to be used courageously, even when prudent. She stands at the border, she stands at the edge, she claims them as central, and let the rest of the world move over to where she is, on issues and ideals abundant in the world sphere, used as light that shines on the pathway to that more perfect union – so, sharing them, the result, as we move forward is an imperative: here, she channelled Toni Morrison, a hero of hers. Her narratives do not require code switching, it is abundantly clear in one. She avoids ever imbibing it, because her voice and tone, are clear for everyone to hear, comprehend. But if history is the problem solver, it would be necessary to sound the alarm, and to remind people, all peoples that the past is historic, and that history is great inspiration, in making things equitable, fair and open to all.

Binta makes sure her narratives are nuanced in the fabric she’s weaving, to ensure that it is not told as anything other than what they are. They are not codes. They are not dog whistles, they are clear, easy to understand – even for the little guys. It is a universal clarity. Her story, from a storyteller’s point of view, is to take these suppressed, hidden, and sometimes erased stories, and shape them into easily disseminating form. She climbs as high as possible, and as bright as possible, so the realities and possibilities are not ambiguous – they are amplifying – mplified to reach the masses, like a spread of possibilities that we need, especially now.

The possibilities of a world better than the one we have, that we have been given. The more people can relate, the more people can believe in what is achievable, the stronger her message, the stronger the reality becomes. And her goal is to hold as many people as possible to that reality, the reality of bountiful possibilities that abound in all populations, and that are achievable – if and only if the ideas are equitably implemented.

Because to her, the reality we are living in now, they are not holding us together: instead they are trying to kill us, suffocate us, and barely leave us room to breathe. She wants to make sure they, the oppressors that is, cannot ever charm their way out of the consequences of white supremacy. The system itself must be dismantled. Her people are tired of putting on masks, survival mask that is put on, where if one seem harmless then they would not be hurt or be crushed by the innate white supremacy in the land.

To Binta, if you can’t get something to budge, double down, toughen up, outlast them. For the first time in America, majority of its people believe that the police are more likely to brutalize Black Americans, they believe that African Americans face “a lot of discrimination and that white people have an easier time getting ahead.” This is an unprecedented shifting, due to “the great awakening.” From the history we were not taught, the horrors we were not meant to consider: in our pursuit of liberty, happiness, fair and equitable treatment. A rational life – she couldn’t get the word out of her mind. What does that mean? It’s been a bumpy road, but our way is just and clear, she says. And that was that.

Binta is aware of the mirage that freedom is, even after one is said to have acquired, achieved it, referencing the emancipation declaration, “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.” Words spread, so did jubilation, and then the reality – it was quickly found out that the declaration of freedom and creating it are two different things. She reminds of the need for vigilance, even as the great awakening is acknowledged, and declared irreversible: Binta wants everyone to be mindful of the pitfall that unsecured freedom results in: referencing the Jim Crow laws and all other devices that were put in place to hold down the newly freed slaves, humans, who were demanding something of the country that stole so much from them – because the infrastructure and economy of the nation were built on the back of Black people. Literally. She knows her victory and those of her group, and her people, would have to be a result attributable to their power of organizing, an electoral force, from the organizing power of Black and Brown people – using their votes: “making a national reality plain and involving in its delivery,” is what this is all about, she muses.

She reflects on the fact that African Americans, who make up 13% of the U.S. population, represents a mere 3% of workers at the top technology companies, and another 1.8% of law partners. The population of African American men in management at U.S. companies with 100 or more employees crept from 3% to 3.3% between 1985 and 2014. And people of color are roughly 40% of the U.S. population, but they make up about 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs. Research Binta has seen and perused over time, shows that rather than diversifying their workforces, board and leadership teams, many institutions have financed pricey diversity efforts that consistently fail to increase racial representation.

Her goal, part of her goal, is to detect, disrupt, and engage in the dismantling of patterns of bias that have metastasized in unequal representation, hiring and salaries. She wants them, the captain of industry, to diversify the ecosystem the same way they do profits and innovation among themselves, the elites. As we all know, she muses again, racial injustice is not an abstraction. She knows that institutions can root it out in their midst, only if they try, and for the most part, only if they are pushed enough, even when that should not be necessary, because fairness is a virtue, civics is a virtue that preaches good relationship between citizens, governance and all. These cannot be left on auto pilot mode, it has to be nurtured into concrete results – requiring honest encounter with our airbrushed history, pervasive racism, pervasive racial illiteracy, pervasive erasure of critical history, and systemic inequalities, systematic oppression of African Americans, Black and Brown people. It is only when we know our history, and it becomes everyone’s story, merged from the stories of the diversity of groups, only then can we get there, as one.

In this period of racial reckoning, Binta believes that achieving racial justice does not require more time and strategies – it requires only will, the will to act and implement the already promised. The gradualism that has been the vogue, that has defined racial progress and needed acts, must be superseded by a swift systemic change that a majority, a wide swat of America finally agrees is overdue. She is encouraged by the fact that many major companies have released statements on antiracism. While some seem authentic, others sound, ring hallow. Considering that some companies that tweet out “Black Lives Matter,” but have 100% white corporate leadership. Recognizing that in the context of antiracism, shallow support like this, is called optical ally-ship, one flavor of virtue signaling – moral grandstanding, advertising moral position for the purpose of self promotion, this sort of virtue signaling seems like selfishness covered in a thin shell of goodness, used to score social points rather than genuine acts – the doing of work for real reform. She knows it is critical to hold them to their words – it is critical they are held to follow their words with deeds, actions – the time for talk is passed.

Binta used the analogy of radio waves: the signals they send are received by people, and the receivers matter. Because in life, in society, in family and organizations, people conform to others action, influencers, and opinions – people often say and do as others do. We all are influenced by creatures of it, the signal, in one way or the other by forms of these influencers. Influencers receive a lot of attention, and people assume their message as popular, and shift towards it. Yes, people receive signals and shift towards it, and are changed by it. As social norms shift, we shift with it – adopting popular opinions and behaviors, and dropping ones that fall out of style. It is the way of the world. It is part of the question of how did we get here. It is how we got here. Evolution. Evolving. It is why Binta laments, and it’s hoped would help in the evolution and evolving of our common humanity – and it is hoped would produce meditations out of the lamentation, and in that case, will produce answers, clarity – and helps us find our way, on the path to the more perfect union.

Norms, as we know, are especially powerful, especially as they gain traction. So signaling is so important, as something to have an awareness of, and pay attention to. She knows that no matter the motives of these corporate entities and others, when people speak out, their voices are, and have powerful effect on receivers: so our collective outrage on this mission should be sustained – and made a sustaining vehicle. Her goal is to make them become social norms, that yield a phenomenal groundswell. She knows that she and her people, those she advocates for, should use these signals as anchors, in holding everyone accountable to act according to what they have expressed, promised – accordingly. The power of the people, the power of the signals from likeminded influencers, have in and of themselves helped people locate and unearth erased history, helped locate each other on the path to change – the road to a more perfect union, as inscribed in our creed, in the document all is founded and constructed on.

There was a time, she muses, when everyone thought that something was solved back in the 1960s, but no, it was not really solved, it just changed form, as it always does: when there seems to be progress, the other side goes to their drawing board, and device a way to hold Black and Brown people down, in their game of zero sum – which is illustrative of larger issues and what needs to be done as we move forward – what is to be done and prepared for. She uses the gap in incomes, the rate of unemployment – the median household income among Blacks and white people, it is found that those of Black were substantially lower, and unemployment for Blacks while at 6.0%, those of whites was 3.1% – this was as of January 2020, and the median household income at $40,258 vs. $68,145 for white, as of 2017.

These numbers, she knows, reflect the long-term consequences of segregation, which vastly contributed, in no small measure, to the denying of African American, Black people in America the jobs, salaries and other opportunities that are key to upward mobility. Because if you live in a segregated neighborhood, every single bad thing in the world happens to you. If one lives in segregated neighborhood, it is difficult to get loans, if not downright unable to do so, get loans for housing – it is a place where the schools lead to jails. And one other thing: segregation and its aftermath determines who gets, receives benefits – and whether marginalized communities, Black and Brown groups, would truly get equal protection under the law: rules are shaped by the bureaucratic details of what segregation wrought – including rule-making and lower court injunctions that accompany segregation. These powerful levers of the federal administrative state have been used to keep people oppressed. She knows that even as African Americans were waging and winning battles in the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s, federal rules prevented them, African American, Black Americans from accessing the same benefits afforded white citizens.

Binta referenced a depression era pair of federal program designed to promote homeownership, and how they were implemented in a way that effectively excluded Black people from accessing loan due to redlining. She remembers that the GI Bill followed similar path – while it lifted millions of white veterans into the middle class by helping them access college and buy homes, the way the law was implemented effectively prevented thousands of African Americans, Black servicemen from obtaining the same. This is because of a country that refuses to change, even as the rest of the free world looks up to her, because of its ideals – vaunted ideals, inscribed in the document – a document that is meant to guide us to that more perfect union. It is the why of how did we get here, in Binta’s lamentation, er meditation – it is designed, the narrative that is, to help us get some answers, to help us find clarity. To help us shine a light and remove the darkness from our path so that we are marched into that more perfect union unhindered by the darkness.

Thanks to smartphones, an outgrowth of the technology revolution, erased, and heretofore buried in darkness stories and events, are no longer able to be buried, hidden and easily erased: torrents of videos of cruel images of Black deaths, were not archived in darkness, thanks to these technologies – perhaps, she muses, they are the source of the intensity of our current moment. These videos, especially that of George Floyd’s murder from a knee on his neck from, in a nine minutes plus video of a lynching in broad daylight, have combined with the vulnerability caused by Covid-19, resulting in the feeling that the country, its democracy is fragile, if not broken – we are seeing actions and phenomenon that is bringing us to the brink of madness and, apparently, to the precipice of significant change.

It is an odd mixture, but an understandable consequence of our troubled past, and the troubled times we live in. She agrees, we now face a moral reckoning. W have to decide, America has to decide whether this nation will truly be a multiracial democracy or whether she continues to give lip service to our problems once again and remain decidedly racist and unequal – which is contrary to the words of the document and its inscribed deals – the ones that our forebears and countless others risked their lives, in some instances, gave their lives for, risking everything to persuade the nation to try to live to these stated ideals, and rid itself of the insidious view that white people mattered more than others.

These forbears marched, they suffered the billy stick, firehoses and police dogs. They watched as fellow travelers on this journey that continues, even as we are in the 21st century, ended up at the bottom of the Mississippi River, and they watched, witness their forbears dreams shattered to pieces, again and again. Time is up, she said, with a sigh.

Binta asks: what gives one group the right to tell another group what to do or how to live? What gives that mandate legality, when we are all created equal? Or are we not? If the answer is of the affirmative, what does, Binta asks, again and again, in her self-talk, as she stares at the stark reassertion of the value gap – the idea that white lives matter more than others. It is a moment of reckoning that made its choice, on how it sealed Black America’s fate for generations. She has experienced the rage caused by this betrayal, and clenched her teeth, as she finds out how the country had doubled down on its ugly commitments, and what they used as the justification for this horrific history, their sense of innocence – what is the justification, that being white has a value entity that makes it more important, valuable.

She’s a despairing witness desperate to tell the story of how the nation arrived at such a decision. She lamented how the country failed time and again when faced with choices that would make our journey to a more perfect union more equitable, for everyone, she means everyone, especially those whose history was abated, removed from the public square, hidden or erased or downright destroyed. Thereby losing out on so many things, economic and more, at a huge cost to them. She believes African Americans, Black Americans are owed economic benefits, a form of reparation, from deprivation, and outright unkept promises., and parts of which are inscribed in the document that lays out our ideals, she muses.

She can recall from fractured memories, the trauma of loss of heroes, forbears, in America’s betrayal. At all levels of form, the fragmented memories displayed fragmentation, sometimes urged on, enabled by some very surprising noble men and women: the lawyers, the judges, the protected members of the middle class – the criminal justice system crushed Black Americans with intention – it is how the justice system is administered in the country: all these have not been questioned – no outcry from them saying wrongful accusations from these aforementioned entities.

As William Baldwin said; the horror is that America …changes all the time, without changing at all. And what happens in America affects the rest of the world, so being mindful of our behavior, utterances and governance, is is an imperative. She thinks of all others, who did not die, but unknowns, the invisible people whose lives were smashed on the freedom road, in a nation that refused to change. Even as everyone, because they are so educated and all, expected to be civil, sophisticated in civic and all, and even when they are cognizant of the suffering of despised, marginalized communities, people: even as the fate of the oppressed and of the oppressors, the despised invariably become intertwined, and becomes the fate of the nation. She lamented all these, seeking and begging for answers, pleading to be heard, meet half way, for the other side to listen and talk about it without the brutality and indifference, a pandemic of its own.

Binta’s attempt to tell the story, of the horrors of a country that refused to change – she’s angry, but holds on to her faith that she and others on this journey are on the right, and would make the nation that refused to change, change – otherwise, what’s the point? She asks. They, she said, slammed the door shut on the opportunity for the fundamental transformation the forbears’ civil right agitation – the movement had occasioned, and thinking about what those years had wrought. The ghosts that still haunts her, but from which she believes we still have a chance again to choose a new America.

She knows that we have some difficult choices and days ahead, as we are confronted with the ugliness of who we are as a nation. Because according to Binta, the ugliness cuts deep. In such moments, and as a matter of fact, throughout her days, she insisted that her people tell themselves the truth about what the nation has done and what we are doing to remedy things. She knows we cannot stick our heads deep in the sand, we are not ostriches. Or that we seek comfort in the national illusions, mechanisms of distraction, or the so-called innocence. This new found moral reckoning requires owning up, confessing and repairing old wrongs. Because if we fail this time, it may well be the latest addition to the ruins that have become almost natural to us, as we are made to be used to the ugliness.

Now under the simultaneous attack from the pandemic, a remorseless plague, and a president, now a former president, who’s autocratically inclined, possibly a criminal head in the people’s House, we find ourselves on another fight for survival, surviving an invisible enemy, and the other party’s legacy of oppressive, suppressive tactics, in trying to steal an election, to keep themselves in power to avoid the aftermath, a reckoning. This attempt, if it had not ben countered by a group of exemplary, dedicated and patriotic citizens: wizards behind some of the biggest advances in political technology in recent times, who applied scientific methods to political campaigns, saw what was happening, and decided to take action for the good of the Country, to save democracy, in the midst of a double whammy ecosystem.

This, a digression by Binta for a minute, is the story of unprecedented, creative and determined campaign to win at all cost, which in a way, is a testament, a reveal of how close the country came to disaster. Because, an attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election, if successful, would make the foundation of rule of law a nonentity, and tell the world how fragile democracy is, even as democracy is what we mostly sell to the world – So it became another imperative, the need to protect, defend and cherish it. It is massively important for the country to understand that Democracy, and the system that holds it did not work magically – that it is not self-sustaining, self-executing. Because it is a fact that a well funded cabal of powerful people, across industries and ideologies, working together, behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information: they were not rigging election, they were fortifying it. Because they know and believe that the public needs to understand that the system is fragile in order to ensure that democracy in America survives, endures. The people need to understand this. Their efforts, is why we are able to exhale after the fact, after all that we have gone through this past year and a half. Now we know, we were really some seconds from Marshall law and a constitutional crisis.

The catastrophic events of the past year have not shaken Binta’s resolve, or beliefs. Suffering is not new to her, and as a Buddhist, the Buddha she knows, suffered quite a bit, even as a product of royalty. Her basic take on politics is that, it’s pretty obvious if you do not overthink it or swallow whole the prevailing framework. She believes it is better to relentlessly identify one’s assumptions and challenge them. Train yourself not to swing at most pitches, something she applies to everything, and the approach has worked for her so far. So much so that she can anticipate and plan for the worst she knows will be coming her way. This method proved a winning hand, as proof positive as she began to hear from others in the fraternity, eager to join forces for the movement, for the fight ahead. A fight she hopes would be an engagement in conversations, allowing each one to tell their stories, on their own, not made up for them, or erased, hidden, or downright destroyed.

She knows that this gives them time for scenario-planning, planning around the potential for a contested topic, history, and imbibe steering clear of hysteria. She knew that American democracy was dying, and she knows that joining forces with likeminded folks, utilizing these acquired methods, is how they might be able to keep her alive, because the world needs America, the value it stands for, the ones inscribed in the document. The ones the rest of the world look up to America for, as a beacon.

Because the key difference between America and other countries that lost their grip on democracy, she surmised, was that America, even with a powerful federal government, is decentralized in so many forms and ways, and the systems are strong, and holds, which presents an opportunity to shore it up. This she believes, requires efforts of unprecedented scale, to defend and protect this democracy. A beacon, in the geopolitical sphere. A shinning light emulated by many around the world, and worthy of emulating. Because of its ideals and some of its exemplary leaders who have come to embody this, who showed the world what America should be about, and live it.

Her group, she knows, does not have that syndrome, where if it is not invented by one of them, or if the idea is not brought up by one of them it won’t be considered a good idea. All Ideas are tabled on its merits. Because talents, genius abound in all populations, all groups, all communities, they do – the constellation of operatives across the activist spectrum covers the gamut – the political space, where all share, even as they overlap – goals – did not work at such cross-purposes. There are no leaders, and no hierarchy – this kept the disparate actors in sync: keeping different pieces of the movement ’s infrastructure in communication and aligned, even while she plays a critical behind the scene role in keeping them together, Binta keeps her humility armor on all the time.

And while the strategies might not always align, she makes all allow for this ecosphere to work together. They have to work together, because we need all these people, she says – because this periodic uprising, protests of the past and present are not going to die down, or go away, as long as we have a deeply racially unjust and a racially segregated society. Binta acknowledged that the absence of change should not be equated, or tied to an absence of information, or those who can tell this information to the people – people who need it to make the right decision. You cannot name any significant injustice in the country that’s not undergirded by erased, hidden or downright suppressed history. The ones we are not supposed to see or or know about.

Binta thrives and strives. She believes knowledge and the acquisition of it is aphrodisiacal, especially acquiring knowledge from brilliant people, those in the know, and especially those with an ear to the ground on flow of information, critical information, according to her, helps. In one of such encounters, a meeting with an exemplary, an eminent writer, newsmaker, and exemplary citizen – left it totally reinforced in her that great nations thrive by constantly refreshing great reservoir of knowledge, the knowledge from the stories we tell ourselves, and especially not the ones we try to erase, bury or keep hidden. The eminent writer newsmaker believes that the knowledge of who we are as a people, how we got here, the different and long conflicts that bind us together, and what we find admirable and dishonorable and what kind of world we want, and hope to build together, are important for the road to a more perfect union, because, a more perfect union includes a more equal union.

To the eminent newsmaker, writer, this constitute a moral framework from which to see the world. He even quoted, channeled Homer – who taught the Greeks how to perceive reality. The eminent writer, newsmaker, further talked on this, and brought up how Exodus teaches the Jews how to interpret their struggles and their Journey. That this rational experience invited Americans to share Walt Whitman’s passion to contain the whole vast carnival of stories, to see themselves in its themes and feel themselves within this story: I dare say, he meant, the eminent writer/newsmaker that is, meant all humanity, as they live in this geography called America, as one and indivisible.

The write/newsmaker, eminent and exemplary citizen, as it can be, courageous and prudent as can be, who’s always calm and steady in his analysis of national and global variables of things politics and societal, believed that these shared stories, this shared knowledge should help us discover a shared destiny and our shared affection for one another. To him, a kind of knowledge that we acquire through reason, logical proof and tight analysis. This to him can be established by carefully using evidence, not unlike what Binta is trying to do, in The Book Of Lamentation, ergo Meditation – using the clarity from the cultivation, quiet times of meditation to find answers to our common humanity’s seemly intractable divide, as he framed it: “the history of all hitherto existing societies, the history of class struggles.” This, Binta says, she could not have put any better. To Binta, her goal, as well as the ones enunciated by the eminent writer/newsmaker, is to hunt for error, weigh evidence and determine which proposition passes the test, pass muster in her goal of shining light on the darkness that has long kept answers hidden, including propositions that would open people’s eyes to truth and justice, ergo, to a more perfect republic, union. Because for now, we do not see the same reality, even when the suffering is staring us in the face, we refuse to see it, actually pretending not to see it.

We intellectualize them, make excuses for bad behaviors, afraid to call them out. And people, demagogues are allowed to get away with lies ad bad acting. We buy their zero-sum premise, and are made to believe that for one to win, the other has to be beaten down, in their game of zero sum – zero sum game comes up a lot with Binta, because it is evidence based: The people feel trapped in a mortal order that makes them feel unsafe, from an unjust system. It is a system that produces a collapse of trust, and the rise of animosity. Because to the eminent writer and newsmaker, the real problem is in our system of producing shared stories: because if a country cannot tell a narrative in which everybody finds an honorable place, then righteous rage will drive people toward trial narratives, ergo, divisions – narratives that tear it apart.

The eminent writer/newsmaker, exemplary citizen, went further and brought David Hume into the picture – allowing Binta’s narrative to have his flair, philosophy on such as she is narrating about: Hume maintained that reason is, and ought only to be the only slave of passion. He says that once you realize that people are primarily desiring creatures, not the rational one we have constructed them into: we find out that they are not rational creatures, in Hume’s point of view. But what is important here is that, once you realize that one of these projects of schooling and culture is to educate the passion, it becomes the aha moment, that becomes the guide. Which made Binta realize that the eminent writer/newsmaker, exemplary citizen is a lamenter, too, and has always been lamenting just as she has – lamenting that leads to meditating, that further lead us to a road of clarity and answers as to how we got here, and what would get us to where we want to get – a more caring humanity, all-around.

Binta gleaned from the eminent, exemplary writer/newsmaker’s lament, his purpose: she found out that his purpose is to help people learn and feel the proper kind of outrage at injustice, the proper form of reverence before sacrifice, the proper swelling of civic pride, the proper affection for our fellows. She quickly realized that all these were not conveyed through facts but through emotional experience – stories we tell ourselves. He said we should focus on reason and critical thinking skills – the core of the reservoir of knowledge.

It is because the ability to grasp complex stories about ourselves has atrophied. He called for the ability to tell stories in which opposing characters can each possess pieces of the truth, stories in which all characters are embedded in time, at one point in their process of growth, stories rooted in the complexity of real life and not in dogma of ideological abstractions. This is what Binta gleaned from the eminent writer/newsmaker, exemplary citizen. And even as she now recognized him as a lamenter, a kindred spirit, if you may, on the same road to a shinier path – the light from the laments, meditations, shines light on the hitherto darkness.

Having passed through the ideological curriculums, we see how debauched and brutalized our storytelling skills have become. She was impressed about how fortunate she was to have met him, and if she were still living in prehistoric or near prehistoric times, she would take him, the eminent writer/newsmaker, exemplary citizen as master. America, according to the eminent writer/newsmaker, exemplary citizen, has the greatest story to tell about itself, if we have the maturity to tell it honestly.

In telling this stories, Binta especially emphasizes the need to recognize one component, the tracking of dangerous lies that might otherwise spread unnoticed: the toxic content of these dangerous lies, big in their form, is only made worse by incessant attacks, that the bad actors are proficient at, because of their skill in technology, you get attacked from multiple platforms, designed to look authentic. The first instinct is to push back, call it out, but the more engagement this gets, the more the platforms boost, and other mainstream media are then lured into helping them in their games – the algorithm reads it, and goes: this is popular, salutes and push it to more people – in toe is malign behavior, which are hard to quickly put out. So, the best way to her is to pause, and get a better grasp of things before one responds.

Because, bad actors spreading false information is nothing new: conspiracy theories and the viral force of social media and the involvement of foreign meddlers makes disinformation a broader, deeper threat to the organization. So she wants to harness the momentum of the movement without allowing it to be co-opted by these distractors. It is the best way to ensure people’s voices are heard, and all involved decided, to protect the ability to tell their stories. Freedom defenders train to deescalate, an imperative in techniques of things. Because as it has been proven, the summer uprising has shown that people power have a massive impact.

From Binta’s perspective, the summer’s racial-justice protests sent a signal to business owners too: the potential for economy-disruption, from the civil disorder that could spread. And business does not like disorder, business does not thrive in disorder. But she wanted to be mindful of the right times to call for moving masses of people into the streets, as much as they were eager to mount a show of strength, mobilizing immediately could backfire, she believes. And that might put people at risk. She would rather take the risks, than make innocent people suffer from her misjudgments – Protests that devolve into violent clashes would give the other side a pretext to send security forces, invoke law and order codes, and elevate the points of their backlash. It’s best for the movement, the alliance, to send a message that the people had spoken, in clear and unambiguous ways – a strategy of foregrounding the peoples’ right to free expression, demanding that their voices be heard in the calling of attention to the racial implication or disenfranchisement of Black and Brown people.

Black erasure is a real thing, and we are just beginning to have the necessary conversation about it now. It’s a lesson, a teachable lesson on how easy it is to erase a whole history of people, if it can happen then, it can happen again, and it can happen to any group that has the vulnerabilities of people of color, or any marginalize, power-deprived communities – to the extent of finding out how easy it is for people not to be properly credited for their innovations, inventions, creations, discoveries – because they were made not to exist – all these works, events and stories, date back eons. This is her chance to correct history, she muses.

The idea of seeing ourselves in a beautiful light, learning to love ourselves, canalized from our free expressions of our own stories, told by us, for us and for everybdy, of like minds or of no like minds, as long as it is not fact, stories that are disputed: no one quarrels with facts – as long as these are acknowledged to have happened by all, and allow people to be seen, judged for the sides they take – allowed a chance to prove their validity, prove to the rest, why their value is different from the rest of us, and what they are based on, the values in their premise, that is, muses – and the musings become lyrical, in torrents, in spades, as they cascade, and she is just getting started, she says, with vehemence – because, according to her, previously, all indications pointed to the self-hate we have been brainwashed to accept, and have been going through, enduring since the days of slavery and Jim Crow, to now. Which begs the question: how did we survive all this time? The barbarism, brutalities of it all – These are questions in the story of Black erasure, Black activism and relevance.

Binta points to the new backlash against the teaching of critical race theory, and how it is being weaponized by certain groups for political gains. It has turned to a debate between people who think children should not be burdened with the past, and those who want kids to learn how the legacy of the past shapes American society to day. The question to her is, is American history merely a tool to inspire patriotism, or is it, as some historians argue, a valuable lesson in the good, the bad and the ugly of all that is America? Because, to Binta, our understanding of the past is a key factor in how we envision our future.

This assumes the part of a story about the story, because corrective measures are needed to correct errors of the past in order to have the envisioned future we desire and love versus the myths America tells itself. In her narrative, the emphasis is on equity. Because it is important for all, especially children, to understand how some groups as a whole benefit from the suppression of others – from the discriminatory system that are very much alive and well today. Because if we are not teaching children, our people, that the reason why racial inequity exists is because of racism, then what are they going to conclude as to why racial inequity exists? To her, they are going to conclude that it must be because those Black people must have less because they are less. When evidence abounds that when all groups are given equal and opportunities, equal and level playing field, all thrive. So, to her, not teaching our children about racism is actually divisive. And a young girl in her group, listening to all this said: “It’s actually more divisive to not want to be aware of anyone else’s history that’s different from your own.” To her, preventing the teaching of critical race theory, seems as though it is erasing who she is and her history – her classmate, another young girl mused. To her, understanding inequity is necessary to create equity.

To Binta and everyone present, they may not agree on everything, but they want to know the truth about how the nation, the U.S. got to where it is today. The discovery of this truth will allow everyone to more smoothly navigate their way to a more perfect union. It is part of the answers on the question: how did we get here? This, Binta agrees, is the clarity she hoped would come from the lamentation, ergo meditation. She is concerned as a citizen that some have lost the ability to truly consider the perspectives of each other, one another, which to her, is a mark of an enlightened, educated citizenry.

Binta pointed to an example of erasure, happening in real time, even when it’s not of Black erasing, but of national erasing: the rewriting of history by a former president, his cohorts, and some members of Congress and other high political officials, who claim the 2020 elections was rigged, stolen, and that what happened on January 6, 2021 was borne out of some touristic people visiting the Capitol – these group of people are trying to rewrite the story we just witnessed, in a certain form of erasure, because form of the true happenings are suppressed, removed from their narratives – an insurrection glaring to everyone, is now being made to look as if the insurrectionists were peaceful and joyous people visiting in their millions to celebrate America. How audacious! Shamelessly so.

But, the good news is that we all know what happened that day, caught on camera, in full view of the world: an insurrection. An attack on the seat of our democracy, the beacon the others look to around the world to shape their own part of the world. The former president and his cohorts, would like us not to believe our own eyes, which is nothing but a move in undermining our faith in democracy. They are asking us to question a legitimate process, our legitimate government, a dully elected one. The good thing is, our system worked well during and after the election, otherwise, these people would have us staring at Marshall law, constitutional crisis, in their zeal, greed to get it at all cost: Power. A big lie, that’s what it is, a Big lie! The iteration of 21st century Jim Crow architecture, infrastructure, is what they’re trying to foist on the nation: it is real, it has to be fought, Binta noted.

The big question is: are you on the side or truth or lie? Are you on the side of liberty and freedom for all or on the side of tyranny? These are the questions that the raw and sustained assault on truth, on Democracy have raised. Yes, to Binta and her group, it is about: Freedom, Liberty, happiness and the pursuit of. So this unfolding assault on all that is dear to all must be resisted, to preserve our liberty, freedom and happiness – it is that Significant! It is why its’ an imperative. The citizenry should be alarmed. All should be alarmed. The love of country and our common humanity should be defended. It is an assault on who we are as a nation, as Americans. And the past is a safe guide for the future.

The perpetual characters in the political and economic life of the nation, for all of Binta’s 35 years, have been mostly images of white people as the perpetual characters in the political and economic life of the nation – and this have become influencer of the life and thought of African Americans, not as an option from choices to choose from, but more of an imposition, literally. These images situate white people as the land owners, who lived here from the beginning of time, and the rest of us as illegal aliens, to be accommodated, tolerated. As if our lives, the lives of Black and Brown people have no meaning, no depth, beyond servitude, and needs the approval, acknowledgement of white people to a meaningful life. A motive, influence, that is bad and cruel. And as another eminent historian stated, these images colonize our thoughts, she lamented.

Binta wants, not just as an imperative, but as a primordial obligation in her narratives – she’s compelled to do what most others have ignored, or rarely acknowledge – mark history while the stories are still being written, while they are still being talked about – which brings us to a new way of looking at these things, and which allows for a new way of fighting the injustice, inequity, that pervades. She wants to stir Black and Brown people to themselves, their history, their true history, and not the ones told by those who would like them and the world to think a jaundiced way – her goal then is unearthing even the littlest of the erased and suppressed stories, that have been hidden from plain view, kept in the dark, for so long: she actually wanted to use eons; being polite as ever, she chose what everyone would easily understand – a long time. She wants to leave structures in place, thoughts architecture, if you may, that would be used as a reference point – as a way of telling our stories, structures built to allow creativity, free thinking, to truly flourish.

In doing so, she’s running her own enterprise, created for the cause, a reference place for those who want to talk and write about our history, all our history, of all communities. This, she believes is the least she can do to advance the path to a more equal society – our journey to that more perfect union, as promised in the document, the document that holds the ideals to the foundation of the land. Binta, like eminent scholars and writers and exemplary citizens of yore, is pushing to express our individual dark and brown skin selves without fear or shame. Because, as she would say, she knows that we are beautiful and ugly too, just like the rest of mankind. And in that sphere, there’s the good, the ugly and the bad, even as talents abound in all populations.

African Americans, Black people, like other racial groups, are knowledgeable, and like other groups, are ignorant, they are law-abiding as other groups are, and sometimes they are not, just like other groups – they are secure and insecure just as other groups are, they are hardworking and lazy, just as other groups are: to her, all racial groups are equal in the merits and demerits. This equality of the racial groups, what makes them equal, is easy to discern: and that being our common humanity, which is perfect and imperfect. Yes, our common humanity is imperfect and complex. She wants to tell America to tone down its anti-Black racism. These would be part of the structure she wants to put in place. The narratives, lamentation, ergo meditation, ergo clarity, transparency, ergo answers, ergo understanding, ergo a more perfect union realization, made more easy.

Because for generations, in the mind of America, the African American, the Black people have been seen more as a formula than human being: it is why the blood, the 1/3 formula came to being: a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be kept down or in his/her place. And in some times, when the other wants to be generous, helped up, to be debated, analyzed, worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, and what she calls a social bogey or a social burden: the label of welfare moms come to mind, even as the majority of welfare recipients are the other. These labels are given to us to brainwash and hold us down, hypnotized into believing all the lies, big and small.

Binta knows that by helping, as part of this lamentation, ergo meditation, she would be helping in the shedding of the old chrysalis of the African American, Black people – because of this, she is achieving something like a spiritual reawakening, emancipation. All this, by Shedding who and what do not serve the African American, the Black people. Emancipating the American consciousness, and banging on the door of the classical canon. Because in our common humanity, Black people have provided, created so much for appropriation by others – they have influenced, inspired Native Americans, Asians, whites, Hispanics and middle eastern just as those other groups have inspired and influenced African Americans. Around the world, we are becoming, she muses – As in a moment of delight, delight in the cause.

She knows that we are living in an important moment in Black History, and what’s exciting her is being able to absorb all this, and live in the structures she’s creating, helped along from the formerly erased, suppressed records and all – in all the expression of human life, in African American life, she’s seeing that accurate narratives, truly told stories, in all forms of expression, are no longer hidden, erased or downright purged – in this sphere of our common humanity, she cannot imagine anything more exciting than what she’s observing, and absorbing – A rising generation that isn’t afraid to call out racism and injustice when they see it. A generation that is out front in the fight against systemic inequities, injustices and the suppression of people, particularly Black People, and the larger social activism.

Binta knows that sometimes, the biggest worries are about the littlest things, and thankfully for her, she muses, they are making it – in spite of the violence and chaos that have trailed the yearnings for better treatment. All everyone has asked for, is that governance, vis a vis the people, be guided by ideals explicitly stated document, the American Ideals, that all men are created equal, and endowed by inalienable rights to freedom, justice, fairness, equality and happiness. She’s not looking, not trying to link arms without questioning what we are linking arms for: unity with purpose: for a more percent union.

Because despite our best efforts, she sees how Black people are criticized for never being put-together enough, and when they do, they are told they are too showy. They are made to always walk tentatively – a tentative line of who we are, and what the public sees us as. She is learning, and resolute about “No” being a complete sentence. And reminds herself that she and her people are not in competition with others, not as in the zero sum espoused by the other. Just like the others, we, she said: are part of the human race, following the trajectory of the lives we are meant to live, lead. Because, optimism should not be seen as opposed to pessimism, but in conversation with it. Because one’s optimism is never as powerful as it is in that moment when one wants to give it up.

She believes that the way we can all be helpful is not to negotiate the feelings of fear or doubt, but to ask: what led us to this place, this darkness, and what can lead us out of the shadows, as we navigate our way, our path to a more perfect union, as recited in the document. We have to crown ourselves with the belief, the belief that what we are about, and what we are here for, is way beyond this moment. Binta is learning so much about herself, and to the extent, her group, that she’s not lightening that strikes once, she and her group is the hurricane that keeps the story going, all the time, as long as there are inequities, injustice to fight – people can expect to see her again and again, as long as these anomalies exist. These are narratives of bold integrity and originality – I called it that, Binta would never use such words, too big, she would say – her narrative, the infrastructure, architecture she leaving in place, for posterity, is on a detailed landscape of an ideal republic coming to life. Lamentations, ergo meditation that help shed light on darkness, a dream to walk forward – one that feels more achievable with every step.

Binta is not trying to erase what’s there, because that will take lifetimes – not inter lifetimes. Because this came out of the making, from generations of oppressive calculated misinformation. But, she can assert truth and facts and say: this information is missing, or that information is deliberately hidden, suppressed from previous narratives – she can assert that these were points of view that were never meant to be considered. Because even as Black history often focus on slavery, especially the ones that downplay the atrocities of the slave trade, and confer nostalgia upon plantation life and portray the enslaved as grateful to their protective owners.

These stories often make Black character ancillary to rousing white allies, white people, and everyone else. And they go about without any inkling of complicity in racial and racist structures. Here, in this sphere, we are being treated as objects, as opposed to subjects, i.e., incarceration’s ties to slavery. She knows that for years, our stories, she muses, have been told and commodified in a way that reduced her people in other people’s eyes and in our own eyes. To her, it is important for us, her people, to rescue our narrative – because, that’s what will rescue our humanity. It is understanding where we share common, core values, and putting aside what they want us to fight over, in the game of divide and conquer. Kids, she says, want to be the success they see. They want to sit tall in the saddle. They want to see Black excellence in all that they have excelled in – as in the Black excellence Industrial Complex, dating back to millennia. They want to see manifestations of these.

To Binta, her stories, narratives, challenge the hegemonic narratives of America. In doing so, tapping into the prevalent hurt, joy, anger and sorrow coursing through the Black community, and forge a path for their peers and those who will come later to follow. Where the child of a farmer and mechanic, can strive, with a strong will to succeed. Here, she is betting on herself to advance this narrative to new heights. Creating a pensive and methodical narrative that work to bring clarity, and advance our path to a more perfect union. It is an inward and outward reflection that will connect with all and all, in the public sphere. It is original as it is ambitious – a narrative, that’s insightful and wise. Courageous and prudent. Even in all our imperfections, our imperfect acts. Our acts of imperfection. Because to Binta, historical context is extremely important, as a part of reconciliation with our past. This to her, is not to make anyone feel bad, but to enlighten us to be who we were meant to be. Because it is not the claim of systemic racism that threatens national cohesion, our national unity, it is the systemic racism.

I watched Binta as she reclined to a more somber mood, she then began to narrate her encounter with the eminent scholar, professor, writer and exemplary citizen, on a poignant experience that excavated other memories, memories that were once buried. The professor, eminent scholar, writer and exemplary citizen told her that by maintaining so much clarity about her life’s work, she will not make others’ agendas become hers. So she does not think about self-care in material terms. No, walking outdoors, running to clear her head. Being generous with “No”, saying “Yes” only when she actually want to do something, these are all non-material self-care.

The eminent scholar, professor, writer and exemplary citizen then continued narrating the poignant story – her experience in her department with two other new assistant professors. She said that from the beginning, she and the other assistant professors were told that becoming an associate professor with tenure required publishing a book with top-ranked university press. She said that the two people of color did just that. The white person did not. They all got tenure. A decade later, she has written a second book and edited another, and that white colleague still hasn’t published a first book. That fact, to the professor, reflects less on this individual white person than on the people who weighted her contributions equal to his and still believed they had credibility to judge her work, her record.

And she added an aside: what she likes to always say: she has been surrounded by white people her entire life, and that has not meant being surrounded by excellence. That as a Black woman, she’s constantly reminded that she was never meant to do anything at the university but clean, so the standards for promotion were not set with her in mind. White men created them, so they are the ones best positioned to meet them. Nevertheless, she met those standards, while white men often fell short. And when they do, criteria magically change, but no one considers this “lowering” of standards. Affirmative action comes to mind, just as welfare mom analogized the other premise That language emerges only if the beneficiary is not a straight white man. She then decided as a principle, never to put stock in their opinion of her work. She does not waste time and energy believing that if she had done something differently, she would have different outcome. Her refusal to ignore the injustices that shape her profession has been her truest form of self-care.

The freedom from the burden of taking personal responsibility for inequities she did not create is only part of what she deserves. And she deserves joy that cannot be extinguished by the discrimination she cannot avoid experiencing. She tells herself that this was about her own affirmation. She said that at some point, she started thinking the number 3, for the three areas of the job: research, teaching, and professional service, and how she has excelled in all of them, in spite of it all. When she looks at the gifts she gives herself for accomplished milestones, she is reminded that she does not need to wait for others to tell her she earned them. And that is the only gift she can give herself. Another form of self-care. Yes, she says, it is at one’s best harvest that one can understand these dynamics, nuanced but poignant stories of life, of humanity, our common humanity, and yes, of self-care. This is what guides and keeps us sane. We should never forget our initial intension. Our goals and why we embarked on them in the fist place. This, according to Binta, is why she narrates the book of lamentation, ergo meditation, ergo clarity, answers, and a shined light on the journey to a more perfect union. It is an invitation to keep thinking.

I looked up, realized, that the sun is nearly set as wind drifts through open windows. There was a stillness to the narrative; solemn, but no less socially impactful, even as clarity from it, soothed like balm to raw skin, while many dark days may lie ahead, one could envision the endless lowlights receding, giving way to a shining and much brighter one to come. The white supremacist insurrection at the nation’s Capital on January 6, 2021, the one the whole world witnessed.

Binta knows that we are not too far removed from the racial reckoning of the past – that last summer protests, seeking justice for all the inequities built into the system, the ones many refuse to acknowledge, even as they stare in their faces, remarkable. And this makes for a timeline great narrative, rather than a single story. Because, time has only heightened the magnitude of these inequities, the spectrum of Black lives and travails – Black culture and creative freedom. Portraying our diversity, proving once more that we have rights engrained in the document, the same range of outward expression that others are afforded. This, she knows will make for rich observation, rich navigation, shedding light where there’s darkness. And she made one thing critically clear, to live life as she preached, holding everyone in her orbit to the same.

This realm also gives us opportunities to do well by doing good, she says. Sometimes, detractive relationships and ruthless interactions are made of these. Moments. What to do? Silly question: I am already all in. To Binta, it does not take a magnifying glass to the difficult patch of the terrain she has to navigate, negotiate to know this – For Binta, from girl to womanhood. She sugarcoats little of this rite of passage. She knows some monsters that are kinder than people, and some people that are more vicious than monsters. She knows that wolves and foxes are deadly enemies. She knows that mountains are like battle array, flowers and plants like soldiers, flowing water like swords, flying birds like bows. And according to her ancients, she knows that in this world, the whole world, the art of war is everywhere. And you ask me, how did we get here? Wars are supposedly conducted to right some wrongs. These wrongs, after after all said and done, were not righted. Which brings to mind the adage: the more things are supposed to change, the more they remain the same, especially when subterfuge is used as a means to get ahead. Binta knows that some of the issues we are dealing with today, that have caused so much pain to a lot of people, especially her people, could have been corrected during reconstruction.

She lamented the lack of political awareness, and will on the part of some of our people: this being from an extinct type of less mediated childhood, with a timelessness quality to it, in the turmoil, judgement, and bewildering choices made, as the mind begin to explore independent thoughts, that are eternal. Binta raises a periscope into the ferocious inner workings of the mind of these people who crafted the Jim crows into law, and implemented them brutally.

To her old self, childhood, this was a body agitated by what she saw, heard, the life that writhed within, that was consuming her, and realized that it cannot all be left to adults, because adults cannot sculpt how their children turn out no matter how diligently they try – their work ate it. They just watch them, worry about them, and are careful how they talk about them and the things, around them. The children are sometimes, just invincible, like paintings on the wall. It was these experiences that led to the commitment she forged: a desire to do something about it, all these experiences that writhed in her. And here we are, what to do? What was also amazing was the fact that even such romance infused interludes as first love and sexual discovery were dark experiences – because she could not in the right mind, conscience enjoy these, while so much brutality, evil deeds were daily occurrences. She knows that sometimes in life, things happen we are not prepared for, but should not be allowed to consume us. It’s about outcomes and principles – the politics of things. To her, it’s about getting it done no matter the politics side – speaking truth to naked exercise of political power, designed to harm and repress a particular group. To Binta, it’s all about a move from darkness to a new moon.

The idea behind her laments, which she hopes would allow for meditation, is to make people talk to each other, plainly – if it makes you feel uncomfortable enough to cringe, or pause, or angry, it means you have been touched by the indifference, the pandemic of indifference. You then begin to cultivate the idea of what it means for there to be a portion of the population that believes that there’s a superior and there’s an inferior sets of the electorate. The lamentation makes one reflect, truly think about where they stand vis a vis these systemic biases that hold a segment of the population to fear for their lives, to always be in constant anxieties – that become detrimental to their health, and by a large degree, contribute to the so-called diseases that are called inherently more black affecting.

This to her, is a myth. A false narrative, because these diseases are a consequence of the environment, as already stated, that they are boxed into. So the crucible of false narratives that act as a hypnotic trance, are designed to deceive, hold a people in mental captivity, where they believe false to be truth, and truth is suppressed. And these already vulnerable communities begin to blame themselves, begin to believe that it is their inherent physical weakness that contribute to their unhealthy nature. And everyone buys into it – until the woke, the retelling of yesterday’s stories today – double whammy, Binta’s laminations, er, meditation – Lamentation drives meditation, meditation drives clarity, clarity drives enlightenment, enlightenment drives harmony, ergo, nirvana. And more people exit indifference, and the pandemic of indifference slowly dies off. And then, Hope.

There were exemplary leaders, there were not-so-exemplary leaders, in exemplary case of crisis management. She listened to their sayings and their trolls. In the coverage of Covid and of the George Floyd Murder. This is the Double Whammy, of Binta’s lamentation, er, meditation. I did chime in from time to time, but very limited – Binta did the lament. Lamentations, she believes, inspires meditation, and meditation inspires a clearer mind. More unhurried, lessen speed. How did we get here? We got here through the machination of Jim Crow, even as some the participants worked against their own interests, to maintain the supremacy.

“Laments from exemplary leaders and Exemplary Citizens: and whatever they re talking about, you react to it. Think, yea or nay, yes. tt is the reason for the lamentation, to make people think and talk, hello! Clarity is the word we are looking for here,” she said exasperatedly.

And just like that she started narrating an experience at a conference, attended by some exemplary and not so exemplary leaders and citizens.

Here’s Binta, from the conference hall experience: “This exemplary leader came up to me, I took it maybe he was bored, and wanted to kill time, by making small talk. But I was surprised to see that he wanted to know if I had some questions on things. So, I asked him to give me his observation on things, in this case, I referenced the double whammy, the twin murder of George Floyd and a raging pandemic. He said: During the first few months of this year, we have seen once again how fragile our global world is. How great the danger of sliding into chaos facing all countries – common threats from the double whammy of Covid-19 and the protests against systemic racism – Bias in all its form facing all countries in one form or the other, and not all are equipped to deal with it properly.”

The eminent citizen continued: “No one country can cope with it alone,” he paused, not sure if he were about to rearrange his thoughts, or go a different route, but he continued: “the immediate challenge today is to defeat theses old and new vicious enemies.” In this case, I am assuming that the common enemy os the double whammy – the resultant protests resulting from the murder of George Floyd, and the pandemic raving the world, and ravaging America, as it was unable or truly willing to be consistent in addressing it, in this case, them both. But , he continued: “Common threat. The old enemy being legacies of Jim Crow, the new one, Covid-19. Even today, we need to start thinking about what comes next, life after it retreats.”

He said among his peers, some are saying that the world will never be the same again. “But what would it be like? A question to ponder, isn’t it?” “Lamentation, er, meditation.” He answered his own question. What came to my mind is: has Binta mentioned her narrative, treatise on lamentation to the eminent citizen? Continuing to answer his own question: He said that would depend on the lessons we learn from this. That breakthroughs always come when we understand that it is our common enemy, a threat to all of us. When we begin to believe that it is for our common good. And yet as we face this double whammy, other global challenges remain, even as we deal with the outcomes of systemic bias, racism that the George Floyd murder brought to the fore, in a very vivid, daytime, in realtime murder, and the protests that came from it, bringing the old enemy forward. He just hopes that this time, we push for a final resolution: for promises made to become promises kept. He reeled off others that have become more urgent, such as: poverty, and inequality, the degradation of mother earth, our environment. He believes the depletion of the earth and the oceans, problematic. He thinks the migration crisis another. And now, a grim reminder of another threat: deceases and epidemic, that in a global, interconnected world can spread with unprecedented speed.

He said the response to this new challenge can not be purely national. The world community needs to come together, develop and implement strategies and goals common to all mankind. “Yet,” according to him, “we have failed to plan, develop and implement these needed strategies.”

The eminent citizen went on to say, “progress toward the Millennial Development goals have been extremely uneven. We see today that the pandemic and its consequences are hitting the poor particularly hard, thus exacerbating the problems of inequality.” Binta then asked “Why were these admonitions, of the eminent citizen and others about ways to get from point A to the more perfect union, not adhered to? This and other missteps is how we got here – it is the answer to “how did we get here?” He said: “what we urgently need now is a rethinking, reimagining of the entire concept of security, for the nation and its people, security in all spheres. Because, he said: “The aftermath of the Cold War has been envisioned mostly on military terms. The news is about airstrikes, new weapons, missiles of new generation. This year the world has been at the brink of disasters, clashes that could involve great powers.” He mentioned the serious hostilities in Iran, Iraq and Syria, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Armenia, among others. And though the participants eventually stepped back, or agreed to negotiated peace, it was the same dangerous and reckless policy of brinkmanship,” he concluded.

Then he posed a question of his own, it is that if it is not clear by now that going it alone in a global crisis like the pandemic, and wars and the arms race cannot solve today’s global problems, when would it be clear? War and unilateral decisions on things, he said, is a sign of weakness, defeat, a failure of politics. In my mind, and I assure in Binta’s, the obvious nagging question is: Why did we not listen? Why did great and small nations and their citizens not listen, even as the burden to listen fell on the leaders. Because exemplary leaders are born out of major crisis. It is when you separate true leaders from pretenders.

He continued: the overriding goal must be human security: provide food, water, shelter, a clean environment and caring for people’s health and wellbeing. To achieve it, we need to develop strategies, make preparations, plan and create reserves of essential materials and supplies. But all efforts will fail, if governments continue to do the go it alone, or fuel the arms race, instead of the human race because the trillions of dollars spent the last few years on warmongering and execution, could have been applied for, and towards the common good, caring about our common humanity – and above all, all these should be presented without any sharp edges. Inviting the other side to come, work with all, plead with a smile on our faces, even when discussing these deep thoughts, seemingly intractable issues among world enemies. And enmity is an abstract. These were the lamentations of the exemplary leader. Food for thought.

In the same conference, of world leader, leadership not not just of governments, but leaders who show their leadership from word, pronouncements and deeds: and among this group there was an exemplary spiritual leader, renowned, not used to talking too much. He was deeply concerned about the state of the world. In his lamentations, he said: “Sometimes, friends ask me to help with some problem in the world, using some “magical power;” I always tell them that this spiritual leader has no magical powers. If I did, I would not feel pains in my legs or a sore throat. I tell them we are all the same as humans beings, and we experience the same fears, the same hopes, the same uncertainties. I tell them that from my background’s perspective, every sentient being is acquainted with suffering and the truths of sickness, old age and death. That as human beings, we have the capacity to use our minds to conquer anger and panic and greed.”

After all this, I decided to tell Binta and the exemplary citizen what the venerable one said about not being angry, not being greedy and above all, not being stupid. I especially told the exemplary citizen of my gratitude in able to hear him in person. And that if all these admonitions of the venerable one, the ancient, are maintained, the world will be a more peaceful place, harmonious and all. This in recognition of his premises viability. The venerable one then told Binta that it is why he stresses emotional disarmament as a goal to try to see things realistically and clearly – without the confusion of fear and rage.

He said that if a problem has a solution, we must work on it to find it; if it does not, we need not waste time thinking about it, but take a pause. He was quick to remind that the entire world is interconnected, interdependent – that there’s a universal responsibility. He used the outbreak of this terrible disease to show that what happens to one person can soon affect every other being. And reminds us that a compassionate or constructive act – whether working in hospitals or just observing safe distance, physical or social, have the potential to help many, as we can see that nobody is immune to this virus: rich or poor, big or small. Powerful or not powerful, peasant or aristocrats. We are all worried about our loved ones and the future, especially of global health, economy, and our own individual homes. “Pray as mush as I do, prayers, I know, are not enough.”

The venerable one, sage, then went on to say: “This crisis shows we must all take responsibility where we can, and must combine the courage doctors and nurses are showing with empirical science to begin to turn this situation around and protect our future from more such threats. Denying science not helpful. Science is what makes us, brought us here.”

He continued, the venerable, that is, he said: “in this time of great fear, it is important we think of the longterm challenges and possibilities of the entire world.” In my summation, I took this to mean, that he was echoing what the previous lamenter, the other world leaders’ lamentations and proffered ideas to solving this as one and the same. Because, according to him, photographs from out of space shows that there are no boundaries on our blue planet, all are artificial, man made for control.

To the eminence, venerable one, sage, the pandemic serves as a warning that only by coming together with a coordinated, global response will we meet the unprecedented magnitude of the challenges we face – keeping in mind that nobody is free from suffering and pain, and we must extend our hands to others who lack homes, resources or family to protect them. This crisis shows we are not separate from one another – even when we are living apart. Therefore, we all have a responsibility to exercise compassion and help.

He continued: “with my background, I believe in the principle of impermanence. Eventually, this enemy, the virus will pass, as I have seen wars and all other terrible threats pass, in my lifetime, and we will have the opportunity to rebuild our global community as we have done many times before. There’s a need to stay safe and stay calm. It is important that we do not lose hope and confidence in the constructive efforts so many are making,” he concluded. Again, the question is: why did we not listen? The venerable one, sage and eminent spiritual leader has for the umpteen time, admonished us on all these, ways for our common humanity to survive and endure. It is the why of how we got here.

Binta, not given to platitudes, paused, and said: “in this same conference, I met another exemplary scholar, who just happens to be a person of color. We talked about the state of the world, as I had done with the two previous guests, exemplary persons. He did not need prompting. He began to speak, with every word enunciated properly, calmly and steadily: “the images and sounds of George Floyd continue to haunt. Media plays them over and over again. It’s part of a ritual practice, a way the nation manages its racist past, sins. People declare their outrage. They, mostly white people, wonder how could this happen in today’s America. The right-wing media decry it all as the violent nature of people who refuse to take responsibility. They defend the police. They condemn the violence. Civility matters more to them than justice.” He stopped to gather his thoughts. And continued: He said he watched the video of George Floyd murder and completely lost it. The stress of the times, combined with the cruelty of the act and Floyd’s desperate plea, broke him, he said. In his own words: “I found myself, which I rarely do, burying my head in my hands, weeping. I thought about all the black people who may watch the video in this pandemic and about the white people who ask the all-too-familiar questions about how we change.”

At this point, I stepped aside and let the eminent scholar lament without my interruptions, which are already far and between. He continued: “We all heard the haunting sound repetition of the words: I can’t breathe.” We saw former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin sit there, smug, hands in his pocket, with little regard for the man dying underneath his knee.”

“As a nation, we have surpassed 100,000 dead, 40 million unemployed – African Americans across the country have been disproportionately hit. The virus plunders lives, the police continue to kill, and people are angry. “

The exemplary scholar continued, his observations and thoughts. He continued: “Anger and fear make a combustible mixture. More than 140 cities have exploded since Floyd’s death. Pundits and politicians have denounced the violence. Police have responded with violence of their own. Bracketing the tear gas and rubber bullets, the way the police have behaved toward the protesters reminds me of how they police Black communities. Contempt, spite and insult are felt in every encounter.” He delivered it with calm and sagacity. No sharpness to his lamentation. It was as if he was pleading for understanding. Community. Join us to make it a better place. He was pleading, his lamentations were.

He continued: “The anger results from accumulated grievance. George Floyd is just among the latest in a long list of our dead at the hands of the police. It also serves as a proxy for the desperation and frustration caused by Covid-19. This kind of expression of angers is never just about the single incident; it carries with it every moment in which the society has told people they are disposable. The horrors of the auction block, the brutality of the lynching tree, the backbreaking work of the cotton field and the slaughterhouses, the sounds of clanging chains on the chain gang, and the daily disregard, fuel the rage.” And the exemplary scholar talked as someone who knows his history. He was not done yet. He continued:

“The fire and looting announce a different kind of presence: those who were once silenced are now heard, and they are shouting across our sordid history at the top of their lungs: “something has happened here,” and they are not going take it anymore.” And he raised a question, the eminent scholar that is: he asked: “How does one live in such a time? What happens in your bones, on your insides, when you’re ravaged by disease and hatred, and the anger threatens to consume you? When we are caught in a double bind, a double whammy. Do we need video footage to convince white America what is happening to us is real. Dealing with the ongoing stress of the virus, how to manage the trauma of the terror of seeing another Black person killed? George Floyd’s death brings into full view the terror and trauma that shadow Black people’s experiences in this country. Covid has not changed that: In it, we see terror, trauma – and coronavirus are knotted together like a thick briar brush with thorns.”

One wonders how we will survive it all. Will racism and the disease finally choke life out of this fragile experiment in democracy? He asked, the eminent scholar, exemplary person. The answer he says; “will depend in part on white America’s willingness to leave shibboleths of American racism behind – to give up this insidious belief that because they are white they ought to be valued more than others, and stop consuming Black suffering like buttered popcorn at the movie.” Those of us who will dare to actually learn from our history, he said, must figure out how to be together differently in a new America. Did they listen to the Eminent, exemplary scholar’s lamentations? No. Because they did not listen – is the “why” of how did we get here. To him, and just like Binta, the idea is to make people talk, think, proffer ideas – look critically at things, and see if it can remain like that or take another path. “Let’s think and talk, “ Binta said, expressing the rational behind the goal of her narrative, why she’s lamenting, and why her lamentation, ergo meditation., is an imperative. She wants to make people think, and thinking give way to talking, ideas are formulated from the thoughts. This is her premise.

The eminent scholar, exemplary citizen continued: he said, “we owe it not only to those who served and sacrificed for our nation, but to ourselves and those succeeding generations to vote him out. I have long known that serving a cause greater than oneself is the highest calling, whether in the military or in civilian life. And I have always tried to be a voice of reason and to speak in a measured way,” – even when he has gone more political, I still found him, the eminent scholar, a great lamenter – he continued, “But this situation calls for a much more direct approach. It is time to call out egregious behavior for what it is.” He did not stop there, and he continued, “For the first time in our (American,) history, a president has repeatedly shown utter and vulgar contempt and disrespect for those who have served and died serving our country.”

He did not stop there, and he continued, “ He took an oath of office that is similar to the one that each person takes who enters the U.S. Military,” “But he has completely failed to uphold his oath. Now we know why. He has admitted that he cannot comprehend the concept of service above self.” He cannot understand selflessness because he is selfish,” he said, “ He cannot conceive of courage because he is a coward. He cannot feel duty because he is disloyal.”

In the words and thoughts expressed by Martin Luther King Jr., the scholar argues that sin is buried so deeply in the human soul that sweet words are insufficient to get people to give up their unjust power. “Instead of assured progress in wisdom and decency,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Man faces the ever-present possibility of a swift relapse not merely to animalism, but into such calculated cruelty as no other animal can practice.” As realists know, this is double whammy – the crisis of the times: and this is not just about race, the economic inequality, environment, healthcare, but also about the greatness, the ideals we espouse to the world – a need to self-correct course, otherwise, we would seem hypocritical and all – and the greatness of the Nation’s Institutions will be so scorned and derided, which of late, has been obvious, and feeling neglected and abused. Binta, lamented, on the double whammy, her lamentation, er meditation to get us talking.

A conference as important as this, and the topics that are covered, which centers on the global-ness of things, geopolitics and our common humanity, becomes the tasks of the community gathered here. And if anyone is qualified to find answers, those who are here are eminently qualified, by virtue of their positions, the different positions they occupy and the aspirations that come with the office – yes, they are better qualified to cover it than the exemplary newsmaker, only because the occupy and the responsibilities that come with – but it is believed, and taken as a given that the voice of the eminent, exemplary newsmaker would be listened to and discussed in their deliberation – his point of views in the different fields are recognized and valued – he is known as a deft analyst of things politics and social, and not too shabby on history.

We had said hellos when we passed each other earlier. And based on the last three eminent, exemplary persons, our conversations, and their lamentations, the eminent newsman becomes a good filter, a crucible, if you may, to make sense, more or less, from all that was said on Double Whammy, and its effects on mankind, our common humanity, American humanity. And here are his views, even as I quickly discovered that his also would move quickly, morphing into lamentations like others before him: the political leader, the spiritual leader and the academic. Here are the newsmaker’s lamentations, albeit previously misunderstood.

He said: “this moment is about police brutality, but it’s not only about that. I keep hearing the word “exhausted.” “People are exhausted by and fed up with the enduring wealth disparities between whites and Blacks, with the health disparities that leave Black people more vulnerable to Covid-19, with the centuries-long disparities in violence and the threat of violence, with the daily indignities of African Americans and the stains that linger on our nation decade after decade.” He was not done, he had more to tell me, even in this very sombre mood, the first I had ever seen him as such: what do I know. It also just happened that this is the first time I am seeing him in person, other times were on TV screen. He is a likable man, I am finding out, reinforced an earlier impression, a formed impression of a celebrity. Mind you, I am not one to go into anyone’s fandom.

He said George Floyd’s killing happened in a context – and that context he said, is racial inequality, disparity. According to him, racial disparity does not make for gripping YouTube videos. It’s just the daily condition of our lives. He said it’s just a condition that people in affluent Manhattan live in one universe and people a few miles in the Bronx live in a different universe. It’s just a condition that many Black families send their kids to struggling inner-city schools while white families move to the suburbs and put on black T-shirts every few years to protest racial injustice. I did say he was not shabby when it came to history. The eminent, exemplary newsman knows his history, just as he knows his news.

He continued: he said the response to this moment would be inadequate if it’s just police reform. That reparations and integration are the way to do that. Reparations would involve an official apology for centuries of slavery and discrimination, as well as spending money to reduce their effects.

Even as he is for reparations, he believes there is a wrong way to spend that money: sending descendants of slavery a check. That to him, would launch a politically ruinous argument over who qualifies for the money, and in the end people might get a $1,000 check that would produce no lasting change. To him, giving reparation money to neighborhoods would be best, the best way to go.

The eminent’s newsman stressed that much of this nation’s segregation is geographic. He says in Minnesota, where George Floyd was killed, early 20th century whites-only housing covenants pushed Blacks into smaller and smaller patches of the city. Highways were built through Black neighborhoods, ripping their fabric and crippling their economic vitality. And because the city gave up on desegregation, you have this long-suffering Black neighborhoods. The home ownership rate for Blacks in Minneapolis is one-third of the white rate, and the typical Black family earns less than half as much as the typical white family.

To really change things, you would have to lift and integrate whole communities, because it takes a whole community to raise a child, to support an adult, to have a bustling local economy and a vibrant civic life. To him, neighborhood should be taken as the agent of change, the unit of change. That those who live in the neighborhoods are the ones with the expertise to lift the neighborhoods. No outsiders with a foundation or a government contract really knows what’s going on in any neighborhood or would be trusted to make the desired change. The people who live in the neighborhood know what to do, they just need the resources to do it.

He posed another question: how can government focus money on formerly redlined neighborhood and other communities? He suggested National Service Programs, A National endowment for civic architecture, modeled after National endowment for the arts, could support neighborhoods nationwide. A social innovation fund, private/public partnership, would be setup to support such organizations. He also mentioned Opportunity grants and K-12 education savings accounts that would help minorities to move to integrated schools.

He reminded me that in the progressive era, governments built libraries nationwide, which remain vital centers of neighborhoods life. With the economic impact of the pandemic, we would soon have a lot of empty retail, commercial space. He said we can build opportunity centers where all the groups moving children from cradle to career could work and collaborate.

He said this is not like we would be reinventing the wheel, because similar things have been done before, The Great Society’s “Community Action” project professed to redistribute power to neighborhoods, but did it in the worst ways, by sending disruptive agitators to spur conflict between local activists and elected officials. The result was rancor and gridlock.

He says the tumultuous moment offers a chance to launch a new chapter in our history, and reparations are part of that launch. Because they offer a chance to build vibrant neighborhoods where diverse people want to live together, where the atmosphere is kids playing outside and not a knee in the back of the neck.

I said: “you must have thought long and hard about all this?” He looked at me, as if to say; did I not tell you that at the beginning, that I have had sleepless nights about all this? But, he is not a condescending man, would not extend a slight to what he considered a not very mindful question. He was gracious as ever, just as we see him on TV. And simply said: “yes.”

The Double Whammy: pandemic and the killing of George Floyd has presented a perfect storm of necessity, technology and mindset. This year, 2020, will go down in history as a time when the rules changed and our lack of preparedness, and the sins of the past led to massive economic side effects while overwhelming our health and social care and social cohesion. Both, begging for reforms, and the strengthening of our foundation and the ideal we hold dear, that the world knows us for as a beacon on the hill. She needs to be true to its ideals to be shaken from its malaise.

Shutting down the economy has extremely disparate impact on various parts of the population, with those in the lower strata of society far less able to weather the effects. And not all the measure, the capabilities encapsulated in the governments response, benefits are distributed equally. Because for those who have limited access to the internet, and the internet of things, some of the measures are, as they relate to schools and work, are much harder or impossible.

The rumors mills, the panic buying, the hoarding and all, including the potential for misinformation and disinformation to pollute the public sphere – public thinking is equally of great concern, all the lamenters agree, and I agree. Good quality and accurate information must be on everyone’s agenda, to weed out misrepresentation by not spreading rumors, unconfirmed guesses and deliberate disinformation. Critical thinking is called for by all.

While every lamenter is reasonably confident that we will survive this Double Whammy, it is important to take into account how important preparation and foresight will be our moving to protect against future occurrences, future pandemics. It is what is expected of leadership, why we call them leaders. Because there is no question in anybody’s mind that another will come and we must be more ready for the next one than we are for this one, and proceed to keep the promises made after reconstruction and all. Building the interconnected world we all rely on, requires vision, tenacity, humility, unwavering optimism, courage and prudence. As an eminent scholar wrote: “if you cant’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” This pandemic has suffered from lack of credible measurements. There are lamenters who believe that the pandemic, covid-19 is a harbinger of biological warfare: its rapid unpredictable spread that might infect all, including the launchers of the bioweapon, the disease.

Why did they not listen to these lamenters and the solutions they proffered? It is the why of how we got here. We got here by not doing what we preach, especially what we preached to the rest of the world. We need to avoid the hypocrisy label, by doing the self-correction, doing the right things, keeping the promises, those made at reconstruction and those embedded in the documents of our ideals.

It so happened that as I was exiting the hall, I ran into the eminent newsmaker, the exemplary one, and this time around, he wanted to quickly talk to me about ideals and expectations – ideals and expectations that never got implemented, or implemented one way, leaving some out of the original equation, the calculation of things in the ideals.

He said: that we as a society believe in education. We assume that if you help someone get a good education and the right skills, he, she will be able to succeed in society. Opportunities will abound. Social harmony will reign. But, he looked even more somber, and said slowly: this formula hasn’t worked for many African Americans. Some gains were made over generations, but these gains, as of yet, have not led to the progress that those preaching the gospel, people like him: the American dream predicted that all young people are entitled to. Lamentations and the retelling of old stories now.

The eminent newsmaker, exemplary citizen lamented the fact that the median income for white, college-educated household is $106,000, for a comparable Black college graduate only $82,000. That in 2017, Black college graduates earned 21% less per hour than white college graduates overall, Black families earn $57.30 for every $100 white families earn, and widening, not shrinking.

He said the wealth gaps are even more horrendous. That in 2020, the wealth gap between white and Black families is as wide as it was in 1968. He highlighted the disparity by quoting a member of the St. Louis Fed, who pointed out that between 1992 and 2013, college-educated whites saw the value of their assets soar by 86%, while that for their Black counterparts saw theirs fall by 55%. He stressed the fact that college-educated Blacks tend to carry higher student loans burdens. Which becomes a big drag on upward mobility, and wealth transfer. When a young white adult wants to buy a home, his parents often help. At the same stage in life, a Black man is more likely to be sending money home to help his parents.

So, in other words, the pent-up anger, energy and anxiety and rage have spilled out. Covid-19 laid bare the nation’s broader racial inequities, creating the Double Whammy. About 13% of the US population are African Americans. But according to CDC data, 22% of those with Covid-19, and 23% of those who have died from it, are Black. Some 44% of African Americans say they have lost a job or have suffered household wage loss, and 73% say they lack an emergency fund to cover expenses, according to the Pew Research Center. The average full-time white farmer made $17,190 in farm income in 2017, while the average full-time Back farmer made $2,404. This is according to U.S. Census.
Binta overheard a protester say: “its either Covid-19 is killing us, cops are killing us or the economy is killing us.” This, again, is the why of how we got here. And the image of Derek Chauvin, the police officer, casually kneeling on victim, George Floyd, has spurred this national, global uprising and reckoning.

Continuing on the same trajectory: According to statistics compiled by Washington Post, police shot and killed 962 to 1,004 Americans each year, Black Americans are nearly three times as likely as whites people to be killed by police, according to database Mapping Police Violence, and after every killing, there’s uproar, then it dies down and the nation moves on, until the next one happens. How much more can the people bear? Every day in this awful, exhausting year feels like rock bottom, and then we tunnel further into some hideous crawl space. Millions of jobs have been lost, over 600,000 deaths, and the reckoning continues.

And this is quite fitting, terribly uncanny timing, that the struggle, protests, posed by the double whammy would define the final months before a bitterly divisive election, is a conflict that dates back to America’s founding, reconstruction, promises made and not kept – it all coalesce into a force so powerful it can push even a once-in-a-century-pandemic aside and coupled with the killing of George Floyd to create this uniquely double whammy.

George Floyd died at dusk on Memorial Day, in a city where Black residents were about nine times more likely than whites to be arrested for low-level offenses, according to a ACLU study – and on that day, officer Chauvin was the last to arrive at the scene of George Floyd’s arrest for suspicion of buying a pack for cigarettes with a twenty dollar bill, the clerk assumed was counterfeit. And since he joined the Minneapolis police department in 2001, Chauvin has been the subject of at least 17 conduct complaints, almost all of which were closed without discipline, according to city records. All this, is responsible for the pent-up anger that combined covid-19 and the protest to create the double whammy.

I did not expect what the eminent newsmaker, exemplary citizen said. He argued that increasing educational opportunities doesn’t by itself reduce income disparities – or social disparities. He said minority students who graduated from college were supposed to enter a less racist America. They have not – 17% of college-educated Blacks say they face discrimination regularly, compared with 9% of high school-educated Blacks. He said that half of all Black Americans with some college degree said they have feared for their personal safety because of their race, compared with roughly a third of those with less education.

I realized that it is easy to caricature things as just the echo chamber of the liberal left or the conservative right, and one side fighting defensively against such elitist clone – our able and eminent, exemplary newsman, is a cut above all that, hovers above any such garment, they do not fit him, he is able to quickly disabuse one. His career is a supreme reminder of the indispensability of fearless, yet prudent newsman, citizen. This is what I have long admired him for, always taking the middle ground, unbiased and truth to power, come what may, and his ire, if I may call it that, is only on whose sides the pen strikes. Just as I was, Binta was impressed – Get twofold result, with one strike, with half the effort. Mindful of the fact that a predictable move results in a predictable outcome. Yes, Binta got all this from the newsman’s lecture.

Much of what he writes, because writing is what he does, sometimes do distress and enrage those who deserve his ire, criticism, or on many occasions, good will reportage: yes. The ire, speaking truth to power is most directed at the old lions, who would rather it all stay in the dark archive, history’s past, and the good will, well, at those who work assiduously to self-correct, and make good on the light that would shine on the path to a more perfect union. He believes indifference is a pandemic, uncured, becomes a destabilizing vector. He believes that public cowardice in the face of the perversion of truth – including people’s indifference to evidence, the corruption of integrity, which on any given day, would prompt moments of belligerent contempt and fury. But in the end, I believe all he cares for, all he’s about, is any measure of good his writing does, especially how Binta puts it, “because so many of our citizens are grateful followers of his news, and none of his great advocacies will have been done in vain. It is the why, of how did we get here? Lamentations, ergo meditation, retelling old stories now.

Racism, fear, division, these are powerful weapons. And if we don’t deal with them head-on, can destroy this nation. This was from a former first lady, as told by Binta. It is her style, both in form and textualism. On laws and on the meaning of words, rather than the aims of the legislators. Style. She’s brutal in her opinions: castigating ideological opponents, versus diplomatic approach, confidence in her legal analyses, and willing to debate, but unfailingly polite, her rhetoric much less combustible when all present are calm, steady and coherent in presentation, in approach. A powerful advocate of embraced philosophy. Her collegiality and contrast, her combination of ideology and curtesy makes her more effective, more dangerous, positioning her to influence not just the outcomes, but also the language of opinions that become the law of the land. She is very tough, and does not like bad arguments. She’s your antithesis. Where you’re doubtful, she’s unequivocal. The things you find terrifying, she finds nonthreatening. Even as she’s always on point, she lives a carefree life, unlike most of us, and still stay focused and attentive to the important things.

Her childhood, growing up in the Ecumenical faith community, where people praise, and espouse a teaching that submits that women be submissive to men, in husband and wife sphere. Even as some fear that if they are part of a movement that subjugate women, they are really bad members of it, Binta found it empowering, a learning vehicle for a future use – to be pulled out as she navigates the world as she finds it – always of the mind: going with the flow with mindfulness, courage and prudence, and awareness of the laws that govern the land.

And even though she was aware that when any member is subjugated in that marriage, it is the husband they believe, she found all that a learning state of her growth, as she said earlier, to be used as she continues on the life she has chosen. All this, she believe, she can change from the outside, and then, she says: “It is better to know oneself and also know the enemy. And the best place to know the enemy is from within.

Her best friend in high school, who also is a member of the congregation, was a bit to her right, Binta’s politics and philosophy. She preached conservative, and they find much to applaud, including, including as a judge, her narrow reading of abortion rights, and a muscular view on the second amendment. Now she’s being considered for a higher judicial appointment, and some fear that if she is confirmed, she would be on the bench at a time the judiciary might be asked to consider many major and legacy issues that affect a chunk of the population. The affordable Care Act, popularly called ObamaCare, and the adjudication of election related cases in a year Trump has repeatedly railed, claimed without evidence that the election would be a fraud – putting voting by mail in disrepute. And we have voting cases winding through lower courts. It is believed, according to Binta, that if confirmed, her friend, if she lives up to her predecessor’s age, whatever her influence on other justices, she would wield influence for a generation, and possibly much more, based on her relative young age.

Binta went off track here for a minute, I had not seen this coming, where she ad hoc, and segue into a diatribe of consequence. This she says, came from an invasive thought, a thought that came to her mind, because of a nominee, who also happened to be an old school mate, nominated to the highest court in the land. She was reciting to me what she had heard others say about the woman, her friend, even as she did not mean to eavesdrop. And she was not done, on her diatribe of consequence.

Somehow, on a dime, she segued back to the eminent, exemplary newsmaker, citizen. And I was glad she did, for I like his oral treatise, and I like learning history, for lack of a better word, learning history on the cheap. She continued:The information he’s given me are all in public record, archives, yet, I must confess I was not familiar with most of the facts. He narrated how some Black professors, and others both in academia and in the corporate world, feel profound alienation, that they rarely give or go to parties of the peers, colleagues – they just decide to not entertain or attend casual faculty functions, not wanting to ingratiate themselves into the lives of their white colleagues, because according to an Ivy League Black Professor, it is already hard enough to breathe in America. Everyday you feel a knee on your neck. He recommended some notable Black writers to read for reference, to get clarity on the subject: Ta-Nahisi Coates, currently the most celebrated American writer, Ibram X. Kendi, and others who have lost faith in the way schooling is done. He mentioned “Afro Pessimism,” by Frank B. Wilderson 11, of UC Irvine, who argues that anti-Black violence is intrinsic to world history. Yet, they believe that Blacks are not going to be genocided like Native Americans. We are being genocided, but genocided and regenerated because the spectacle of Black Death is essential to the mental health of the world. Morbid, I said. A huge sacrifice, I said. In this lamentation, er meditation, and the retelling of old stories, now.

In his conclusion, the eminent citizen, exemplary newsmaker, deduced the following: that many conservatives and moderates say these ideas being discussed come from campus culture. They believe that when people read Foucault, they develop an alienated view of the world. But, according to him, the blunt facts, however suggest that these writers are responding to something real, in the world both of less educated and of the highly educated. People are responding to the failure of the mainstream, moderate, progressive formula for how to create a more equal pluralist America. And as a moderate himself, the evidence doesn’t support moderation when it comes to racial equity. Better schooling is essential to creating a fair and equal America. But, according to him, it’s not nearly enough. And it became the cheapest way of gaining historical knowhow, facts on the cheap, ever. What an enjoyable listening. And I was good a student, a good listener.

I couldn’t wait for the next person on Binta’s narrative, who the next exemplar person of choice would be, from Binta’s mind – a person worthy enough to warrant a mention in this, her treatise on lamentation, that she hopes would lead to meditation, ergo, clarity for all, especially of the open-minded souls, who have given up on indifference. People would talk, and exchange their histories, the ones they own, because it all out there, not culled from the erased, hidden, or destroyed ones, that others crafted for them – their own history. From this, everyone knows everybody’s position, the trajectory they took to get here, the present, and allows everyone to make the right decision, a fair, a more fair decision about their fellow American – going by what is ascribed in the Document, that undergirds our democracy, the one to a more perfect union.

No one wants to be associated with a pandemic, or spreader of it, and indifference is a pandemic, and therefore should not be spread, but eliminated. We are all supposed to be enlightened after all, no? And most people who have visited the British museum, like I did, their most memorable part, which also happens to be mine, the most enjoyable part, in my visit to the British Museum was the Enlightenment. And we should do and practice what we preach.

The next ride was not long in coming. Binta proceeded to narrate a lament from another eminent, exemplary writer, particularly as it pertains to her gender. She narrated the fact that, throughout our history, Black Americans are not only dehumanized, they are treated as unequal, deemed less valuable by the systems that purport to be for all people. Black life is so utterly disregarded that many Americans seem to have normalized the idea that someone deserves to die for possibly using a counterfeit money, $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Or being killed in their own home like Breana Taylor when police fatally shot her, in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment, when white plainclothes officers of the Louisville Metro Department forced entry into the apartment. Breana Taylor was in for the night with her boyfriend, after a job as a full-time ER technician, she was also a former Emergency Medical Technician. She was killed for no reason other than the color of her skin suspicion. Or the fact that coming from an impoverished community can result in ones death, being killed. Or not having the resources financially or physically, in an economically deprived station to survive a natural disaster or a pandemic.

The able, eminent, exemplary writer went on to tell Binta what became a good part of her lamentation treatise – he told her about how today, America is failing to keep its promise to itself about being the land of the free by not truly examining once again this awful legacy of racism and the brutality in policing. He said sadly, this is just one example of America failing its own people. He talked about the essential nature of Black American jobs, the ones they hold, that further expose them to diseases, from stress and contacts. He talked about the high maternal death rates, more likely to have diabetes, and high blood pressure, and have a poverty rate that more than double that of white Americans. All from structural barriers and indifference, another pandemic. These continue to hold back Black Americans. He believes that if Black people and Black culture were erased, not only would the world be poorer for it, but no one left would be any safer. They would just be the next target.

The eminent newsman, exemplary citizen went on to say: that according a Pew Research Center report last year, two-thirds of Americans said that the expressions of racism have grown more common during the psst few years, at least the last four or so. Almost like a brewing confrontation – with every events that divide, that is happening. Racism being catalyzed. He said an editor of a major Newsmagazine had proffered that to be a true advocate of change, a true ally of the Black community, requires the willingness of white people to be uncomfortable with all the inequalities that they see. That this has been a time of essential discomfort for the U.S. – amount of reckoning that has been long time coming. He said in America’s road to fulfilling its promise, fulfill the ideals embedded in its constitution, it is essential to address this searing accounting, treatise on America’s denial about systemic racism.

He says politicians, activists and everyday people can and should debate what to do about this reality, and he continued: but it is a reality, one evident in volume of data, research and reporting, not to mention the lived experience of millions of African Americans. He said hat after all these years, far too little has changed, evidenced by the devastating detail of covid’s disproportionate impact on Black and Brown neighborhoods.

He lamented the need to speak and print truth to power, to always stand for the equality of every person. That this is not a partisan or a policy position. It is a basic human value that should run through all. That we must hold ourselves accountable for ensuring that it runs through all. Across countless conversations all over the globe, we must push one another on turning discomfort into action. And where we need to challenge and change existing structures and ways of working, we must do so. Especially, he said, from those in that exclusive club, the people who are in the business of words. He expects them to do better at naming what they see and doing something about them. He knows that by amplifying the underrepresented voices, and increasing diversity in work places, will create trust in all, and push everyone forward with candor and courage, to build for the longterm. Committing to making equality a constant on the journey to fulfilling our ideal, our promise. That at a time the world is confronting multiple crises that are changing so much about the future, how we live and relate, and the ways we need to think about the future, these proffered words will allow us to explore all that in particular depth. He emphasized the need to remember those who come with sweet words, and no action – cognizant that sweet words can hide dark intentions – All the glory fleeting and futile.

The fact that the coronavirus pandemic has scrambled the world, exposing fault lines hitherto left in the dark, weaknesses in systems, laying bare systemic inequalities and racial discrimination, people around the world, more people around the world now are seizing in the moment, to push for change, countries after countries, and are standing in solidarity with protesters in the U.S., and are calling for a reckoning with past and contemporary injustices in other liberal democracies and where such is allowable. Historically, this can be adjudged a different journey, a one in a lifetime happening: even when it’s still the same impact: all from all that make up structural racism: stop and search, poverty and exclusion. In these places, there are common thread with the U.S. It is not hard to detect. They are also finding out that racism is not uniquely American. Everywhere there is a mix of Black, Brown and white, blacks and Browns are 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched by police according to police statistics in Britain. So this exposes features of the double whammy as it is found across the Atlantic and beyond – presenting an opportunity to address inequalities in all its forms, everywhere. There is really an opportunity for everyone to critically reflect on racist and radicalized past: a reckoning with the past, he said, in meeting the urgency of the present.

It’s the lamentation that drives the meditation, that drives the clarity, that drives the enlightenment, that drives the harmony, that brings nirvana – that’s the idea. The lamentation as the leading driver, which leads to asking questions – a search for answers. Allowing everyone to address all the lamented points, and other relevant subjects viscerally – leading to visceral opinions and statements, these leading toTruths. And truths lead to a more and equal society, a better path to the more perfect union, satisfying the promises made in the document. The ideals.

There were other sins in America’s archives, relatively addressed, with some sediments left. Binta lamented the women’s suffrage, the stories of Irish Americans, the Native Americans, the Italian Americans, Chinese, Japanese, et all – she believed these need to be addressed in her narrative, because some the sediments that are left, can grow to become a beachhead, if not mitigated. They need to be addressed to be made fully whole.

Binta did it again, took a sharp turn off our track, and decided to tell me about a piece of history by an exemplary comedian, activist: her discussions with him, after the fact. Here it goes: From this comedian’s point of view, lies have been used as instrument of control, sometimes to put others down. He says in one of his routines, he starts by getting people to reveal what they really believe, what they think of different social issues as we navigate our state of being, our common humanity – he says often times, he has succeeded at times in making them reveal their inner thoughts, exposing their ignorance, bigotry, and conspiratorial delusions that often lurk just below the surface of our modern lives.

Some of the actors he said used unhinged lies and conspiracies to gain power and subjugate others, even when they knew otherwise. An example is the myth about The blood label – a myth that Jews murdered Christian children and used their blood for religious rituals, which some label as the world’s oldest conspiracy, dating back to the Middle Ages. The other conspiracy is the lies that Black people are genetically inferior or inherently violent, which is at the core of white supremacy. He said the lie that women are biologically or mentally unequal to men, and for that reason, to be treated as property and body-shamed, has perpetuated millennia of patriarchy. He was not done yet, she advised me. And just like the eminent newsman, exemplary citizen, the comedian had a lot to say – but then, he is an activist, therefor a lamenter.

He said he believes that today, we live in a very dangerous moment in time. Because we have a leader who tells an average of 23 lies a day, and is the super spreader of coronavirus conspiracies – the activist/comedian lamented how social media is an enabler of this leader, thereby complicit as an enabler and super spreader – and in the case of social media platforms, he said that some are more than others in the egregiousness of the enabling. He says that it feels like we are in the final days of the age of reason – the enlightenment-induced commitment to evidence, science and objective fact. Some say truth is not truth and that truth is in the eye of the beholder. Some say there are different versions of truth. And these lies are told, he said, without any sense of Orwellian irony, to deny the very existence of our external reality.

The exemplary comedian lamented the fact that social media outfits, platforms, are mostly designed for pecuniary purpose, and not some of the often stated goal to do good – he believes that some might sell their souls, and have amassed their amazing wealth from the suffering of people. Using their algorithms to amplify content that generates more vile engagement, especially on the extreme fringe – right or left, especially the hateful ones, who use it to trigger hate mongering, fear, anger and incredibly strong, primitive emotions, primitive politics, which they then telegraph to and micro-target to voters – and sometimes, working against their own interests, because the hate clouds their sense of being, fairness and recognition of the fallacy of their ways, even when it harms them so.

And the leader said: “when the looting starts, the shooting begins.” A crass statement from a crass leader. A message – in a dog whistle from time past. And it is the how of how did we get here. The comedian, eminent and exemplary citizen said: astonishingly, the biggest social media of them all, refused to take it down, or admonish the cruelty of it all, and continue to give a platform, a stage for white supremacists and Holocaust deniers, even as it reaps gargantuan profits, which, in essence, is the driver of their decisions on whether to take down the cruel statement, or admonish the perpetrators for the cruelty.” He thought the renowned satirist was prescient when he said: “Falsehood flies, and truth comes out limping after it. The breakneck speed with which the posts, cruel posts reaches its targets, makes it herculean, in the efforts to correct and hold to account the perpetrators.

He noted that in studies after studies, it shows that people are especially susceptible to conspiracies in periods of great uncertainty when they feel a loss of control over their lives and what answers to make sense of the world. He said over the years, he has filmed people who otherwise looked, or seemed to be good and descent, repeating lethal conspiracies, regurgitating the diet of lies that they have been fed hourly on social media.

Even as we struggle through this former leader’s incoherent approach to fighting the pandemic – science is ridiculed, denied, to the extent that face mask are claimed in some videos to cause coronavirus. A group also claim ownership to a conspiracy theory, that the former leader is battling a cabal of satan worshiping pedophiles (mostly democrats and celebrities,) who drink human blood, specifically, blood of children, which he finds to be an unmistakable echo of anti-Semitic blood label, but not before pushing it to millions of Americans and people around the world. A shared reality upon which democracy depends is being shredded. The eminent comedian, exemplary citizen understands the ways of the new world, savvy, knowledgeable in his laments.

Binta recalled how the eminent newsmaker, exemplary citizen talked about five gigantic changes happening in America right now. The first is that we are losing the fight against COVID-19 under this particular leader. Two, that our behavior does not have anything to do with the reality around us. He said we just got tired so we are giving up.

He said all Americans, especially white Americans, are undergoing a rapid education about the burdens African Americans Carry every day. To him, this education is continuing, even as public opinion is shifting with astonishing speed.

He said we are in the middle of a political realignment. The most telling is that the party of the vociferous science deniers has given up on itself, for a personality cult whose cult leader is over. That a quasi-religion is seeking control of America’s cultural institutions. That the acolytes of this quasi-religion, social justice, hew to a simplifying ideology, because history is essentially a power struggle between groups, some of which are oppressors and others of which are oppressed. He said viewpoints are not exploration of truth; they are weapons that dominant groups use to maintain their place in the power structure. To him, words can then be a form of violence that has to be regulated. Especially as they are weaponized to inflict cruelty on others.

The eminent newsman, exemplary citizen said we could be on the verge of a prolonged economic depression. That state and household budgets are in meltdown, some businesses are failing and many others are on the brink, the continuing health emergency will mean economic activity cannot fully resume. To him, these changes, each reflecting a huge crisis and hitting all at once, have created a moral, spiritual and emotional disaster. He said Americans have become less happy than at any time since they started measuring happiness, nearly 50 years ago. That Americans now express less pride in their nation than at any time since Gallup started measuring this 20 years ago. All this under this former leader. That in times like this, you have got to have a theory of change.

He said the loudest theory of change is coming from the Social Justice movement. That this movement has emerged from elite universities, and its basic premise is that if you can change the cultural structures you can change society. They, the members of this movement pay intense attention to cultural symbols: language, statues, the names of buildings. He said it’s a very apt method for change, especially the symbolism of kneeling before sporting events.

He believes that Social Justice methodology is ultimately not a solution to our problem, it’s a symptom of our problem. Because, according to the Eminem newsmaker, over the past half century, we have turned politics from a practical way to solve common problems into a cultural arena to display resentments, in a weaponized form. A continuation of zero-sum.

To the exemplary, eminent newsmaker, citizen, dealing with these problems takes actual lawmaking, actual budgeting, complex compromises, all the boring, dogged work of government that is more C-SPAN than Instagram. So, to our eminent, exemplary newsmaker, citizen, empathy, and friendship, not animosity and cancelling. The pragmatic spirit of the New Deal is a more apt guide for the years ahead than the spirit of critical symbolism. I was again tempted to say Bravo, but again, I reigned in my emotion, for Binta is yet done, in lamenting the lamentations of these eminent citizens. Binta was always quick to remind me that these lamentations, retold, are for driving meditation, driving clarity, driving enlightenment, driving harmony, ergo Nirvana.

It is, as they are, meant to provoke thoughts, retelling old stories today, catalyzing inner thoughts of who we really are, our purpose here, in this ecosystem called earth. It was almost like she was pleading, even when enunciating deep policy topics, there was always a smile on her face, calm, poise, begging for the other side to come and visit, share thoughts, insights, talk about things; that there is enough to go around. Average people feel exposed to the wind of change on their home turf, their response may be to honker down, look after themselves and find others to blame, especially when reacting to dog whistles, but Binta takes a different response, to her. it is a fight for a noble tomorrow of equality, exploration and peace, because she knows that as long as the sort of fearful individuality is ascendant, equality, exploration and peace would be in drought mode – We switched again and we went back to our original, our previous lamentation. This is the how, of how did we get here. Here we are, here we go.

Binta continued, on the eminent newsman, exemplary citizen: He bemused leaders that have proclivity to incite, a history of inciting violence and emboldening militias and extreme groups, using proven cases where their supporters have attacked innocent people in their names – we would have to be the real fools not to see the perils ahead, and how a contentious election could spiral into violence, if not tamed. Because, as he puts it, conspiracies are lethal, to our health and to our democracy. The fate, he said, of our democracy, now rests with voters and whether they stand up in record numbers and choose truth over lies. The whole world is watching, he said, and it is the time to see whether our planet’s oldest democracy will endure or slide into autocracy. The next few weeks, he emphasized, will determine whether America will be so lucky. I wanted to say Bravo, again, and again, I reigned in my emotion. Binta does not abide ululation. Any kind of outbursts or grandstanding, when a few words would suffice. In the Lamentation, er, meditation, the retelling of old stories today. There are rights and wrongs in every history, and to a man, dwelling on regrets is like imprisonment. Remember, information is power, the narrative is the power, the owner that is.

The eminent newsman, exemplary citizen further lamented all the inequities further exposed by the murder of George Floyd, and the pandemic, the initial mishandling of it, he believes, created the double whammy that became fuse, a catalyst for the protests; when enough became enough. And all peoples of all stripes came together to say so, and declare that indifference is a pandemic.

And thousands of people marched on the streets, to protest police brutality at the risk of covid-19 transmission. It’s difficult to maintain physical, six feet distance, of separation when the country’s streets fill up quickly, and one realizes the difficulty in calling for change behind a mask – and silent protest is inadequate when the goal of protest is to make ones voice heard, loud and clear enough. The protesters also know that the struggle for racial justice, or any injustice, have always required, necessitated putting oneself on the line, even the line of fire, literally. And in such situation, protesters become essential workers in a pandemic of indifference, of police brutality, of systemic bias, global racism. Yes, and yeas, these protests are global because racism, as some might want to ascribe it to one side of the ocean, is global. Parts of the lamentations of an exemplary activist, citizen. Addressing the question of how we got here, and why it has been slow for the powers that be to not take actions addressing all these, all these years.

He said that societies whose norms, social policies and institutions systematically disadvantage people of color relative to white people, is by definition, violent. He goes on to explain that the World Health Organization defines violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in injury or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.” Fitting for this information, because the eminent, exemplary citizen happens to be a doctor. And the police, according to him have always used violence or the threats of it to maintain racial order, that many of our police departments traced their roots to patrols that returned runaway slaves to involuntary servitude.

The eminent doctor maintained that in addition to the above, the interlocking social systems have work in concert to produce or reproduce racial inequities, thwart potential and frustrate self-actualization. He said, consider for example, the effects of residential segregation on wealth accumulation and in turn social quality. In essence, the police and some other security outfits were designed as instrument of oppression. And oppressed people will resist the “knee on their neck,’ they will fight to breathe, and they will find allies, as they are working across historical divisions to create an inclusive, equitable, democratic society in which we all value, in which police do not have impunity, immunity to kill Black people. He said protesting is critical, urgent and, unfortunately, risky. Because protesters take risks for our collective well-being, the question then is, should people be protesting in a pandemic? Rather, it remains, how can we best protest our essential workers? Protesters, we all should remember, he reminded us, work on our behalf, on the public’s behalf. Spoken like the physician that he is. First do no harm, I remembered it.

The eminent doctor, exemplary citizen, professor, recommends that tear gas, which causes coughing, which in turn widely disperses virus-laden droplets, use should be halted, because it, the behavior leads to greater virus spread. He found it particularly unreasonable, troubling, the reports of police officers to de-masking arrested protesters and placing them in crowded conditions – vans and jail cells.

He talked about the elephant in the room: Binta was particularly impressed and emphatic about this, the mental health as the eminent doctor mentioned, calls for mental health services with a focus on coping with the trauma from repeatedly witnessing Black men being killed by police, ways to access food, medical care and housing, all of which are necessary for optimal health and may be more difficult to access in communities that will rebuild because of property damage. Even as the element of PTSD is evident and normalized.

Binta referenced a noted professor’s take on the health of Black Americans – the professor, she said had written that there’s nothing innate to Black people that explains why they are sicker and die earlier than their non Black counterparts. There is no gene specific to Black people that predisposes them to death, which another legal scholar had also explained, that it is implausible that one race of people evolved to have a genetic predisposition to heart failure, hypertension, infant mortality, diabetes, and asthma. She said that there’s no evolutionary theory that can explain why African American ancestry would be genetically prone to practically every major common illness. That Black people’s genes are not deadly, rather, the way we have organized society is deadly. This, as a rebuttal to the long documented research that Black people have higher rates of these diseases. She said, these diseases should be attributed to the environment and the essential nature of their work, and the stress that comes from these toxic variables – environment equals proximity to toxins from factories, chemical factories emissions, pollutants that retards growth in young ones, and makes older ones sick, sicker.

She debunked the notion that Black culture may also be playing a part, as those who would like to justify the racial disparities in health would like to propagate. Because there’s nothing in Black culture that would make them sicker, no different from other humans who are abused, exposed to circumstances that make for what happens to them, health wise. This is one of the big lies that is told to hold down Black Americans, and by extension, Black people all over the world.

The eminent scholar, exemplary professor went on to say: that police brutality against people of color is a spectacular form of racial violence that the nation’s criminal justice system inflicts every day, and in the larger context of mass incarceration. She said that presently, there are 2.3 million people in the country’s prisons, jails, and other criminal-justice facilities. That by most measures, this number is remarkable. Because it means that the U.S. has the largest prison population in the world. China comes in second with 1.7 million people in their prisons, which is over half a million people fewer than the U.S., but China is a country of 1.4 billion inhabitants versus U.S. of 331 million inhabitants.

To put it in further context, she said the U.S. numbers translate to the imprisonment of 698 people for every 100,000 people. This rate, she said, dwarfs the the incarceration rates of the countries that the U.S. usually thinks of as its peers. That indeed, the rate at which the U.S. incarcerates its people is roughly six times the highest rate of incarceration among Western European nations.

The eminent professor, exemplary scholar went on: she said while these numbers, in and of themselves, might be disconcerting, they become even more disturbing when we consider the racial geography of the U.S.’s prison population: people of color, particularly Black people, are disproportionately represented among those who are incarcerated. That while Black people constitute 12 or 13 % of the U.S. population, they constitute 33% of the prison population. Therefore, Black people are overwhelmingly represented in the country’s prisons and jails. Meanwhile, white people make up 64% of the U.S. population, but they make up just 30% of the prison population. Astounding it would seem to any fair-minded person.

And Binta reminded me that this is all that her Lamentation, er Meditation, is about, to start the conversation, that will drive inner reflection, that would hopefully provide answers, clarity to all that ails the nation, in its journey to fulfilling a promise, its inscribed ideals, embedded in our constitution.

With this enormous strings of data, informational history, I asked Binta, even when I was not expecting an answer, I had to ask her: and I said, Binta, how did these eminent writers, scholars, activists, even doctors make themselves easily accessible to you, and cooperated so effortlessly?”

She as always, just looked at me as if to say, without saying it aloud: it’s all about retelling the stories of yesterday today, retelling old stories today, and people like to tell stories, especially to unburden themselves, take away that knot, if you may, and being attractive is not a factor not to consider. Yes, she did not respond, she has a way like that. In the back of my mind, I might hasten to say that she may have just been amused at the fact that, even though I may have forgotten, she had told me at a point along the way of this narrative – she had told these eminent citizens that she was doing a documentary, and also from her use of her vast network, and as she would say: information, knowledge is power, and whoever narrates it properly and well, embedding courage and prudence, wins on facts, truths, verifiable information. It is said, no one quarrel’s with truth.

The point is, for the ones who believe that indifference is a pandemic, and are openminded about it, they generally believe we have reached an inflection point, that we can either confront it for what it is and make an inflection point of what it is, in the arc of our nation’s history, or we can become complicit in the continued perpetration of this disease, just because we refuse to admit we are ill. This is not something our parents, as much as they tried, were able to protect us from, the ugliness and sheer pervasiveness of racism, they could not. Because it comes at them from all fronts, in multiples, and it’s everywhere, and utterly unavoidable, no matter how one tries, no matter how strong the words of our parents, on the ways of the world, the world we live in as a nation. The constant nightmare of racism, is debilitating, stifling, suffocating, depressing – any of these words describes it – it remains the same, a bad dream that would not go away, Binta concluded, and starts all over telling the old stories of yesterday, today.

Because if we do this, we can begin to come together, as a people and strive for healing, fight for understanding, a plea to share the sunshine under this beautiful earth, then she says: we all can truly begin to enjoy the bright sunshine, and bright moons of our American Ideals, because if we do not allow this to happen, refuse to choose this path, we can expect the darkness to remain, and the rest of the world, even when they are just as guilty of the same systemic racism, would remind us of our promises, our inscribed ideals, the Constitution., and how we use it to define ourselves, our nation, as it compares itself to others, especially the authoritarian ones, where despots or their equivalents rule. Because, as the eminent scholar said, when we criticize these kinds of regimes, their inequities, we think that the problem lies not with the citizens, but rather with the government or law. So, it is time for the citizens to reflect on themselves and decide what kind of country, nation that they want to have, live in.

Because, mass incarceration means that this country approaches its problems through the criminal-justice system. That when faced with social ills, our nation respond by building more prisons and jails. Because incarceration is the tool that we use to address societal problems, we have erected few limitations on the police ability to keep the social order.. Police can stop whomever they want to stop whenever they want to stop them. They can investigate things that have no relation to the reason for the stop. They can use force. They can kill – She was brilliant. I, again, did not say what I had wanted to say, so, I just looked at Binta and nodded a profound approval of her lamentations, the retelling of old stories today. The sea of inequities, the sea of bitterness that comes from them, have no bounds – taking care of them, is the only solution. And the world has no boundaries in the waxing and waning and change of stars. Natural rules. Reflecting the change in the will of the people. It shakes as the will of the people shakes. It stabilizes as the will of the people stabilizes. When How did we get here is addressed: it drives stability, harmony, ergo nirvana. The fate is the will of the people. Fortune and misfortune are interdependent.

And she continues on the eminent doctor’s lamentation, her curiosity and the joy of connecting with others, of like minds, is the drive, because according to Binta, there comes at various points, times in our lives, where we have to focus on certain things, issues that have lurked beneath the surface for eons, neglected due to indifference, or the other side’s ability to bamboozle all, and these things become things that you really have to pay closer attention to, be interested in, and advocate for, for the survival and living up to its credos of our democracy, and these seem to be one of those moments, times. She looked to the future, and knows that it is time to deal, engage in and promote more civic engagements. And she continued the lamentation of the eminent doctor:

Under the old leader, a thought occurred to me: America has always been loved, feared, envied, maybe hated, but never pitied. Now, under this sociopath, we see other peer countries, allies and non allies, big and small, look at America and wondering what is going on, they ask what has become of this great power, a place of innovation, research per excellence, the one who sets the trends for others to follow, is unable to control in an effective, cohesive way a pandemic others of less knowhow and means have done.

From my conversation with Binta, and by extension, the eminent newsman, exemplary citizen, I gleaned unpalatable news and information on present currency. The European Union countries started opening their borders, and readied a list of feckless countries whose citizens would be unwelcome. It turns out, these countries have leaders who have failed to contain COVID-19. And on top of that list, a place one would not expect to find the U.S., humiliating, yes, travelers from the United States were lumped together with those from Brazil, Russia, where cases were soaring – the U.S. and these other feckless nations were banned because of fear they would spread the virus – because these countries led the world in infections, with the United State taking an enormous lead.

On the other side of this policy, countries the European Union countries are letting in are: citizens of China, Cuba, Vietnam, countries that was able to control the virus were welcomed in Europe. And it was assumed that China was ready to capitalize globally on America’s failure. One imagined the blow to America’s prestige because of a failure to test, trace and contain the virus, and advise in a coherent way, necessary protocols to help mitigate the spread of this Virus. In a sane world, this action by the European Union would shock our leaders, especially the science deniers and others, into finally changing course. It was hoped that this would press our leader to do the right thing – but we are not in sane times. The world is a bizzaro form. And China, not blameless, is again used as an excuse, to bamboozle the the people – as an enemy that unleashed the virus, possibly as a bio weapon. All this further create a drop in U.S. influence abroad. World reaction was mostly one of astonishment that the U.S. could be so caught up in some culture war that it has become inept. And in a shameless way, they did not care what damages their antics and big lies were doing to the reputation of the nation, the United States Of America. It is not in their DNA to have a sense of embarrassment.

I am thinking that to lighten the mood, I could not find any other reason why she would all of a sudden go philosophical: anyway Binta segued, guided by an invasive thought I later found out, and she went like this: The dead are gone, the living are in danger. Move ahead instead of hiding the intention of retreat, retreat is inevitable, as the desire for sex and food is human nature. An ancient, for levity. In all we do, there’s always an element of puck that propels things, and does help the prepared mind more than others. And it is of interest to remember that luck can sometimes be true and sometimes not. Luck contains fate and efforts, to work maximally, all its essence will have to be in balance, harmony with each other. And opportunity favors the prepared mind, and the body achieves what the mind thinks.

The ancients, venerable ones say it. They cannot be wrong, they are the venerable ones after all. We can see the decline in everything when it’s in full bloom. Have we reached full bloom? Others before us started just like this, before they flamed out. And according to divination, there would never be another one like this. There would never be another nation like America. Never. They tell us that the fortunes of a nation can be predicted from subtleties. Embedded in all our choices – our choices after all, lead to outcomes, desired or otherwise, when they come at variance to our goals. It is important to make efforts instead of gathering luck, we are told. In this retelling of yesterday’s stories, today.

So, to bring order to the chaos, to avoid cracks in the system, allowing the fulfillment of the ideals, promises, in the constitution, the nation must solidify with the will of the people, their goals and aspirations – In the efforts to bring order out of chaos, a country solidifies with the will of the people. Is a truism. And it is part of its lamentation, er meditation, the retelling of old stories today. If we do otherwise, if we refuse to pay heed – it vanishes if it is without the will of the people. As anchor. The current situation calls for such combination of luck and efforts, to save us, and no one can do it alone – we as individual, we cannot save it alone, group effort is needed.

So, Binta keeps her narrative, the treatise on lamentation, er meditation, based on the two principles. An old saying, from ancient: whether the world tortures you or not, do not let it diminish you, value yourself. And above all , in spite of it all, still love your neighbors. Love the people. Because all humans are the same. It is the DNA of our common humanity. What we have, the system, has an artificialness to it all. Leaders, especially the demagogues, divide us – but, if are all peoples are left to their devices, just like children, they do just fine. It is only that these things are taught – and children and adults are helped along to create these things in their minds, and fall into the web of the artificiality of things. We are all tortured by the same fate, in this geography called earth. We are all unfortunate like that. .

The eminent sage went on to say, a bit to support the initial premise – he said: watch how love takes away from you. He said that the moment you underestimate love as nothing but a gentle strength, one has made a mistake. Love is something you use to your advantage. To love is to take unsparingly – Arishima Takeo – So love all, even as we act to correct all imbalance, love your neighbors, love the people, as we all work to create a new period, in order to start a new chapter – a new chapter in our history, where we all have our stories allowed to be told, and we all listen to each other.

In Binta, we find out quickly how her narrative, her lamentation ergo meditation has made her legacy timeless, rooted in her truth, even when it might seem reckless to fight against something you think you cannot win, she trudges on. She believes it is fine to carry on even when it seems not win-able, or when one thinks it can’t change anything. But just the simple fact that she’s trying something embedded in hope, is to her, what matters. Because youth is fleeting, this is something she knows, always mindful, cognizant of, so it behooves her, to use the time given her judiciously, her youth. And so it goes. And here we are – what to do? And she halted her digression and returned to the eminent citizen, scholar, exemplary citizen, activist’s lamentations. Here:

Binta, I observe, even when she carries this element of playfulness, whimsy, it is only for disarming the opposition – one can never underestimate, the element of curiosity as always the paramount drive. She does not want to keep speculating about the Childhood and what is done to it by so many adults, the connections that we have in our brains, embedded there by parents, and the village as the raiser of the child, because it is said that it takes a village to raise a child, so all this did not come from the parents alone – but as infants and adolescents become – they become the connections to other people. She knows that she needs a dose of hope, because just as most people, so many of us, she wakes up to the dailies, TV, Radio, and are furious about the state of things, to the extent that she turns off the radio and TV, even when she might gain from hearing wha is there, because knowledge, information is power – there are never good news, only the depressing and downers, that create PTSD – they become parts of the: how did we get here?

Binta believes that when multiple people are involved, there’s a different feeling in doing it. You have this visceral sense of collective efforts, that something is being achieved collectively that could not be done individually. There’s a joy to it. It’s important to the whole of what is, what the activism is about. Especially as the nation is being tested like at no other time, being tested by an overdue reckoning on multiple fronts: police brutality, the rise of white extremism, supremacy, systemic racism, in all its manifestations, and by the relentless pandemic of covid-19 – creating and greatly contributing to double whammy’s emergence – spurns a deep economic and unemployment crisis, we have not seen since the great recession, possibly the great depression, and not already forgotten – where a leader constantly deploys racist language, untruths, conspiracy theories, he stokes them, rather than calm the already tense situation. Exacerbating divisional cracks.

These acts, and inactions, further cause frustration, dashing hopes of marginalized communities, in a country whose credo is equality for all, as a cornerstone of its existence, but has not delivered for so many. We have a condition of segregation and racism that have created an ever widening gap in wealth and education, a crisis further deepened by the double whammy. It’s the lamentation, er meditation, the retelling of yesterday’s stories today.

Binta continued, narrating the outcome of her encounter with the eminent newsman, exemplary citizen, his take on the question: how did we get here? She said his view is that, the video of the murder of George Floyd have combined with the vulnerability caused by the pandemic, COVID-19, and the feeling that the country is broken, is enough to bring us to the edge of madness, and we hope to the precipice of significant, enormous change. Do we expect anything to come out of it? Binta was unsure. But she sees white America, for the first time, may finally be realizing their obligations in larger numbers, in what is happening, and the answers to the question; how did we get here. She contemplate whether America has the resolve, the will and the rigor, and the courage, energy to see this through – to Binta, it is yet to be seen, and she is not ready to hold her breath, waiting for it to happen. So, working, retelling the stories of yesterday today, through her lamentations and the lamentations of her interviewees, and other worthy people of goodwill, she gleans from here and there, to drive questions, personal question, personal reflections of our roles in society, personal conduct vis a vis our indifference to all inequities we see in the land, that do not conform with the promises, ideals on our written document, the Constitution, and what we preach to the world.

Binta believes that from its founding, America has always been in crisis. But she locates hope at the timing, at a moment when equality may finally be on the horizon, seen as a broader fight – for injustice anywhere, is injustice everywhere, as another eminent citizen, exemplary activist once said. So, to Binta, we are re-examining what equality means to American, in America, and she dare say, to the rest of the world, as America is the beacon that others use as a yardstick, even when it is sometimes questioned, the audacity to say what she cannot live up to.

This is particularly true of those who feel unheard, unseen, unimportant, and exhausted by what they experience, and willing to proffer significant, powerful ideas about the road map to fixing it, about how we can change. Binta knows in order to change, we all have to stand up against all these inequities, systemic bias rooted in the system, and profess loudly, standing for change, unequivocally. This would involve building new structures that reflect the demographics and lived experiences of the world we live in, that would show demonstrable, sustained progress. We have to endeavor to hear and elevate the voices of people who have lived these stories.

It is obvious to everyone that the pandemic has shut down the economy with more speed and more force than perhaps any other event in history, at least the history of the united states of America. Money have been doled out by the Fed at a scale that dwarfs all previous efforts. The speed and chaos of the economic collapse the pandemic has wrought obscures the actions that the fed could take. They are simply rewriting the rules, creating new roadmaps with all the numbers and complex programs, simply rewriting rules for American capitalism, Binta enunciated, and added that the Fed has increased the size of its footprint in the economy, and they are not near done yet, in this historical anomaly that is by many factors of 10. Even while looking to the Congress to chip in, do something to alleviate the suffering of the people. On this point, Binta is in alignment with the new approach, for it is designed to help those who have long been left out of it all, even when all was built on their backs, and continues to be essential workers.

Binta echoed another eminent writer, researcher, who enunciated that we have bought into the view that America is a zero-sum game on many cases: “if you succeed, I fail,” the new leader said, and continued: “When any one of us is held down, we we’re all held back.” The eminent writer, exemplary researcher according to Binta, argued that America has been fed “zero-sum story” that says progress for people of color will take away what white Americans already have, which according to the eminent writer, researcher: “the logical extension of zero-sum story is that a future without racism is something white people should fear, because there will be nothing good for them in it, she said. The writer explained that racism actually costs all Americans, by allowing wealthy conservatives to take away resources from all of us.

She referenced the fact that the president of the United States – an older white man, telling Americans that they shouldn’t fear the success of Black people, which she believes is a radical departure from the past, especially of leaders, especially white leaders. She was not done yet, she then referenced a history lesson, part of the answer to the question: how did we get here: She goes on to tell a story about Montgomery, Alabama, where in 1959, white citizens decided to drain the public pool rather than integrate it. Doing this, as they have done in other instances, including in elections, elections of those to lead them, they do things against themselves, against their own interests, in order to hurt the “other,” even while also hurting themselves. And they know these, cognizant of the consequences of their actions. This same thing has happened as the U.S. has gotten more diverse, she says, rather than share the benefits of government with Black people, many white Americans have sought to end benefits for everyone, which she believes is responsible for why America doesn’t have well funded schools, good wages for everyone and low cost health care. It is why the Affordable Care Act, also called Obama Care was fought tooth and nail, even when the other side, those fighting it knew that it benefits them too. She knew that being Black meant that she was not as privileged as many of her classmates. That she attributed this to inherent problems with the economy. Which she pater discovers as she grows and started forming her own opinions, were not true.

She then recalled a conversation she overheard in the hall of Congress, when a member of the conservative bloc ranted about “deadbeats” who had babies with multiple women and then avoided child support. From this overheard conversation, is when she started wondering whether her focus on economics was obscuring something else: that racial stereotypes were stalling efforts by progressives to enact changes in Congress, boxed into a corner by such soundbites, that makes their constituents look undeserving, responsible for their travails, even as the other side, have the sea e kinds of actors, deadbeats, just as in welfare moms, the other side has them in spades, in majority. In her own words, Binta recalled the eminent writer, researcher saying: “we went from an era of shared prosperity to an era of inequality. Why would the country have done that to itself?” She asked. To her, it did not feel like the economics of orthodoxy had an answer. She said people in power turned white, Black and brown people against one other, telling them that one group’s success would come at the expense of another. That as a result, white people stopped supporting the government programs that enabled their prosperity as soon as access was expanded to Black people.

She used California as an example, when in 1978, voters passed Proposition13, which limited property taxe increases, so they would not have to pay for “other people’s children,” and immigrants from Mexico. Another example she used was about a union drive at a Nissan plant in Mississippi that was going steam until many of the white workers pulled their support, more comfortable with seeing themselves allied with white management than Black or Brown co-workers. A pattern she said, ends up hurting everyone, as Black families become the canaries in the coal mine, hurt by destructive policies that soon entrap the rest of America. Years after California voted to lower property taxes, funding plummeted for all public schools, and tuition for state colleges and universities had risen fourfold. Black and white workers at Nissan and other non-unionized places make less than their unionized counterparts.

As a kid, she was always bothered by homelessness and the sight of homeless people begging for money on the street. Why that is possible in the richest country in the world. Her interaction with classmates who boasted about being socially liberal but fiscally conservative, gave her the idea that at their heart about race, She detected inherent stereotypes about whether Black and Brown people were deserving of the things white America had received for years. For her, the transformation that happened was foreseeing race as a kind of an accelerator of inequality to seeing it as a driver of inequality. Even in all of this, she found exceptions: people and places who were trying to create racial solidarity. She gave an example of a white fast-food worker, who had thought immigrants were stealing American’s jobs, until she went to a Fight for $15 meeting and saw herself in a Latina mother also trying to raise a family on fast-food wages.

She then realized that connecting with someone, or seeing yourself in someone, is the antidote to a phenomenon that is, in some ways, destroying America, and she believes that we need to shift people from that and to say; “we have found the enemy, and it’s not each other.” And work to tailor, in cross-racial relationships, policies to address historical wrongs, that help all Americans. She believes, unlike the early part of the pandemic and the protests, we have a leader who acknowledges America’s racist past, rather than adding to it.

Wherever you fall, which ever side you are on in the political ecosystem or spectrum, the one who is cultivated, who discarded the yolk of indifference – it would be clear to that person, that when everyone has access to equal opportunities, especially economic one, everyone benefits. It is nonsensical to believe that a version of capitalism that works for a few, would endure without friction, from those left out. Whereas, capitalism that works for everyone can only come from a bold move, for a big bold structural change. Because if we just tinker at it at the periphery, it would be a waste of time, for it would not be enough.

I looked at Binta, she was not reacting – I won’t say she had a poker face, no, she just had Binta’s face. Unreadable. She believes that those in power, who hold the economic leash, those who have a disproportionate hold on power, economic power, would not willingly give it up without a fight – they would not be willing to give this privilege up, even when it is in order for the whole to be greater than its parts, the sum of its parts. She found it eerily pleasant, because even though there is a fight ahead, a fight that may not be an easy one, the fact that people are shedding the pandemic of indifference, ahead, even so, she is excited that the people are finally coming out, coming on board, and embracing the new mindset, which is what the lamentation, er meditation, is all about, the story of the double whammy, that is a retelling of yesterday’s story today.

Because to her, America seems to be struggling with balancing individual rights and the good of the team. Yes, she’s very much of the feeling that Yes! we have individual rights, but there are instances where if you curtail those a little bit and cooperate with other people, you get something that you could never get by yourself. And just as in individual, civil rights, they are ordered freedoms, because with ordered freedom, rights, there would be chaos. It is why mandates of the pandemic is necessary to preserve, see the whole. Because at the end of the day, we are all the same, in the same boat, and we all change, as things change, and we all have other interests. How we respond is vital. One cannot ignore for a moment, that all that have gone on the past few years did not happen. One has to acknowledge it, evaluate them, even when you are not quite sure how to go about it yet, contemplating them, which is what the Lamentation, ergo meditation is all about, is to get us to think, talk, in the hope of getting answers, to the root of it all, without being too preachy.

She wants her kindred people to take a good look at themselves and ask, “how do I answer these questions? How did the conditioning from the past lead to where we are, where we are today? Does it make you uncomfortable enough to do something, to shed your former self and embrace the future, a future that disbands indifference in place of care and attention. Because, everything about our world is about the basic right of all, when everyone is satisfied on equal level, the world enjoys more harmony. Because there’s enough to go around., if we eliminate greed and indifference to the sufferings of others. These should be the easiest conversations for our time, and yet, some make it the most difficult.

How she got the eminent Coach, exemplary citizen to talk to her, still baffles me. He’s not known for being too out there. But, here we are, the man is telling her, in his most earnest, sombre, but forceful way, void of nuanced expression – because to him, a spade is a spade, he calls it as he sees it. He was angry but controlled, a good anger. He is a subscriber to the new wave, the one that says indifference is a pandemic – and he wanted to say his bit, even with the littlest time allotted, as such a chance does not come to one frequently.

He said: the country is in trouble. He said he was embarrassed as a white person by the manner in which George Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020. In this emotional mode, he expressed his dismay, he took issues with the actions of former police officer Derek Chauvin, that led to the death of Floyd in Minneapolis. “In a strange, counterintuitive sort of way, the best teaching moment of this recent tragedy, I think, was the look on the officer’s face,” “for white people to see how nonchalant, how casual, just how everyday-going-about-his job, so much so that he could just put his left hand in his pocket, wiggle his knee around a little bit to teach this person some lesson – and that it was his right and his duty to do it, in his mind.”

“I don’t know, I think I am just embarrassed as a white person to know that that can happen. To actually watch a lynching., in daylight, on television. We have all seen books, and you see Black people hanging off trees. And you are amazed. But we just saw it again. I never thought I would see that, with my own eyes, in real time.”

And he continued: “ It’s like the neighborhood where you know there’s a dangerous corner, and you know that something’s going to happen someday, and nobody does anything.” He added: “and then young kid gets killed and a stop sign goes up. Well, without getting too political, we have got a lot of stop signs that need to go up – quickly, because our country is in trouble. And the basic reason is race.”

He narrated what one of his players in a farm league he coaches, what this person had expressed emotionally – that when we, meaning Black people, “when we tell you about our fears, please should listen. When we are afraid for our kids, please listen. When we tell you the many challenges we face because of the color of our skin, please listen. And please, don’t get caught up in how the message is delivered.” And it was the sort of fear the Coach remembered witnessing in the friends he grew up with.

According to him, “there was a difference between the Black friend who was scared, and me who actually wasn’t. Because I thought I had rights.” And that’s a white privilege that not everyone realizes, and people need to know, just because you don’t see it, it does not mean it’s not there.”

He talked about even if he is incapable of experiencing it, he said from an early age, he recognized the power of empathy, of listening. So, he listened to his players, he listened to their reaction to the death of George Floyd under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Chauvin and the ever-present threat of police brutality and systemic racism. He knows that indifference is a pandemic, he reinforced that, in terms all can understand, loud and clear.

He said people are hurting and Black people, mainly, are scared. And that the disturbing thing is that they have been scared for a long time. This he said, is the cry for help that they have been giving for a long time and people don’t totally listen.” I think everyone is at fault.”

He believes that it is important to keep in constant conversation, that would help bridge the gap between generations. Young and old sharing, sharing their enlightening perspectives with each other, old and young side by side, with other young and olds. And especially, do what we can do for the youths, setting examples. He admonished us to interact in extracurricular activities that involve all shades, all peoples – for them to see how it is in a real world, especially of professionals, professional sports players on the team, how we interact with each other, and knowing that that’s how all people should interact with each other., for the team to succeed, in this case, the nation is our team.

People with compassion are less likely to be indifferent, and wisdom, which is proven by research, from eminent scholars, is equal parts compassion, empathy, balanced emotions, and self-awareness, may protect against indifference. And it is said that if we can increase someone’s compassion, wisdom is likely to go up and indifference is likely to go down. This is the retelling of old stories today, Binta’s lamentation, er, meditation – meant to spark such conversations as we are having. And the eminent coach is a Bravo! deserver. He has shown, according to Binta, that implicit bias, rests not only in the machinery of governing but in everyone’s heart. Humbled and ashamed that some Americans are made to feel afraid and unsafe in their own country. She can only hope that this will indeed open eyes that have been shut. But hoping that the George Floyd’s killing, and attendant protests, which catalyzed the woke is welcome.

In the lamentation, er, mediation, the double whammy, in this retelling of yesterday’s stories today, is providing answers to the question of how did we get here. It shines light on especially the “how” of how did we get here. It’s about the injustice of today and America’s historical role in it. She also reminds, that Racism, implicit or otherwise, is not just an American phenomenon: all countries are dealing with it, in one way or the other, the scale of differentiations, affectations, a different thing, in the degrees.

And Binta continued, on all she has gleaned from her encounters with these eminent, exemplary citizens, and said: that there are myriad problems that preceded COVID-19, how in the greatest nation on earth, that is also the richest, and the most technologically advanced – she asked: do you know that some communities resorted to putting hot spots on school buses and parking them in their communities, just get some basic things done, like homework and learn remote? What others take as a given? She lamented how parents of kids drive up next to the buses to try to get free wi-fi, so as to be able to finish their work. Or there might be a Dairy Queen in town or a gas station, that they would sometimes use.

So after school, these are the places they take them to, and that’s where they do their homework. This she believes is simply unacceptable, especially as this exacerbate the already huge inequality that exists. She emphasized how this has impacted digital adaptation. The only solution, she believes, is upgrading and expanding the infrastructure for these in these communities, to allow for a much greater access and willingness to leverage these tools and technology – because, sometimes, the scenarios described above is the only way these communities live their lives – Ordering things from online stores from their families and friends who have stable and effective wi-fi.

So the parking of busses in communities that have hot spots, and doing school works and other chores are not new to them. What they have to sometimes deal with is the fact that it can be sometimes too hot or too cold or too wet, as they navigate these places and spots. You can be a brilliant student, brilliant and dedicated worker, and you can still lose out on things, short changed because of the hops and loops one has to go through. Yes, we have to recognize these people’s travails, treat them with respect and the dignity they deserve. And Binta said: “I will not abide with someone who is nasty. It should be a collaborative culture – nasty, I am not having it,” she mused, emphatically. You can never know what the ending is until the end. And when the time is right everything falls into place, returns to its proper place. Another of Binta;;s ancient.

This is the retelling of old stories today, lamentation, er meditation, the double whammy of Binta’s narrative – delving into the uncomfortable parts of history. What power looks like, what white privilege looks like, what things that amplify power looks like, and what it takes to maintain systems of power, in the uncomfortable parts of history. Binta also recognizes the acts that sometime seem like a savior complex on the part of some, cohabiting with the sense of entitlement among the white elite – even as the solution should involve the Black experience, for all stories given equal hearing, listening, produces harmony, better coexistence, in our shared common humanity.

We have to see the irony of some of the actions being taken, especially from those whose ancestors have benefited from slavery. And people will only have opinions about what they know, even when things should be looked at from the ground up – all stories, including the hidden and erased – teach what the nation was built on, what the nation has done and what it represents. The promises and the not keeping the promises parts. Without that understanding, we can’t move forward.

She said as an art school student, she has always been interested in observing other people and trying to create empathy, and not necessarily to create empathy, a dichotomy. Her initial intention was not to create works about race, but to realize that there is power in the figurative, and there is power in representing people who look like her. She found out that she can give a real, profound insight to that experience, as a result. Portraiture, to her is no different from imagining a scenario, the visualization of it, she said, is based on this idea of people doing so many things with money, like the means to commission an artwork, or having done such great things that an artwork is commissioned to honor, while others scrounging and barely making it, and have to go to hot spot to get school work done.

This is fictionalized because she is trying to critique the whole concept of portraiture as it relates to visualizing concepts, social situations as they relate to our common humanity, in this landscape we call earth, which our nation is part of. In this case, the subjects do not smile, no caricature here, because that is a demand placed upon people like herself in order to not seem threatening. She wants to remove that weight and that psychological pressure, and show that if you are Black, a person of color, being represented in art, any art form, you do not have to be a celebrity, or strike a pose, or fulfill an expectation, you just have to be given the same chance, opportunities as others – in this case, equal opportunity. And just like arts, should not be made to cower, play nice, feel and act non threatening, to be felt comfortable around – should not be made to conform to the expectations of dressing for the role – it can just be a hoodie, slouching, and not invite the police shootings without provocation.

Because what you wear as a Black man can get you killed. And as a Black man, you get used to being looked at with suspicion. The eminent history professor, accomplished, and an exemplary citizen, has this to say to Binta: to her, in her opinion, in some ways, the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld Louisiana’s statute mandating the segregation of all public facilities, was the nail in the coffin, and became part of the how did we get here – it’s about the policies that relegated Black people to unequal status in the nation. She said that since 1876, the courts and congress had eroded the Reconstruction Amendments’ promises to African Americans: suffrage, equal protection under the law and due process before the law. That the Plessy v. Ferguson and its embrace of “separate but equal” let African Americans know once and for all that despite those guarantees, their fundamental rights would not be protected.

She lamented that Plessy v. Ferguson was not overturned until 1954, and only because of dedicated work by civil rights attorneys and organizers. She said from Plessy, we know that the letter of the law, and even the constitution, is insufficient and potentially even meaningless if it is not applied fairly. That we also know that some laws, like the segregation statute, contravene basic principles of the constitution. Democracy, she lamented, requires that we do more than rely upon or simply follow the law; we have to insist upon virtuous laws, and passionately reject oppressive ones. History teaches us that if we sit idle by, even the most noble laws can be distorted by bigotry and bigoted laws – and when left unchecked, can lead to immense suffering – to Binta, what the African Americans are suffering now, are part of the answers to the question: “how did we get here?”

The eminent professor, accomplished and all, exemplary citizen, referenced the example of the New Deal, how it affected farmers, especially farmers of color, specifically Black farmers. Because it did little to improve their welfare – in fact, in many ways, she said, left them worse off than they had before. Because at the time, Southern Democrats, with an interest preserving Jim Crow, dominated Congress. And many farmworkers were people of color.

Consequently, she lamented, unlike most urban industrial workers, farmworkers were omitted from the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, the National Labor relations Act and Social Security Act of 1935, and The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. This exclusion, she said, condemned migrant farmworkers to a life in America without a place to enact their rights. She says this is still the case today, despite their contribution as “essential workers” in our food supply chain, people who work on farms continue to experience the enduring consequences of the federal government’s refusal to afford them real security through extended labor and social protection.

She says the impact of the New Deal on farmworkers is a reminder that policy decisions are often advanced in ways we don’t recognize as inherently exclusionary, and that such policies impacts can last far longer than the moment for which the laws were created. Ending in a sombre note. Policies that define one race as inferior and another race as superior, that is toxic, truly burdensome to those relegated to the inferior scape.

And even with all this, and the effect of double whammy, Binta’s lamentation, er, meditation, the retelling of yesterday’s stories today, even so, a shamelessly crazy person appears, and became their arrowhead, and for that reason, that reason alone, they looked the other way. Even the religious component of things, and they had an excuse for it. Yes, even using the Bible, the Good Book to justify their shamelessness and his shameless actions. Even in the middle of all this. Even with the promises and ideals set in the document, they looked the other way. They had an excuse for it. Lots of denials, lots of hypocrisy. When the Good Book is subverted for political and monetary gain. Lots of outright decay of truth, creating a new term, unlogic. For it was all illogical.

In celebrating her history, our historical figures, the eminent art school former student said she wants future artworks to look like people she recognizes, to counter the stream of limiting tropes and identities of, and for Black people, not just in the U.S., but all over the western world and beyond, where racial and other inequities exist. She believe that there a need for openness and more nuanced understanding of what it means to be Black, or someone of color – she believe that that’s only going to happen only when there are people in positions of power to commission and promote our art, who understand where our art comes from. This is Binta joining with the former art student to lament the entertainment industry, lamenting the media, the role they play in contributing to the inequality in the land, and the long held imaging, their portrayal of Black and Brown people – caricatured, for the fun of it, totally indifferent to the plight and humiliation that they spurn. And for a long time, the other side suffered in silence. The weight was just too stifling, the knee on the neck would not allow for breathing, not to talk about allowing for talking. So, they suffered in silence.

We need courage, she said, and a genuine desire to learn from and look into our past – an opportunity to look into our past, to create a more cohesive society if we choose to take it. Her question is: do we further ingrain the current system of choosing this topical figures to represent values we should aspire to? Or do we embrace representations of those who have previously been stigmatized or invincible. This concept might not be popular at the start, at the beginning, but, as a society we must make that contract with one another to pursue something more radical. Otherwise the debate around arts, entertainment, the media, statues, is all talk – they will end in naught.

And the man said: Racism is over, and I said, “racism is not over, racism is being confronted, may be on its way out, only time will tell,” I left it at that. She said, the man was naive, or just plain uninformed. I said, he has an MBA. That said it all, she responded, with finality. Never to allow me in on the true nature of her words, what she really meant. Binta.

“A man came on to me, trying to make small talk: he said: ” ‘Many of us and a lot of people around the world likely have not forgotten that covid-19, the pandemic odyssey began with a clumsy cover-up that took place in Wuhan China, and a failed attempt to silence Chinese doctors, especially the young one that died a few day after the fact, for trying to expose the true, alarming nature of things, the scales of danger he saw, observed, from some of his patients. So, an illness that might have been contained inside China was allowed to cross borders. It is impossible to know how many lives could have been saved in China and around the world if China’s political leaders, had done the right things, instead of putting the blame on bungling local officials – if they had behaved responsibly, would we be here?’”

And he continued: ’If China had done the right thing, and that also means, if it were an open society, Covid -19 would have been remembered as a small footnote in history.’” – Even though I was not quite in the mood, nor about to start defending the communist regime, I said: “Panic is not preparation, you do not make right decisions, when in panic mode. Panic, just as rumors, spread rapidly, giving way to random facts – conspiracy theorists, and conspiracies mongers. In this case, all that’s left is to pray to the heavens or something more, or greater than ourselves.’ For sanity, comprehension of things unknown and unseen. And they call it the invisible enemy. And in the art of war, you are admonished to know your enemy as much as you know ourself.” And Binta cuts in, and continued:

“China is doing all it can to be stable, doing all it can to remain stable until it has fully laid foundations, solidify – I suspect they are going with the flow with mindfulness – is it always pleasant, no! But that is what it is. They may have moved 300 million people out of poverty within a few decades, they are still on sandy foundation, a little push or rush – an open debate, will push it to decimation.” The man looked at me amazed, not sure if it was about what I said, or that he did not expect such response from a lady he was trying his best pick up line, to pick up.”

“And by the way,” Binta continued, “the other leaders should do, they should have done what leaders are supposed to do, be prepared, have a plan of action for such, it’s the stuff leaders are made of, exemplary leaders are made for moments like this. Great leaders influence those around them, including the world, not the other way around.” It is how we got here, it is what has always gotten us where we are – it is the choices we make that define our futures – It is how we have always done it, which now needs a change.” So, what comes next? And that was that, she moved on to her lamentation.

Upon the peaceful earth and on the clear sky, the sun and the moon coordinate with each other to shine. The result is only subject to heavens divination and I don’t dare to doubt it. This was an ancient, a new ancient. The strong and the gentle are facing the fire of Change, a scrambled world, resulting from the double whammy. An ancient combined with the present, I take it. Binta reminded me of an ancient and said: a man of substance does not like to flaunt his true worth. Binta is a woman of substance, albeit, she does no like to flaunt it. Binta, a product of Smith, Harvard and Stanford, is not a slouch; architecture, policy, science, technology, mathematics, and oh, what do thy call those people who fix damaged arts, yes, art conservators, a restorers. Plus curating them. We actually met at SFMOMA, for a brief stay. She does not stay too long in one place. Does not take crap, not from any one. She does not give one, either. She recognizes the transformative power of well cobbled narratives, she recognizes that words shape ideas, and ideas shape souls, and that one can become an engineer of the human souls, with facts, only facts, and the allowance of all our stories to be told, properly, with equal attention to your journeys. There was a time I thought she might be a spy – from all the invitations she extended me to tagalong on her trips to Tehran, Prague, Berlin, and points between, was never dull. That is the Binta I know. Brilliant.

Epilogue And The End

How did we get here? And how can we possibly get out of it? A question that has perplexed for so long. Binta’s direction of events that constitute double whammy is intended, as has already stated and restated, is meant to provide the fodder that allow for conversations, and hoping the talking to each other, in an unvarnished, and straightforward way, bring us answers, answers that would allow us, for once and finally, get from this place to a new place, a new beginning – the protests that came after the murder of George Floyd, a catalyst.

The question is: can this finally move us beyond the hitherto insurmountable great wall of divisions, and allow us arrive in our desired place, where everyone has a place at the table, or would it be more about: the more things change, the more they remain the same? The myriad, manifold of social, cultural, and religious factors that converged to create this particularly toxic political spawn – can we make repairs to them overnight? A country that is being pulled apart, in geographic, ideological, and spiritual phenomenon ways, that created a situation, where so many have been in denial of, until the “woke.” Can this hasten our arrival at the more perfect union, as inscribed in the document? The answer is, according to Binta, a definite yes! We have to give it our all, our best. In the cosmic, we are a tiny grain in the ocean, Binta in a self talk. With innumerable unknowns. All this to her, is the needed exploration and mining in the unknown realm of the universe – of life, and especially cobbling together of all the hidden and erased or destroyed history, the ones we were not meant to see or talk about. We must talk about them all, to get closure and be at peace with each other, that is the goal, Binta’s goal.

Can what was inspired by Covid and George Floyd truly be a real catalyst? And allow us to finally able to talk respectfully to each other, even as we eschew indifference, and consider it for what it is, a pandemic? Are we able to do this? Can we talk about them respectfully, and not feel that you are a radical, if one has a view that is at variance to ours. Can we be patient enough to listen and hear all the points of view? The 9 minutes and 29 seconds video, in broad daylight, captured the attention of the world, it was the fuse that lit the protests, producing the awakening. Is this for real, have we finally come full circle, to full maturity, an enlightenment?

According to Binta, for a while now, the country has been drifting, increasingly clustering in like-minded communities, and surrounding ourselves with people who think like us, which produces a profound effect. Because as some pundits have alluded, when like-minded people gather, they tend to grow more extreme, on both sides of the divide. Right or left, conservative or liberal. The double whammy has upended this drift, and created a platform that allows people to at the very least, talk about these things. And all peoples are now participating. They are no longer looked at as radical thoughts. Because all that is being asked for is nothing but a fair shake, no more than anybody else – just a level playing field, same opportunities, no more no less, in our common humanity – as we share this geographical landscape, we have to learn to live with each other, there’s no other alternative. Any other alternative at variance to this noble one, would induce disharmony. And these are all embedded in the document of ideals, ideals that undergird our democracy.

The world of Covid and the murder of George Floyd are palpable – The murder was in broad daylight and Covid is real, and does not discriminate. It does not distinguish between rich and poor, big or small, does not recognize colors, borders. That we are all facing the same threat, from the same invincible enemy, has a message there, for all of us. We are all in together. And this is a plea for unity and understanding, to hear each other out. To treat each other with dignity and respect. And allow for the fact that some of us have borne the brunt of inequity for a long time. And a murder in broad daylight, a metaphor for the knee that has been on our neck, Binta mused, created the woke – and took us from the politics of fear and rage, from erased and hidden history to bright lights shone on these hitherto erased and hidden stories. The dysfunction of it all, seeming like a cold war, albeit in the same locality, of same groups within the same ecosphere, geography. It is what some call the violence of faction.

Binta believe that its is the responsibility of the group, her group, to make pluralism work, make all the different factions germinate, and create a broad diversity of interests – she believes it is possible. Sans uniformity. And I said, repeating an earlier question: “where do you get all your information?” And as before, she looked at me in amazement: She gave what seemed like a smile, but not a smile. She does not give her smiles away easily. She said: “I watch and read quite a bit of interviews. They are all in the public-sphere, Worthy ones. Ideas I find worthy of promotion, that needed to be heard, universally scoped and enunciated, such ones, and of course, they have to agree with the core me, resonate with my idealistic imperfect self. I promote these laments, everybody’s laments. In a way, it is promoting many diverse points of view without the publicity they want or do not want.” she added.

I was trying to figure out the premise, understand where she was going, coming from, the critical nature to explain and all. From Prague to Berlin, Tehran to Cairo, back to san Francisco, we talked, about everything. Never boring, always wanting more. Engaging. Mind invigorating. Mind cultivation. Mind blossom. These are some of the words I sometimes describe our sessions with. In all we do. Policy, is what she has a brilliance in. Art, photography, painting, restoring, conserving, and curating, exemplary in. She was that good. And an exterior that matches the brain. Never a dull moment, indeed.

Lamentation, er meditation, Binta’s laments, as she observes the world around her. Along the way, she finds that so many seemingly trivial matters are tied to centuries of oppressions, and all of us are complicit in many of the systems. It’s not just the so-called awakening, or cancellation, but interrogation and growth. She hopes the lamentations produce the desired interrogation, widens the scope of the conversation – culminating in meditation, on the history of it all, the history of the choices behind all our decisions, and juxtapose them with the full consciousness of what that history is – and by asking if there is a history behind all our decisions, we might be able to use it to find clarity to things, leading to a true awakening – a realizations of what is. It is what this is about: make people contemplate the present, and how they fit in it.

And if white supremacy and anti-black racism remain fundamental to its structures modes – of violence, by which countries continue to govern: indifference might become one of our most passive and fluid modes of complicity. It is also important for an awareness of the optics, images, codes perpetrated by mass media, that point to white power and values as desirable, over others, and whether the thoughts are allowed to enter our heads or not. This is just s bad and insidious as the indifference of all things bad in the system, that brutalize parts of the community – the systemic pandemic that has manifested itself in ways both mundane and tragic. Laying bare a version of America that many people refused to accept, in which many people are finally coming to grips with – the profoundly uncomfortable truths.

She argues that these systemic biases have been embedded into nearly every aspects of our society, from corporate cultures to classrooms, to even hair color and make. That a white supremacist orientation has determined almost everything in the land. Always palpable, but mostly latent. Binta asks, who are these people we live with, these people who live among us, perpetrating these ills. In all of these, you feel the same depth of devastation. She recognizes that these and the so-called awakening revealed, to a captive world, the array of indignities and dangers that people of color, especially black Americans, can face on a daily basis. She referenced the Amy Cooper video, the last or so of the “so-called Karens,” the central park dog walker, as a real gift to society, with her performance of fear – a white woman who weaponizes her fear and white privilege in an attempt to have a black man murdered – we have seen it again and again, she said.

Rhetorics about whiteness and racism that might have previously been perceived as radical now begin to receive support in mainstream discourse, in media. As good as all these are, she says the country, the world, as a whole have miles to go in terms of fully confronting its pasts. She wants to wait and see if this initial response to this double whammy is with more sustained inquiries, or would it turn into modes of shifting within their own “clans,” organizations, corporations and institutions. She believes that in order for this not to happen, would require all to continue to have these deeper and more difficult conversations. Because from cradle to death, systemic racism haunts preschool, colleges, police precincts, and everywhere in between. Binta, again, hopes her lamentation would serve as a catalyst, a fodder for these deeper, and more difficult conversations beginning from how it all started: the unholy alliance, made strictly for profit, between colonialism and slavery – the dynamics, scaffolding are what produced the racist state violence – all these manifestations are unearthed when we examine all the complex ways in which anti-black racism was formed and the different ways it expresses itself in the country.

When they created policies in policing, it was a deliberate attempt to keep the former slaves controlled, keep them in check – these policies spawned today’s police departments, and spawned the systemic inequalities. She talked about the backlash, white-lash against the election of the first Black President, which was palpable. She mused about how, whether you are white, black, a Republican or Democrat, we all have an understanding that we all get a say, the race, creed, or sexual orientation, not important to participate, even when the other side, those who believe in zero-sum, enactors of the Jim Crow doctrine, promoters of race based animus, the rottens and evil, cultural warriors against lovers of democracy, in order to hold this country back: they tell us that freedom requires that some of us don’t have to participate. Not too different from what right wing authoritarians make. She believes in the dignity of the human being above the power of the state. Binta talked about how another great icon of the black movement for equity once talked about what the greatest sin of white supremacy is: it is the taking away of our global language and our ability to communicate with one another, making it harder to actively disassemble these common evils and racisms, and those who no longer believe in American democracy – it is whether the lying is repudiated, it is whether the insurrection is repudiated, whether the gaslighting is repudiated, whether the whitewashing and lies about a president who incites violence and eggs on rioters is repudiated – in this period of crisis, great crisis that equals all others that have come before, in events that have challenged the progress of a great tradition that have existed for over 200 years – Binta believes that in spite of some of the ills of social media, social media is now benefitting all groups, allowing them to be in contact, direct connection with one another. The country is in a lot of trouble, and it is her duty, and those of her group to fight to defend and save it from itself. And by the way, she says, even as others would like you to believe, we are not all equally corrupt.

But she reminds us that social media also has the tendency to allow us to disappear things as trends pop up and then fade. Will these new woke fade or will it sustain? She said the goal then, and she answered her own question: and said, the answer is to figure out a way to maintain consistent touch points and sustain conversations. Making sure, how important it is that we use the technology, as opposed to allowing the technology to use us – because being part of social media is often how one develops a political opinion, and it is how we develop a non reactionary politic.

She advises that it is important to not confuse information with knowledge. And just because the cell phone gives us a vast amount of information as a result does not mean we are being educated. Because education relies precisely on learning the capacity to formulate questions: critical thinking. Leaning how to raise questions not only about the most complicated issues but about the seemingly simplest issues. Again she reminds that when one learns how to question the validity of the binary nature of things, one is questioning that which has persistently been the most normal context of peoples lives. That the work of ideology happens in these seemingly normal spaces. So, she continued, we begin to ask how we address issues of harm without replicating the violence, which brings us to how we create safety by not resorting to the same tools of violence that are responsible for us being unsafe. This, comes from “questioning the most simple.” Eurocentric and or Us-centric norms that have been established. For the readers who have been submersed in western media, to turn to other texts to subvert these norms.

She advised that we should find ways to interrogate ourselves, our identity, because for so long, the primary prism through which we viewed most things, including the world, was through being one race or the other, black, brown white persons in the world. For her as a person of color, a black woman, of mixed race, it’s an ongoing process of being more honest in her experience and the ways of her education, her experience and the ways her identities layer on top of each other. And with these recognition, you start asking yourself what does it look like to structure a movement strong enough to hold many of our truths in one, while still actively dismantling the lack of equity that is often tied to who she is.

Binta believe that it is important to ask how the hereto-normal, heteronormative tradition influenced the rest of our trajectory. What does it mean to know that the solutions presented to us on the balance aren’t perfect. How does she engage with voting while engaging with the larger movement for equity in these spaces? These are questions, she says, she continue to wrestle with, day in day out, in her lamentation, er meditation, that is generating these discourse. In the telling of yesterday’s stories today.

To her, after all this laments, the conclusion she has reached is that: it is by no mean the only means of civic engagement. That it is necessary to engage throughout the year in whatever way possible, and that the past few months of continued protests have helped nuance this conversation. There would no longer be this binary of whether to vote or not – because it is the difference between having an equitable representation, equitable society or not. And she added: to assume there has to be a perfect candidate in the electoral process in order to vote, is a wrong premise. That we should learn to not criticize those who advocate, who suggest during an election that we all need to vote, even though the candidate was not, is not the candidate that we wanted.

Election, the electoral process, as far as voting is concerned, should be based on the difference between a candidate that would allow our movement to flourish, even with their imperfections, as we all are. And after the election, for people to endeavor to hold them to their promises, which also include being extremely critical of that candidate, once he or she is elected to office or be faced with the alternative of what we have experienced. It is important to remember the efforts, to the extent of knowing how important the achieving the right to vote was, because, she remembered people who were not able to register to vote in her home state once upon a time.

For Binta, we vote for our own capacity to continue to do the work that will bring about change. Again, because every major change in this country, and the world at large, has been a consequence of a kind of collective imagination.

So the question we have to ask, is whether this particular candidate will enable that kind of arena or shut it down? In a sense, when we vote, we are either voting for ourselves or against ourselves. And again, because one of the strategies of white supremacy is to take away the potential of the Black, Brown, and all others imagined as a threat, in their zero-sum game. We are in a moment right now, she continued, of world building, building a world not based on precedent, or even in reaction to the systems that have been set up, but truly independent of it – based on values of equity, fairness as inscribed in the document, the Constitution. It is an opportunity to reclaim our space for imagination — lamentation makes people think, for it brings to light these issues, resolves, thereby spawns more thinking, spawns meditation, spawns cultivation, spawns realization, ergo awakening, then clarity, harmony.

In America’s dark history and the potential catastrophic effects on all – the pandemic, and the systemic racism which was tremendously exposed by the murder of George Floyd, that produced the double whammy, is the chance we need to address all this. This, Binta mused, is a ruthless world, but as the eminent writer, researcher said: “we have found the enemy, and it’s not each other.”

End

Credits: This piece is dedicated to all the great Thinkers of the world and especially those who lament the state of affairs in our Land, who consider indifference a pandemic. Their lamentations do not go unnoticed. Thank you, thank you for all your contributions, for making people more aware – for your laments, and for sticking your necks out, others have gained more insights. Some of the erased, hidden or suppressed stories have come to light. I will continue to align, and pay attention to your views, express, promote, shine light on them – and share them with the world.

These are lamentations and ideas of what could be, but was not – lamentations on how we got here, even as we have been unable to acknowledge them. Binta’s lamentation is everybody’s lamentations. Laments expressed by everyone. Lamented, and we have them as tools for meditation – meditations that are meant to bring clarity, answers. It is hoped that this is a true woke – a true awakening – and as it is said: a true awakening does not extinguished before it accomplishes its goal. And as she has often said, when asked, Binta said: “it takes as long as it takes.”

Maybe it was for nostalgia, or the fact that this narrative, a dual narrative, if I may say so, that is winding down, at least for the first part, is being missed by yours truly, as elongation of it, makes things less boring, if you may: I asked Binta what gives her strength, she said: He that resides within her consciousness all the time, who is greater than he that resides within the world. Being in an attentive healthy body, brilliant mind, tranquil soul: attentive to their health, wellbeing. The search for the substance of her true nature, her fundamental nature, because he that hears this preaching, would manifest itself, and the original face before birth of parents would manifest. “When all these are in alignment, it is done, and I am good.” Experience tells me not to dig too deeply when Binta talks in ancients, cryptic at that. It is for the beholder to discern and decide, and make out what may. Cultivation. So, for all the great thinkers, the world over: your lamentations are acknowledged, recognized: and it is hoped they would generate conversations – discussing all of our stories, unimpeded – everyone given equal opportunity to strive, express their true humanity, in the realm of our common humanity – for a true and lasting woke – a true realization, a true awakening. Calm and steady. Dignity and respect. Smiles.

Thank you. The story continues.