Mercy Not Sacrifice
I’m used to treating political speeches like fluff. I don’t expect them to actually be inspiring or teach moral values that are worth emulating. But as I’ve been looking at lines that Melania Trump’s speech-writer plagiarized from Michelle Obama, I’ve grown interested in meditating on the values that these words are promoting. What’s really interesting is the way that these values resonate differently depending upon the social location of the speaker. It’s very different for a black middle class family raising their kids in the immediate aftermath of desegregation to talk about hard work, integrity, and respect than for a white upper class woman to appropriate these values in her speech. The words have an entirely different meaning in the abstract than they do at a political convention for the first black presidential candidate in US history.
“You work hard for what you want in life.”
This line makes me grimace. Because I feel the weight of black respectability culture. Of course, Michelle Obama had to remind America that she was raised to work hard because white people depend upon the myth of black laziness for our self-identity. Hard work is the core value of the white middle-upper class self-justification. We work hard; other people don’t. That’s why we deserve our wealth, and they don’t deserve our tax dollars. It doesn’t matter how wealthy you are; you have to have a rags to riches story about how you’re an entirely self-made person. Nobody wants to admit that they’re a trust kid. Even Donald Trump tries to narrate his life story as hard work.
What we’re discovering is that the moralization of “hard work” created by capitalism and racial self-justification results in an exhausting, miserable society. The message of the Christian gospel is that we don’t have to work hard; we just need to surrender and then we’ll find the communion with God which is exactly everything we want in life. When we learn how to rest in God, our contributions to society are not experienced as hard work but as joyful worship. As long as Christians self-justify through our “hard work,” we will continue to make ourselves miserable and exhausted, and we will judge anyone else who seems to be having a better time than us. I totally respect why that line was absolutely necessary in a speech by a black future first lady, but I wish that our country could dial back its idolatry of hard work just a bit.
“Your word is your bond.”
This is the most fascinating phrase in the speech. My friend shared a post from Slate explaining the history of this phrase in black hip hop culture. It originated in the late 1500’s among merchant traders basically signifying that a written contract was unnecessary because you’ve given your word. The last time white people really used this phrase was in Victorian English. But it became a part of black speech within black Islam in the 1960’s and then in the early hip hop movement.
In any case, this is a powerful and very challenging value for me: to think of my word as my bond. First of all, as a pragmatist, I often justify saying things that I don’t really mean in order to accomplish whatever needs to be accomplished. Second of all, I’m terrible at following through when I say I’m going to do something, because I’m so distracted and disorganized. I need to do a lot of work on my integrity, which is contingent upon living with intentionality. I’ve been advised to do simple things like putting my shopping cart back where it’s supposed to go instead of leaving it in the middle of the parking lot in order to begin the work of reversing a lifestyle filled with laziness and dishonesty.
“You treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.”
Michelle Obama said this whole sentence, but the plagiarizing speech writer cut out the last part. That omission really says everything. It’s a completely different statement without the emphasis on treating strangers and opponents with dignity and respect. Many Donald Trump supporters are very dignified and respectful with people in their personal social circles. It’s just the immigrants, the thugs, and the gays that don’t deserve dignity and respect.
Is there anyone who has been treated with less dignity and respect over the last eight years than Barack and Michelle Obama? Barack is a politician, so perhaps he’s fair game, but Michelle? People even found ways of sneering at her anti-obesity campaign. Suddenly, it became a liberal nanny state move to promote eating more vegetables, which my ultra-conservative south Texas grandma would have been delighted by. Every time Michelle had a french fry, Fox News was on it. The right wing hate for Michelle Obama is one of the most shameful things that happened over the past eight years.
If there’s one thing we can all agree on regardless of where we fall on the political spectrum, it should be the importance of treating strangers and opponents with dignity and respect. If that were the only thing our politicians were able to commit themselves to doing with real intentionality for the next four years, we would become an infinitely better country.
“We want our children to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
The meaning of this sentence completely depends on the context. For a black woman who grew up when desegregation was still a new thing, this is a riff on Martin Luther King, Jr’s “I have a dream” speech. It’s about fighting for a world in which no institutional racism or other unjust obstacle will subvert the ability of our children to live out their talents. It means holding sacred our cultural value of equal opportunity which puts other values in check. Because creating a world in which no child will be disadvantaged might require redistricting our schools and even busing students around in geographically segregated school districts so that we do not continue to have under-resourced inner city schools.
When you read this sentence as a generic statement without the subtext of racial injustice, it’s all about achievement, which is the predominant idol of white middle-class America. Unless we have big dreams and high achievements that we work hard to attain, we’ve failed. I’m a failure because it took me 38 years to release my first book which will probably not be nearly as influential and pivotal in the history of American Christianity as I need for it to be. Defining my life by my achievements is the most disastrous thing I’ve ever done. And it’s taking me a long time to unlearn that. I don’t need to have big dreams to save the world so much as I need to have a big heart to pour out in compassion on the people in my immediate path.
Reworking this line to make it right for me, I would say the only limit to the depth of my compassion is the weight of my need to achieve great things.
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