I think my language is too loose and personal to stand up to some of
the recent responses to this thread. However, maybe taking a stab at a
working definition of "the human condition"--the term I used in the
post that initiated this thread--is a good place to start as I address
some of the comments the thread has generated.
First, I don't know when the discussion began equating "the human
condition" with genetics or even with "human nature." When I use the
term "the human condition," I'm referring, as we do often in literary
criticism and other fields, to the range of situations and experiences
that are common to humanity of all ethnicities and locales, as
recorded in the written, pictoral, and oral sources we've depended on
to enlighten us since we started keeping track of ourselves as a
species. In this limited sense, the term isn't interchangeable with
genetics or human nature, unless one wants to use it as an attempt to
distinguish human genetics from those of other life forms. Also, in
the sense I'm referring to, the human condition necessarily is limited
to recorded human experience. Thus, whatever humans or their ancestors
did before the species developed methods of preserving and
disseminating its history is beyond the pale of what my context. It's
also immaterial, since we can't know what did or didn't happen in
those early eons or beyond the periods covered by archeological finds
and the speculations they give rise to.
As for the question of what my son may or may not do in the military,
I'd like to petition to remove him from this discussion. It was an
insensitive and proprietorial error for me to bring him up as a topic
in a debate in which he has no part. Since what we post here is
accessible to anyone anywhere and might always be, I want to publicly
apologize to my son for the characterizations I've subjected him to
because of my loose lips/fingers. He's quite articulate and can speak
for himself on this subject if he chooses to do so.
Then there's the issue of my ethnicity vis-a-vis the positions I've
taken in this thread. Let me put it this way: I'm really tired of
having white _and_ black people remind me of what this nation has done
to my people. The question is, what are we -- my people and all others
who have the capacity to act -- doing about what's happening _now_,
today? Is there _any_ ethnicity on earth that can't point to
oppression by some other group at some time in history? (That's not
altogether a rhetorical question; I'd appreciate hearing from one of
our historians on the question.) Yeah, he who forgets the past is
condemned to repeat it, and ignorance is simply ignorance, not bliss,
etc. etc. In response to those truisms, I am committed to helping my
descendants and my students of all ethnicities and the many unschooled
young black people I come across to know and understand the history of
this nation, its good and its evil aspects. But once one knows that
history, what productive response can come from black people's
withdrawing from or rejecting everything about life as it's currently
lived because of what happened in the past?
It's worth nothing that when African Americans celebrate and catalog
their history, they include in that history their long heritage of
military service to the United States. In fact, part of the effort of
African American history as a discipline is to give credit to those in
all areas of American life whom white-written history expunged from
the record. So when we talk about genocide, let us remember that
historical expunging itself is a form of genocide--cultural and
psychological genocide because it asserts that the targeted people
made no, or, at best, insignificat, contribution to the nation's
history. Is historical expunging an outlived practice? Hardly. Have a
chat with some high school friends and see what they've learned in
school about ethnic peoples in America.
But there's a difference between a continuous presence in the
militaristic facet of the nation and in sanctioning oppression. We can
no longer cavalierly assert that if you're not part of the solution
you're part of the problem, because life has taught us how often we as
individual women and men occupy, for one reason or another, a murky
position between problem and solution. Similarly, if the only way that
black people can free themselves of the taint of American oppression
of _all_ kinds, not just militaristic, is by shunning military
service, then it's a no-win situation for those black people who
believe their presence throughout American life can make a humanizing
difference. I think each of us has the right and the responsibility to
choose where we want to or feel we can make a difference and take a
stand there.
My posts to the list over the last month or so should have made it
clear that I've often been conflicted and ambivalence about my place
in life. The sources of the conflict are rooted in (among other
realities of my experience) gender, ethnicity, generation and, yes,
history. One reason I'm glad Sixties-L is back is that it has prompted
me to begin resolving nagging political conflicts and ambivalences and
get on with the rest of my life in a productive, humane way. I'm
younger than Mr. Mandell's "advanced age"; but being middle-aged, I'm
not so young that I can afford the luxury or the irresponsibility of
dropping out or encouraging young people to do so on the grounds that
our government is corrupt and corrupting. If the sixties taught us
nothing else, they should have taught us that.
S. Flowers
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