Go to the Polls; Remember Who We Are
Delivered at The Unitarian Society of New Haven
November 4, 2018
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Sermon
“Look, Mama, there she is!”
We had boarded the last ferry from lower Manhattan to Governor’s Island.
The sun was just beginning to set behind the majestic woman standing in the harbor with her torch held high.
And as I held my child close and looked out over the water, I was surprised by the tears that filled my eyes and the lump that rose in my throat.
The boat shifted, and soon the sun was so bright behind her, we could barely see the statue.
“Don’t look into the sun,” I told my daughter. “It could hurt your eyes.”
And there was something poetic, something powerful in the fact that we could no longer look at Liberty without being blinded.
The truth is, I could barely look at her at all, not because of the sun, but because of a feeling that arose the moment she first came into view. It wasn’t sadness; it wasn’t regret; it wasn’t longing.
It was shame. I felt the way a guilty child does when they know they have done something wrong; they try to meet their parent’s eyes, but they simply can’t. They look down and away, anywhere but in your face.
The shame I felt that afternoon on the ferry was not mine alone. It was shame felt on behalf of us all, of our nation, shame felt on behalf of America, “the land that never has been yet and yet must be.”[i]
I could barely look at Lady Liberty, because I cannot bear what we have become.
As I gazed upon her, I could hear the cries of children at the border and see the photos of asylum seekers languishing in refugee camps around the world, banned from entering the “land of the free.” I couldn’t look at Lady Liberty without thinking of the migrant caravan or the survivors of sexual assault who felt so deeply and profoundly betrayed by the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
I couldn’t look at Lady Liberty without thinking of my parents’ state of Georgia where the Secretary of State, himself a candidate for governor, has systematically purged African-American voters from the roles using false claims of voter fraud and arcane laws to suppress the black vote.[ii]
And there she stood, her “beacon-hand” still holding out the promise of “world-wide welcome” despite it all, reminding us of…what?
Of who we once were?
Of who we could be?
Of who we wish we were?
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886, but, as the story goes, was conceived of in 1865 just after the end of the Civil War and the abolition of American slavery. She was born in a conversation between philosopher and abolitionist Edouard de Laboulaye and the artist Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.[iii]
For Laboulaye, a member of the French Anti-Slavery Society, the idea was to create a monument to abolition, to freedom, to symbolize more than American independence, but also the end of slavery. The original conception of the statue was to have her holding broken chains and shackles in her left hand and to have them scattered also at her feet. As you can imagine, this idea did not fly with the white American financiers on whom the funding of the project depended. They refused.
Laboulaye and Bartholdi relented on the chains the statue would have been holding, but fought to keep them at her feet. A tablet took their place in her hand. But they are still there, she strides barefoot over a broken shackle and chains.
Somehow, sometime, I must have told my daughter this story, because as we rode by Lady Liberty on our way to Governor’s Island, as we went to sleep on the island in a canvas tent buffeted by the harbor wind – yes, you can camp on Governor’s Island in the New York Harbor – and when we woke in the morning to the statue’s solemn and steadfast presence, Arden asked again and again: “Where are the chains on her feet?”
Well, you can’t see them, except from the air. You can’t see them unless you are in a helicopter far above the island.
Psychologist Dr. Joy DeGruy is the author of the book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
She spoke about the Statue of Liberty and the chains at her feet in an interview a number of years ago after a visit to the statue. Once she learned that the chains were still there, but for all intents and purposes invisible, the African-American scholar said, “I thought to myself: they are invisible like us.”[iv]
Until about 2014, the chains at the feet of Lady Liberty were not only invisible to the eye, they had been lost to history as well.
The National Parks Service, which maintains the statue, had no mention of the chains anywhere in their literature or on their website or in their tours. The statue’s connection to abolition was not a part of the story as it was being told. Joy DeGruy and others pressured the Parks Service to tell the true story, and today, you can read about the chains and the abolitionist message they represent on the Parks Service website and in their brochures.[v]
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free.”[vi] The Statue of Liberty was not originally intended only to welcome European immigrants. It was to also symbolize the struggle for freedom of African peoples unjustly enslaved in this land for hundreds of years.
We erased that meaning by hiding Liberty’s chains from view and from history.
Why does this matter?
Well, as I was preparing my sermon schedule this past summer, I knew that today would be just two days before the mid-term elections. And I knew our November theme would be “memory.” And so, I entitled today’s sermon: “Go To the Polls; Remember Who We Are.” I would talk about American ideals, American values, and how they dovetail with our Unitarian Universalist values.
I would not tell you how to vote, but implore you to vote, imagining that by now, some of you at least might be feeling so weary that even the act of voting might seem worthless.
But I would fill you with hope. And I would remind you that America is more than soundbites and toxic political rhetoric. I would fire you up to head to the polls with the faith that we, as Americans, are a people fundamentally dedicated to freedom and equality, that this is who we truly are, that this is who we have always truly been.
I would quote Langston Hughes: “O, let my land be a land where Liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, but opportunity is real, and life is free. Equality is in the air we breathe.”
Yes, that is what I would say today. “Equality is in the air we breathe.”
But that would be a lie.
Because the next line of the poem is this:
(There’s never been equality for me, nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
And who is speaking?
Hughes answers:
the poor white person, “fooled and pushed apart” he says
the black person, “bearing slavery’s scars”
the Native American “driven from the land”
the immigrant “clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.”
“Dog eat dog” and “Mighty crush the weak.”
This is the story of America:
a story of oppression and power run amuck,
a story of slavery and genocide,
a story of exclusion and persecution,
a story of racism and white supremacy.
It is ugly to say these things. It’s unpopular to say these things. It is inconvenient and uncomfortable. And it is true.
Our neighbor, Rabbi Brian Immerman, the new rabbi at Congregation Mishkan Israel wrote to his congregation after the tragedy at Tree of Life Synagogue last Saturday. “I too am filled with sadness and despair,” he wrote, “but I am not shocked.”
“I am not shocked,” he said, “because given the prevalence of gun violence in our country today,
it was only a matter of time before someone entered a synagogue.”
And I realized, as I read his words, that I was not shocked for a different reason. Saddened, heartbroken, but not shocked, not just because of the prevalence of gun violence in our country, but because of the prevalence of hatred and bigotry and white supremacy. These things are the bedrock of our nation. They are what white Americans have been spoon-fed since the pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.
The hate-filled rhetoric that we hear spewing from the top levels of government today is not causing people to hate. That hate was always there under the surface. One of you said to me last week that it is hard to know which is worse: having it be hidden or out in the open.
Now, I’m all for transparency, but so I think the emboldening of people’s hatred of others – of “the other” is a dangerous precedent, and it is one we have seen before.
When I saw this week the flyer sent out by the campaign of Ed Charamut who is running for CT State Senate with an image of his opponent, Representative Matt Lesser, I was appalled. The flyer contains a doctored image of Lesser, who is Jewish, with bulging eyes and fistfuls of cash. It literally looks like it could have come out of pre-World War II Germany.[vii] I was appalled, but I was not shocked.
We forget history at our peril.
And the history of America is as I have outlined it here this morning, but there is another side to our story.
Ibram X. Kendi writes in his book, Stamped From the Beginning, that the history of America is a “duel and dueling history of racial progress and the simultaneous progression of racism.” In his careful study of America’s past, he says, he “saw the anti-racist force of equality and the racist force of inequality marching forward, progressing in rhetoric, in tactics, in policies.”[viii]
In her book, White Rage, Carol Anderson also chronicles this duel and dueling history of America. She writes:
“The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is a problem; rather, it is blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship. It is blackness that refuses to accept subjugation, to give up. A formidable array of policy assaults and legal contortions has consistently punished black resilience, black resolve.”[ix]
I think these observations of American history are astute and true. We are called, I think, to witness the experience of the black community in this country and to understand the connections to and parallels with other communities who have faced and continue to face oppression in America.
Pastor Steven Anthony Cousin of Bethel AME Church in New Haven did just that the other night at the vigil at the JCC in Woodbridge. “When a young white man came into an AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, Bethel’s sister church, in 2015,” he said, “the Jewish community stood with the Black community. Tonight,” he said to the mostly Jewish crowd, “we stand with you.”
It is hate that motivated a man to kill two black people in the Kroger parking lot in Jeffersontown, KY.[x] And it was hate that motivated the man who killed eleven worshipers in Pittsburgh, PA just days later.[xi]
And, today, when we think of “white rage,” how can we not call to mind the face of a furious Brett Kavanaugh, enraged at the possibility that a woman might refuse “to accept subjugation, to give up.”[xii]
We make the connections.
We recognize the parallels.
And we acknowledge that the other side of the story of our nation is the one written by the people who did not and do not give up. The story of the people who demand full and equal citizenship even when it means violence and humiliation and even death.
So, go to the polls on Tuesday, folks, and remember who we are.
We are a nation where hate simmers right under the surface.
And we are a nation whose story is one of a determined march toward equality and equity – in the face of that hate, in spite of that hate, and in direct opposition to it.
Our history as Unitarian Universalists is, like America’s, one of duel and dueling forces of the anti-racist force of equality and the racist force of inequality marching in step, pushing and pulling against each other.[xiii]
We must acknowledge the times and places where inequality triumphed in our institutions and our people’s spirits.
And we must celebrate and support those among us who challenge those institutions and spirits and push us all toward equality.[xiv] And, moreover, each one of us is called to follow their lead and challenge ourselves to a more embodied anti-racist practice of our faith.
~
All through the night, on Governors Island, I listened to the wind as it whipped around the tent. I heard the boats in the harbor and the waves crashing against the sea wall. Through it all, I thought of the statue standing tall on her pedestal, torch held high.
I thought of the irony and hypocrisy her presence held for African Americans during Reconstruction, for Native Americans relegated to reservations, even for the immigrants who sailed past her and had their names changed – Americanized – at Ellis Island.
And I thought of her “imprisoned lightening” and her silent cry commanding us, as a nation, to meet her “mild eyes,” to keep our promises, and live into our promise, to be the land that Langston Hughes extorts “we, the people, must redeem,” the “land that never has been yet and yet, must be.”
And when I emerged from the tent the next morning, there she stood, her torch light beaming in the dawn, the rising sun illuminating her cloaked form.
The feeling of shame I’d felt on the ferry was replaced that morning with a firm resolve and a deep understanding and acceptance of who we are.
We are the nation that hid the chains and tried to erase both slavery and abolition from the history of the Statue of Liberty.
And we are the nation represented in that statue as she marches, resolute, over those broken chains.
We have the power to turn this around.
May it be so.
Notes
[i] Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/let-america-be-america-again
[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/us/randolph-county-georgia-voting.html?module=inline
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/us/politics/georgia-governor-voting-irregularities.html
[iii] https://www.laprogressive.com/statue-of-liberty-wears-chains-and-shackles/
[iv] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4tLaNeg9GA
[v] https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/abolition.htm
[vi] The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus
[vii] http://www.wnpr.org/post/political-mailer-prompts-claims-anti-semitism-conn-state-senate-race
[viii] Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Nation Books. Originally published 2016. Reprint 2017.
[ix] Carol Anderson. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2016.
[x] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/us/louisville-kroger-shooting.html
[xi] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting.html
[xii] https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a23499571/brett-kavanaugh-hearing-republicans-white-male-rage/
[xiii] https://www.uuworld.org/articles/black-hole-white-uu-psyche
[xiv] http://www.blacklivesuu.com
“Look, Mama, there she is!”
We had boarded the last ferry from lower Manhattan to Governor’s Island.
The sun was just beginning to set behind the majestic woman standing in the harbor with her torch held high.
And as I held my child close and looked out over the water, I was surprised by the tears that filled my eyes and the lump that rose in my throat.
The boat shifted, and soon the sun was so bright behind her, we could barely see the statue.
“Don’t look into the sun,” I told my daughter. “It could hurt your eyes.”
And there was something poetic, something powerful in the fact that we could no longer look at Liberty without being blinded.
The truth is, I could barely look at her at all, not because of the sun, but because of a feeling that arose the moment she first came into view. It wasn’t sadness; it wasn’t regret; it wasn’t longing.
It was shame. I felt the way a guilty child does when they know they have done something wrong; they try to meet their parent’s eyes, but they simply can’t. They look down and away, anywhere but in your face.
The shame I felt that afternoon on the ferry was not mine alone. It was shame felt on behalf of us all, of our nation, shame felt on behalf of America, “the land that never has been yet and yet must be.”[i]
I could barely look at Lady Liberty, because I cannot bear what we have become.
As I gazed upon her, I could hear the cries of children at the border and see the photos of asylum seekers languishing in refugee camps around the world, banned from entering the “land of the free.” I couldn’t look at Lady Liberty without thinking of the migrant caravan or the survivors of sexual assault who felt so deeply and profoundly betrayed by the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
I couldn’t look at Lady Liberty without thinking of my parents’ state of Georgia where the Secretary of State, himself a candidate for governor, has systematically purged African-American voters from the roles using false claims of voter fraud and arcane laws to suppress the black vote.[ii]
And there she stood, her “beacon-hand” still holding out the promise of “world-wide welcome” despite it all, reminding us of…what?
Of who we once were?
Of who we could be?
Of who we wish we were?
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886, but, as the story goes, was conceived of in 1865 just after the end of the Civil War and the abolition of American slavery. She was born in a conversation between philosopher and abolitionist Edouard de Laboulaye and the artist Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.[iii]
For Laboulaye, a member of the French Anti-Slavery Society, the idea was to create a monument to abolition, to freedom, to symbolize more than American independence, but also the end of slavery. The original conception of the statue was to have her holding broken chains and shackles in her left hand and to have them scattered also at her feet. As you can imagine, this idea did not fly with the white American financiers on whom the funding of the project depended. They refused.
Laboulaye and Bartholdi relented on the chains the statue would have been holding, but fought to keep them at her feet. A tablet took their place in her hand. But they are still there, she strides barefoot over a broken shackle and chains.
Somehow, sometime, I must have told my daughter this story, because as we rode by Lady Liberty on our way to Governor’s Island, as we went to sleep on the island in a canvas tent buffeted by the harbor wind – yes, you can camp on Governor’s Island in the New York Harbor – and when we woke in the morning to the statue’s solemn and steadfast presence, Arden asked again and again: “Where are the chains on her feet?”
Well, you can’t see them, except from the air. You can’t see them unless you are in a helicopter far above the island.
Psychologist Dr. Joy DeGruy is the author of the book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.
She spoke about the Statue of Liberty and the chains at her feet in an interview a number of years ago after a visit to the statue. Once she learned that the chains were still there, but for all intents and purposes invisible, the African-American scholar said, “I thought to myself: they are invisible like us.”[iv]
Until about 2014, the chains at the feet of Lady Liberty were not only invisible to the eye, they had been lost to history as well.
The National Parks Service, which maintains the statue, had no mention of the chains anywhere in their literature or on their website or in their tours. The statue’s connection to abolition was not a part of the story as it was being told. Joy DeGruy and others pressured the Parks Service to tell the true story, and today, you can read about the chains and the abolitionist message they represent on the Parks Service website and in their brochures.[v]
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to break free.”[vi] The Statue of Liberty was not originally intended only to welcome European immigrants. It was to also symbolize the struggle for freedom of African peoples unjustly enslaved in this land for hundreds of years.
We erased that meaning by hiding Liberty’s chains from view and from history.
Why does this matter?
Well, as I was preparing my sermon schedule this past summer, I knew that today would be just two days before the mid-term elections. And I knew our November theme would be “memory.” And so, I entitled today’s sermon: “Go To the Polls; Remember Who We Are.” I would talk about American ideals, American values, and how they dovetail with our Unitarian Universalist values.
I would not tell you how to vote, but implore you to vote, imagining that by now, some of you at least might be feeling so weary that even the act of voting might seem worthless.
But I would fill you with hope. And I would remind you that America is more than soundbites and toxic political rhetoric. I would fire you up to head to the polls with the faith that we, as Americans, are a people fundamentally dedicated to freedom and equality, that this is who we truly are, that this is who we have always truly been.
I would quote Langston Hughes: “O, let my land be a land where Liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, but opportunity is real, and life is free. Equality is in the air we breathe.”
Yes, that is what I would say today. “Equality is in the air we breathe.”
But that would be a lie.
Because the next line of the poem is this:
(There’s never been equality for me, nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
And who is speaking?
Hughes answers:
the poor white person, “fooled and pushed apart” he says
the black person, “bearing slavery’s scars”
the Native American “driven from the land”
the immigrant “clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.”
“Dog eat dog” and “Mighty crush the weak.”
This is the story of America:
a story of oppression and power run amuck,
a story of slavery and genocide,
a story of exclusion and persecution,
a story of racism and white supremacy.
It is ugly to say these things. It’s unpopular to say these things. It is inconvenient and uncomfortable. And it is true.
Our neighbor, Rabbi Brian Immerman, the new rabbi at Congregation Mishkan Israel wrote to his congregation after the tragedy at Tree of Life Synagogue last Saturday. “I too am filled with sadness and despair,” he wrote, “but I am not shocked.”
“I am not shocked,” he said, “because given the prevalence of gun violence in our country today,
it was only a matter of time before someone entered a synagogue.”
And I realized, as I read his words, that I was not shocked for a different reason. Saddened, heartbroken, but not shocked, not just because of the prevalence of gun violence in our country, but because of the prevalence of hatred and bigotry and white supremacy. These things are the bedrock of our nation. They are what white Americans have been spoon-fed since the pilgrims landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.
The hate-filled rhetoric that we hear spewing from the top levels of government today is not causing people to hate. That hate was always there under the surface. One of you said to me last week that it is hard to know which is worse: having it be hidden or out in the open.
Now, I’m all for transparency, but so I think the emboldening of people’s hatred of others – of “the other” is a dangerous precedent, and it is one we have seen before.
When I saw this week the flyer sent out by the campaign of Ed Charamut who is running for CT State Senate with an image of his opponent, Representative Matt Lesser, I was appalled. The flyer contains a doctored image of Lesser, who is Jewish, with bulging eyes and fistfuls of cash. It literally looks like it could have come out of pre-World War II Germany.[vii] I was appalled, but I was not shocked.
We forget history at our peril.
And the history of America is as I have outlined it here this morning, but there is another side to our story.
Ibram X. Kendi writes in his book, Stamped From the Beginning, that the history of America is a “duel and dueling history of racial progress and the simultaneous progression of racism.” In his careful study of America’s past, he says, he “saw the anti-racist force of equality and the racist force of inequality marching forward, progressing in rhetoric, in tactics, in policies.”[viii]
In her book, White Rage, Carol Anderson also chronicles this duel and dueling history of America. She writes:
“The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is a problem; rather, it is blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship. It is blackness that refuses to accept subjugation, to give up. A formidable array of policy assaults and legal contortions has consistently punished black resilience, black resolve.”[ix]
I think these observations of American history are astute and true. We are called, I think, to witness the experience of the black community in this country and to understand the connections to and parallels with other communities who have faced and continue to face oppression in America.
Pastor Steven Anthony Cousin of Bethel AME Church in New Haven did just that the other night at the vigil at the JCC in Woodbridge. “When a young white man came into an AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, Bethel’s sister church, in 2015,” he said, “the Jewish community stood with the Black community. Tonight,” he said to the mostly Jewish crowd, “we stand with you.”
It is hate that motivated a man to kill two black people in the Kroger parking lot in Jeffersontown, KY.[x] And it was hate that motivated the man who killed eleven worshipers in Pittsburgh, PA just days later.[xi]
And, today, when we think of “white rage,” how can we not call to mind the face of a furious Brett Kavanaugh, enraged at the possibility that a woman might refuse “to accept subjugation, to give up.”[xii]
We make the connections.
We recognize the parallels.
And we acknowledge that the other side of the story of our nation is the one written by the people who did not and do not give up. The story of the people who demand full and equal citizenship even when it means violence and humiliation and even death.
So, go to the polls on Tuesday, folks, and remember who we are.
We are a nation where hate simmers right under the surface.
And we are a nation whose story is one of a determined march toward equality and equity – in the face of that hate, in spite of that hate, and in direct opposition to it.
Our history as Unitarian Universalists is, like America’s, one of duel and dueling forces of the anti-racist force of equality and the racist force of inequality marching in step, pushing and pulling against each other.[xiii]
We must acknowledge the times and places where inequality triumphed in our institutions and our people’s spirits.
And we must celebrate and support those among us who challenge those institutions and spirits and push us all toward equality.[xiv] And, moreover, each one of us is called to follow their lead and challenge ourselves to a more embodied anti-racist practice of our faith.
~
All through the night, on Governors Island, I listened to the wind as it whipped around the tent. I heard the boats in the harbor and the waves crashing against the sea wall. Through it all, I thought of the statue standing tall on her pedestal, torch held high.
I thought of the irony and hypocrisy her presence held for African Americans during Reconstruction, for Native Americans relegated to reservations, even for the immigrants who sailed past her and had their names changed – Americanized – at Ellis Island.
And I thought of her “imprisoned lightening” and her silent cry commanding us, as a nation, to meet her “mild eyes,” to keep our promises, and live into our promise, to be the land that Langston Hughes extorts “we, the people, must redeem,” the “land that never has been yet and yet, must be.”
And when I emerged from the tent the next morning, there she stood, her torch light beaming in the dawn, the rising sun illuminating her cloaked form.
The feeling of shame I’d felt on the ferry was replaced that morning with a firm resolve and a deep understanding and acceptance of who we are.
We are the nation that hid the chains and tried to erase both slavery and abolition from the history of the Statue of Liberty.
And we are the nation represented in that statue as she marches, resolute, over those broken chains.
We have the power to turn this around.
May it be so.
Notes
[i] Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/let-america-be-america-again
[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/us/randolph-county-georgia-voting.html?module=inline
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/us/politics/georgia-governor-voting-irregularities.html
[iii] https://www.laprogressive.com/statue-of-liberty-wears-chains-and-shackles/
[iv] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4tLaNeg9GA
[v] https://www.nps.gov/stli/learn/historyculture/abolition.htm
[vi] The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus
[vii] http://www.wnpr.org/post/political-mailer-prompts-claims-anti-semitism-conn-state-senate-race
[viii] Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Nation Books. Originally published 2016. Reprint 2017.
[ix] Carol Anderson. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2016.
[x] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/us/louisville-kroger-shooting.html
[xi] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting.html
[xii] https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a23499571/brett-kavanaugh-hearing-republicans-white-male-rage/
[xiii] https://www.uuworld.org/articles/black-hole-white-uu-psyche
[xiv] http://www.blacklivesuu.com