More than a week ago my husband (who still lives in New York) asked me what I thought about the "ground zero mosque". I don't know if those were his exact words, but what I do know is that after almost 15 years of being married to this man I've been drawn into more pissing matches than I care to admit. So, I was wary of his question and hedged, fudged a non-answer. Shame on me.
That continues to bother me while I spend too much valuable time reading and re-reading Ross Douthat's NY Times column (that crash you heard was the sound of my head hitting the desk in disbelief), and all manner of blogs (and the commentary) about the controversy. Much of this seems like a bad accident on the interstate and I am just one more rubber-necking bystander about to miss my exit.
So, let me weigh in (hopefully so that I can move on). I'll preface my remarks by talking some about September 11th and the years immediately afterwards. I don't want to get into the particulars (where were you when?) of that day; I already have elsewhere and it's not germane to the point I want to make except to say that the day was as grievously painful to me as it was to so many; acute and visceral memories remain. My husband and I had talked about leaving New York for years, but after September 11th we made a tacit agreement to stay longer to be with our fellow New Yorkers and to help rebuild the city saying: we live here and we stand in solidarity with fellow New Yorkers (those we like and those we don't). We support others making a living here. We are not afraid.
It was the least we could give to a great city that nurtured us both and where we realized many of our dreams. Our commitment to New York was personal and understandable. What I couldn't fathom was how much of the rest of the country felt, and while I was touched I was still baffled because it seemed like a lot of idealized love from afar. I mean I felt that there was this exaggerated wailing from people who actually despised or feared New York and it's "cityness". But, in times of grief and mourning, you don't apply a cultural "means test" to others' condolences.
Where this really troubled me was when it became apparent that we were going to war with Iraq. I marched with thousands of others in protest as a way of saying "not in our name" and I was appalled by what I considered hysteria across the country about why we must attack. I bitterly said that people in Huntsville, Alabama or Omaha, Nebraska shouldn't flatter themselves; nobody gave a flyin' fuck about them enough to attack them in the first place. But then I came to realize that there is a hierarchy of suffering and back in the early 2000's to be associated with September 11th was to trump all other American tragedies and to elevate one's self and life. (I'll never forget being in Cleveland in 2005 and a woman, learning that I lived in New York, asked me "what was it like?" with an avidity that made me mute. It was as if she wanted to shake the hand that shook the hand that shook the hand ...)
I feel the same kind of self-inflation is happening around the proposed Cordoba House; that it's a way to assert a claim to specialness for some people who really "don't have a dog in this fight". But, what of those who do like the immediate families and friends of victims of September 11th? This society has done as much as it can do to repair an irreparable wound -- attention, adulation, money, preferential treatment in public policy matters and political campaigns, and a displacement project -- the Freedom Tower and the WTC site to battle over. We understand those offerings are proxies for the actual needs, that of having the loved one restored to life and of justice. But, that cannot be done. There is such a thing as collective suffering, but I don't think there is such a thing as sustained, collective grief. (Sustained trauma is another matter.) Are we to be uncritically deferential into perpetuity? (We're not capable of it. How many Martin Luther King Day celebrations have you attended that have made you cringe or merely bored? How many of you have opted to commemorate certain events -- especially if there's no feast associated with them -- privately as opposed to communally in order to restore or preserve some meaning?) No society owes any people an unending obligation regardless of the enormity of the crimes committed against them. Not Native Americans. Not African-Americans. Nor European Jews. The list of atrocities is endless, but the obligation should not be.
Years ago in writing the opera, "The Negros Burial Ground," I did research on the then recently unearthed African Burial Ground (in lower Manhattan). The more the archeologists dug the more the controversy grew about the dispensation of the remains, who owned access and rights to them, which archeologists were going to get to study the remains (the City? local universities? Howard University?) and who was the official custodian of the narrative. I remember thinking that here was a world-class historical find, one that would make many an archeologist's or a historian's reputation, and the pious wrangling over the Burial Ground had as much to do with career-making and political power plays in New York as it had to do with historic preservation. Jockeying for position is what it is, but don't try to bullshit me that you're doing this for The Ancestors. The more important point I'm making is that that hallowed ground was covered for 200 years while commercial New York morphed and grew. Now what sits atop a graveyard holding the remains of 10,000 enslaved Africans are city and federal buildings, streets, drugstores, shops, franchise restaurants and subway tunnels where every day thousands of people walk, ride, drive and bike. There is a small parcel (adjacent to the federal building whose construction led to the burial ground's discovery) that has been saved as sacred ground. It contained the skeletons of 200 people, and that parcel and those skeletons are the proxies for the others. Would the recovery of more lower Manhattan land (and more skeletons) exponentially increase African-Americans' connection to our past and elevate our status by eroding the stigma and shame of enslavement? Not enough to justify the reclamation of prime real estate. Monuments (and the dead) can only do so much.
What do I say to those (such as Mr. Douthat and others) who argue that while the Cordoba House proposers have a constitutional right to build the community center they have an ethical obligation to consider moving elsewhere? I think that King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" has already answered the incrementalists, the gradualists who suggest that a vilified, unpopular or oppressed minority must, among all its other responsibilities, be sensitive to the discomfort of the fully privileged majority. There are plenty of glib responses to that obligation -- "above my pay grade" is one of the least profane. More seriously, though, the struggle to reconcile America's ideals with its practices always requires pressure being applied against the status quo. The acquisition of justice is always a fight; justice is not bequeathed, it is won. As in any battle, certain proprieties are abandoned, not forever but for a time.
How often have I heard "we are a nation of laws" and how often I have agreed to abide by a legal decision (see Bush v. Gore) even if I abhor it. If a law is morally untenable to me then I should actively pursue its repeal until such time when the law is changed or superseded. If people are offended by the building of the Cordoba House in lower Manhattan, then they should advocate loudly and long for laws that would prohibit such building and let it stand the test of constitutionality. (Recently a dubious political hit job was sanctioned by the state: after James O'Keefe's discredited ACORN video sting, within weeks Congress passed legislation which intentionally put the organization out of business, and the law was subsequently upheld by the courts.)
For those who don't mask their animus towards Muslims by making arguments about "sensitivity", I say that my experience with bullies (growing up African-American in Iowa has "blessed" me with a cornucopia of experience with bullies) is that bullies perceive concession and accommodation as capitulation and capitulation as an invitation to demand more concessions. In other words: if I can get you to do X, I'm going to demand that you do X+1 next, and then, having succeeded with that demand I'll insist on X+2. If the builders of the Cordoba House concede to moving location, will they be asked to let an outside board monitor their programming or financial statements, and to permit non-Muslim overseers (and yes, I use that word deliberately) monitor their operations? Why not?
If, for instance, I wanted the Cordoba House builders and its future employees and patrons to submit to screening to detect the possibility of criminal behavior then I would advocate for changes in land use law in New York City and make sure the law made screening demands on Century 21, various professional services firms, small retailers, restaurants, titty bars, government agencies and colleges operating within Ground Zero's radius. That way it would be more difficult to accuse me of being xenophobic, racist and politically opportunistic. (Well, no, not more difficult, just harder to make the charges stick.)
I hope I'm done. I may not be for if this goes on much longer I think I'm going to find myself at some demonstration in lower Manhattan and you know how much I love going back to the city these days.
One more note regarding President Damned-If-He-Do/Damned-If-He-Don't. Lately I have heard or read far too many commentators say that Obama "walked back" the statement he made at a White House Ramadan dinner when days later he refused to comment on the "wisdom of building a mosque ...." I thought him prudent to refuse to be drawn further into the discussion. The more he says the more the story becomes about Obama. One major speech on Race; one set of remarks on constitutionally protected religious practice. Move on.
End of dispatch.
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