Surrender Under Protest

Listen while you read:  https://youtu.be/7Nf5uWB6xgc

From the comfort zone of history
On the lips of trusted loved ones
To the lonely, fragile minds of angry youth
No sooner was it over
Than the memory made it nobler
The selective means by which to point the view

Compelled, but not defeated
Surrender under protest if you must

~  Drive By Truckers

On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, killed nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston, SC.  Captured the next day, Roof stated that he wanted to start a race war.  Largely because of this murder, the Confederate battle flag was removed from the South Carolina Statehouse.

"Surrender Under Protest," on the 2016 American Band release, was, in part, inspired by this American tragedy.  The catchphrase, "surrender under pressure," originally belonged to those defending the "Lost Cause," the view that the Confederate Army was as heroic as the Union Army.  Drive By Truckers is a Southern band; they are very familiar with the fixated Confederate attitude that has remained in parts of the South ever since the War Between the States.  The song points to those unable to abandon tradition even when the sin at its root has been recognized and denounced.

I grew up in a predominantly white small town in the Northeast.  There were a handful of black families in town, and as much as I can remember, we did not subject them to any discrimination.  Pete, Tony, Leila, Karen, Chuck . . . all were popular and well-liked.  But it is possible that they suffered racial bias of which I was simply unaware.  My memory of these families came front and center when I went to see Hidden Figures, the movie about three black women who played a pivotal role in the NASA Space Program at the same time that I was going to school with the handful of black kids in my town.  The story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson is an important chapter in our history, but of course, I knew nothing about them until I saw the movie.  "Black History" was simply not a thing when I was a teenager.

But I knew about the space program.  I have autographed pictures of Alan B. Shepherd and John Glenn, the result of my obsession to write letters to famous people before I discovered boys.  John Glenn's orbit around the earth in 1962 is an important part of the Hidden Figures story.  The discrimination against blacks that is highlighted in the story is not new to me, but I found myself, nonetheless, shocked at the shame of it.  That the tradition of "colored" bathrooms went unquestioned and unchallenged, even at an intellectual institution such as NASA, disturbed me as if I were learning about it for the first time.  But haven't we gotten past this by now?

Of course, the answer is no, we have not.  If we had, nine black parishioners would not have died due to the lonely, fragile minds of angry youth.  It seems that the ugly curse of racism has risen again, encouraged by an American dialogue that marginalizes the "other," and recently, that has found a new leader who chooses not to put forth an argument against bigotry, but instead, normalizes it.

After I sorted out my reactions to the movie, I wondered about how a younger generation would respond to it.  Would they be as appalled as I was at the blatant discrimination?  Or would they dismiss that old piece of history as if it no longer has any bearing on our society?  "Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  (George Santayana)

So much for the comfort zone of history.