Weekly Roundup: Why Are We Not Allowed to Remember?
Brad and Dan begin this Memorial Day episode by discussing the theme of memory and erasure. They point out that there are some things we can't stop remembering--that's how trauma works. The replay of certain events plays on repeat even when we want it to stop. Other things are put under the banner of erasure--from the Tulsa Massacre 100 years ago to the Insurrection of 1/6 a few months ago. They then tie this to the concerted efforts to block a 1/6 Commission by GOP leaders and what this means for the ongoing Cold Civil War waged by Republicans and Christian nationalists against democracy. This is interwoven with the ongoing vitality of QAnon, the new Biblical Worldviews Center from the Family Research Council, and other aspects of the Christian nationalist ecosystem.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty in Religions, Skidmore College, and our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB.
I'm actually coming to you from a road trip where I'm sitting in the city of Santa Barbara.
So if I don't sound like my normal self once again this week, it's because I'm on the road.
But I am here with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
It's good to see you Brad, like Brad the Nomad as you sort of were in New York State last week and now down in Southern California this week.
Yeah, a lot going on, but you know, it's always, no matter where I'm at, it's always nice to just stop and catch up on the news and try to figure out what's happening with you, Dan.
I will say this is one of those weeks where there was just a confluence of events, and I think we want to start today just by talking about the fact that it's Memorial Day weekend.
I think a lot of people are excited.
This might be the first weekend that they have planned a trip or maybe going camping or getting away with friends and family because of vaccines and everything else.
It's also a day, of course, where we remember.
We remember those who served in the military and lost their lives, those who sacrificed for the country.
Both of my grandfathers served.
Neither of them died in service, but they served in World War II.
And a couple of years ago, around this time, Dan, I was actually in France visiting battle sites where the all-Japanese battalion fought in a very bloody war that saw the loss of hundreds of American lives, etc.
That is what's going on today and this weekend.
It's Memorial Day weekend.
It brings up for me, Dan, the fact that there are some things we can't forget, and that is obviously those who've served and died in service, but there are other things we can't forget.
I think all of us know that we've had things happen to us that are traumatic or life-changing, and a lot of times we replay those events over and over, even if we don't want to.
It's kind of how trauma works, right?
What's weird about Memorial Day, and I want to talk about, is that I think there's some things that we can't forget that are attempted to be erased.
And I'll get to what that means in a second.
Now, there's some other things that are in danger of being forgotten, even though they happened in front of all of us.
So, let me spell out what I mean by all this, Dan.
Jelani Cobb, writing at The New Yorker, says this.
This year, Memorial Day, the national holiday on which we commemorate the men and women of the American military who died in the course of war, falls on May 31st, a date that marks the centennial anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre, a racial pogrom in which the black population of the prosperous Greenwood district of that city was attacked, murdered, and terrorized, leaving as many as 300 dead.
Last year, Memorial Day fell on May 25th, the day that George Floyd died in the custody of a white Minneapolis police officer.
The ineffable terribleness of the video depicting his death soon launched a wave of chaos and fury that swept across the nation.
The massacre in Greenwood was just one outrage among a cluster of racially motivated eruptions that began in the aftermath of the First World War, The bloodletting in mid-1919 was so commonplace that the period came to be known as the Red Summer.
The protracted brutality of Floyd's death sparked protests and uprisings in more than 350 cities in the United States.
These two memorial days point inescapably not only to those who have died on battlefields abroad, But to the theaters of conflict at home and the freighted politics of race, grief and culpability.
I think, Dan, one of the things I appreciate about Cobb's words is that he points to things that are often incredibly traumatic and and change the course of history.
And yet there's an attempt to erase them.
Tulsa, the Tulsa massacre, was all but erased from the public memory.
On purpose.
The goal by officials, by those in power, was to make sure that people didn't know about Tulsa.
There was even somebody who started teaching about Tulsa in the mid-1940s, and people didn't believe her because they said, we've never heard of this.
And that was 25 years later, Dan.
It's been one year since George Floyd was murdered.
I think we've talked about that a lot, not only on this show, but in in the public space.
But again, there's a chance, I think, that we forget, you know, we are living in a country where these things are all too common and it's too easy to allow them to become commonplace.
I want to just read one more thing, Dan, and I'll throw it to you.
I apologize for this long lead up, but here's Cobb one more time.
There's another connection between what happened in May 1921 and May 2020.
Viola Ford Fletcher, who is 107, testified before Congress about Tulsa last week and said that she could still see, quote, black bodies lying in the street.
She added, I hear the screams.
I have lived through the massacre every day.
Witness testimony in Derek Chauvin's trial yielded a view into the ongoing trauma of those who watched George Floyd die as they pleaded for him to be spared.
Charles McMillan, who testified for the prosecution, sobbed so uncontrollably on the stand that the judge had to call a recess.
In the days after Floyd's death, McMillan confessed to a journalist that he woke up each morning hearing Floyd's anguished cries for his mother.
The fact that these events have fallen on Memorial Day make for easy inferences about the importance of commemoration.
But this is not how trauma works, particularly for those who are closest to the calamity.
It's not the necessity of remembrance that serves as a burden.
It's the inability to forget, even if you want to.
Dan, I just want to kind of keep on this theme that there are some things we can't forget, even if we want to.
And I think the witnesses of the George Floyd murder and the Tulsa massacre are poignant and vivid examples of that.
There are also things that are under erasure that people try to make us not remember.
And I think as we're going to talk about here at length, January 6th and the out the The fallout of that is one of those things.
So I'll throw it to you.
Any thoughts on Memorial Day?
On Floyd?
On Tulsa?
And memory?
Anything there?
And we'll go here to January 6th in just a second.
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