Lions Lambs and Scapegoats

Now it is March, that season of lion and lamb, when green appears again. Today I saw the first crocus. Roots stir, shoots poise for flight; there is much preparation underground for that revolution we call springtime.

How will we smell the fresh spring air when our windows are bricked up? Immigrant detainees at Elizabeth and at Wackenhut are not allowed in the sun, are not allowed outside. The system is of course to protect us all—what if they got sunburn?

At this moment in the emerging Security State we are all made to feel insecure. Tens of thousands are locked up in inhumane conditions; not only immigrants and not only Muslims. Others lose their way—will they end up behind bars too? Prison is a growth industry—and springtime is coming.

Along Steinway teens lock horns like wild goats. Without presence of parents they wander far astray. Without presence, the parents cannot convince with mere words.
We are too busy to sustain Presence, and too nervous to develop our Being. Without presence we become like bricked up windows. We live without the Light that we need to grow.

A recent Community Service Society study examining trends in joblessness in the city suggests that by last year, nearly one of every two African American men between 16 and 64 was not working. Based on data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the report has found that just 51.8 percent of black men ages 16 to 64 held jobs in New York City in 2003.

Rates are higher than the official unemployment rate, because the official figures count only those actively looking for a job, and not those too discouraged to keep trying. Spokesmen stated that that employers "are particularly uninterested in hiring black men for jobs that require customer or client contact, for whatever reason.'' They tend to give preference to women, he said.

Racism can be overt and it can be subtle. There can be cultural as well as human rights aspects to this problem. But is not 50 percent unemployment a crisis? And with recent sweeps of minority youth, is it surprising that some should believe that an effort is being made to keep African American youth off the voting roles by criminalizing them? Felons can’t vote in New York.

Yes we must have our scapegoats. Let them lock horns and fight amongst themselves! So much the better. Let immigrants and African Americans be divided, so much the better for the gangsters in the boardrooms and the halls of government.

What would they do without the scapegoats, without demons to scare us? What if we stopped being distracted by the latest nationalistic rhetoric from Osama, from Rumsfeld and from Blair, from the whole lot of them? What would we do? The poet Cavafy writes:

“Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion
(How serious people’s faces have become)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.”

Richard Perle may have just resigned, but we have not seen the last of him. Racial profiling, discrimination, Muslim bashing will all continue. These distractions can be “a solution” to keep our minds off what is happening in Haiti, what happened in Rwanda and in the Congo. When are we Americans and we Muslims going to be an effective force for peace? How do we take back that peace and wholeness of mind and begin to work together?