The Search for Dignity in a World Gone Mad
Have we lost the better angels of our nature?
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah
This past June (2016), best-selling London author Zadie Smith, wrote a piece for Elle about the young writer Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, an essayist who she met when, as a young inexperienced teacher at Columbia University, Rachel was her student. Smith’s admiration for this writer all these years later continues to grow. She describes Rachel’s style and approach to writing about black culture:
“She writes about the history of African Americans in the US, but it's never dry or academic as there's so much love in it. She loves the people, the details, the landscape, the language. Her non-fiction reads like a rich fiction. It's uncommon to read a voice that mixes anger and joy so beautifully and with so much skill. She doesn't write rants, she writes eloquent, appreciative tirades.”
I recently encountered Rachel’s poignant ability to explore important truths when I came across her long-form article about James Baldwin on Buzz Feed, written in February (for some reason the photo is no longer available at the top of the story, but scroll down, the story is there). She relates how she came to a deeper understanding of who Baldwin was on a trip to visit the famous writer’s home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France, but it’s not just a story about her and Baldwin. As is typical of her beautiful writing and deeply analytical thinking, Rachel connects Baldwin’s life with that of an ordinary person, her grandfather, a man who never became famous, never escaped to France to avoid America’s racism, but a man who did the best that he could with the weight of the times on his shoulders, a man for whom it was “straight hellish to live in the States with no ticket out.”
The article is an impressive one. As I thought about it for many days that followed, I realized that one line struck me the strongest:
What Baldwin understood, and my grandfather preferred not to focus on, is that to be black in America is to have the demand for dignity be at absolute odds with the national anthem.
In these days of political figures screaming obscenities in front of cameras, young men gunned down at what often seems little or no provocation, people murdering each other over imagined slights, and the distasteful, hatred-filled lumping together of those from different cultural backgrounds as undesirable (still, after all these years, code for skin color), I am wondering why we are drifting even further from treating all Americans with dignity and why so many of those who propose to be our role models lack it. It seems a disappearing concept, fast chasing the Woolly Mammoth, the Dodo, and the Saber-toothed cat into extinction.
Dignity is what most of us long for—the form of respect that allows us, regardless of our daily circumstances, to be treated as well as anyone else. And it is a seldom-mentioned attribute when it comes to our leaders. Some leaders have that quality naturally. It is not connected to economic levels, class, appearance, or celebrity. We know it when we see it—the person of principle who has a sense of pride in him or herself, of self-worth and a sincere regard for others. The person who keeps cool under pressure, in spite of insult or underestimation. President Obama epitomizes these qualities in my view, something I can say about few who monopolize the headlines. Jimmy Carter is another, Maya Angelou, Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai come to mind. These are people I would like to emulate. They aren’t telling us how great they are; they are showing us through their actions.
A true leader conducts his life according to a quietly thought-through set of principles and does not incite violence to get his own way. Skin color is not his measuring stick for how someone should be treated. Perceptions of holding greater power than another does not excuse abuse or brutality. Dignity is quieter, more collaborative, more empathetic. I long to see it when I turn on my TV; I want to be inspired.
We need more true heroes, those that keep us marching toward the pinnacle of human excellence. # # #
AN UPDATE ON MS. GAHNSAH: In 2018, Gahnsah won a Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for her portrait of murderer Dylann Roof, using a unique and powerful mix of reportage, first-person reflection and analysis of the historical and cultural forces behind his killing of nine people inside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. Check out her tumblr account for MORE on this talented writer.