Life is Too Short

This weekend I attended the Mississippi Book Festival. It is a wonderful gathering in Jackson of authors from around the country and writers who focus on the South and the state of Mississippi. This year was particularly nice, at least for me. Ellen Daniels, the event’s executive director, had the presence of mind to move the festival from the humid days of mid-August to late September.

The last time I was here the August sun brutally beat us down. Leaving some in ambulances. Others thirsting for some form of relief. Air conditioning was simply not enough, it never is, to defeat the Mississippi heat in August, the devil’s weather.

Walking around the state capitol brings back memories. When I was 14 years old, I served as a page for Representative Pat Presley who helped me find funding to attend the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. And every year, from middle school to the moment I left for Morehouse College, I participated in the YMCA youth legislature (organized by the late Tony Lay). The bus would make the trip from the coast and for three days we would join students from all over the state to take over the Capitol and serve as representatives and senators. We ran campaigns for leadership. In fact, I was elected the first Black youth governor of the state. Ironically, my opponent all those years ago was Robert P. Jones, my fellow panelist at this year’s festival. History and time can be funny like that.

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Of the book festivals, this is one of my favorites. (The New Orleans Book Festival is my favorite. I am from the water after all). I love the feeling of landing at Medgar Evers airport. I get to return to my home state, see old friends like Pamela Junior and Reena Evers-Everett, the daughter of Medgar Evers, and have wonderful conversations with interesting people who love books and ideas.

This year I was on a panel about “The Soul of America” with W. Ralph Eubanks, author of the wonderful book, When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil It’s Poorest Land, and Robert P. Jones who wrote the prophetic book, Backsliding: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation after the Christian Turn Against American Democracy. The conversation was brilliantly moderated by Traci Thomas of the Stacks podcast. The Supreme Court room was packed and people were visibly engaged.

But there was a moment that struck me. Traci asked us about the role of compromise in our democracy, and I wondered aloud what that might mean. What does it look like to compromise with slaveholders, or with people committed to Jim Crow, or with those who want the world that MAGA wants? Who bears the burden of those compromises? History is replete with answers to those questions. So is the present, I believe.

I cannot remember how I transitioned to the point, but I mentioned the conversation with Sad Gaad, author of Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind, scheduled for later in the day. This was to be a conversation about how progressive elites weaponize empathy to turn people against their self-interest. His is a book about the limits of kindness. I tried not to do it, but I know my face betrayed my disdain. My brow furled. I think I growled the words.

It was time for me to leave and make my way to the airport for the dreaded connection to Atlanta back to Philly. I dread all connections in Atlanta. I wanted to find Reena to give her a hug and say goodbye. She told me she was in room 113. I rushed to meet her. A line gathered outside the door for the next session. Police and security stood at the door as the audience from the previous panel flooded into the hallway. (There were no police or security outside the doors of our panel).

I caught a glimpse of Reena, walking close to the ground but smiling that infectious smile. I hugged her and Pamela. They wanted me to meet John Jennings, the brilliant graphic novelist and curator. The kind of encounter that makes this event so special. I walked to the door. An older white-haired white man in a white polo shirt and a gun holstered on his side, or not quite on his side, more towards the front. Wherever it was, I saw it. He spoke to me with a stern Mississippi drawl, “No sir. You can’t go into the room. We are not letting anyone in yet.”

I looked at the line. I looked up at the room number and remembered: this was the space for the conversation with Gaad. This was the line for a conversation about the limits of kindness. My blood boiled. Plus that particular sound of Mississippi in the voice of the white-haired man with the gun attached to his hip annoyed the shit out of me.

A man in line shouted my name and said, “I expected you to be in line. I am only here because you mentioned him. This is the kind of conversation that needs to happen in places like this.”

I disagreed. Some conversations are not meant for me. Life is too short. And that got me to thinking. Why was the festival platforming Gaad? I know he is a scholar at Ole Miss’s Declaration of Independence Center for the Study of American Freedom (typing that made me snicker), but his rant against empathy is part of an all-out assault on our democracy. Books like Gaad’s and The Sin of Empathy aim to corrode our sensibilities and urge us to turn a blind eye to the cruelties in our midst—to make us a nation of calloused hearts.

I am not suggesting that we cancel Gaad. That is a red herring. I just don’t think these people should be welcomed in polite circles. If you want a conservative voice in the conversation, and we do, then find a truly conservative voice. Not these people who are attacking the very foundations of the Republic. It gives them an air of respectability. It assumes they argue in good faith. It empowers them instead of shaming them.

People like Gaad can write and bluster all they want. No one ought to deny them that right. It is theirs to do with what they will. Nor should we ignore the implications of what they are saying for our democracy. In fact, we must take seriously the danger they represent. But we don’t have to sit and listen to this nonsense, and we damn sure don’t have to platform it.

All of this takes me back to Traci’s question about compromise. We compromise all the time. With our spouses. With our children. With co-workers. In politics. It is part of what it means to negotiate life as we live it.

But certain compromises sully the soul. They corrupt the heart. You can end up being complicit with evil. And it is damn near impossible to remove that stain. It’s like spilt red wine on white shag carpet.

I keep thinking about something Robert Jones asked as we sat in the airport waiting for that dreaded connection. “Why do we need a theology against empathy? Why are they attacking it?” He asked the questions with the smile that is his father’s smile. With a slight glint in his eyes, he said, “They know what the images of Emmett Till did. How they moved us. Of the images of Medgar Evers, shot down in front of his children.” I thought of Reena.

They don’t want us to see suffering. They don’t want us to feel it. They don’t want our blood to be moved by the horrors of our day. I have little interest in being complicit with that. And I don’t believe people committed to democracy should platform it.

Life is too short, and too damn precious.

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