We must find a way to repair our divides so that everyone can breathe
I exhaled. On Jan. 20, 2021 I exhaled for the first time in four years. I knew I felt tension and certainly experienced angst and even terror at times, but I didn’t know I had been withholding my own breath. Perhaps, when I think about it, maybe I did know? If nothing else, it wasn’t lost on me that 2020 was a year about breath. The year 2020 revealed to us as a nation what many of us had known the whole time. Brazenly and quite objectively, it showed us whose breath we value and whose we do not. It showed us what we really look like and how we care and don’t care about one another.
On Jan. 20, 2021 I wept at the sight of Madame Vice President Kamala D. Harris swearing to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against enemies both foreign and domestic. My shoulders shook as President Joseph R. Biden held up his right hand and swore to do the same. And then it happened. I breathed. My lungs emptied into a long audible sigh. I felt as if I could finally lay down and take a hard-earned nap. But, by nightfall, I remembered something. I remembered nearly 400,000 Americans had ceased breathing in a matter of months.
By the time Joseph R. Biden and Kamala D. Harris were sworn in, millions of Americans were sick, unemployed, hungry, many without homes, and many more still in fear. I remembered only two weeks prior, mostly white American insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol leaving the stench of destruction, death and feces in their wake. It hit me that as surely as I exhaled, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Aubery would never do so again. It stunned me that there were millions of Americans, just as I was breathing again, who would begin to hold their breaths. Tens of millions rue the day that gave me oxygen.
We are nearly two weeks into the Biden-Harris Administration. Executive orders have been signed. New names, personalities, and dispositions have been selected to fill important governmental posts. All of this is designed to map out a way to serve the interests of our citizenry and move our country forward. I keep hearing the familiar refrain, “It’s time to move on.” But we are fractured. We are ruptured. We cannot move forward when only a small majority or a small minority of us is the only group breathing. Without breath flowing in the whole body, it dies. Without breath, this whole experiment in democracy is devoid of life. In my opinion, we must find a way to repair the rupture and then be restored to a collective breath. We all need air.
I do appreciate the executive orders of which I am aware. To me, they seem to be striving toward restoration of human dignity and respect for the earth upon which we sit, walk, and build. However, in my opinion, neither executive orders nor Congress can repair the breach upon which this nation was built. There was too much life lost in the ocean, too much blood soaked in the soil, and too many broken hearts unattended. This moment in the history of the United States reminds me of what I have read about in South Africa after apartheid was outlawed. It reminds me that we must have truth and reconciliation if we want to mend the breach.
Our country knows about truth and reconciliation. I work in the criminal justice system. I see our courts use a certain brand of it as the convicted are required to state out loud the nature of their wrongdoings in the presence of those harmed. I have listened as judges issued orders of restitution as a means to attempt to make right what went so horribly wrong. We are not better nor are we stronger living in denial. Instead we show ourselves simply afraid. I have heard it said that it is impossible to legislate morality. I believe it is also impossible to legislate courage. Laws require votes and signatures. Courage requires honesty, compassion, and breath.
Western Kentucky native LeTonia Jones is a social justice entrepreneur and writer in search of deeper truths about love and what is required to live fully human and be at peace.