my nigger and yours

.
In 1936, Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. He won medals in the 100- and 200-meter races, another in the long jump and yet another as a member of the 4x100 relay team. He was the most successful athlete of the summer Olympics, and watching a documentary about his life last night, it was hard not to cheer in the heart for such a successful and wondrous athlete. What people remember of the 1936 Olympics -- if they remember anything at all -- is the fact that Owens' blistering successes put the lie to German Chancellor Adolf Hitler's hope that the games would highlight Aryan superiority, a part of Hitler's world view and a view that would later lead to the slaughter of six million Jews and other 'undesirables.'

Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens was black. Hitler, as leader of the country hosting the Olympics, refused to shake his hand as was customary after a gold-medal win. Hitler also raised enough of an objection so that two Jewish men who were members of the American relay team were pulled out of the line-up at the last minute and Owens and another black runner were substituted. If Hitler had to choose between Negroes and Jews, he'd pick the Negroes.

In 1936, Hitler was consolidating a power that would later lead to World War II. His newly-minted planes and tanks and machine guns were being given a test run in Spain, where another dictator, Francisco Franco, was having a difficulty that came to be known as the Spanish Civil War.

Hitler was putting together his world view in 1936. He had not yet put it all together, but he was on his way. To help him, he had several attendants who reveled in and helped cement and embellish his vision of "Ein Volk. Ein Reich. Ein Fuerher." (One people. One empire. One leader.) One such man was Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, an individual who was one of the greatest expositors ever of what would become known as "spin-doctoring," a talent for creating and instilling a vision which, no matter how ludicrous, would become part of a wider perception.

It was Goebbels who said, for example, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." Well, he did and they did and the Goebbels legacy lives on to this day in military adventures and politics and other more personal venues. Just tell a big enough lie or tell a half-truth long enough and hard enough and ... voila! it becomes true. Joseph Goebbels helped craft and instill the notion, for example, of Aryan superiority ... the white guy, the blond guy, the blue-eyed guy was top dog among all the races and Germany would be an Aryan nation.


Joseph Goebbels was with Adolf Hitler during the Summer Games of 1936. The documentary showed pictures of the two men sitting cheek by jowl, watching the games in which Jesse Owens emerged as a big winner.


And if the documentary was to be believed, Goebbels was both astonished and outraged that a "nigger" should have bested his Aryan competition. According to the documentary, he expressed his astonishment in his diary ... the nigger had won! How could that be?!

Goebbels was astounded. He was in some way insulted!

Imagine that. How could he be astonished that the nigger won if he had not bought into his own fabrication -- the one depicting the Aryan race as superior? He bought into his own lie and refused to believe what was right in front of his nose. Jesse Owens had won. It was a plain fact. But Goebbels apparently could not allow himself to consider that his view of "niggers" was simply not true. He just couldn't do it. Superiority was a vision that was too important, too visceral and too grand to be upended by plain fact. 

Joseph Goebbels

And that was what stuck with me after the documentary concluded. The heart-rending treatment that Owens received both in Germany and later when he came back to the United States was enough to make a strong man weep, but what stuck with me was Goebbels' astonishment and outrage. He simply could not surrender or re-evaluate his own notions and, instead of doing so in the face of the facts, found new and improved ways of buttressing his opinion and bias.


How very human. Individually and personally human... to erect a vision or view that is consoling and to mortar that view with hopes and observations and neglect to step back and wonder how factual that view might be. Adolf Hitler may have coined the phrase "the Big Lie" in his book, Mein Kampf, and Joseph Goebbels may have helped to nourish Hitler's vision, but the tendency to elevate and aggrandize personal visions -- to anoint our Aryans and excoriate our niggers -- is just human ... one of the truly horrific human capacities. Never let a fact stand in the way of a good story. Never investigate, but only seek out a comforting meaning or belief. I want to be at peace and happy, so office politics, and tales of "terrorists" and the one looking back at me from the bathroom mirror are vital to my peace and happiness no matter what the facts may show. I console myself that my fabrications are not nearly to heinous as those of Joseph Goebbels or Adolf Hitler. Oh really? I need my Aryans. I need my niggers. And naturally I am not as mean-spirited or cruel as Joseph Goebbels or Adolf Hitler. No, my hands are clean. I can prove it because my lily-white mind or mouth never utters the word "nigger." What a good guy I am ... please don't trouble me with what is obvious or factual.


And as the years pass and the rivulets of my story swell over and over and over again, I too am surprised when the nigger crosses the finish line right in front of my nose. I too am jolted and filled with anguish. My story is just too important to revise or investigate.


It is a fearsome thing, changing the mind. Truly, it is hard. So many years building a sense of what is true and comforting. So many years of Aryans and niggers. So many years of patriotism and xenophobia. So many years of doing works considered "good" and eschewing works considered "bad." So much talk of rooting out the "terrorists." It's just the best story I can tell. Or is it? If all that and more like it were somehow taken away or revised, how the hell would I know who I am? Isn't it easier to excoriate the likes of Hitler and Goebbels with their Big Lie and never stop to consider how widespread the implementation of my own Big Lie has become?


If you know who you are, it's no wonder you're scared of being what you might, more factually, be. How could I be consoled by a tale I cannot yet tell? But the obvious keeps crossing the finish line right in front of my nose. And the mind and heart cry out piteously, "Stop that! I love my niggers and my Aryans and I rely on the sincerity of that love to prove my point." I believe myself ... my intellect, my emotions, my car, my cat, my country, my religion, my ... my story ... my Aryans, my niggers.



Change my mind? Not on your life! And certainly not on mine!


And yet...


And yet....
.