Editor’s note: David Moats, an author and journalist who lives in Salisbury, is a regular columnist for VTDigger. He is editorial page editor emeritus of the Rutland Herald, where he won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials on Vermont’s civil union law.
[T]he campaign of racial harassment that caused Kiah Morris to resign her post as a member of the Vermont House from Bennington was so noxious and disturbing that outrage among Vermonters was widespread and deeply felt. The case was also an instructive lesson in the ways that hate works to undermine democracy.
The Morris case gained new attention last month when Attorney General TJ Donovan called a press conference in Bennington to explain that he did not have grounds to bring charges against anyone, even against Max Misch, an acknowledged white supremacist, who admitted he enjoyed trolling Morris with racist messages. As it happened, Misch appeared at the Donovan press conference, where Morris also spoke, in what he seemed to view as a prank designed to unnerve the targets of his racist attacks.
The upshot is that Morris was driven from office by racist hate weaponized into a campaign of intimidation. That is disturbing on two levels. First, it was an attack on a public-spirited woman who had put herself forward to serve her community. At a personal level, the attacks were deeply hurtful to Morris and her family.
Second, the incident showed how weaponized hatred corrodes the foundations of democracy. It is happening in more extreme form in other places, as in Poland, where a right-wing zealot recently assassinated the mayor of Gdansk. Now democracy has come under attack in Bennington. The people of Bennington elected Morris, and the racism directed at her essentially overturned the election. A minority of haters defeated the majority of voters. Further, by demonstrating the devastating effects that racist attacks have at a personal level, the haters may cause other people of color to think twice before putting themselves forward — or from even lifting their heads up where they might become targets. It is the kind of intimidation that African-Americans have been subjected to since the days of Jim Crow. The Ku Klux Klan didn’t have to lynch all blacks. Just one person murdered now and then could send a wave of horror through the black community, with the obvious message that anyone who raised his or her voice was in danger. In fact, lynching was not a now-and-then event. For a period of about 50 years, known lynchings occurred at a rate of about once a week somewhere in the South or nearby states.
The bravery of those who stepped forward during the civil rights movement is thrown into bold relief by the history of violence that formed the backdrop of their actions. It wasn’t even history. The advances of the civil rights movement took place within an atmosphere of terror: bombings, murder, church burnings, police attacks and other violence.
Hatred and intimidation are still not a thing of the past, as African-Americans, even in liberal Vermont, continue to attest. And it’s not just high-profile figures such as Morris who experience harassment. Racial profiling by police has been documented again and again, and if some would like to dismiss incidents of profiling as the work of a few bad apples, Morris’ case shows the devastating effect that a few bad apples can have.
Thus, the attacks on Morris underscore the pernicious way that hatred works. It is safe to assume that, because humans are not angels, a certain level of hatred will always exist, directed at one group or another. The reasons why are legion, and we could enlist a brigade of sociologists, historians, psychologists and philosophers to explain them. As citizens we have to deal with it, whatever the explanation, which puts those resisting hatred in a paradoxical position.
The message of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was about the power of love to combat hate. Only light can drive out the darkness, he said. Absorb the blows of the police billy club, and the world will take note of the injustice you are suffering.
Easy to say. Harder to put into practice. It all depends on a sort of radical humility that may be an alien concept in an era when unbridled egotism seems to be the dominant motif. It is a cliche for our leaders to proclaim American exceptionalism and the notion that ours is the richest, greatest, most powerful nation on earth, and also the most morally righteous. In light of these conventional notions of American greatness, humility may be equated with weakness, both personally and politically.
So if success in America derives from self-promotion, aggression and acquisition, what is the purpose of humility? Why is it a virtue? The question begs another question: What kind of success is achieved by selfishness? What kind of community does rampant individualism produce? The cutthroat political atmosphere and unchecked corruption of the Trump administration provide an answer.
It’s worth remembering that democracy itself is founded on principles demanding a sort of radical humility. The premise of democracy is that we are all created equal, which means that our neighbor is inherently as worthy as we are. We are not equally strong or smart or fortunate, but it is a profoundly important moral premise that we are equal in value and we share equality of rights. Our great religions share that premise. Humility is a virtue that honors the worth of the other, that listens to and respects the other, and works to protect the dignity of the other.
Those who exalt themselves and promote a message exalting one group over another rely on the power of hatred. They are making inroads in both Europe and America, where democratic values are under siege. But as history has shown, hatred, tribalism and nationalism inevitably yield to a death spiral leading nowhere but destruction. Nazi Germany, Jim Crow America, ethnically cleansed Bosnia — someone thought he was better, and those who understood democracy’s mandate for humility had to fight back.
It’s likely that Attorney General Donovan would have prosecuted the daylights out of anyone where evidence supported charges in crimes against Kiah Morris. In the meantime, Morris has spoken out, and her supporters have rallied to her side. One variant of the humility required to support democracy in America is white humility. Listening to the reality of the lived experience of black people in America is something white people sometimes resist. But if white people were able to listen and to hear, they would gain a better idea of the consequences of the crimes of slavery and white supremacy, and would more fully appreciate what has been required even to survive.
It is enough to foster a sense of humility in anyone willing to listen and learn.
