Fighting Nazis and racism

In my last post, I read a magazine and a newspaper article. Both were related to heroin. After reading the New York Times story, I brought up the issue that black families weren't empowered to stand up and change the conversation around addiction. So, I chose a handful of quotes from Ta-Nehisi Coates's "The Case for Reparations" for a follow-up post to further discuss that issue. 

   "Clyde Ross grew. He was drafted into the Army. The draft officials offered him an exemption if he stayed home and worked. He preferred to take his chances with war. He was stationed in California. He found that he could go into stores without being bothered. He could walk the streets without being harassed. He could go into a restaurant and receive service.    Ross was shipped off to Guam. He fought in World War II to save the world from tyranny. But when he returned to Clarksdale, he found that tyranny had followed him home."

So many things about this bother me. Clyde Ross chose war over staying home to work. Ross would rather risk death than the oppression he faced working at home in Mississippi. Life was so bad, people would rather die for their country than live in it. I basically said the same thing thrice because it is such a problem. I like to believe every person has good in himself or herself, yet this proves me wrong. Ross's home environment seemed more toxic to him, so he opted to take his chances with the Nazis and their Axis Power buddies.

Ross knew life only in his home state. In California where he was stationed, he felt equal. Restaurants waited on him. Nobody expected him to move to the side or tip his hat when he walked past on a sidewalk. He was accepted. He fought "to save the world from tyranny" and returned home where it followed him. Americans have great pride in their country and the people who fight for it. Unless those people are black. Ross may have saved the world from tyranny, but he couldn't save himself. Those perpetrators of racism couldn't see the red, white and blue in him–only black.

"He came to Chicago in 1947 and took a job as a taster at Campbell’s Soup."

In a story of hardship and racism, I loved this little detail. Ross didn't just move north; he found a job as a taster of soup. 

"The men who peddled contracts in North Lawndale would sell homes at inflated prices and then evict families who could not pay—taking their down payment and their monthly installments as profit. Then they’d bring in another black family, rinse, and repeat."

Coates finds the perfect metaphor for how men sell homes on contract and how inhuman the process was. "Rinse and repeat." If the inflated prices or taking of all the money from families didn't strike a chord, adding this definitely did. I can picture the white men ushering in new families only to turn around and shoo them away, all the while keeping the money.

"Black people were viewed as a contagion."

I think Coates encapsulates the centuries of struggle here. In seven words, Coates summarized all the crap black people have gone through in their quest to be treated equally. But when will it end?

"A country curious about how reparations might actually work has an easy solution in Conyers’s bill, now called HR 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. We would support this bill, submit the question to study, and then assess the possible solutions. But we are not interested.“It’s because it’s black folks making the claim,” Nkechi Taifa, who helped found N’COBRA, says. “People who talk about reparations are considered left lunatics. But all we are talking about is studying [reparations]. As John Conyers has said, we study everything. We study the water, the air. We can’t even study the issue? This bill does not authorize one red cent to anyone.”"

Lengthy excerpt, but an important one. A proposed STUDY of reparations wasn't accepted. Just a study. HR 40 merely suggests a study into reparations and possible solutions. Nkechi Taifa said it's because of who is making the claim: blacks. It's completely obvious and heartbreaking. Then to add insult to injury, John Conyers makes a great point at the end. The bill doesn't offer any money, and people study everything else under the sun. Why not reparation? Scientists study things like migration. If someone can study the movement of people, why can't someone else study the treatment of people and how to make amends for that treatment?

" At the end of World War I, black veterans returning to their homes were assaulted for daring to wear the American uniform. "

This comes back to Ross returning home to tyranny after World War II. I guess it's not surprising that about 30 years before he returned from war, others were attacked for wearing their uniform. These people were probably proudly wearing their uniforms and were trying to show how similar they are to the whites. Evidently you could be an American soldier only if you were white.

Not much changed from the first to the second war. And it was years until something did.

A variety of styles aids my writing

After hours of searching, I grew discouraged. I didn't think it would be so hard to find a long magazine story related to heroin and addiction. Lucky for me, I found one from a magazine and another from a newspaper. Bethesda Magazine, a publication I wasn't aware of until this week, and the New York Times published articles related to heroin. Bethesda featured moms who lost children to overdose while the Times focused on how white families affected by addiction are changing the conversation. It couldn't hurt to read two different styles related to the same topic.




I started with the Times article "In Heroin Crisis, White Families Seek Gentler War on Drugs" for the sources. Some are out of my reach, like the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Others like Eric Adams, the former narcotics detective, are more within my grasp.




I thought there was a slight disconnect between the article and the headline. While it is mentioned that white addicts now experience compassion when years prior black addicts were jailed, I feel the emphasis is on lack of treatment centers and how to combat that. Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw mentions how treating blacks with such compassion back then could have prevented "the devastating impact of mass incarceration." I see a story in that. Why didn't black families feel empowered enough to challenge the policy around drug use? It bothers me that addiction had to invade powerful white families before change happened.

Because the Times article is a newspaper story, it's a dryer read. But that's good in my case. As I read through, I was making mental notes where an anecdote, scene or more detail would transform it into a magazine story. Then I switched to the regional magazine story.

Bethesda Magazine's "A Mother's Heartbreak: Heroin's Toll in Montgomery County" uses the faces of about five mothers and their children to demonstrate the rise of the heroin problem in one county. What seems like a daunting task to me became a lovely magazine story. The mothers meet as a support group. Some are connected through their now-deceased children. Using five random moms who each lost a kid to addiction wouldn't be as effective; the story wouldn't flow well.

The writer, Cindy Rich, uses scenes that have an emotional impact. Rich recreates the 911 phone call in which a mom is desperately trying to keep her son alive while the paramedics rush to the house. In another, one mom asks another how she's doing. She doesn't know why she bothers asking when she knows the answer. I hope I can recreate some powerful scenes when I write my long story. My focus going forward in my reporting is detail. Detail to hold the story upright and leave readers feeling something.