I could count on the one question asked by international students every semester, sometimes in the classroom, more often in my office. Gabby’s eyes and tone linger.“ In Germany, we learned about the Holocaust in middle school and took a class trip to a concentration camp in high school. But what about this country? What happened to indigenous tribes in the curriculum? Why did I learn about the US African slave trade in Germany rather than in the country responsible for it?” Her incredulity, expressed with an undertone of anger, well-represents students new to the US who also cherish their opportunities and freedom.

“We believe that the truth of this century cannot be discovered unless its tragedy is explored to the bitter end” (Albert Camus, Camus at Combat, November 3, 1944). Philosopher Camus, laboring in the French Underground, unfortunately speaks directly to this country in 2021. Tragedy must be investigated fully. Horror must be acknowledged without excuse. Truth be told—moving forward requires looking back.

The United States—land of the how free and the home of who’s brave? We’re about to find out. Cage free chickens have come home to roost—lots of squawking here there and everywhere, especially in “higher” education, the Olympic Games, and Charlottesville, Virginia.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize winner for “The 1619 Project,” showcases “attacks that Black and marginalized faculty face all across the country” in her throbbing, brilliant statement on declining tenure at the University of North Carolina. “The last few weeks have been very dark,” she writes, and her unveiling of pulsing racism appalls. Hannah-Jones prefers to “work at a university not built by the enslaved but for those who once were” and will be joined at Howard University by author Ta-Neishi Coates. Hassled before but now nonstop and brazenly targeted, she’s dogged by ignorant hate mail. Georgetown University law professor Paul Butler elaborates on the national embeddedness of white supremacy so explicitly demonstrated by the University of North Carolina. Racism’s rootedness in education, for so long spreading its poisonous ugliness underground, now blinks in bright light. Dr. Cornel West resigns from Harvard, where like Hannah-Jones he experienced a reversal of that university’s original denial of his tenure, highlighting in his letter “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths.”

The 2021 Olympics sometimes seems a lengthy throwback, in worldly knowledge and human development, to the games in ancient Greece. For starters, the unvaccinated can compete—in Games without spectators due to Japan’s soaring viral spread. Why wasn’t vaccination mandated for participation? Next, how about the following (three of many) stupefying Olympian blunders? Let’s begin with banishment of the Afro “Soul Cap” because swim caps must “fit the natural form of the head.” One size fits all what? Thick and curly hair, dreadlocks and braids are not “natural” for whom? Karen Attiah calls out this humiliating “aquatic apartheid” in impassioned detail: “The international swimming federation just gave Black swimmers everywhere a wet slap in the face.” If anything, the “soul cap” slows down a swimmer. Likewise, “marijuana is hardly known for speeding people up” reminds the WAPO Editorial Board, but predicted winner of the 100-meter dash Sha’Carri Richardson accepted and indeed agreed with her disqualification from the event. Grieving over her mother’s death and uncomfortable in the public spotlight, she smoked pot (legally) in Oregon. After her thirty-day-suspension expired and she was eligible to run in the 4x100-meter relay, Richardson was bypassed by USA Track and Field. That’ll show her. Contrast banning the soul cap and Richardson’s relay exclusion with this utterly grotesque, almost unbelievable report on a male member of team USA: “Protected Again and Again: How a Fencer Made It to the Tokyo Olympics Despite Sexual Assault Allegations.” The headline nauseates. The content chills.

Stroll with me around Charlottesville. Here’s what’s missing, and only recently departed, from the Court Square area: the slave auction block…the “at ready” Confederate soldier, complete with his cannonballs and cannon, guarding the entrance to the courthouse…horsebound Confederate Stonewall Jackson bucking in the courtyard…and a few blocks away, Confederate Robert. E Lee posturing on horseback. Walking on, we arrive at the University of Virginia, stopping at an empty space created by this just-past “weekend of removals.” Here’s how Anthony Guy Lopez, Crow Creek Sioux tribal member and UVa graduate, feels about the missing statue of a horse-mounted “Conqueror of the Northwest” towering over crouching Native Americans: “If art can be evil, these were. What this says to American Indians is that violence is part of our lives, and that we not only accept but glorify it.”

Let’s stay at UVa. Down a slope from Thomas Jefferson’s Rotunda awaits the newly-constructed “Memorial to Slave Laborers.” Stop and look and sit, read and re-think. Between 1817-1865, approximately 4,000 slaves toiled behind UVa’s tall brick walls and inside its smoky hot kitchens. What stories can they tell us? How much can they teach us? Their history is our history—we share the future. This Memorial stands unfinished by design….

Zhanya Bryant

I picture one particular UVa student at the Memorial, wearing pearls given to her by her grandmother. Meet Zhayna Bryant, “the girl who brought down a statue,” beginning with her petition to remove Lee’s likeness, initiated five years ago. Like Hannah-Jones, Bryant receives hate mail: “White supremacists have no boundaries for kids.” She proves to “young people they don’t have to look or be a ‘certain type of way’ to make change.” May this country grow into the home of her brand of brave.

An ever more true story of the past, can’t you hear it? And we keep listening and telling and opening until, one day, the story and truth sync.

Never-ending, always becoming. Whole.

Okay then. Popcorn and notepad out. Watch “High on the Hog” featuring chef / narrator Stephen Satterfield. Based on the cookbook by Jessica B. Harris, we travel and eat with soulful, soft-spoken Satterfield from his start in Benin and Ouidah in Africa. Remain with him and Harris at the “Cemetery of Slaves.” Smell the cooking of founding White House enslaved chefs Hercules Posey and James Hemings, and grasp “How African American Cuisine Transformed America.” Savor rice and mac ‘n cheese—hear your stomach growl at that beet cornbread and raspberry-hibiscus cheesecake. Turn on the stove—warm your heart.

Read or listen to J. Drew Latham’s poetic proclamation that “Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves.” Why does he celebrate the possibility of a worry-free morning jog and being loved for who you are? “Joy is the truth, / Crooked lines hammered straight” claims the wildlife ecologist. Check out birdwatcher Latham’s reasons to question “How Am I going to Be Perceived as a Black Man with Binoculars?”

Last call for music and dancing.

Jessie Mae Hemphill brings her Mississippi country blues to Psalm 41, “Lord Help the Poor and Needy.” Where are the poor and needy? “In this land / in this land.” Contemporary country music singer Mickey Guyton challenges “If you think we live in the land of the free /you should try to be Black Like Me.” A Black woman, a country singer, a hard time? It’s “Another Country,” Amanda Petrusich toasts in her stirring closeup as “Mickey Guyton takes on the genre’s overwhelming whiteness.”

How about a dance with former Congressman and forever Honorable John Lewis? A life spent making good moves from Selma to DC, if he can say it, we can do it: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We will find a way to make a way out of no way.”

What’s Your Story, USA?

First call. Fresh start. Beginner’s mind.