Excerpt: Life Out of Context

The following is an excerpt from Walter Mosley's "Life Out of Context" (Nation Books).

If the circumstances of life don't bring us together and force us to act in concert, then we must create our own circumstance. This seems to be a self-evident truth. Being an artist, not unlike the venerable Public Intellectual whose presentation sent me on this path of investigation, I feel that it is my duty to try to construct a system that will illuminate those important issues we all have in common. Only in this light can we see each other and transcend the tyranny of the pocketbook.

That's the only reason I'm writing this piece: to try and figure out how we get together and work as One. There are a thousand reasons for people of color and their supporters in other racial communities to come together, but a thousand reasons may have just as many groups that form around them, each organization claiming that their commitment is the most important. There are Afro-centrists and urban planners, feminists and gays, NRA members and Democrats, conservatives and rap masters, radicals and socialists; there are artists and philosophers, rich businessmen and the cultural guides that have seen themselves as our leaders since the sixties came and went.

The unjust, unjustified, and barbaric war against Iraq is obviously not enough to shake our moral foundations. Our rock-bottom salaries and nonexistent medical insurance coverage doesn't move us to question why. Four million black men and women going in and out of the prison system must be guilty because they were, or will be, convicted. Natural reasons are not motivating us to unite and so it seems we have to create a rallying point.

I make this claim this with a great deal of trepidation. My fear comes from the knowledge that I'm not the first late-twentieth century would-be do-gooder who has come to the conclusion that our context must be fabricated. Politicians fabricate all the time. They cull the radical fringe and the special-interest groups for commonality and then profess belief where they have none. They promise a chicken in every pot or warn about homosexuals or communists. They babble and stutter in public because they think that the common citizen babbles and stutters. More to the point, they create enemies and threats that bring us together in fear. They see terrorist collusion and weapons of mass destruction behind every beard. They militarize and kiss bloody wounds. They find zealots that actually believe these things and press them into the public eye.

Our politicians are masters at creating context. We come together under the great umbrella of one of the two major (so-called) political parties and ask, who am I? They respond, you are the innocent victim of those that hate freedom. You are the unknowing pawn of thieves that defraud our great public works. You are a member of a great democracy whose fate it is to protect the world from its own misguided notions and ancient belief systems.

And we believe this jive. Why wouldn't we? These are our leaders talking. Our notions of human rights and democracy have been cooked up in their mothers' kitchens. They created the language that we were taught in school. Their friends own all of the major media outlets. It is only through their largess that we might have comfort in our lives.

We want to believe in our political leaders. Let me say that again: We want to believe in our political leaders. This phrase by itself is worth much consideration. At first it seems patently obvious and simple -- not a very deep statement at all. But of course it is. Our leaders lied about weapons of mass destruction; they lied about Iraqi collusion with fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. And if you're a conservative reading these words, let me modify it for your benefit: Our leaders were wrong about weapons of mass destruction; they were wrong about Iraqi collusion with fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. In either phrasing, we were given erroneous information by people who we want (in the worst way) to believe in.