What Makes a Good American Citizen?

Posted on August 31, 2023 by Fred Zilian

(Note: This essay was originally published in the Newport Daily News on September 30, 2017. I re-publish it today because of its continued relevance.)

As a human body is only as healthy as its individual cells, so a civilization or modern state is only as healthy as its individual citizens. As a healthy human body is sustained by new, healthy cells, so a modern state needs continuous rejuvenation with new, healthy, good citizens to sustain itself, especially in times of stress.

In the Western tradition, the roots of citizenship and the good citizen reach back to the ancient worlds of Athens and Republican Rome. The word “citizen” stems from the Latin word “civis,” meaning citizen. Citizens had both rights from and duties to the political body—the city-state. When the state—facing an emergency—summoned the citizen to military duty, the citizen had to respond, putting his allegiance to the state above allegiance to family, clan, faction, or tribe. Aristotle maintained that a human being could reach his full potential only through the city-state. To Pericles, living life aloof from the affairs of state was stupidity.

Since the divisive Sixties, the rights, duties, and norms of the “good American citizen” have been a subject of debate and division. They have become especially relevant in recent years with the actions of Edward Snowden and Colin Kaepernick, and now with the election of Donald Trump and his proposed policies on immigration reform and his accusatory statements against those who do not stand for the national anthem.

For the first two decades after World War II, American citizens were in general agreement as to the rights, duties, and norms of the good American citizen. Their fundamental rights were clearly enumerated and codified in the Constitution, though subject to various interpretations. With memories of the war still fresh and now facing Cold War competition with the Soviet Union, Americans were generally united in their duty to support their country’s leaders and policies against Soviet communism, the leader of which said that he would “bury” us.

As the Sixties began and many movements for change proliferated, the consensus of the Fifties cracked. Large groups of mostly younger citizens, middle-class citizens, and African-Americans citizens split from the majority of American citizens who believed generally in the legitimacy of the American system, its leaders, and its policies. The rights to assemble and to free speech gained in prominence and allowed these groups to demand change. They asserted that America was not so beautiful; rather it was deeply flawed. The wonders and prosperity of capitalism were illusions and did not bring happiness and contentment. Social injustice was rife. They asserted that the arms race, especially the nuclear arms race, was dangerous and unnecessary. The country’s involvement in the Vietnam War had to end, some of them going so far as to actually visit with and break bread with the enemy. They asserted that the country’s authority figures were capable of great stupidity, could not be trusted, and had to be challenged. Finally, they asserted that a freer, more open lifestyle was better than mindless conformity.

The most significant legacy of the Sixties regarding citizenship was the breakdown of the single model of the “good American citizen” of the postwar period.  Large portions of the population believed that a good citizen was no longer just a “red, white, and blue citizen”—“my country, right or wrong.” Now one could be accepted as a “good citizen” by being, let us say, a good “white citizen”—someone who is motivated on pure principle to disagree publicly with the country’s political leaders and policies. One could now be a “good black citizen”—one who is prepared to oppose publicly the country’s policies on minorities. Some would even condone a good “red citizen”—one who is prepared to use violence to change American policies or indeed the American system. After all, it was none other than the writer of the Declaration of Independence who said: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” The “yellow citizen”—one who protests merely for self-interest—has never gained legitimacy or respect.

President Donald Trump in many ways has shown that he longs for the good old days, apparently the late 1940s and the 1950s. With his comments disparaging the members of the NFL who refuse to stand for the national anthem, he is saying that to “Make America Great Again,” the only good citizen is a “red, white, and blue” one. This is mere sentimentalism.

In the song, “American Pie,” Don McLean longed to hear some Buddy Holly music again, but the man at the “sacred store” told him “the music wouldn’t play.” Trump longs for the good old-time patriotism, but America–and the world–have changed.

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The Fleeting Glitter of the Gilded Age

Posted on August 21, 2023 by Fred Zilian

(This essay was originally published abridged in the Providence Journal on August 5, 2023.)

The storied Gilded Age of American history, with its epicenter in New York City and eventually in Newport, RI, began 150 years ago. This age is at once part of the epic story of American capitalism’s astounding ability to create wealth, but also a cautionary tale of how great wealth can be squandered.

While most historians begin the age in 1870, the year 1873 is more apt. In that year Mark Twain and co-author, Charles Warner, published a novel entitled, “The Gilded Age,” in which they offer vivid portrayals of greedy industrialists and corrupt politicians in Washington, DC.

Also in that year two eventual leaders of New York City high society met: Ward McAllister, the self-made social maestro of all things that glittered, and the commanding Caroline Astor, wife of William Blackhouse Astor, Jr., the head of the Astor family, the richest in America in the mid-19th century. Looking to introduce her daughters to society, she brought her old-money wealth and prestige while McAllister brought his impeccable taste and manner. Theirs was a perfect match to dictate social custom, protocol and standing. She became the undisputed “Queen” of New York and then Newport society.

Ward McAllister

They both had been troubled by the many families who had only recently acquired wealth in the rapidly burgeoning American economy, thanks to the Industrial Revolution. These parvenus were attempting to wedge their way into high society; however, McAllister and “The Mrs. Astor” took it as their sacred duty to serve as the gatekeepers. Their mission was nothing less than to save society from the barbarians.

“The Mrs. Astor”

The preceding year, McAllister had prepared a list of 25 “Patriarchs” of high society New York.  He said that these men: “had the right [by blood and wealth] to create and lead society.”

Each of these Patriarchs was charged with inviting four women and five gentlemen to the first annual Patriarchs Ball in the winter of 1873. This list eventually approached the figure of 400, a number which also served as the maximum capacity of Mrs. Astor’s ballroom in NY City.

McAllister told the press: “Why, there are only about 400 people in fashionable New York society. It you go outside that number you strike people who are not at ease in a ballroom or make other people not at ease.”

A decade later the center of New York society moved—for only the two prime summer months—to Newport, RI. In the 1850s, Ward McAllister had bought farmland on the same island as Newport, a place of magnificent natural beauty and cool summer ocean breezes. With his encouragement, the Astors bought the Beechwood mansion in 1881.

Beechwood

By the late 1880s, the Vanderbilts, the Goelets, the Belmonts, the Fishes, and others followed, seeking to escape the heat of New York City summers. They bought, built, and staffed opulent mansions, which they called “cottages,” principally on Bellevue Avenue in Newport. Fifth Avenue shops also followed and opened outlets for the season. The “summer colony” was established.

The great wealth that these families had amassed allowed them to luxuriate in a carefree summer idyll, what economist Thorstein Veblen called “conspicuous consumption,” with social calendars packed not only with teas, dinners and balls, as in New York, not only with many picnics in the beautiful venues the Newport area offered, but also with expensive hobbies.

In 1880, James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the influential New York Herald, completed The Casino, described as the most lavish resort in America. Despite its name, there was no gambling; rather it offered cards, croquet, tennis, dances and concerts. The following year it hosted the first U.S. Nationals tennis tournament.

With its wonderful harbor leading to Narragansett Bay, leading to the Atlantic Ocean, Newport was a marvelous location for sailing and yachting.

In 1893, the Newport Country Club was established, hosting two years later the first U.S. (Golf) Open and the first U.S. Amateur Open.

Once trolley service allowed the masses access to Easton’s Beach, the main beach in Newport, the rich in the 1890s organized the Spouting Rock Beach Association and opened the exclusive Bailey’s Beach.

Daily in the late afternoon, after another wardrobe change for the ladies, they mounted their horse-drawn carriages and joined the daily procession down Bellevue Avenue. Ladies might bring up to 90 dresses for the summer season. Feathered hats and white gloves, three or four new pair each day, completed their ensembles.

Once “automotive machines” appeared, the rich—of course—purchased the newest and most expensive and staged races and other auto events.

William K. Vanderbilt, 1904

For the most part, women ran this society, their husbands busy at work during the week and joining them on weekends. The four leaders of high society included Caroline Astor, Alva Vanderbilt (who eventually married Belmont), Marion “Mamie” Fish, and Theresa “Tessie” Oelrichs. They all owned opulent mansions on Bellevue Avenue or nearby Ocean Drive.

Though not one of the influential leaders, Alice Vanderbilt and husband Cornelius II built the largest of the Newport mansions, The Breakers: 70 rooms on a twelve acre plot overlooking the ocean, thirty baths with hot and cold fresh and salt water, costing $7 million ($254 million today) to build and certainly millions more to furnish.

The fortunes these families made in railroads, real estate, shipping, coal, the China trade, and other businesses allowed them to be waited on by platoons of servants. While a skeletal staff of a dozen might suffice, many more than this might be needed to complete the staff of one of these cottages. In 1895, there were 2,287 servants working in Newport, almost 10% of the population.

Not the case with all these families, but certainly for the Vanderbilts, America’s richest family for several generations, the Gilded Age offers a cautionary tale. Vanderbilt scion Anderson Cooper writes in his book (with Katherine Howe), Vanderbilt: “This is the story of the greatest American fortune ever squandered.” And Arthur T. Vanderbilt II writes in his book, “Fortune’s Children”: “When 120 of the Commodore’s [Vanderbilt] descendants gathered at Vanderbilt University in 1973 for the first family reunion, there was not a millionaire among them.”

A retired educator, Fred Zilian (pegasusenrichment.com) gives tours of Newport and lectures on its history.

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Two Women of Creation Stories: Eve and Skywoman

Posted on April 21, 2022 by Fred Zilian

(Note: This is the tenth and final essay in my series on “Notable Women.”)

Two women, Eve and Skywoman, play central but different roles in two creation stories, the former in the Judeo-Christian and the latter in many of the Indigenous. 

In the Judeo-Christian creation story, Eve has a critical role, but clearly subordinate one to Adam who was the first to be created by God out of “the dust of the ground.”

After instructing man not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God says, “It is not good that the man is alone; I will make him a helper like himself.” (Genesis, Ch. 2: Verse 18) God casts man into a deep sleep, and takes one of his ribs to make woman.

In the Garden of Eden, the woman lacks the strength to resist the serpent’s temptation. She sins by eating the forbidden fruit and then gets man to eat it.

Once man confesses, God reprimands woman first, asking: “Why have you done this?” The woman says: “The serpent deceived me and I ate.” (3:13)

God indicates her future suffering: “I will make great your distress in child-bearing; in pain shall you bring forth children; for your husband shall be your longing, though he have dominion over you.” (3:16)

Turning to Adam, God underlines the culpability of woman by beginning: “Because you have listened to your wife, and have eaten of the tree ….”

God stresses to man that he, no longer in the lush, verdant Eden, must now work hard to draw food from the soil: “…thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread ….”(3:18-19)

Adam decides to name woman “Eve,” a name in Hebrew relating to the verb, “to live.” Eve then is “the mother of all the living.” (3:20)

Whereas Eve plays a supporting and sinister role in that creation story, Skywoman’s role is vastly different. Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants, relates the creation story of Skywoman, “shared by the original peoples throughout the Great Lakes.”

Through a shaft of light streaming from a hole in Skyworld, Skywoman falls down, like a twirling maple seed, clutching a bundle, her long black hair billowing.

All the animals below look up and recognize a being. Beating their wings to break her fall, the geese catch her.

The animals then gather in council to consider what to do with her. A great turtle floats by and offers its back to her. She steps on to it. The animals realize she needs land for a home, so they in turn dive deeply for mud, all failing.

Finally a tiny muskrat dives, returns, but perishes. However, in his tiny paw he manages to hold on to some mud. “He had given his life to help this helpless human.”

The turtle tells the others to place the mud on his back. Skywoman spreads the mud. She is so moved by the gifts of the animals, she begins to sing and dance in thanksgiving. From the small dab of mud, the entire earth grows, what the Indigenous call Turtle Island. This occurs, Kimmerer relates: “Not by Skywoman alone, but from the alchemy of all the animals’ gifts coupled with her deep gratitude.”

When Skywoman fell, she did not come empty-handed. She grabbed onto the Tree of Life, bringing with her fruits and seeds of all kinds. “These she scattered onto the new ground and carefully tended until the world turned from brown to green.”

The stories—especially creation stories—civilizations tell underline the values and principles important to them. They are also normative, indicating how we ought to live. In my study of world civilizations, I have found that civilizations may decline because they continue to cling to values which may have helped them rise and prosper, but because of changed circumstances are no longer useful or valid.

Perhaps, in this era of human-induced climate change, modern society can benefit from an examination of its creation stories and from a comparison with other creation stories, including the Indigenous story of Skywoman. The Judeo-Christian story is marked by desire, sin, punishment, and banishment from a Garden of Eden. The themes of this Indigenous story are: help and kindness from the animal world, gratitude, reciprocity and balance with all living things, and flourishment.

In the first, Eve—lacking in character—sins and is banished, along with Adam, from the Garden of Eden; in the second, Skywoman essentially creates our Garden of Eden.

Fred Zilian (zilianblog.com; Twitter: @FredZilian) is a retired educator (history and politics) and a regular columnist.

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Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul

Posted on March 25, 2022 by Fred Zilian

(Note: This is the ninth essay in a series on “Notable Women.” It was originally published as “The amazing career of the Queen of Soul” in the Newport Daily News on March 21, 2022.)

Fifty-five years ago Aretha Franklin’s recording, “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” broke into the Top 40 Pop Chart, her first genuine commercial hit which went on to sell over one million copies.

The documentary, “Muscle Shoals,” describes how the song came to be. Jerry Wexler, a music producer at Atlantic Records, convinced her and manager/husband, Ted White, to travel to Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a literal backwater in the world of music production.

In her interview for the documentary, Franklin describes Wexler’s pitch: “I’ve got these cats down in Muscle Shoals and they’re really greasy.” Once in the studio, Franklin and the all-white musicians had the words of the song but worked without written music, trying in vain to find the right groove. Singer-songwriter Dan Penn described the scene: “They had a song, they had an artist, but nobody knew what to do, not even these geniuses.”

Suddenly keyboard player Spooner Oldham started a five-note riff filled with melancholy. Aretha began belting out the lyrics. “You’re a no good heartbreaker/You’re a liar and you’re a cheat/And I don’t know why/I let you do these things to me.” The other musicians joined in; twenty minutes later the song was cut.

On March 18, 1967, it broke into the Billboard Top 40 Pop Chart, reaching number 9, giving Franklin her first top-ten pop single. The song reached number one on the R & B chart.

In an interview, Franklin highlighted the importance of her experience at Muscle Shaols. “Coming to Muscle Shoals was the turning point. That’s where I recorded my first million selling record. It was a milestone, THE turning point of my career.”

Franklin began her music career at a young age, singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father, C. L. Franklin, was a minister. In 1954 when she was twelve, her father began to take her along on his “gospel caravan” tours. In 1956 J.V.B. Records released her first single, “Never Grows Old,” releasing that same year the album, “Spirituals,” with five of her recordings.

From 1960 to 1966, Columbia Records had her under contract; however, genuine commercial success eluded her under its management. When her contract expired, music producer Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records convinced her to join Atlantic.

After recording her hit in Muscle Shoals, Wexler brought her and the main musicians to New York City and recorded an album with the history-making hit “RESPECT.” As a single, it entered the Top 40 Pop Chart in May 1967, climbed to #1, and remained on the chart for eleven weeks.

The song and I have a history, as it was released when I was finishing my freshman (plebe) year at the US Military Academy. During the academic week, which ended only after Saturday morning classes, room inspection, and parade, it was academics, military discipline and measure, and martial music.

However, at the Saturday night “mixer” dance, it was a different universe. With girlfriends and the girls who came from surrounding colleges, it was time to dance to “Midnight Hour” and “Mustang Sally,” (Wilson Pickett), “We Gotta Get Outta This Place” (The Animals), “Baby, I Need Your Lovin’” (Four Tops), and “RESPECT.” My tight, black collar loosened; the gray jacket became unzipped. It was time to get down and get lost in soul music.

The following year, three classmates and I donned female attire and lip-synched the song in a talent show. I reprised this four years later with other classmates in a talent show in our military unit in West Germany.

The song “RESPECT” came to be her signature song and eventually also served as a civil rights and feminist anthem.

Overall, Aretha Franklin’s accomplishments are breath-taking. She recorded 112 charted singles, including 17 top-ten pop singles, and 20 number one R & B singles. She won 18 Grammy Awards, including the first eight awards given for Best Female R & B Vocal Performance, a Grammy Awards Living Legend honor and a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Aretha Franklin, 1975, receiving a Grammy Award

She was awarded the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1987 she became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

By coincidence, my wife and I happened to be in Detroit the day after she died (August 16, 2018). With a group of friends, we were visiting the Motown Museum. Included in the group were all four of us who had “performed” the song in 1968.

We struck up the tune and tried to remember our old moves. A reporter from a major French news service invited me to comment. I said: “The country [back then] was riven by race relations tension and we—you can see are all white—we didn’t give a damn. It’s really a statement about the unifying effect that music can have.”

Fred Zilian (zilianblog.com; Twitter: @FredZilian) is a retired educator and a regular columnist.

Sources:

“Aretha: Lady Soul.” (album) Atlantic Recording Corporation, 1968.

“Aretha Franklin.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aretha_Franklin .

Accessed March13, 2022.

“Muscles Shoals.” (DVD) Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2013.

Ward, Ed et al. Rock of Ages: The History of Rock & Roll. NY: Rolling Stone Press, 1986.

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Race, Racism, and Me, Part III

Posted on March 5, 2022 by Fred Zilian

 (Note: This is the third essay in a series on “Race and Racism in America.” It was originally published by the Newport Daily News on March 2, 2022.)

In my 23-year teaching career at Portsmouth Abbey School, coming after my Army career, I not only educated students of numerous “races” and nationalities, I also served as the International Student Advisor, increasing my interaction with them. The school has been historically strong with Latino/a students since its founding in 1926. When I taught there (1992-2015), the number of Korean students surged followed by the Chinese. In my 20 years as their advisor, I recall that between 12% and 22% of the student population was international coming from 12 to 18 countries.

Portsmouth Abbey School is a boarding school. Therefore, I not only taught the students in the classroom, but also coached them on the fields and courts, ate with them, and tended them after dinner and on weekends.

My career at this school reinforced my experiences in the military. I came to know students of all colors, sizes, creeds, characters, and abilities: gifted and challenged, mature and immature, motivated and coasting, on track and astray.

To conclude this survey of my personal experiences, a look at race in my own family. I must have been home on leave from West Point when my close cousin, then in high school, told me she was going steady with a boy. I smiled. Then she said: “But he’s black.” “Oh, my goodness,” I said. Repeating the title of the famous movie, I said: “Ahh, ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’” My cousin told me how troubled her parents—who happened to be my godparents—and our grandmother were. Eventually they were married, and a baby girl was born. That baby grew and now has her own child.

I barely came to know my maternal grandmother, as she always spoke Italian. On the other hand, my father’s parents had already passed when I was a child. No photos of them were on display in our home, and I remember only a few stories told about them. Gustave Zilian was born in Germany and had worked on the Panama Canal where my father was born. When I asked my father about his mother, Zenobia Dubois Zilian, he simply said: “She was from the island of Martinique.”

Zenobia Dubois Zilian

It was only in the last few years after joining an ancestry organization that I learned more about her from documents. Her parents were from Cuba and perhaps Jamaica. She was born in Panama and spoke Spanish originally. In the 1930 Census document, she, my father (19 years old at the time), and all his siblings were listed as “Negro.”

With this knowledge, I was not surprised when my DNA analysis revealed I am 12% African, and from the area sometimes referred to as the “slave coast”.

In discussions with my mother about my father’s parents, I came to learn that my grandfather did not treat my grandmother well. I wonder now if my grandfather, after coming to this country with his young family in 1918, came to resent marrying a “negro” and having five “negro” children. Before I was born, did my grandmother feel the sting of racism from my grandfather?

All the experiences I have related in these three essays help me to understand my affinity to African culture and my friendships with African Americans. However, as one of these friends cautioned me after learning of my African DNA, I should never equate this with having the “Black Experience.”

After all, because of the color of my skin, I have never heard the click of car doors locking as I walked by, had a security guard follow me around in a department store, been denied service at a restaurant, watched TV featuring only people who did not look like me, reached into a box of crayons and pulled out one marked “flesh” which did not match my skin color, felt compelled to demonstrate with a sign on my chest proclaiming: “I am a MAN.” I have never felt like a second class citizen or human being.

Also, while I had the sex talk as an adolescent, I never had “The Talk” about people calling me certain demeaning words and especially about what to do if stopped by a policeman, once I had a driver’s license. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ entire book, “Between the World and Me,” is essentially this “talk” to his son. My African American friend told me recently that not a day goes by that someone does not do something which reminds him of the color of his skin.

In short, though I have had many challenges in my life, I have never had to worry about the color of my skin.

Fred Zilian (zilianblog.com; Twitter: @FredZilian) is a retired educator and a regular columnist.

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Race, Racism, and Me, Part II

Posted on February 23, 2022 by Fred Zilian

(Note: This is the second essay in a series on “Race and Racism in America.” It was published by the Newport Daily News on February 21, 2022.)

While I grew up hearing the normal racial and nationality slurs common among teenagers in middle class America of the 1950s-60s, it was in my first few months at the US Military Academy that I heard unvarnished racism with a southern drawl from the mouth of a classmate. I thought he was kidding, but he was dead serious when he challenged me about my intention to do something with an African American classmate.

Dreaming to lead the Army football team as quarterback over Navy on national TV, I played freshman football next to a small number of African American classmates.

And then senior year came, and there was Gary Steele, a tall, athletic, handsome African American classmate, a star offensive end on the football team. We worked closely together during that year. Strong in body and in dedication to West Point’s values of “Duty, Honor, County,” he and I are still friends today.

Steele family, 2013, Induction of Gary into the Army Sports Hall of Fame (US Army)

Overall we had just a handful of African Americans in our class, certainly not a number representative of our country’s population. Of the 749 of us who graduated in the Class of 1970, I count seven apparent African Americans in my yearbook.

Following graduation in 1970, I reported to Airborne School and Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia. There I was taught by many sculpted, dedicated, long-serving, highly professional African American sergeants who instructed me on how to jump from an airplane, make a parachute landing fall, tie a bowline knot, rappel down a cliff, and navigate through a swamp. Most important, they taught me about myself and about leadership in stressful situations.

After all the academic schooling and military training, in March 1971, I reported to my first duty assignment in the 2nd Battalion – 509th Infantry, 1st Brigade, 8th Infantry Division, Lee Barracks, Mainz, West Germany. The US was locked in the Cold War with the Soviet Union; we stood watch in a reserve position on “freedom’s frontier” behind the Inter-German Border.

What a shock it was to meet my first platoon. This was still a conscript Army then; the draft did not end until 1973. The Vietnam War had decimated the Army, called frequently then a “hollow” army. I knew my platoon would not be its official size of 33; however, 14 soldiers? It was more aptly called a reinforced squad, rather than an infantry platoon.

The majority of my platoon was composed of people of color, mostly African Americans and also one Native American.

The culture of the troops was in stark contrast to the culture I experienced at West Point. Most of the troops had been to Vietnam and were just finishing the last few months of their draft enlistments. Some showed minimal and grudging respect for me; others had no qualms about showing their disdain for this young, over-zealous, white, pretty boy who had not tasted real combat. A small number displayed outright contempt and white-hot hatred. My first day I was called “pig” and “cracker” behind my back.

During my assignment, Major General Frederic Davison assumed command of the division, the first African American to command a division. Along with several other young officers, I had the opportunity to meet with him for an informal conference.

Major General Frederic E. Davison, Commanding General, 8th Infantry Division

And then, when I became a company commander, there was Sergeant First Class Thornton, whom I elevated to First Sergeant of the company. A well-built African American, he brooked no disrespect or nonsense. With his help, the company became more disciplined and professional.

In three and one-half years in that unit, I served with soldiers of color, jumped out of airplanes with them, marched, bivouacked, played lunchtime basketball, and socialized with them. I even had a great game of basketball with the one who called me “cracker.” I learned that sports could transcend the color/race line.

Several years after returning stateside, I had a teaching assignment in the Social Science Department at West Point. And here there were African Americans Fred Black and Bill Lowry. Both were great officers and educators, and colleagues and friends. Fred, as well as Gary Steele, will read this column.

In the early 1980s, after many years in the world of military education, I found myself back in a frontline unit on the DMZ in Korea, serving as a principal staff officer in a brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division.

And here there was short, sturdy, tough-as-nails, African American Sergeant Major Wall. Having been away from the front line army for so many years, I lacked much knowledge and experience for my position. SGM Wall took the time to teach me. Many times he would enter my office, close the door, and offer me counsel and direction. We developed a mutual respect which turned to admiration.

He rotated out of the unit before I did. At his official departure ceremony, after saluting him, I hugged him—totally unheard of and in contrast to normal military protocol.  

In my 25-year military career, any negative stereotypes I may have harbored about African Americans were dismantled. I had met, worked with, played with, danced with, and soldiered with great ones, incompetent and unprofessional ones, and all in between.

Fred Zilian (zilianblog.com; Twitter: @FredZilian) is a retired educator and a regular columnist.

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Race, Racism and Me

Posted on February 5, 2022 by Fred Zilian

(Note: This is the first in a series of essays on “Race and Racism in America.” It was originally published in modified form by the Newport Daily News on February 1, 2022.)

Race and racism comprise one of the great fault lines which continue to haunt American society.

W.E.B. Dubois, the greatest African American voice of the first half of the 20th century, wrote in 1903: “… for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.”

Martin Luther King Jr., in his final book before his assassination in 1968, wrote: “This long and callous sojourn in the far country of racism has brought a moral and spiritual famine to the nation. But it is not too late to return home.”

With the celebration of his birthday and with Black History Month approaching, I now force myself to consider and write about this fraught subject. If you have read my earlier columns, you know that I have written about it before, however, only on historical subjects. While integrating history, I hope with this series to engage its current dimensions.  

For your benefit as well as mine, it is fitting as a first step to examine my own background on this subject. Come take this journey with me.

My earliest recollection of any type of racism—evidence of an attitude of superiority of one race over another—in my extended family is the use among my many Italian American aunts and uncles of the Italian word for eggplant (moulinyan) to refer to African Americans. As a boy, I could sense that this was a put-down word, however, not as demeaning as “n—–r.” I placed it next to the other words used to put down boys of other nationalities who made up our small town of Hasbrouck Heights, NJ: “kraut,” “mick,” and “spic.”

I grew up with no African Americans or people of color—none in elementary, middle, or high school. Certainly, there were darker skinned schoolmates, but none with other African physical traits. This stemmed from the absence of people of color in our town in the 1950s and early 1960s. I eventually became old enough to discern this and assumed some type of conspiracy among realtors.

In competitive, scholastic sports, I played against athletes of color, but never with any.

When my father, a lover of music, took my brother and me in 1960 and also in 1961 to “Murray the K’s Holiday Review” in Brooklyn, NY, I had never seen and mingled with so many Blacks. The audience was multi-racial because the show was, featuring many of the top rock and roll artists. There was Del Shannon and The Angels, but also Ben E. King and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. There was even a multi-racial group, The Marcels, who—singing their Doo-Wop version of “Blue Moon”—sent me to the moon.

When the Isley Brothers sang their hit, “Shout,” for the finale of one show, blacks and whites mingled and danced in the aisles. At the early age of 12, I noted how music could transcend the color line.

During the summer months, my father, a massage therapist (mother was a housewife), took Thursdays off, allowing our family of five to drive the hour north to Lake Sebago in southern New York state. Friends and extended family often joined us, allowing much rough and tumble on the beach and in the water.

After lunch, we boys might explore the surrounding shore and woods. It was on one such Thursday perhaps in 1960, that we walked the shoreline. Several hundred yards from our beach we walked around the bend and found ourselves in another, well-populated beach area; however, this beach was filled with people of color.

And then it happened. I thought I recognized Elston Howard. (I proceed with some trepidation, knowing I am talking about a NY Yankee here in Red Sox Nation.) Howard was the first African American on the Yankees, during that marvelous stretch when they usually won not only the American League pennant, but also the World Series. Howard spent 13 years with the Yankees, 1955-1967, their starting catcher 1960-66.  He earned the American League MVP in 1963, becoming the first black player in AL history to accomplish this feat. I watched him on TV frequently as all of my family were avid Yankee fans.

Elston Howard

As a young teenager, I remember being a bit confused by this separation of the races at our favorite lake and by the fact that one of my baseball idols had to swim around the bend and out of sight from where I swam.

Fred Zilian (zilianblog.com; Twitter: @FredZilian) is a retired educator and a regular columnist.

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With Low Fertility Rate, America Needs Future Migrants

Posted on February 3, 2022 by Fred Zilian

(Note: This essay, abridged, was published at thehill.com on February 25, 2019; however, I failed to post it here.)

The Republicans and Democrats have reached a compromise on the border issue. President Trump, not happy with the mere $1.38 billion in the compromise bill for his wall, has declared a national emergency so that he can use other appropriated funds for this wall. However, the real national emergency is not keeping people out with a wall; rather, it is getting the right people to come to America to counter its very low fertility rate.
In the long term, human economic and personal insecurity and climate change will increase the flow of migrants and refugees from points known but also unknown. Now that the U.S. fertility rate has dropped to 1.76, well below the replacement rate, America’s challenge—if it wants to remain a superpower—is not to build walls and restrict migrant flow excessively, as the Trump Administration has, but rather to manage properly a more generous migrant flow so that its population continues to grow, with all the attendant benefits.
The World Migration Report for 2018, authored by the UN International Organization for Migration, estimates a total of 244 million migrants, including over 40 million internally displaced persons and 22 million refugees. The report cites the reasons for the recent increase in displaced people, including conflict, persecution, environmental change, and a lack of human security and opportunity.
Focusing on the United States, the PEW Research Center in November 2018, presented data on migration to the United States. The U.S. has more immigrants that any other country, about 40 million, about 20% of the world’s immigrant population, people born in another country, with just about every other country in the world represented. They make up 13.5% of the U.S. population. A total of 10.7 million are unauthorized or illegal (23.7% of U.S. immigrants). Unauthorized migrants tripled in size during the period 1990-2007, and then declined after the Great Recession of 2008-2009. In the period 2007-2016, unauthorized migrants from Mexico declined while those from Central America increased. Since 2010, more Asian than Hispanic migrants have arrived each year. Regarding refugees, in FY 2017, almost 54,000 were resettled in the U.S.; the largest came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and Myanmar.
Several factors suggest that migrant flow to U.S. borders will increase in the future. Just beyond Mexico lie the three countries from whom the highly publicized “caravans” of migrants have come in recent years. Over the past five years Stephanie Leutert, writing in Foreign Affairs, indicated 875,000 migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have come to the U.S. border, driven mainly by rampant gang violence and economic hardship. However, without a job or family in the U.S. these migrants, most moving in family groups, have no legal pathway into the U.S. Until the factors, pushing these migrants to leave, are dealt with, we can expect this migrant flow from Central America to continue.
A second factor which will increase migrant flow to the U.S., a land in what Thomas Friedman calls the “zone of order” , is climate change, an issue in which the U.S. once led but now, under the Trump Administration, dawdles and denies. Over three years ago at a Commencement for the Coast Guard Academy, President Barak Obama sketched the risks ahead. “Around the world, climate change increases the risk of instability and conflict. Rising seas are already swallowing low-lying lands, from Bangladesh to Pacific islands, forcing people from their homes. Caribbean islands and Central American coasts are vulnerable, as well. Globally, we could see a rise in climate change refugees. … Elsewhere, more intense droughts will exacerbate shortages of water and food, increase competition for resources, and create the potential for mass migrations and new tensions. All of which is why the Pentagon calls climate change a “threat multiplier.”
The Trump Administration has disallowed the Department of Defense from addressing the impact of climate change in any meaningful way, deleting it from the official list of national security threats. However, a recent DOD report maintains that it is, stating: “The effects of a changing climate are a national security issue with potential impacts to Department of Defense missions, operational plans, and installations.”
Climate change is manifesting itself in sea level rise here in the U.S. and beyond. Almost three years ago The New Scientist, using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, indicated that the sea level will rise 1.8 meters by the year 2100, probably displacing over 13 million people in the U.S.
Internationally, the effects of climate change were addressed at the two-week UN climate conference in Paris in December 2015. Sewall Chan’s reporting on the conference indicated that warming, in addition to other effects, can cause violence leading to the large-scale displacement of people. The conference’s report noted that between 2008-2014, an average of 26.4 million people were displaced each year by floods, storms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters (although most moved within their own countries). The accord called for developing recommendations “to avert, minimize and address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change.”
William Lacy Swing, a retired American ambassador who now leads the International Organization for Migration, said that climate change was adding to a “perfect storm” of “unprecedented human mobility,” a result of the quadrupling of the world’s population over the last century and wars, conflicts and persecution.
The world’s many glaciers continue to melt, a clear result of global warming. Dr. Twila Moon, University of Colorado, Boulder, wrote of this in the journal Science in May 2017: “The evidence is overwhelming: Earth is losing its ice. Much of this loss is irreversible and the result of human-caused climate change,” Glaciers all over the world are disappearing and should be the subject of “international concern.” Among other effects, millions of people will be forced to leave their homes by rising seas, crucial sources of water will run dry and wildlife will lose sources of nutrients and shelter. The US Geological Survey has reported that the Glacier National Park in Montana has lost more than 120 glaciers in the last century. And Dr. Moon said this was a pattern repeated all over the world from the Antarctic Peninsular to Patagonia, Kilimanjaro, the Himalayas, Greenland and the Arctic.
Also in the journal Science, in December 2017, a team of scientists, studying weather variations from 2000-2014 in 103 countries and their effects on asylum applications to the European Union concluded that “weather-induced conflicts in developing countries spill over to developed countries through asylum application.” “Our findings support the assessment that climate change, especially continued warming, will add another ‘threat multiplier’ that induces people to seek refuge abroad.”
The final factor arguing for a less restrictive immigration policy is the dramatic fall in the U.S. total fertility rate. This rate has dropped since the Great Recession of 2008 to 1.76 births per woman in 2017, well below the replacement rate of 2.1 needed to keep a population stable. Despite this drop, the Trump Administration has moved to restrict immigration.
This trend has significant negative implications for our Social Security and Medicare programs. As medical experts John Rowe, Dana Goldman, and S. Jay Olshansky have indicated: “The significant reduction in fertility in the U.S., if not offset by enhanced immigration or greater worker productivity, puts these programs at risk.”
The white population has a very low fertility rate among all groups within the U.S. population. Therefore, it is the minority groups who are contributing the most to the U.S. population. Demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution has demonstrated where future gains will likely come. “The likely source of future gains among the nation’s population of children, teenagers, and young working adults is minorities—Hispanics, Asians, blacks, and others. Also Statista reported that Hispanics in 2017 had the highest fertility rate among significant minorities. (Native Hawaiians/Other Pacific Islanders had the highest.)
Military might, economic prowess, and natural resources have always been measures of a state’s power. Today we can add such things as technological capability and innovation, entrepreneurial talent, cybersecurity and strength. It is surprising that in an Administration filled with so many “realists,” including President Trump and National Security Advisor John Bolton, there is such a lack of concern with one of the most fundamental sources of a state’s power—population.
The trends discussed above suggest that the U.S. will continue to be a magnet for immigrants, pulled to our borders by order and economic opportunity, and pushed by violence and climate change in their home countries. With the dramatic drop in the U.S. fertility rate over the past decade, it would be wise for the United States—rather than overly restricting immigration—to streamline its immigration policies to accept the right combination of skilled and unskilled workers, innovative entrepreneurs and also families who can give us young Americans.
Fred Zilian, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of history and politics at Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island. He is the author of “From Confrontation to Cooperation: The Takeover of the National People’s Army by the Bundeswehr.” Follow him on Twitter @FredZilian.

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Mother Teresa, the Saint of Calcutta

Posted on January 19, 2022 by Fred Zilian

(Note: This is the eighth essay in a series on “Notable Women.” This essay was originally published in the Newport Daily News on January 15, 2022.)

In an American culture increasingly driven by “The Self”, Mother Teresa’s unrelenting selflessness offers us an alternative model for living our lives.

Mother Teresa was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in 1910 in the city of Skopje, then a part of the Ottoman Empire and now the capital of North Macedonia.

As a young girl, she was fascinated by stories of Christian missionaries and by 12 felt a strong calling to the religious life. “It was then that I first knew I had ad vocation to the poor … in 1922. I wanted to be a missionary, I wanted to go out and give the life of Christ to the people in the missionary countries …. “…it was the will of God. It was His choice.”

At 18 she left home to join the Sisters of Loreto at Loreto Abbey in Ireland, an order of nuns which had education as its primary focus. There she learned English, the language the Loreto Sisters used in India.

She took her first vows as a nun in 1931, when she began her service in Bengal, India, and her solemn, final vows in 1937.

On September 10, 1946, while riding a train, she stated that she had a mystical encounter with Christ, described in “Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the ‘Saint of Calcutta,’” edited by Brian Kolodiejchuk.

“[It] was a call within my vocation. It was a second calling. It was a vocation to give up even Loreto where I was happy and to go out in the streets to serve the poorest of the poor.” “I knew it was His will and that I had to follow Him.”

She always held this day to be the real beginning of the Missionaries of Charity. To the end of her life she maintained that the first purpose of the congregation she founded was “to satiate the thirst of Jesus Christ on the Cross for Love and Souls.”

It took four years of prayer, hard work, entreaty, and delay; however, the Catholic Church finally in 1950 agreed to the official formation of the congregation.  On October 7, 1950, the Society of the Missionaries of Charity in the archdiocese of Calcutta was established.

The sisters who chose to join were required to take four Vows: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience, and devotion to the poor, to include the abandoned, the sick, the infirm, and the dying.

Two years later she opened her first hospice, eventually naming it Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart. The services offered were free to the poor, including medical care and the opportunity to die with dignity in accord with their respective faiths. Muslims were read the Quran, Hindus received water from the Ganges, and Catholics received the final sacrament, the Anointing of the Sick.

In 1958, she opened a hospice for lepers, calling it Shanti Nagar (City of Peace) and also clinics for them throughout Calcutta. She also established homes for orphans and homeless children.

By the 1960s, she was able to open hospices, orphanages, and leper houses throughout India.

In 1965, the congregation opened its first house abroad in Venezuela. More houses followed in 1968 in Italy, Tanzania, and Austria.

In the 1970s, the congregation expanded operations to the United States and dozens of other countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Ironically, while heading such a far flung, spiritual congregation, she was burdened with an interior, spiritual darkness, revealed only to a handful of her spiritual advisors. She spoke to this darkness and emptiness in her letters, beginning in 1953.

“Please pray specially for me … for there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started ‘the work’”.

In 1964, she wrote: “In my soul, I can’t tell you how dark it is, how painful, how terrible. My feelings are so treacherous.”

In 1977, she wrote: “As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves but does not speak.”

Brian Kolodiejchuk describes her spiritual journey in accepting the pain and darkness, even coming “to love it.” “Mother Teresa had reached a point in her life when she no longer ventured to penetrate or question the mystery of her unremitting darkness. She accepted it, as she did everything else that God willed or at least permitted, ‘with a big smile.’”

She received numerous awards and honors during her lifetime, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. In 1999, she headed Gallup’s List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century. In 2016, the Catholic Church canonized her, making her a saint.

Her health declining in the 1980s, she still maintained a rigorous pace until her death on September 5, 1997.

By 2007, the Missionaries of Charity numbered some 5,000 sisters and 450 brothers, operating 600 missions, schools, and shelters in 120 countries. In 2020, it consisted of 5,167 religious sisters.

Fred Zilian (zilianblog.com; Twitter: @FredZilian) is a retired educator and a regular columnist.

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Soviet Union Ended but Russia Endures as Great Power

Posted on January 12, 2022 by Fred Zilian

(Note: This essay was originally published by the Newport Daily News on December 30, 2021.)

Thirty years ago the flag of the Soviet Union was taken down from the Kremlin for the last time. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which rose from the ashes of the Russian Empire (1917), was dissolved on December 25, 1991, capping a wave of democratic revolutions throughout the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. The U.S. and the West had won the Cold War.

During the two years culminating in this event, I had the privilege of being a U.S. Army liaison officer to the German Army. My family and I lived on the fringes of the American diplomatic community in Bonn, West Germany, then the capital, and witnessed the re-unification of Germany on October 3, 1990.

The Cold War was the state of tension and competition between the U.S. and its allies against the USSR and its allies which began after World War II. Historians differ as to the precise date of its inception; however, surely with the speech of President Harry Truman in March 1947, the Cold War had begun.

With the Soviets pressuring Turkey and providing aid to the Communists in the Greek Civil War in the early postwar years, Truman stated in his speech: “”The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will.” He continued in portraying the choice that every nation faced: A way of life “based upon the will of the majority” versus a way of life “based on the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority….”

He then stated the new policy: “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” He finished by asking Congress for $400 million in aid for Greece and Turkey.

Since its inception, this Cold War had seen periods of intense competition and confrontation, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, and also periods of relative calm and cooperation, such as the period of “détente” (relaxation) of the 1970s. Happily, this state of tension of nearly five decades never erupted into outright warfare between the two “superpowers.”

There were many factors that led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. In 1985 the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the leader of the Soviet Union. He instituted policies of greater openness and also economic re-structuring.

Second, the Communist command economy had shown categorically its inability over decades to produce goods and services in any manner comparable to the capitalistic economies of the West.

Third, there was the example and pressure of the West, led in the 1980s by the United States with President Ronald Reagan at the helm, a fervent believer in the Western model.  

Finally, on the domestic political level, there was widespread popular disillusionment with and calls for reform of the Communist model of government, including its instruments of control (the KGB security apparatus and the military). In a recent panel discussion (“End of the ‘Evil Empire’”) sponsored by the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, both Ambassador George Krol and Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Peter Zwack emphasized this role that the Russian people played in the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Beginning with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the wave of democratic revolutions in Europe was so stunning that one important scholar, Francis Fukuyama wrote a book entitled “The End of History and the Last Man,” (1992) arguing that the liberal, democratic model had prevailed and would for all time.

The Soviet Union dissolved into 15 post-Soviet states. Russia, the largest and most powerful, was recognized as the legal successor of the Soviet Union. It eventually recovered its footing as a great power in the international system.

In 2020, Russia had the 11th largest economy by Gross Domestic Product. It possesses the world’s largest nuclear stockpile, and with about 1 million active duty military personnel the fifth largest military force. It has extensive mineral and energy resources and is a leading producer of oil and natural gas. Russia retains the permanent seat of the former Soviet Union on the United Nations Security Council, one of only five.

In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, a part of the Ukraine, one of the former Soviet republics, the first time since World War II that a European state had annexed the territory of another. In recent weeks, U.S. intelligence agencies have indicated that Russia has assembled tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine’s border, indicating a possible intention to attack in January.

Fred Zilian (zilianblog.com; Twitter: @FredZilian) is a retired Army officer and educator and also a regular columnist.

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