Azzi: Racism: It never ends, it just never ends

I remember the first time I visited the Parthenon. I was new to Greece and was invited to a late-night dinner in Plaka, an Athenian neighborhood of cafés and tavernas clustered below the shadow of the Acropolis.

It was a magical moment - an ancient 5thC BCE temple, seen by many as an enduring symbol of ancient Greece, Democracy and Western civilization - illuminated that night by moonlight and dominated the night sky above us.

I couldn't resist.

I had read about and studied the Parthenon and at that moment I wanted not to drink retsina and eat fried cheese in its shadow but to stand on its steps, to breathe its air. I insisted we climb up there before having dinner - and we did!

Built to honor Greece's triumph during the Greco-Persian Wars it has endured for over two millennium, having served as a church in the 7thC CE, as a mosque in the 15thC under the Ottomans, and having been looted and vandalized by the 7th Earl of Elgin in the early 19thC  the Parthenon, to my mind, was a symbol of the endurance of democracy.

America aspired, once upon a time, to be such a symbol; to be, as Ronald Reagan framed it, a “... shining city upon a hill," a reminder of an historical narrative referencing experiments in governance back to the Greeks and Romans. 

“[I]n my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans," Reagan said, "windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace ... and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

A shining city upon a hill that once beckoned to huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

An aspirational America, envisioned as different than others and distinguished by a transformational belief that all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among which are "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

An America where my immigrant parents made a life for me and my brothers.

In my America I chose to watch, last Tuesday night, LeBron James break the NBA all-time scoring record of 38,387 points set by my forever hero Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1984. I reveled in anticipation of the moment when James would break the record, and cheered at the moment in the third quarter when it happened - a fadeaway jumper from near the foul line.

James, who once told the New York Times that he's ".. inspired by the likes of Muhammad Ali, I'm inspired by the Bill Russells and the Kareem Abdul-Jabbars, the Oscar Robertsons—those guys who stood when the times were even way worse than they are today ..." has over the years supported and invested millions of dollars in educational and social programs and foundations, including starting a school in his home town of Akron and nationally with Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

"Hopefully, someday down the line," James says, "people will recognize me not only for the way I approached the game of basketball, but the way I approached life as an African-American man."

I didn't watch President Biden's State of the Union (SOTU)  message live, nor did I watch Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' response. I recorded them, and viewed them later.

As I watched them, as I witnessed the Republican response within the Capitol, and watched Gov. Sanders' MAGA-pandering response I realized how far the party of Abraham Lincoln has been diminished, how much they've abandoned Solon and Jefferson, how far they've drifted from the Magna Carta, The Declaration of Independence, and The Constitution.

Gov. Sanders did not challenge President Biden on issues of policy but couched her 'critique' in cultural terms, dog-whistling that “... Republicans will not surrender this fight ... Upon taking office just a few weeks ago, I signed executive orders to ban CRT, racism and indoctrination in our schools...”

It's always about race.

I believe that since the 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African-American men the right to vote it has been the objective, first by the KKK and now by today's Republican Party, to replace our democracy with a White Christian nationalist oligarchy where whites are supreme.

They corrupt democracy in the full light of day - Jim Crow and White Citizens' Councils style - proudly, without fear, and then brag of how they've suppressed the vote, redistricted Black voters, marginalized districts and suppressed voting opportunities for vulnerable poor and minority communities.

And, it appears, with the Roberts' Supreme Court, they’re confident nothing can stop them.

This morning, as I made coffee and solved Wordle, I read that Duval County [FL] Public Schools, one of America’s largest school districts, pulled an illustrated children’s biography of Pittsburgh Pirates legend Roberto Clemente off its shelves to determine whether it is “developmentally appropriate for student use.”

Florida laws, Duval says, require books in schools to be free of pornography; instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade; and discrimination “in such a way that an individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex or national origin, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously."

PEN America reported that Duval had removed at least 176 titles from classrooms, including works such as “My Two Dads and Me,” “My Two Moms and Me,” “Celebrating Different Beliefs,” “The Gift of Ramadan,” “The Berenstain Bears and the Big Question” and books about Rosa Parks, the Underground Railroad and Japanese internment camps during World War II.

Racism: It never ends, it just never ends.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Azzi: Racism: It never ends, it just never ends