Preemptive Love Isn’t Really Love

Rinku Sen

Preemptive Love Isn’t Really Love

The part of today’s swearing-in that remains clear, hours after the event, is a line from Elizabeth Alexander’s poem. I’m not a big on poetry – I’m too plot-oriented and speedy, and the stillness required to enjoy most poetry generally escapes me. I nearly went to sleep when she started in on love — what a cliché! But then, this gem that perfectly tapped the source of all my fidgeting in the midst of this undoubtedly amazing political moment.

Alexander called for a particular thing: Love with no need to preempt grievance.

Haven’t most of us experienced that other kind? Preempting grievance means that from the beginning, there’s an understanding, spoken or tacit, that we will not speak of any harm, we will not express affront. We must not reproach, complain or resist. This is the kind of love that undergirds abusive marriages and secretive families. It gives birth to miserably tense holidays in which we carry ourselves so rigidly that we can’t eat, laugh or play tag football. This kind of non-love isn’t just a private thing. It can be the way of nations and governments also. As I was writing The Accidental American and reflecting on the dismal immigration and civil rights record of the nation since 9/11, a prominent economist told me the question I would have to answer as I peddled the book: “Rinku, why do you hate this country so much?”

This is the kind of love that conservatives will demand from us in the next period. The kind that says, as the Hudson Institute does, that all racism has ended, so there’s no need for affirmative action. The kind that says, as former Education Secretary Bill Bennett did the day after the election, “Black men have no more excuses.” Sometimes even liberals and progressives, perhaps unwittingly, will reinforce the silence. Loving Obama, loving this moment in our political history might well lead us to censor ourselves with reminders of how many problems he inherited and how many people are out to kill him. What a dilemma! Our ancestors had to confront this same definition of love – when Japanese Americans protested internment, when Black soldiers fought for equal right after WWII, when Puerto Ricans worked to get the US military out of Vieques. So many examples. None of them with the backdrop of a Black Presidency.

The power to preempt doesn’t belong to all of us – only to, well, the powerful. Think of it as an act of war that prevents you from fighting back. The idea that something productive may live at the other end of that struggle never occurs to the one in power, only to the aggrieved. This preemptive kind of love isn’t really love at all – it’s just obedience. You can’t have an obedient people and an engaged people at the same time. So, I’m going to take the poet at her word, and hold the President accountable to her implication. I’m going to move ahead assuming that he’ll feel the love, without no need to preempt our grievances.

Posted at 2:01 PM, Jan 20, 2009 in Obama | Permalink | View Comments

Comments

RaceWire, ColorLines, and the Applied Research Center not only have some of the best analyses of race in the USA, they also have some of the best writing, like this piece. Send it to your friends, families, and colleagues so that there is not even a chance we will be silenced. We are not post-race, we are at a once-in-a-lifetime moment to tell the truth about race.

Agreed! The movement that put Obama in office NEEDS to remain critical and demand true justice. "Post-racial" is non-existent and the silencing effect of more political correctness is dangerous.

I was really surprised at the " Love with no need to preempt grievance" line.

Traditionally, people liked what St Paul had to say, that "Love keeps no record of wrongs".

Maybe love with no need for an accounting is love in a perfect world, where there are no power differences. In an imperfect world, we have to be able to resolve actual grievances, and they can't be resolved if they're preempted. I was thinking last night that "preempt" is such a mellow word for what is essentially an aggressive act.

I'm an atheist, but this essay inspired me to post the following, which I think is the moral of the story of this momentous occasion:

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.