Real Change Requires Loss

Guest Opinion

By Isiah Smith, Jr. | Jan. 27, 2024

Two separate events occurred in the last few weeks. The first was when Harvard President Claudine Gay announced she was stepping down just six months into her presidency amid a firestorm of controversy at the university. The second was the annual MLK birthday celebration.

At a glance, these two events seem entirely unrelated. But upon closer examination, it became apparent that they had much in common.

In her Jan. 2 resignation letter, Gay said, “When my brief presidency is remembered, I hope it will be seen as a moment of reawakening to the importance of striving to find our common humanity—and of not allowing rancor and vituperation to undermine the vital process of education.”

Gay also noted that “it has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus.”

In a statement as predictable as it was inaccurate, the Reverend Al Sharpton claimed Gay’s resignation was “an attack on every Black woman” in America who has “put a crack in the glass ceiling.”

In a Jan. 8 New York Times op-ed column, John McWhorter, an American linguist specializing in Creole languages, sociolects, and Black English, wrote he doesn’t think race was the primary reason for Dr. Gay’s resignation. Mr. McWhorter, who is Black, is currently an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches American studies and music history.

He writes that although Dr. Gay received deplorable racist hate mail, “I don’t think the notion that racism was substantially to blame for Claudine Gay’s trouble holds up.”

He continues, “No, the charge that ultimately led to Gay’s resignation was plagiarism, of which more than 40 alleged examples were ultimately unearthed. And plagiarism and related academic charges have, of course, also brought down white people at universities many times.”

He adds, “The lessons from what happened to Professor Gay are many. But cops-and-robbers thinking about racial victims and perpetrators will help answer few of them.”

Every negative encounter that occurs in a black person’s life need not be informed by prejudice or racism. Black people, as well as white people, can make mistakes in their personal and professional lives. Dr. King understood this and preached that character counts, as does assuming personal responsibility for one’s actions. To reduce every adverse consequence in one’s life to racism is to dishonor the memory of social justice fighters who fought so hard for equality.

On Jan. 15, we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Although I participated in the celebration, I was conflicted. Year in and year out, we performed the old, tired rituals repeatedly—music, singing, and joining hands with teary eyes—but everything seems to stay the same. We continue to receive the same results since we continually do the same thing.

Children growing up in the Deep South, witnessing awful things and witnessing so much mindless suffering, developed thick skin. But they also created something else: hope. They knew things were not what they should have been and learned about real suffering and disappointments. They thought we would overcome someday. Isn’t that what the song promised us?

Through it all—and by all, I mean watching the evaporation of generational wealth and painful legacies their forebears had bequeathed—a sense of hopelessness developed so suddenly it seemed like it happened overnight. But it wasn’t overnight; it was a long time coming, and when it arrived, a dark and gloomy night appeared that never entirely lifted.

As Ray Charles sang, “Here we go again.”

The great writer James Baldwin thought any real change “implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.”

When we experience moments where genuine change is possible, we often find ourselves caught in the awful pull of the present moment, where we cannot see or even dare to imagine what a different future would bring. That is why change is so complex and why we cling to what we know, to the old and familiar ways of being to which we have become strangely devoted.

I have come to believe that it is when we are able, without reservation or hesitation, to surrender the familiar for a chance at real change and self-actualization that we can be set free—and put ourselves free—“for higher dreams, for greater privileges.” If we cannot, or feel that we cannot, set ourselves free and embrace a new world with more rewards, then we are lost, taking the same actions repeatedly and hoping for different results.

Real change is possible, but only if we put aside our entrenched, preconceived notions about the nature of reality.

“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Isiah Smith, Jr. is a retired government attorney.