Courage: Eight Portraits [Paperback]

This wonderfully readable book will leave the reader with two sets of contradictory feelings: one is awe for these eight people who stood in the breech, almost always against systemic forces of evil, to be counted as history's handful of "last standing" action heroes. And while there are, a handful more that also could have been counted in this small number (recently deceased Corazon Aquino of the Philippines and the great boxer Muhammad Ali, come immediately to mind), the book also raises, in relief, a number of hauntingly unavoidable questions. The least of them is this: Why in our Christianized Western world are there so few people of courage? And two: Why does there continue to be such a huge backdrop of so much systemic evil -- usually defined by large numbers of people willingly and purposely engaged in reactionary, racist and Fascist forces designed primarily to destroy the dignity and well-being of others?

At least in the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Raoul Wallenberg, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, Edith Cadell, and Aung San Suu Kyi, the forces of evil seem to have won. And all but the last of these gave their life in defense of a fight against mostly entrenched reactionary and racist forces. The jury remains out on Aung San Suu Kyi, as she has now been under house arrest for most of her (and my) life? Efforts to release her now have been so normalized that effectively the rest of the world no longer seems to know that she exists or cares what happens to her. Surely it is a fine human gesture to write a hymn to the respective heroism of these great people, I too laud the author, but at the same time it must also be recognized that a hymn is only the most feeble of human gestures. It is quite a bit more sobering to realize that despite an increased focus on religion, our world does not seem to be getting any better.

Here in the U.S., I have had the good (or bad) fortune to live in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy's legacy. Since the forces that killed them have never been caught and brought to justice, the chances are very good that, in addition to murder, they also accomplished their political aims, and what now masquerades as normal American society is in fact but the fruits of their evil deeds normalized and burrowed into our political system. As for racial progress, the author and I seem to be seeing it through entirely different lens: For me, the halcyon days of racial progress were during the late 1960s when blacks and whites were not only joining hands in fighting against racist reaction, but were also taking to each other. Now in the period of "paper equality," the tension is worse than it was during the days of segregation, and none talks across racial lines in the U.S. It is an unwritten law.

I also have had the good (or bad) fortune to have visited South Africa in both the "before and after" Mandela periods. And I have no compunction about saying that what I saw "after" does not accord with all of the rosy reports of racial progress coming out of South Africa (mostly from NPR's Charlene Hunter Gault). At least that was not the case in Pretoria, and Johannesburg, the two cities where I lived. The racism and tension were undiminished in the "after Mandela period." After five pm, like magic, both cities turned completely black as whites lined the exit routes in their sleek "gun-racked" Safari SUVs, headed for the "lily white" suburbs, the same as they do in the USA. And while different observers may disagree on how much or how little racial progress was made during Mandela's reign, there can be no disagreement over the fact that while a handful of blacks may have had control over the machinery of government in South Africa, parading around government building in their flag-adorned Mercedes Benzs, there is not one iota of difference in the economic power the two racial groups hold or control whether it is before or after Mandela's rule. The "shanty towns" encircling almost all large South Africa cities, both before and after Mandela, remain a world-class disgrace.

My point is that it is one thing to pay homage to a handful of heroes, and quite another to ignore the reasons heroism is needed in the first place. Sadly, our world remains a dangerously reactionary and racist place. The forces of evil are clear, identifiable, and are gaining ground as is evidenced by the fact that they have been normalized as cultural necessities. This only means that in the future, more and better heroes will be needed. Three stars.