All Lives Matter

Can we learn retrospectively?

The world is changed. The permanence of this is unknown, as is the final landing place.

France, Belgium, America and Turkey are recent deliverers of shocking news of terrifying events – events that change the way we view ourselves, our environment, our futures. And many other events fail to capture the publicity they deserve.

I was doing some research this afternoon including reading several interviews with well known writers, some first published in the 1930’s.

One such interview was with Author William Faulkner published in the Spring edition of The Paris Review in 1956, written by Jean Stein

In the interview, Faulkner is quoted as saying

“No, only to repeat what I said before: that if we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green. Maybe the purpose of this sorry and tragic error committed in my native Mississippi by two white adults on an afflicted Negro child is to prove to us whether or not we deserve to survive. Because if we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.”

The full interview can be accessed here.