“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
A friend recently asked me why everyone called George Clooney by his real name and very few people knew that Fonzie’s real name was Henry Winkler. My wife said, “that’s easy – George Clooney has been in a million films and is famous for his philanthropy, political activism and photogenic face whereas Henry Winkler’s whole career is built on the Fonzie character. She is probably right AND my friend’s question also made me start thinking about the differences between the false facades of charismatic characters and the authentic auras of a person with real character. “As Abraham Lincoln said, character is a like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.” I’m not sure if George Clooney is entirely the real thing, but I am sure that the Fonzie character was built on a shadow reputation.
Fonzie, of course, is the cool greaser from the 1950s with a love for motorcycles and leather jackets. He famously clashed with the show’s cast of wholesome, All-American characters. The question made me think of the differences between character and characters as in, “Well, he’s a real character vs. Wow, She has real character!” It also made me grapple with the question of how much do we “face it” or “fake it” i.e. how often do we honestly face our own reality and the reality of our present and past vs. how often do we just fake it to make it? And thus this post.
Unsurprisingly, a few books and articles I recently read informed my thinking about these questions.
In his new book, A Fever in the Heartland, Timothy Egan traces the Klan’s expansion in the 1920s across American political and civic life. 100 years ago, thousands of citizens in Indiana gathered to celebrate “America is for Americans.” There was a grand parade with floats portraying Klansmen defending women from Blacks, Jews and Catholics. The featured speaker was David Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of Indiana, the charismatic con-man responsible for the Klan’s expansion across the Midwest in the 1920s. In just a few years, Stephenson had risen from an absolute nobody to become the dominant player in civic and political life in the Midwest. In his chilling new book, Egan documents the unsettling emergence of the KKK in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and beyond. This newly-born Klan was characterized by racism, lynching, beatings, torture and the mythology of white victimhood. The Midwest mobs fed white, protestant citizens with an expansive buffet of resentments and perceived grievances. Stephenson was able to play into the fears and hate of moral purists and traditionalists to wage war on anything “different” or “modern.” Egan writes that “Folks got their news from editors loyal to the Klan” from a disinformation network that speedily spread lies. In the meantime, Stephenson profited immensely from sales of robes and membership fees. In the end, a woman whom he had raped and murdered brought him down.
Are you getting the idea?
While Egan never makes the explicit connection between what happened 100 years ago and what is happening now, the parallels are horrifyingly obvious. I highly recommend this book. It gave me a sense of hope that corrupt characters can be ultimately held accountable through a counter movement of courageous lawyers, journalists, politicians and abused victims. The book also powerfully points out what happens when an evil con-man has the hubris to say “I am the law” by playing into the moral obscenities of white supremacy. Finally, it fully faces the historical facts that continue to haunt us.
The 1920s also witnessed another uprising of a “Red Neck Army” consisting of black, white and immigrant coal miners who were fighting for the right to collectively bargain and to end the egregious exploitation of rich, white coal mine owners. Named for the red bandanas they wore, this working class army waged the largest insurrection since the Civil War. The fight took place on Blaire Mountain in West Virginia where the miners were soundly defeated even though they ultimately won the war for more humane conditions as part of the New Deal. In a terrific article in the New York Times on July 21, 2023, Cassidy Rosenblum discusses the surprising origin of the red neck label and reveals the real character of people who fought for their rights as well as the real characters who denied those rights with brute force and military assistance. The article made me realize that we need to be careful about the assumptions we make about “red necks” when history shows that labels can be misleading.
In an amazing interview with Ezra Klein on July 22, 2023, Barbara Kingsolver, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Demon Copperhead, also makes the point that we often characterize groups of people with demeaning labels. In this case, many of us educated urbanites fail to understand the real character of individual people who live in Appalachia and other rural communities. That lack of appreciation has clearly fueled the anti-elite animus burning through the country today. Personally, I was challenged to look for the trees instead of imagined shadows. There is no monolithic label for any region, class, or ethnic group.
If we go back another 100 years to the 1820’s, we need to face the facts that white, rich men were still profiting grandly by enslaving people. In 1820, Congress passed the Missouri Compromise which enabled Missouri to become a new state that permitted slavery. This federal legislation aimed to balance the desires of northern states to prevent expansion of slavery with the desires of Southern states to expand it. Racism, exploitation and oppression have long and deep roots.
What finally emerged from living in the question posed by my friend about the notion of character vs. character was the realization of how important it is to “face it” instead of “fake it” and to pay closer attention to the real character of people. Martin Luther King’s famous quote: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” rings even more loudly and clearly now than it did 60 years ago when he delivered that epic speech.
In my work, I witness plenty of organizations “faking it.” Leaders pretend to be more competent than they really are. There is reason we have the term “imposter syndrome.” Businesses pretend to be great places to work while they abuse their employees. Starbucks, Amazon and many others would like their customers to believe they are employee-oriented places, while they monitor every minute and fight against unionization. The truth is that we all fake it to some degree by numbing ourselves to our own realities as well as to the realities of the present and the past. We put on a false façade to hide who we really are – whether that’s fossil fuel companies, pharmaceutical companies or just ordinary blokes like me trying to make our way through each day.
To me, “facing it” means acknowledging the truth about ourselves, our organizations, and our history. For example, one of the main points behind DEIB initiatives, as I understand it, is simply to teach honest history. Sadly, getting to any level of agreement about what represents truth seems to be more and more difficult. Even the Supreme Court refuses to acknowledge their ethical lapses – the real character of this band of characters. At every level, character should count.
The Fonz finally got resurrected as Barry after a long and debilitating time of being typecast in Happy Days. George Clooney? Well, what can you say about George Clooney? With that face, he clearly doesn’t need to fake it. And, extending this celebrity cruise a little further, I need to mention the Barbenheimer boom taking place this weekend. I think it’s fair to say that Barbie was always about faking it, whereas Oppenheimer was all about facing it. My understanding is that Oppenheimer only agreed to build the atomic bomb because we fully faced the danger of Nazi Germany expanding its reach. After Germany surrendered, he argued against dropping the bomb on Japan because it wasn’t necessary. He fully faced the gruesome consequences of that decision – as many as 200,000 were killed and its use unleashed nuclear proliferation around the world.
In any event, I’m hoping we can all start facing the reality of who we are, the condition of our current culture and the hard truths of our pockmarked past. I’m hoping we can drop the false facades and quit believing the way to make it is to fake it. And I’m hoping that Martin Luther King’s dream may finally come true. May it be so.
Also published on Medium.
