By now, it is beyond any doubt that the election of the first African-American president in our nation's history did not herald the emergence of a "post-racial" era. Far from it. Rather, it has unleashed the racism that has been bottled up in a large segment of the American people, and that previously only surfaced in code, with "state's rights" being the most frequently-used code phrase of all. It has served to reaffirm the position of racism as the original sin of the Republic, ignored in the Declaration of Independence, codified in the Constitution, promoted through legal segregation and voting restrictions even after a civil war ended slavery, and used again and again in modern times by one of our two major political parties as a wedge issue, and as a major component of its national strategy.
It is not surprising that Missouri, given its key role in the nineteenth-century effort to keep America "half-slave and half-free," to borrow from Lincoln, should serve as the location for the flash point of the anger that has been building for some time about the decline of white power in our national culture and politics. Geographically, the Show-Me State is at the intersection of the Union-Confederacy dividing line, and its history with regard to race relations has been described as "tortured." The tragedy of Michael Brown's death, and the violence that followed, could easily have happened elsewhere in the state; the town of Ferguson was just the unlucky and unhappy landing point for the racial lightning that was always destined to strike.
And make no mistake: there are two real and distinct tragedies here. Whether you like Michael Brown or not, and whether you think of him as a criminal or not, he was unarmed and take from his family and friends by the power of the state. You do not have to think of him as a pillar of the community to realize that this is not only wrong as it relates to Michael Brown, but to any one of us in a similar situation. And thanks to the post-9/11 militarization of the police, any of us, and therefore potentially all of us, can easily be in that situation.
In fairness to the police, however, they are not aided by the efforts of gun-rights activists, many of them with racial motivations, to flood this country with firearms. But the combination of firepower that now exists on both sides of the police-citizen divide desperately calls for a major rethinking of the distribution and regulations of firearms in this country, a regulation that was not only written into the Constitution through the Second Amendment (sorry, Mr. Justice Scalia, but that's the truth), but was also at one time supported by the National Rifle Association itself. And, if the death of Michael Brown does not move you to support such a rethinking, perhaps this will.
Violence breeds violence, and Brown's death is no exception to that fact. And that statement is one of fact, not of support to the instigators of the second tragedy--the rioters in Ferguson allegedly "protesting" the grand-jury decision not to indict the officer who killed Brown. Their anger was legitimate; their actions were not. The destruction for which they, and they alone, are ultimately responsible, harmed white and black residents and businesses, promoted social division within the community, and provide political ammunition for those who view Brown's death not as a tragedy, as they should, but as a triumph.
Where do we all go from here? And, in the immortal words of Rodney King, can't we all get along?
Where we go from here is peaceful, large-scale, sustained protest. A successful reform moment isn't distinguished by the drama it creates. It is distinguished by the unwillingness of its members to give up. Instead of giving up, we must show up. Every day. In every state. In every town. And we must do it together, crossing not only geographic lines, but racial ones as well. We must stop shouting, and start talking, and listening. And, in the process, we must not forget that a young man was unnecessary taken from his family and his community. We will never know what his life might have been otherwise, and what we might have lost as a consequence of his death. None of us who become adults are who we are as teenagers.
And the organized protests must, inevitably, turn toward organized political action. Toward electing politicians who believe in solving problems, not in dividing and conquering the people. That, sadly, is the difference between the two major parties today. And, lest you think I'm coming from an overly partisan perspective, consider this. Frankly, in the short run, if you want to make a small difference, you can get involved in next Saturday's run-off Senate election in Louisiana, a state that was purged of much of its African-American population by the "response" to Hurricane Katrina. Organize. Contribute. And VOTE. Use the election to send a message to the divide-and-conquer party that the people are coming together, and on the march.
For a peaceful country. For a united country. For a country that does not use its young people as target-practice for its anger. For a country that can face its original sin and finally overcome it. For a country that can answer Rodney King with a simple "Yes, we can."
UPDATE (today): Perhaps this is a small sign of hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment