More than Marching Needed to End Racism

More than Marching Needed to End Racism

From the movie Unforgiven:   “It’s a hell of a thing to kill a man.  You take all he’s got, and all he’s ever gonna have.”  George Floyd’s death combined with a recent past of all too many similar terrors ignited dry kindling that burst into flames literally and figuratively.

America has come a long way since days yore in the Deep South when gleeful white folks were photographed next to a dead black man with the noose still around his neck.  Most of us were so sickened by the ‘kneeling lynching” of George Floyd that mainstream America might even tolerate football players taking a knee during the national anthem. 

White Americans taking the streets with their fellow Black Americans step together in the right direction.   Feeling a part of something bigger than oneself serves a heady quaff.  Initially, such feelings reached intoxicating levels for some that led to an American-style Krystalnacht.  But unlike the night of the broken glass directed against innocent Jewish businesses carried out by German paramilitary forces, this senseless eruption found vent indiscriminately against anything in its’ path.   To borrow again from Unforgiven:  “Deserves got nothing to do with it.“

Like any mass social unrest, overheated events lead to self-defeating purposes.  The protestors pulled down the statue of Ulysses S. Grant, the general whose Union Army vanquished the South thereby ensuring the end of slavery.  Such actions only harden the opposition whom they wish to convert.  

Despite missteps, the continuing march of protestors will reap reform when prosecutors charge and convict rogue police officers.  Continuing progress means law enforcement weeding outs bad cops, and educating those who remain on less deadly yet effective law enforcement techniques.

Marching, anthems and reform aside, America still faces a long journey ahead.  Indeed, a large segment of our society refuses to understand the depth of the problem when they post placards that “All Lives Matter”. They reveal an indifference to an all too often occurrence: A policeman sworn to enforce the law who acts far outside of it by illegally and unnecessarily killing a black man.

Once the marching and anthem kneeling ends, will America step forward to perform the heavy lifting?  Far easier to march and vocally castigate all police, which only serves to replace one prejudice for another.   Meanwhile, we all desire police protection from an extant violent world that remains in our midst.                                                                                                                       Indeed, the elephant in the room—actually, a leopard lurking to pounce on any utterance perceived to be politically insensitive—remains as it pertains to a segment of the Black underclass that keeps many policemen on edge.  Ironically, White America fostered a cycle of violence that took root in our crumbling urban cores. 

We reaped what we sowed:  Planted by slavery, fertilized by an extra-legal process of oppression oft times violently enforced during reconstruction; and pruned by economic disparity with separate but unequal Jim Crow laws, and LIFO employment of last hired, first fired.   Yet, many wonder why a group of people so easily identified by their color, violently incorporated into America, and maintained in their place through the lash, the noose and abject poverty developed its mirrored culture of urban violence.

So we grapple with a harvest of a Black underclass residing in our crumbling inner city cores.   To combat the ‘problem’, we place the police in the midst of the friction points, some of whom act as modern-day overseers to combat crime and mayhem that sometimes finds its way to middle America.

Not many street protestors crying chants to defund the police would volunteer to take a run behind the wheel cruising the mean streets.  An old 60’s bumper sticker read:  “If you don’t like the police, the next time you’re in trouble, call a hippie.”  Revise the wording from ‘call a hippie’, to ‘call a liberal’, and see how fast they arrive to your rescue.

Many on the Right maintain that the last 50 years of liberal policies have done little to ameliorate systemic poverty in urban areas.  Yet, government assistance and affirmative action have proven more successful than given credit as witnessed by the rise in the number of Black professionals and middle class.  A problem 300 years in the making cannot be solved in 60 years.

Direct payment of reparations has been bandied about, but will never take hold, nor should it.  The old aphorism retains a ring truth to it:  “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Yet, how many White Americans living far from the mean streets stand willing to pay for fishing lessons in the form of indirect reparations?   See how fast their placards fall when asked to share their property tax revenues that fund their affluent school districts with inner city schools so that the money spent per pupil stands more on par to equality that they profess to cherish.

How many street-marchers would willingly raise their federal tax rates 1% to finance the re-building of inner city housing, while ensuring that half the money goes to apprentice programs and good paying jobs to minorities in the construction trades to perform the rebuilding?   How many anthem-kneeling professional Black athletes will stand up to work as teachers or active role models in inner city schools during their off seasons? 

America moves in the right direct.  However, until we break the cycle of black urban poverty, we will continue to live in societal unrest created by centuries of violence and inequality.  Bad policemen remain only a part of the equation.