This past fortnight capped a most tumultuous period in US history, with both moments of soaring hope and expectation and deepest despair, as the US Supreme Court dismissed the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act and then followed up with a sweeping statement judgement that legalized marriage equality across the nation, while a troubled young man walked into a historic Black church and allegedly gunned down a number of worshipers, simply because they were of a different race from him. While very few, if any, are willing to offer open support for the killing of unarmed church-goers, the one aspect of this troubled period that worries me most is that so many may harbor deep feelings about which of the above three events were tragedy and which were cause for celebration. However, glad as I am over both the referenced court decisions (though I would have preferred a narrower, less flowery and more legalistic reasoning for marriage equality), this post is not about either of those issues - the Affordable Care Act may face more challenges, but the reality is that it is now a fact of life, and is ever more embedded in the way we buy our healthcare and any disruptions to this in the future are in no one's interest, except perhaps the most committed of ideologues, while the right to equality before the state is now catching up to the tidal wave of public perception that has swept much of the earlier prejudice aside, and it is hard indeed to imagine this country or any other stepping backwards on this matter.
Race relations and prejudices, on the other hand, are another matter entirely. I have largely ignored the topic, waiting for time and distance to provide better perspective, but the slow burn begun when with the killing of Trayvon Martin almost two and a half years ago, were fanned and kept alive by a series of events, from the shooting of Michael Brown to the even more tragic shooting of Tamir Rice. Less tragic, but still very much an issue to those on the receiving end, were events like the seemingly excessive force employed by Dallas police against a teenage girl. These events were not connected, but they betrayed a sad pattern of inherent racial prejudice - it is unlikely that any of the police involved were racist in the conventional sense of the word, but their prejudice colored their perceptions and actions. It is just as important to note that prejudice colored the actions of the victims in some cases as well. This is not a defense of the killings, just a statement of fact, and it should be noted that the attitudes of young black men towards the police and justice system are justifiably founded, but that collective history, uniformly negative, definitely prejudiced them against taking their chances with the system and set both sides on a track that could only end in tragedy.
While discussing a level of tragedy between cases that all resulted in death may be insensitive, not to add impossible, the killings in Charleston last week are definitely of a different magnitude. This was the only case where the killer had no reason to employ force, except to wantonly kill. And the reported statements of the alleged killer drip with a hatred that most of us imagined long dead. And yet, in the midst of tragedy, the killer may have transformed this nation in a way he never could have conceived - he shone a light on the darkest recesses of our collective soul and dragged into the open the kind of attitudes and behavior generally restricted to the comfortable anonymity of online discussion forums. The unbridled racism and (all too human) ferocity reported by the survivors left no room for lukewarm sympathizers to cloud the issue with speculative non-questions and strawman arguments, while even those more overtly in agreement were aware that he had crossed a line that they did not dare to follow him across.
In many ways, the dangers that every young black man faces daily were finally, and irrefutably on display. The previous events all had something that could be used to obscure that fact - Trayvon Martin was in a physical confrontation with his killer, Michael Brown has just robbed a store which was enough to cloud the issue, even without his reported lunge at the police officer, the man shot from behind in South Carolina was running from a routine traffic stop, and Tamir Rice was holding a realistic looking weapon which he refused to drop when confronted. All these cases could be written off by those who wished to as nothing more than a bit of excessive force, driven by fear on the part of the killer, and the common thread could be ignored, the evidence of racial prejudice could be ignored. But the church killings offer no such convenient escape - a man walked in and shot down nine people, executed them simply because of the color of their skin. He has reportedly admitted that it was difficult to do because of how nicely they treated him for the hour that he spent there before acting, but he found it in himself to go through with his intended plan - he was going to execute them allegedly solely because they were blacks and he was white, and nothing in their personal behavior was reason enough to "forgive" them that sin. And in doing so, he showed all the world the truth - people still die today because of racist attitudes. I have seen an interestingly coordinated attempt to point to some cases where black men killed white people - equally interestingly there are no links or details to these reported cases. In any case the more likely explanation is that a home invasion that results in deaths is just that, rather than an overtly racist plan by radical black men. It is always possible that racist taunts or insults were uttered - racism is not exclusive to whites, and all of us have these tendencies. But the one fact that no one can ignore (or at least must strain incredibly hard to ignore) is that nine black people were executed as a result of race and nothing else; and once we are forced to acknowledge that, we must also face up to the reasons and accept, even if grudgingly that racial prejudices do kill and that today the vast majority of the killing has young black men as victims.
Sometimes, it takes a deep cut to remove the obscuring damaged tissue and start the process of healing. The many cases over the last three years showed us that there was a deep wound in our soul, but it took the Charleston killings to slice away all else and reveal the tumor of racism that lived on beneath. And we have begun the process of healing already. Forced finally to admit the overt racist overtones of the Confederacy and its flag, America has turned away and finally that symbol of prejudice and outdated ideas (like a state's "right" to allow enslavement) is coming down - from State Houses and monuments to merchandise and computer games. There will still be some - Phil Robertsons and Cliven Bundys of this event - who will cling to their emblems of the past, but they are a dying minority and their overt racism will drive them into isolation as no one with an eye to the future is willing to embrace them or their brand anymore. And we should leave them free to be - they have a right to wrap themselves in the flag, no matter how much it offends the rest of us. We should be content that the State's endorsement of their prejudices is done, and that we have no more reason to fear them - like Sauruman, their staff is broken and their power gone and they can be left in their isolated towers of Orthanc (it goes without saying that the willful defacement of memorials to Confederate dead must stop immediately).
Perhaps the greatest response to the racist murders of Charleston is the one unfolding across America today - a new recognition of the distance we still have to go as a nation. As the President has said, we have come a long way from the Civil War and Civil Rights movement and there is little doubt that the US is one of the most tolerant nations around, where one can transcend skin color to succeed, but to become a more perfect Union, we still have a long road to travel and thanks to a young racist in Charleston, we have begun that journey, not to the racial civil war he envisioned but towards equality and justice for all.
Race relations and prejudices, on the other hand, are another matter entirely. I have largely ignored the topic, waiting for time and distance to provide better perspective, but the slow burn begun when with the killing of Trayvon Martin almost two and a half years ago, were fanned and kept alive by a series of events, from the shooting of Michael Brown to the even more tragic shooting of Tamir Rice. Less tragic, but still very much an issue to those on the receiving end, were events like the seemingly excessive force employed by Dallas police against a teenage girl. These events were not connected, but they betrayed a sad pattern of inherent racial prejudice - it is unlikely that any of the police involved were racist in the conventional sense of the word, but their prejudice colored their perceptions and actions. It is just as important to note that prejudice colored the actions of the victims in some cases as well. This is not a defense of the killings, just a statement of fact, and it should be noted that the attitudes of young black men towards the police and justice system are justifiably founded, but that collective history, uniformly negative, definitely prejudiced them against taking their chances with the system and set both sides on a track that could only end in tragedy.
While discussing a level of tragedy between cases that all resulted in death may be insensitive, not to add impossible, the killings in Charleston last week are definitely of a different magnitude. This was the only case where the killer had no reason to employ force, except to wantonly kill. And the reported statements of the alleged killer drip with a hatred that most of us imagined long dead. And yet, in the midst of tragedy, the killer may have transformed this nation in a way he never could have conceived - he shone a light on the darkest recesses of our collective soul and dragged into the open the kind of attitudes and behavior generally restricted to the comfortable anonymity of online discussion forums. The unbridled racism and (all too human) ferocity reported by the survivors left no room for lukewarm sympathizers to cloud the issue with speculative non-questions and strawman arguments, while even those more overtly in agreement were aware that he had crossed a line that they did not dare to follow him across.
In many ways, the dangers that every young black man faces daily were finally, and irrefutably on display. The previous events all had something that could be used to obscure that fact - Trayvon Martin was in a physical confrontation with his killer, Michael Brown has just robbed a store which was enough to cloud the issue, even without his reported lunge at the police officer, the man shot from behind in South Carolina was running from a routine traffic stop, and Tamir Rice was holding a realistic looking weapon which he refused to drop when confronted. All these cases could be written off by those who wished to as nothing more than a bit of excessive force, driven by fear on the part of the killer, and the common thread could be ignored, the evidence of racial prejudice could be ignored. But the church killings offer no such convenient escape - a man walked in and shot down nine people, executed them simply because of the color of their skin. He has reportedly admitted that it was difficult to do because of how nicely they treated him for the hour that he spent there before acting, but he found it in himself to go through with his intended plan - he was going to execute them allegedly solely because they were blacks and he was white, and nothing in their personal behavior was reason enough to "forgive" them that sin. And in doing so, he showed all the world the truth - people still die today because of racist attitudes. I have seen an interestingly coordinated attempt to point to some cases where black men killed white people - equally interestingly there are no links or details to these reported cases. In any case the more likely explanation is that a home invasion that results in deaths is just that, rather than an overtly racist plan by radical black men. It is always possible that racist taunts or insults were uttered - racism is not exclusive to whites, and all of us have these tendencies. But the one fact that no one can ignore (or at least must strain incredibly hard to ignore) is that nine black people were executed as a result of race and nothing else; and once we are forced to acknowledge that, we must also face up to the reasons and accept, even if grudgingly that racial prejudices do kill and that today the vast majority of the killing has young black men as victims.
Sometimes, it takes a deep cut to remove the obscuring damaged tissue and start the process of healing. The many cases over the last three years showed us that there was a deep wound in our soul, but it took the Charleston killings to slice away all else and reveal the tumor of racism that lived on beneath. And we have begun the process of healing already. Forced finally to admit the overt racist overtones of the Confederacy and its flag, America has turned away and finally that symbol of prejudice and outdated ideas (like a state's "right" to allow enslavement) is coming down - from State Houses and monuments to merchandise and computer games. There will still be some - Phil Robertsons and Cliven Bundys of this event - who will cling to their emblems of the past, but they are a dying minority and their overt racism will drive them into isolation as no one with an eye to the future is willing to embrace them or their brand anymore. And we should leave them free to be - they have a right to wrap themselves in the flag, no matter how much it offends the rest of us. We should be content that the State's endorsement of their prejudices is done, and that we have no more reason to fear them - like Sauruman, their staff is broken and their power gone and they can be left in their isolated towers of Orthanc (it goes without saying that the willful defacement of memorials to Confederate dead must stop immediately).
Perhaps the greatest response to the racist murders of Charleston is the one unfolding across America today - a new recognition of the distance we still have to go as a nation. As the President has said, we have come a long way from the Civil War and Civil Rights movement and there is little doubt that the US is one of the most tolerant nations around, where one can transcend skin color to succeed, but to become a more perfect Union, we still have a long road to travel and thanks to a young racist in Charleston, we have begun that journey, not to the racial civil war he envisioned but towards equality and justice for all.
