Race Relations In America: A Dense Forest With No Pathways Out

Despite great progress, America still behaves like we are stuck
on black and white television, replaying the same tired episodes. 

Some conversations could never come from the mouth of the head black guy that most blacks and some whites expect to lead this talk- so Starbucks might have to do it for all of US.

Even if Michael Brown was misbehaving (the report clearly says he was),  his body remaining in the street for 4 hours was abhorrent even to the 33%  of Ferguson, MO whites- who had no clue that life was so hard for their black neighbors. What we also discovered is that most  of Ferguson's whites only go into the black side of town for those really good wings.

Besides, Ferguson police have done such a really good job at keeping blacks in check with an aggressive approach to policing that made Ferguson ticket revenues the envy of Missouri. Attorney General Eric Holder's Ferguson report is old racial news in American hoods, where disparate policing has never been about race but money anyway- right?. The issue of lingering racial disparity is one we've known about, but can't find the pathway to talk about- or do something substantive to address.

Today's  racial story lines involves misbehaved kids  getting expelled or harassed into leaving their school just because they  were recorded expressing a known reality in America, not just an Oklahoma University reality.   The standards for expulsion at OU just got lowered miserably, but the OU expulsions are not about standards as much as racial embarrassment. If the message from the university is that bigots are not welcome, are they missing an opportunity to educate those bigots in the exact environment that such an education should occur?  Anyone who still doubts the benefit of Affirmative Action should realize that its now more necessary for the majority then it is for the minority.

Every attempt that WE make to separate ourselves from the most sensitive areas of decay in our society sends us running to the dentist to pull that tooth out.  Its likely we don't open our mouth on race because WE are running short on teeth since WE fail to brush, floss and attack the decay of racism head on.  I call racism and sexism social decay because they limit lives in a way that can only be described as decay.  Officer Darren Wilson could have been fully justified by his reaction to the behavior of Michael Brown Jr., but would a white kid have been killed so violently and left for so long?.  In truth, Wilson's actions or motives are not nearly as violent as our nations attempt to make him the scapegoat for pent up frustrations.  Whether Michael Brown Jr's death was one of the "good ones" should have never detracted from the fact that a bunch of bad ones happen every day all over the country- and Michael Brown Jr. deserved better than four hours in the street.

Ferguson PD might be uniquely skilled at sticking it to the blacks and the browns, but they are not unique in their behavior.  Over policing of minorities has been part of the tug-o-war of social balance that America has been seeking to strike every since we decided to stop allowing whites to have their own water fountains.  I use the word "allow" realizing that it represents a significant part of the problem.  So does the word "fair" and the words "don't discriminate".  They all are problematic words, but none worse than the words "equal opportunity".  These really awesome sounding concepts have always represented our collective ideology away from social ISM's that we hate, but these concepts only add to the  dense forest of America's racial landscape, then offer no pathway out once you're lost inside.

Ever since the race relation movement inspired by MLK himself, America has been trying to meld its racial jungle into a lovely forest, but we've entered in with no way out. Pulling a sign from the white drinking fountains didn't indirectly create a pathway towards segregation.  Creating pathways will get ugly because it demands we disrupt the tainted beauty of the bigger picture. But the pathways are parts of the picture that should have been painted first if the freedom we proclaimed is ever to be the freedom we insist.

What Was Supposed To Change?

Were Blacks and Latinos looking for less crime and incarcerations or less Blacks and Latinos victimized by it?  Don't answer that!  The obvious answer seems to make that question rhetorical.  So rhetorical in fact, that we've probably never really asked the question.  What were minorities searching for from America, 30-40-50 years ago, and how many of those searches are we still undertaking? If we never established clear pathways, then we had little hope of taking the right steps.

Either dark skinned people prefer more white people filling our over inflated prisons, or less of themselves.  Less growth in prison populations might be a great sign of a vibrant minority in America, because prisons are housing some of our most vibrant minds.  No one really wants bigger prisons with a more representative proportion of white people in them. What we've ALL hoped for, even 50 years ago, was an America that needs less prisons because of more good paying jobs that helps keep vibrant minds from falling victim to the evil that attacks all vibrant minds, whatever the color.

Blame The Narrative- Not The Stories

Our news outlets (if we can still call any of them news) do a great job at searching for the sensational while hiding the humble.  Few outlets share human interest news because few humans seem interested.  As a result, we become the indirect result of the images we project and ingest.  Part of the misdirected war on drugs came from sensationalized news cycles that made a spike in crime appear like widespread chaos.  Even the growth of street gangs was finally tempered from the realization that less news reduced the notoriety of the bad behavior, and the residual recruiting it generated.

News distributors (the narrators) have a defense of their own, however.  Its all of US who continue to watch the sensational and ignore the benign.  We will watch the horrific story and turn the channel when the CNN heroes segment comes on the air honoring heroes like Cathy Heying.  

Heying used to be a social worker, but she became increasingly frustrated with having so many poor families she was paid to help, who would be following a good path in life but have everything fall apart because they couldn't afford the cost of a major car repair.  Sometimes the small difference in REAL life comes down to an extra $600 dollars that keeps you from losing hope in this desperate world.  Everybody can relate to getting below water with major car repairs, but only poor people and their social workers understand how such things help create those people in the hood who never make it above water again.

Heying found herself looking to improve the picture, but realized it was missing a pathway. So she left her job as a social worker and opened an auto mechanic shop for the needy.  Now, she is taking steps and creating a pathway all at the same time.  Her efforts, and the efforts of those like her make words like "equal opportunity" and fair more than social concepts.

NO ONE 'allows' white only drinking fountains, but racial intimidation laws and general code of ethics also did not prevent the kind of free speech that lead to the SAE video and the subsequent expulsion of two kids..  We've pursued integration practices for years now, yet there are still major racial imbalances that result in implicit white only water fountains that "equal opportunity" crusaders have not found a way to integrate.  What does equal opportunity look like when economic segregation defines the boundary?  How will fair treatment look at SAE if SAE just hides its racists songs- and only at the schools with enough minorities to blow the whistle?  How do we educate the next generation away from the failures of the past if we expel them whenever they mimic us?

SAE is a five year old child being beaten for fondling himself.  Parents who do this indirectly create a problem for toddlers who are simply exploring and reflecting. Parents who understand this normal, but socially awkward behavior, take the time necessary to educate their children about themselves in a way that doesn't embarrass them and potentially worsen the behavior eventually. How we paint the picture for the future must include the pathway towards something better than what we already have.  And what we already have is the tendency to pretend that bigotry is isolated and unique instead of vast and prevalent among us, maybe even in us.

If colleges and universities of the world are not the exact place to have the kind of conversations that will create the pathways out of this dense forest, then where shall we begin? Clearly its way too much to ask for such conversations to take place in America's coffee shops.  Obama should find a way to join the coffee people and inspire the national conversation on race that America is trying to make him responsible for anyway.  He is not responsible anymore than you or I.  Which means he's totally responsible.

 If every college in America created the conversation (via a course) and shared the information gained- tomorrow's America won't be a dense forest without any pathways.  The SAE kids from OU and other less noteworthy bigots on campus, could be offered an opportunity to take this type of Social Awareness course instead of being expelled and left under-educated about OUR embarrassment with being racially fondled by the behavior of bigots. (another blog for another day)