I have found the political discourse (or what passes for that) facinating over the last few years. We have heard a thundorous roar from the right that they want to "take their country back." This, of course, raises some questions in my mind. Who are they taking it back from? How did they lose it to begin with? Just who are these people who want to take something from someone else and when did they get title to it?
The reality is that we live in a very diverse country and a country that achieved its greatness from its diversity. It is a country that was never really owned by anyone. In fact our early history is bound up in rebeling against outside forces who would lay claim to the the country and by the constant immigration of individuals seeking something new and something better. This constant push and pull created a dynamic tension that caused us to constantly try to be better than we were and to seek new vistas of opportunity.
Those who feel that someone took something from them are denying by that very claim the basic history of who we are as a people. No one has owned us or the country. We all share it--we even share it with the people we don't like, can't relate to and who disagree with us. It isn't something we can take or give. It is for all of us. How then can one portion of the country try to lay claim to it?
We can speculate what brought us to this point. We have seen a rising surge of immigration of those who look and sound different from the so-called mainstream American culture. Of course, at one poiont most of our ancestors fit that description to a greater or lesser degree. The only sub-group who could rightfully claim the country for themselves are the Native Americans who were, indeed, here first and who had to put up with a lot of trash from the newcomers whose decendents now want to claim the country for themselves. Then there were the large group of Africans who were BROUGHT here against there will and enslaved for several hundred years. Did they earn some ownership in the country for their troubles?
The sad reality is that most of our earlier influx came from Western Eurpoe whose people LOOKED a lot like the settlers who were already here. Today's new arrivals come from lots of other places and they often look very different. Would we be having such discussions over immigration if it were the Canadains who were coming across the border? Afterall, we haven't built a fence along the North Dakota border to keep THEM out! I can only conclude that much of the angst is built upon racial perceptions. My belief is stirred by the fact that most of this "take back our country" talk came with the election of a President of mixed race, something that took us forty four tries to acheive. The sad fact is that lots of people in this country are bothered by this and feel like "the others" have taken control. This is what fuels the paranoid and conspiracist "Birther" movement. Can you prove you belong here and how much proof is enough? This is probably close to what the Native Americans felt--except in this case no one slaughtered anyone. Change came as it is supposed to come, at the ballot box and a majority voted for a president who didn't look a lot like the preceding forty three had looked.And he had the audacity, not just to hope, but to have a strange name and an African father.
Now I have to worry about those who want to take their country back because I think they are trying to take it back from me! I like the rainbow quality of our country. I have traveled all over the world and we are in a distinct minority of countries who have worked this out peacefully. We ought to be celebrating what we are instead of fighting over how we think we used to be and trying to recapture a time when we weren't as open and welcoming.So I want my country back from those who are trying to take it from me-the narrow, the bigoted, the frightened. We are better than that.
Showing posts with label race relations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race relations. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Gates to Gates
In 1991 Rodney King, an African American was beaten by four white members of the Los Angeles police department. Unlike many claims of "police brutality" this was caught on tape and led to the trial of the four officers.LAPD chief Darryl Gates insited that his men were merely doing their duty. In essence he asked that the public believe him rather than their lying eyes. The tape revealed the officers tasering King and then using their nightsticks to beat him into submission. They claimed that he was under the influence of drugs and was resisting arrest. The officers argument prevailed at trail and their acquitals touched off an eruption of violence and rage in the black community of Los Angles. Riots lasted for days resulting dozens of deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage.
Chief Gates moved to the center of the controversy and his many appearances on television did nothing to assuage the mood of the black community. In fact, many of his statements seemed to show a lack of sensitivity to the issue of race and the historic interplay between police and the black community. For years I have heard my black friends joke in a rueful manner about being stopped by the police for "driving while black." That is the term used to label the reality that blacks are stopped and arrested by the police at a much higher rate than whites. Many times these arrests are with the flimiest of cause. The issue of "racial profiling" has emerged from this concern.
Now, in mid 2009 we have seen another Gates hit the news because of this issue. The time it is Professor Henry Gates of Harvard who, in one of the many ironies of this case, is considered to be the leading American scholars of race. He was arrested by the Cambridge Police, shortly after trying to enter his own home. It seems a neighbor had seen two black men with backpacks trying to force the front door of the house. The men were professor Gates and his driver who ws tryig to help me force open the stuck door. Dr. Gates was inside his home when the polic arrived and became incensed at the officers for accosting him in his own home. They claim he became loud and difficult and they arrested him for this behavior, cuffed him and took him to jail.
This has caused another firestorm across the nation with many lining up behind the officer, who ironically was a model officer and a trainer for the department on racial sensitivity issues. Officer Crowley claims he was merely following procedure which procuced echoes of Los Angeles in the minds of many African Americans. Most African Americans I have heard comment on the case see it merely a one more evidence of the disparate tratment of blacks in this society. Even President Obama has been caught up in the controversy when he suggested that the Cambridge Police were "stupid" for arresting a man for breaking into his own home. He has sense disavosed his language but continued to suggest the incident was troubling.
As with any issue the details of this incident for open to interpretation. Perhaps Professor Gates was treated more harshly simply because he was black. Perhaps Officer Crowley indeed followed the letter of the polcy manual. Or perhaps we had two men indulging in some "macho maashup" letting their egos and different perspective escalate a situation beyond its normal limits.
What is clear is that while America has come a long way in our relations between the races, the racial lens is still applied first when incidents like this occur. All this comes on the heels of the hearings for Puerto Rican Sonia Sotomayor for supreme court justice. At those hearings and in the run-up to them, the nation was "treated" to a litany of white men, many of whom had demonstrated their own racial insensitivity in the past suggesting that Sotomayor was a "reverse racist" for suggesting that a wise Latina might be a better judege that a white man.
What all American's should stipulate, up front, is that race still matters in this society. The election of a mixed race president who has addressed this issue quite eloquently, has not healed our divisions. In fact, his election seems to have raised the racial barometer for many whites. I seriously doubt if there is one person of color in the country who at one time or another has not been subjected to treatment based upon their race. This could be from being arrested unjustly or merely, as President Obama described in one of his books, waitng for the valet to deliver a car and having a white person throw him the keys, thinking he was the valet because he was black. And there is not a white person in America who hasn't at one time or another reacted to a person of color out of that lens rather than seeing beyond it. This could range from the ugly racism of jokes or actions, or merely getting steamed when a person of color seems to slow down when they cross the street in front of your car. Our nation has a long, dark history of racism. We fought a civil war, in part, because of it. We have had ongoing viloence because of it. It has cost us money and moral authority. And it has been a topic largely ignored in public discourse because it is so fraught with peril and pain. But we will never get past it until we brave the peril and face the pain.
Perhaps, taking a lead from President Obama and incidents like the one played out in Cambrige these las few days, we can open up the dialogue between the races. It is clear that we are not in a "post racial" time as some thought after Obama's election but maybe we can finally get to the the starting post of shedding light and understanding about this difficult issue. At last maybe we can follow the words of Rodney King in the midst of the riots,"can't we all just get along?"
Chief Gates moved to the center of the controversy and his many appearances on television did nothing to assuage the mood of the black community. In fact, many of his statements seemed to show a lack of sensitivity to the issue of race and the historic interplay between police and the black community. For years I have heard my black friends joke in a rueful manner about being stopped by the police for "driving while black." That is the term used to label the reality that blacks are stopped and arrested by the police at a much higher rate than whites. Many times these arrests are with the flimiest of cause. The issue of "racial profiling" has emerged from this concern.
Now, in mid 2009 we have seen another Gates hit the news because of this issue. The time it is Professor Henry Gates of Harvard who, in one of the many ironies of this case, is considered to be the leading American scholars of race. He was arrested by the Cambridge Police, shortly after trying to enter his own home. It seems a neighbor had seen two black men with backpacks trying to force the front door of the house. The men were professor Gates and his driver who ws tryig to help me force open the stuck door. Dr. Gates was inside his home when the polic arrived and became incensed at the officers for accosting him in his own home. They claim he became loud and difficult and they arrested him for this behavior, cuffed him and took him to jail.
This has caused another firestorm across the nation with many lining up behind the officer, who ironically was a model officer and a trainer for the department on racial sensitivity issues. Officer Crowley claims he was merely following procedure which procuced echoes of Los Angeles in the minds of many African Americans. Most African Americans I have heard comment on the case see it merely a one more evidence of the disparate tratment of blacks in this society. Even President Obama has been caught up in the controversy when he suggested that the Cambridge Police were "stupid" for arresting a man for breaking into his own home. He has sense disavosed his language but continued to suggest the incident was troubling.
As with any issue the details of this incident for open to interpretation. Perhaps Professor Gates was treated more harshly simply because he was black. Perhaps Officer Crowley indeed followed the letter of the polcy manual. Or perhaps we had two men indulging in some "macho maashup" letting their egos and different perspective escalate a situation beyond its normal limits.
What is clear is that while America has come a long way in our relations between the races, the racial lens is still applied first when incidents like this occur. All this comes on the heels of the hearings for Puerto Rican Sonia Sotomayor for supreme court justice. At those hearings and in the run-up to them, the nation was "treated" to a litany of white men, many of whom had demonstrated their own racial insensitivity in the past suggesting that Sotomayor was a "reverse racist" for suggesting that a wise Latina might be a better judege that a white man.
What all American's should stipulate, up front, is that race still matters in this society. The election of a mixed race president who has addressed this issue quite eloquently, has not healed our divisions. In fact, his election seems to have raised the racial barometer for many whites. I seriously doubt if there is one person of color in the country who at one time or another has not been subjected to treatment based upon their race. This could be from being arrested unjustly or merely, as President Obama described in one of his books, waitng for the valet to deliver a car and having a white person throw him the keys, thinking he was the valet because he was black. And there is not a white person in America who hasn't at one time or another reacted to a person of color out of that lens rather than seeing beyond it. This could range from the ugly racism of jokes or actions, or merely getting steamed when a person of color seems to slow down when they cross the street in front of your car. Our nation has a long, dark history of racism. We fought a civil war, in part, because of it. We have had ongoing viloence because of it. It has cost us money and moral authority. And it has been a topic largely ignored in public discourse because it is so fraught with peril and pain. But we will never get past it until we brave the peril and face the pain.
Perhaps, taking a lead from President Obama and incidents like the one played out in Cambrige these las few days, we can open up the dialogue between the races. It is clear that we are not in a "post racial" time as some thought after Obama's election but maybe we can finally get to the the starting post of shedding light and understanding about this difficult issue. At last maybe we can follow the words of Rodney King in the midst of the riots,"can't we all just get along?"
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