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Monday, March 17, 2008

The problem with progress

Okay, that’s just a catchy headline. The problem isn’t with progress, but our reaction to it. When it comes to social progress, America is like a chronically ill person who stops taking his meds prematurely once the most egregious symptoms are gone.

Regarding racial inequality and black Americans, our country took its “medicine” through civil war, grassroots rebellion and governmental upheaval. As a result, the most egregious symptoms of racism are gone—slavery, lynching “parties,” poll taxes, “sundown towns” and government-sanctioned (or at least ignored) hate crimes against black citizens, are for the most part, sad stories from out past. And so, America put away its medicine. And because we have stopped having substantive racial dialogue, because we have too soon forgotten the sins of yesterday and too long ignored the sins of today, America’s low-grade fever is turning into an infection: a race-torn presidential primary where a nationally-known politician can say without irony that black men are privileged in American culture, and even white progressives are shocked at the anger coming from the pulpit of a black church.

From recent conversations in the media and online, several things are clear to me:

To many people, racism against blacks is something that happened long, long ago. Some folks indignantly point out that slavery ended more than 100 years ago, as if with the stroke of Lincoln’s pen, white citizens embraced their black sisters and brothers as equals, gave them 40 acres and a mule, taught them to read and write, and all lived happily ever after. No Reconstruction. No Jim Crow. It escapes people that a 30-something like me could have a parent who grew up with the specter of lynching, and who was not allowed to attend school with white children, drink from white fountains or ride at the front of the bus; that I could have grandparents who were not allowed to vote until they were well into their 60s. For most black people alive today, egregious racism is not some long ago thing, it a thing that has touched our lives and those of people we know and love.

Rest here:What Tami Said