Covid Pandemic; Racism Endemic

CASUALTIES

One has devastated this nation in a stunning manifestation of death, sickness and an almost complete shutdown of normal life whose effects have not yet been fully explored or experienced…with no cure and fears of mutation on its return.

The other disease has become integral to the American experience, has caused death for centuries, fear where no fear should exist, a lifetime without expectations, and a lifestyle of poverty. It is a disease with no apparent cure and none in sight.

This is Year One of the Fifth Century of slavery in America.

The Founders of this nation whom we often revere and salute were, when wealthy enough, slave-holders… openly and with no reservations. Right from the very beginning…the Declaration of Independence, the war against the British, the writing of the Constitution… slavery was written in and accepted as normal.

The racism it has parented is as much a part of America as Mom, apple pie and the Statue of Liberty and the explosions it has caused over time have always signaled another era of the search for a cure – which still does not exist.

Today 40% of Americans are people of color and in some states like Texas, they are now close to a majority. Yet color per se doesn’t always seem to matter – Latinos and Asians have made gains in many States – in business, in service, in education.

Yes, they have faced opposition, experienced prejudice but many have come as immigrants to America in the classic sense of immigrants of old: those white Europeans who fled discrimination, hunger, class-minded, closed societies with limited opportunities. The Latinos and Asians have come in similar ways aiming to work hard, educate their children and succeed in the land of the free, the land of opportunity.

They have had to fight their way but until these last years of America’s failure, they have never been classified and seen by Americans as lesser, as ‘other’ the way Native Americans, negroes, blacks, African-Americans have been seen throughout our lifetime and the lifetime of generations, centuries past.

SYSTEMIC RACISM

As periodic explosions have marked the failure of racial integration, they have also revealed the potency – and failure – of our good intentions. These can be found in those instances where we have recognized the prejudices that exist and tried to make changes.

We have taken steps to end school segregation throughout the nation so that white and black children might receive a similar level of education. There are many States in which white and black children can now go to the same school. Yes there was busing. Yes there was the fight in the Southern States against a lifetime of separate schools. Yes, changes were made. But the overall effort at better education has failed all of our students: New York City has the most segregated school system in America.

We call it systemic racism because in our zeal to “be good people” we go after a singular problem and ignore all the other conditions which impact on that problem and by so doing…fail.

We listen to the Governor of New York quickly announce the development of new laws to limit police brutality that will quickly pass a State Legislature that votes as he does. And we hear him say that the problems with racism and criminal justice exist in education, housing and healthcare. But we do not hear him recommend any changes in those systems…not now or in the past 10 years of his administration or the four years he expects to win in 2022. He hasn’t added a penny to help fix the 375 buildings in the NYCHA system. And he won’t.

Failure to see the humanity in people, the simple reality that a white man walking down a street is seen differently than a black man walking down the same street severely diminishes the gains made by blacks in the last years of the 20th Century…successes driven by the work of Martin Luther King and others – usually in government – who have tried to diminish the cultural effect of attitudes which simply do not go away no matter how many gains blacks have made…no matter the election twice of a black man as President of the United States.

What we know is this: that despite the intensity of the opposition to him in the South – the brutal Sheriff, the dogs, the clubs, the water hoses – King reported that nothing was a severe as the ferocity of the opposition he found in Chicago when he began talking about fair housing programs. Bottles and bricks were thrown.

The truth is difficult but obvious. The goodness in America can be found in the moment: this moment it is police brutality. Fix it. Before it was Fix the South. Fix the schools.

But NIMBY: not in my backyard.

A START

It would be the most natural desire to see fundamental change ASAP.

But what has taken centuries to develop cannot be expunged in minutes. It will take years, decades, maybe generations…hopefully not centuries.

It would also be the most natural desire to know that these changes will take place in the homes of white people.

It will not happen because it never has…because too many people feel too many different things and in today’s families where Mother and Father both work – there is only so much content time allowed between work, social media and the comings and goings of life.

The only other possibility is that these changes come from the very public schools which are failing to teach reading, writing and arithmetic the way schools did generations ago.

They don’t do those things well. Their teachers come out of Schools of Education unable to do what has to be done and school systems just keep going along, collecting taxes, electing School Boards, dealing with teacher unions demands for more money…and damn the performance.

Just look at the college dropout rate now. No more need be said about the failures.

So how then can we suggest that schools begin to deconstruct systemic racism?

Well we can start with the reality that in most American schools there is a Black History Month. The attempt here is to recognize the achievements of black Americans…television stations most often make mention of these activities throughout the month. It is a good thing if by no means a great one. It is a start.

The lessons will be taught on a once a weekly basis so that they start and never stop. They need to be treated as seriously as reading, writing and arithmetic.

At a time when America is severely impacted by an unemployment rate greater than we have ever known this is true: filmmakers, actors, writers and musicians need an income they may now not have for a long time. This program can be to them, what Americans in the time of the Great Depression got from the FDR Administration…WORK… Meaningful work.

Now can educators, historians, political scientists and writers come together to design one such program? It will not be easy because throughout our history we do not have a single approach to teaching American History in our schools. Not one. Ever.

So how do we expect a single approach to educating against racism?

Because hopefully the image of George Floyd’s death by willful murder will survive our immature attention span because the forces of liberalism among the races will drive that image again and again through the months and years ahead…that image cannot be allowed to slip away. It must become a STOP sign in our lives.

This is not a quick fix to what has been an impossible disease to cure.

Covid-19 is an environmental problem which takes it and possible mutations beyond any disease we have known.

Racism is in our American blood but it is a singular disease. When we want to…we can find that cure.