By Gregory K. Taylor
When one travels abroad a different, if not, more objective point of view, hopefully, can be brought to a problem. This writer, intuitively, to his surprise becomes jingoistic while in another country, particularly, when a disparaging remark is passed. It’s analogous to a family squabble when non-family members intercede—look out! The brouhaha let loose when Michelle Obama openly voiced her sentiments about the pride she now feels in her country for electing a Black person as President was mind-boggling. This was not said in a vacuum, but you would have thought so from the reaction. There is an irrefutable history of lynching, indignities, and degradations to warrant that statement. Every educated-real American (coined and lifted from the right-wing), who keeps his own counsel, should have felt the same way--if only slightly. To argue with a person who denies history is like trying to reason with a drunk—it just can’t be done so why bother. So, this article is directed at the sober teetotalling audience of rational thought. As for the drunks and right-wing adherents do us and yourself a favor and play tag on a freeway somewhere. This is not for you.
From a remote city in China approximately four hours north of Beijing, where freedoms are assumed to be harshly constrained, this writer, is glad to be removed from the scene of the crime as America goes through its customary sadomasochistic rite-of-passage in a bi-polar haze. Race in America, is as much a part of its founding fabric as slavery was the engine of production. Codified in a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution, written for and by the landed-gentry aristocrats, they secured for themselves what they would deny others--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Idiot Savants, who exhibited extraordinary skills in forming and ratifying such a brilliant document, yet, they proceeded with alacrity and little conscience to violate the very tenets of said document. Strangely, however, no one wants to talk about this reality and how it still, in a major way, affects race relations. So, like Snagglepuss, for those who are old enough to remember, I have “Exited, stage left” for the moment so as to avoid the usual grandiloquent assertions of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly--contrarians all, as it relates to the Trayvon Martin killing—Heavens to Murgatroyd!
America is again tying itself in a Gordian Knot of self-analysis, incrimination and recrimination, not seen since the O.J. Simpson trial. Like the proverbial Ostrich with its head in the ground America’s ASS is showing for all to see, and its ASS is its race problem. This writer would rather have a root canal than address this issue—it’s just so draining, painful, and subject to violent out bursts. It is also pointless if only one side is willing to have the discussion. So, here’s my two-cent treatise on the subject and with a bit of luck some thoughtful analyses.
The problem is the majority group refuses to listen to the minority group and the minority group refuses to stop yelling at the majority group. With no compromise in sight a defacto stalemate exists while the majority group flees farther (physically) and further (mentally) out in a vain attempt to remove itself from the problem. In these enclaves of gated communities the majority group takes the requisite resources of convenience with them leaving the minority group to fend for itself, with fewer and fewer resources, resulting in a survival of the fittest ethos which in time spills back over into the majority community. The resulting fear by the majority of the encroaching minority causes a deadly dance between the haves and the have nots ending in such confrontations as illustrated in the Trayvon Martin shooting.
It is comfortable for the majority group to believe that the minority group is full of ne’er do wells, malingerers, impossible to educate and prone to criminal behavior miscreants. What else justifies or eases the conscience of the perpetrator to mistreat the minority group. One need look no further than America’s institution of slavery, which the majority group dismisses as ancient history and refuses to hear anything regarding the subject with the refrain...duh…"I ain’t never owned no slaves, and stop your belly aching--pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” but of course the truth of the matter is the majority group never pulled itself up by its own bootstraps, unless the bootstrap is a metaphor for the cheap, often free, theft of the minority group’s labor. And, of course the majority group would hold its collective breath until blue in the face if you told them that, today, there is a legacy benefit, like an inheritance, that the majority group still benefits from and lives off of.
When the majority group tires of running from bedroom community to bedroom community, spending money they no longer can afford, they will be presented with two choices.
1.) Gentrification, which is a bad choice unless done properly and earnestly to meld back into the existing community and make it what it once was before majority flight.
2.) Fight like a cornered animal, a la the Afrikaner of South Africa, becoming more oppressive in response by enacting insane laws, such as, “Stand your ground.” These laws only purpose is to confuse, muddy, and justify, under the guise of self-defense, the killing of the minority group. And, we now know, in the end, even the Afrikaner wasn’t that stupid.
Or, maybe there’s a third choice? How about following the precepts of Jesus (and I’m not a religious person), who the majority group professes to worship, or the golden rule? Maybe the majority group should practice what it expects the minority group to abide by and stop studying the Bible by rote. "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money" After all, it’s only STUFF!
This writer gets it! How does one admit everything they possess has been ill-gotten from a poisonous tree and not by dint of honest effort, but by the exploitation of a gullible, trusting, and unsophisticated minority group? To be fair and just would mean giving back what was stolen. This equity, apparently, is not to be found in human nature.
So, America plods along enjoying its love affair with race. What else could it be but love? To hate something would require one to change it, end it, to stop doing it. So, until America tires of its self-destructive behavior, I will--exit stage left--as often as possible.
