MANSFIELD: The Country That Never Was

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A shibboleth commonly voiced by members of certain faith communities is to “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”  Similarly, we can hate police brutality but still love the police. Writ even larger, persons of color can hate what our country has failed to do to protect minority rights, but still love our country.

The great paradox of America is that it has risen to be among the greatest democracies the world has ever known, while at the same instance — at every step of that rise to glory — it has treated persons of color abominably … beginning with Native Americans and continuing in some iteration or another to this very day. And brutality at the hands of authority has been a constant throughout our history in this country.

Hubris, jingoism and the fig leaf of American exceptionalism provide cover for the inbred tribalism the majority culture has occasionally attempted to shake off over the decades … each time failing — and most often failing abjectly. This current crisis in how America is policed is but the latest example of how our political leaders stick their collective head in the sand when it comes to tough questions of a racial nature.

During the recent Senate hearings on the nomination of Loretta Lynch to replace Eric Holder as U.S. attorney general, many questions were asked of her in regards to myriad contentious issues — such as the use of executive powers by the president, immigration, terrorism, the use of torture, drugs and surveillance — but not one word was uttered pertaining to civil rights and the Department of Justice’s efforts to force cities into consent decrees over policing. Why?

The primary reason for the lack of questions directed to Lynch by senators about this serious problem is due to our long-standing national aversion to conversations regarding race. While I say “our,” in reality I mean “whites” since blacks have been willing to discuss these issues ever since the Emancipation Proclamation gave us a voice  — albeit a feeble one.  But we have at least been willing to talk, no matter how hurtful our history in our beloved land.

On the other hand, few conservative politicians have been willing to speak out regarding police brutality in any setting. Indeed, the reason we continue to be mired in this racial quagmire is due in large part to the recalcitrant, steadfast, unwillingness on the part of white politicians to address this tough, incendiary issue. Too many conservatives feel the only reason minorities raise these issues is to burden them with guilt, but that’s simply not the case. Ours is a cry to save black lives.

But racial tensions are not going to disappear if we simply ignore and fail to engage in dialogue about them — we’ve been engaging in this form of willful blindness for so long we certainly by now should know the fallacy of pursuing that course of non-action. We all have to face the beast head-on if we are to tame it.

Nonetheless, many in the majority culture posit that the best way to bring an end to racial animus in America is by ignoring the elephant in the room, and some go even further by suggesting the only reason racism still exists in this country is because minorities continue to bring the subject up. But the truth is, racial discord — be it in policing, employment, education, or any other aspect of the American experience — is not a problem for whites, only for minorities, so of course their response (in most instances) is “why talk about it?”

Due to this cowardice, America has never been the nation we loudly tell others around the world that we are; indeed, we are truly the country that never was. However, at this juncture in our history, at this particular point in time, we can come closer to living out our democratic ideals than at any other time in the last half-century.

We can do so by changing how policing is done in cities both large and small across America … by insuring that brutality under color of authority against anyone, be they black or white, is no longer acceptable … no longer acceptable and tolerated in a true democratic republic — that all lives really do matter.

While this indeed is seems like a tall order, the Department of Justice has, over the last decade and a half, developed a blueprint that works for curtailing police brutality, something all Americans should view as a moral imperative. We must implement these changes in Cleveland and every other city where police brutality is still a problem. In this way — and only in this way — can America truly become the nation we are now only pretending it to be.

[Photo: Mike Licht (Flickr)]

 

 
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

 

 

 

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