I turned on ABC/Good Morning America to catch the local weather report, which then happened to fly by me without me paying attention till the last second. Instead, I clued in to the next piece, a disturbingly familiar one these days: an African-American father with his teenage son were passing through the lobby of a hotel in which they were guests when a young woman accosted the son, accusing him of having stolen her phone. The short video clip shows a white woman raving and demanding intervention on her behalf by strangers; she appears to be certain, both in her claim of victimization and her belief that surrounding “witnesses” will automatically step in and take the young black man’s phone and hand it to her. Each part of that is so troubling.
It took the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a malevolent police officer in May of this year to force an uncomfortable national conversation about a loathsome pattern (and practice) in American society. I can’t even bring myself to say “current” society, because, as much as I do believe our 45th president has shown himself to be perfectly and embarrassingly giddy about the way his worshipful followers have carried out his own hateful designs, if there is one truth I have come to better appreciate this year it is that the components and characteristics of a racist society have always been there, waxing and waning in intensity.
We are all complicit if we avert our collective gaze when, for example, neo-Nazis strut in our midst, aggressively wagging their AK-47’s (as if to proclaim, we know we’re inadequate; that’s why we carry guns). We are complicit if we tsk-tsk and mumble a how unfortunate – thinking that’s good enough to convey our opposition – when peaceful protesters are teargassed by federal marshals. We are complicit each time a person of color is unfairly kept from profiting from the “American Experience” that the rest of us enjoy. And, historically speaking, on every occasion when efforts have resulted in seemingly ironclad promises to level the playing field, the counter-response has revealed an ugliness about how we treat our fellow citizens.
We never really did critically (and adequately) examine the Emancipation Proclamation when we studied it in 11th grade (or, at least, I didn’t give it close scrutiny). Crafted foremost with a mind toward potential military advantage, it was conceived for the wrong reasons; as such, despite Abraham Lincoln’s invocation of “the considerate judgment of mankind”, it didn’t free all slaves, only those in Confederate states, and it neatly avoided all matters of citizenship. (The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution would have to legislate what should have come naturally in a so-called “evolved” and humane society.) What the measure couldn’t adequately do was squelch the rise of Jim Crow laws. In essence, what it couldn’t do was put into place safeguards so that freed slaves – ultimately all African Americans – wouldn’t be subjected to predictable, hostile acts of bitter resentment.
Jumping ahead nearly one hundred years, a similar reactionary behavior was exhibited in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (For an engaging read – but one that will break your heart, get a copy of Jerry Mitchell’s 2020 release of Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era). Once again, we bear witness to our nation endeavoring to right a wrong, only to provoke repugnant displays of miserliness and indecency. Apparently, we just can’t help ourselves; at every opportunity to right the wrongs, in every historical moment when the moral high ground generously presents itself as an option, we reflexively show cowardice. Are we that afraid of forfeiting privileges that we merely inherited? I freely admit that I have been a lousy Catholic; I don’t attend mass, so the practicing piece of my faith is regularly challenged. I often, however, find myself saying, there but for the grace of God go I. That’s not enough, though. I shouldn’t simply be grateful that I don’t suffer the injustices that others endure by virtue of skin color. I ought to be uttering these words, whatsoever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me.
As this distressing year comes to a close, I vow to more critically examine how I personally respond when witnessing instances of injustice, and to do a better job of voicing opposition. Opposition is clearly not enough, however. If I can say I’m part of the solution, then maybe that will put me on the right path. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Oh, and that young woman who ranted like a lunatic in the hotel lobby? Her Uber driver found her phone in the back seat of his car. Worth thinking about: what if the roles had been reversed, and it was – in all its unlikeliness – the black man and his teenage son charging into a random hotel, grabbing the young white woman and accusing her of theft? Right now, she’s not in jail (and would not even be under investigation were it not for the fact that a video of the event went viral), but would the black teenager have been graced with the same consideration, the same “deliberate and measured” approach? Moreover, shame on the hotel manager who insisted that the boy comply with the deranged woman’s exhortation that he produce the phone for her inspection when she wasn’t even a guest at the hotel. Really! Sometimes outrage is the perfect and necessary response.
