I'm going to talk about racism. I'm doing it from my perspective, a combination of realism and idealism.
The United States of America-America for short- is, and always has been, an ideal. The shining city on the hill we all want to live in. The place where everything is right, perfect, and as it ought to be.
In the early years of our country only white males could vote. Native Americans were slaughtered and survivors forced into settlement on lands deemed of no value by various American administrations. After the transcontinental railroad was completed, the country shunned, deported, and devalued the Chinese labor that built so much of that great American achievement. When we talk about the great industries that became the face of America-steel, transportation, mining, architecture, agriculture- we mention the white males who were captains of those industries, but we fail to have the conversation about the Irish, Greek, German and Mexican immigrants that did the hard, manual, often deadly work of building those industries. Indeed, we often forget to remember that immigration has been a major source of labor, ideas, and innovation in our country. We also conveniently forget the discrimination that was practiced against immigrants of most nationalities at one time or another. As a student in elementary school, I learned that America won WWII, but I didn't learn about 120,000 Japanese-Americans being torn from their homes and placed in internment camps during that same war until after I graduated high school.
America has a long, unhappy history of racism, as shown in the above examples, but our country's major failings regarding racism involve Black Americans. Theoretically freed from slavery by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865, Blacks in America were openly discriminated against in housing, jobs, voting, education and public venues; this discrimination was made illegal by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. Human nature does not change with the stroke of a pen, however, and we still have racially based discrimination-blatant, open, and illegal-in America's streets, and on our news feed each day.
This is the reality we are faced with today in the United States of America. I wrote at the beginning of this article that I am also an idealist, so here goes.
Yes, America is not perfect, and our past is marked with many examples of racism, none of which make us proud. But we have learned from each of these challenges, and we have risen, battered perhaps, bruised certainly, but we have risen better than before each time. We live today in an age of right now news and information; the click you just heard was a cell phone taking your picture, or your video. Therefore, we are faced with a national reckoning, an inability to pretend it doesn't happen here.
Can you imagine Benjamin Franklin's face if he saw how rapidly we can spread news today?
It is in our long-term national best interest that we do not whitewash the events of the past, that we do not ignore the parts of our history that are ugly. As a species, we learn from our collective past, and we can use the unsavory parts of our history to guide us to different ways of thinking, of approaching various problems that face us now, and others that will come to us in the future. Our history is checkered with good and bad, and it would be childish to pretend America was innocent, that we never made mistakes. When my grandchildren learn about the Revolutionary war, I also want them to learn about the Trail of Tears and the Selma to Montgomery marches; I want them to understand America has come a long way in the movement toward equality, but that we still have a long way to go.
Critical to the long-term national best interest of our country is our own attitude. We must resist stereotyping, be it political, sexual, or racial; and we must overcome our own attitudes that lend themselves to racism and discrimination. I frequently ask myself, is this how I want to be remembered?
America is, in my opinion, that shining city on the hill. That place where everything can be good, nay, great, if we will only let it be. We are building that city, one ideal at a time; certainly it is hard work, but it will be worth it!
Thanks for reading; your thoughts, comments, and opinions are welcome, as always.
R.M. "Bob" Hartman