Two Words : Kerner Commission
"Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it." As cliched as it is, those words were never truer than right now.
The language of today's headlines regarding race, and African American complaints about seemingly neverending police brutality are virtually identical to those of 1968. De facto segregation has us again asking the same old questions about the insidious effects of having two "separate and unequal" societies. While, exactly like Nixon himself, today's politicians pretend to not see the realities laid out in black and white in the Kerner Report, regarding the effects of continued segregation. And are once again instead proclaiming the same 1960's need for "law and order". When two drastically different versions of the same report, almost 50 years ago, reached the same basic conclusions about the dangers to the entire fabric of American society if we don't finally confront the continuing legacies of our dark racial past.
Yet, once again we stand at the edge of the exact same precipice. And once again, are incredulous as to where the exact same black anger and dissatisfaction as 50 years ago, could possibly be coming from. Determined, yet again, to believe that the violence they endure is not intentionally racially motivated. And is, likewise, strictly random and incidental.
Will we finally fully confront the true legacy of our "peculiar institution" and "Jim Crow" this time? Or will moral cowardice make us divert our gaze AGAIN?
The parallels to the long, hot, racial summer of 1968 are staggering. Only this time our very different racial demographics make the price of continued moral cowardice far more expensive -- for all races. Because, ultimately, walking down the street, or having a busted tail-light, or shopping at Walmart should not regularly be matters of life and death -- for anyone. And plausibly dangerous enough that certain parents should feel the necessity to teach their kids how to survive such encounters (in what should be such mundane circumstances). Especially, when it's now been almost 50 years since the Kerner Commission laid out such powerful and prophetic recommendations on how and why we needed to make the necessary societal changes all the way back in the 1960's.
No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.