You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
— Mahatma Gandhi
As a result of some very tragic and avoidable events over the past couple of years involving the killing of unarmed black males, the trust gap between black and white Americans is growing wider every day. Each group can cite reasons and examples of why they don’t trust one another. To make the situation even worse, our national leaders are fixated on taking sides and assigning blame for any and every calamity that befalls our great country.
Our leaders are opportunistic and self-absorbed. Instead of taking us out of the blame game, they have taken us deeper into a no-win standoff; instead of leading us, they are instigating and exacerbating situations that beg for a collective solution; and instead of a vision, they have mired us in the swamp of name-calling and finger-pointing. In a word, our leaders have failed to lead.
Since the election of Barack Obama, there has been talk of a “post-racial” society. While President Obama’s election victories are both noteworthy and newsworthy, they were simply a glimpse of America’s potential to rise above its past — not the inflection point of a new relationship between the races. And even President Obama has experienced the stubborn vestiges of race-based beliefs, prejudices and reactions.
What we need now is to establish a big and audacious goal: To eliminate racism and all of its institutional tentacles. We need to revisit the 1967 Kerner Commission’s findings and recommendations. While I don’t agree with all of the commission’s recommendations, I do agree with the report’s most famous passage, which warned, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” It has been almost 50 years since the Kerner Commission report. Are we there yet?
Racial progress is built upon one simple, yet profound, concept — Trust! Gaining trust takes a long time. Losing trust can happen in an instant. Regaining trust is a monumental undertaking.
Black Americans, I would submit, have lost trust in our criminal justice system. As with any ethnic group, there are some unsavory black characters who deserve to be incarcerated. In fact, these unsavory types do more to terrorize, rob and daily kill other blacks than we are willing to admit. Still, it is very hard to justify the fact that blacks make up 12-13% of the U.S. population but comprise 40% of the almost 2.1 million male inmates in jail or prison (U.S. Department of Justice, 2009).
And, in a strange twist of logic, those blacks males, some innocent, who are imprisoned today, can be considered lucky ones — they were at least processed through the criminal justice system and not summarily executed on the streets.
Trust is the answer to the nagging question of how do we start to bridge the widening gap of racial polarization. Without trust there can be no peace or progress. For one group to trust another group, they must be convinced that they will be respected and treated fairly and their human rights protected — not trampled on and dismissed through legal maneuvering.
Imagine how much greater and more prosperous our country can become once we put this new-age tribalism of race behind us.