Heading in the Right Direction

AFRICAN-AMERICAN members of the U.S. Congress entered the House chamber yesterday with their hands up in the "don't shoot" position. According to the grand jury in St. Louis, his hands were never up, he never tried to surrender. Another American divisive debate. We seem somehow to survive them. A young black criminal tries to harm a police officer, and gets killed by the officer acting in self defense. Whether the story should end there, it doesn't. The black community thinks, feels, that racism is a component. Racism adheres, whether it played a part in the Michael Brown incident in Ferguson, Missouri. Vast amounts of empirical observation confirm the tenacity of racism, black and white. No culture in world history has been as racist as American culture, flat out. People who point this out are not fanning the flames, they are not creating the racism by commenting on it, they are pointing to the fire, urging that it be put out, not fanning it. We will not end racism by pretending that we have already ended it. We have merely decreased it somewhat, and it has assumed more subtle, less visible forms. But if we believe we are heading in the right direction, maybe we will be.