Making Much Racism About Nothing

IN A UNITED STATES STATE which should be ashamed of itself but probalby isn't, a single white woman hosted a childhood friend, an African-mericn man, who brought a friend of his along, another African-Amerian man. It was a pleasant visit, in a racist part of Mississippi in which white flight" has resulted in an African-American majority population. The two men stayed for several days. The lady has been confined to a wheelchair since the age of fifteen, and the two men were there in part to give her assistance. The three friends enjoyed each other's company, and divided their time between activities in and outside of the lady's home. A neighbor, aptly described as a "honkie", or "cracker", whichever appropriately derogatory term the reader prefers, was not pleased. She called the local police, and concocted a trumped up complaint about the situation, saying that she was concerned that the homeowner might be bieng subjected to some sort of abuse, even imprisonment in her own home. Anything to avoid admitting honestly that her problem was her own racism. Acording to something called "critical race theory', which should be called "reality" racism in America has gone into hiding, manifests and rears its ugly head only indirectly, institutionally. Six local police officers, all white-as-Klan-sheet crackers, took advantage of the opportunity to harass and physically assault the two black men, both of whom required medical attention. The two men were harassed, beaten, and tortured for hours, after the six officers entered the home on a false search and arrest warrant. All six have a history of racism and abuse of African-American men, with several alleged prior incidents leading to the death of at least one man. The two men retained attorneys, filed suit, and all six of the police officers lost their jobs, and are now facing prison sentences. Justice, amazingly, prevailed. Shamefully, this happened neither late in the ninteenth century nor early in the twentieth, but just recently, nearly one third of the way through the twenty first century, in an America which, according to conservateive orthodoxy, racism no longer exists. Meanwhile,all across the southern fruited plain, "Christian"conservative states are enacting laws prohibiting the teaching of something called "critical race theory", which is actually nothing other than a body of scholarship which clearly demonstrates that racism is not only alive and well in these disunited states, but thriving as usual. Meanwhile,in a particularly benighted state, which shall remain nameless here to mitigate the shame it should feel but undoubtedly does not, a recent law not only prohibits the teaching of CRT, but also forbids teaching classes of Advanced Placement (AP) African-American studies. The law is not only intended to contribute to the national denial of contemporary racism, but evidently to deny that African-Americans exist, or that their existence is worthy of mention. A blatantly racist law intnded not merely to deny the existence of racism in America, but also to deny that the victims of racism are even worth mentioning in any context whatseever, cultural, artisitc, or historical. This is not some shameful, rancid relic of the late nineteenth, early twentieth or even the pre civil rights mid twentieth century, but rather, this is what is happening right now, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The United States of America should be ashamed of itself, but undoubtedly isn't, at least not the portion of it inhabited by and dominated by honkies and crackers, which is to say, nearly all of it.