Getting Past It?

There has been so much in the media lately about the angst about race.  You know...Ferguson, NY, Baltimore, killing kids, killing police, inequality, and on and on.  The Republicans just want to give to the rich and take from the poor...of course meaning black people.  The Democrats just want to tax us to death and give it all away...of course meaning to black people.  We literally can't be engaged in the world without being beat on the head about how racist we all are.  And, for me at least, it is really getting tiresome.  Because that's not me.  And that's not so many, many people I know.  But one of the easiest things in the world and something that get's done all the time on an increasing basis is to stereotype people.  And with all the stereotyping, it becomes difficult to have a reasonable, adult conversation about race.  Sometimes with all the hype, I really do worry that we've not moved an inch.  But then I look around me and know that can't be right.

Two things have struck me today.  The first is a story on 60 Minutes about the new National Museum of African-American History and Culture going up in Washington, DC.  You can watch it here.  Imagine that?  A $500M project, decades in the making to celebrate and study black people in our society.  That gives me hope.  It tells me we aren't all bad.  This will be one more step in the right direction.  But change takes a long, long time and is more difficult than ever expected.  I know we're not all good.  But we're not all bad.

Second, check out this article in the National Post up in Canada.  It has an unfortunate title, but I really do resonate with the thoughts.  It's all about those who accuse folks like me of having "white privilege" don't know what they are talking about.  That everyone struggles.  Everyone has their journey.  And that stereotyping is the worst kind of racism....white or black.

"To even set up white privilege as a category is prima facie racist. It is to reduce the sum of a person, his dignity, his drive, his worth and his soul to the colour of his skin; it is to posit skin colour as the point of departure for all interactions with that person, to found judgments on that skin colour, to draw feverish and deliberately negative conclusions from it."

For me, here's the bottom line.

"Let us instead agree that the history of all peoples is an anthology of pain and sorrow, hardship and brutality, intermingled for the lucky ones with moments — mainly domestic or social — of delightful exchange: of weddings, summer gatherings, a little kindness here, a little success there.

The world, or the God who convened it, if that is your faith, has been bathed in hardships and worse — and exemptions to this fate were not set up by skin colour. And as we emerged from the bleaker, less barbarous times of our past, efforts were made to make life just a little friendlier, a little softer and more caring for all. Most of the good stuff and most of the bad came from particular historical times, corrupt or evil leaders, or just random chance. The gulags made no allowance for whiteness."