I have admired the observations of columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. regarding some uniquely American dysfunction since I first read it in his Why Americans Hate Politics (2004). The three “ghosts” we have never successfully exorcised, says Dionne, are tension around gender issues, race, and the Vietnam War. A couple of well-publicized incidents involving the second of these have been lessons in missed opportunities in the past year or so. Remember the Prof. Henry Louis Gates incident in Cambridge, Massachusetts last summer and then President Obama’s infamous “beer summit” in response? More recently, there was the sudden departure of Dr. Laura Schlessinger following her use of the n-word on the air. She quit in response to the ensuing national outrage but later predicted that she would be back.
America is haunted by the race specter, but apparently is also unwilling or unable to talk about it in any effective way. Some thoughtful people think President Obama abdicated the responsibility to illuminate the deeper issue in the wake of the Gates affair, preferring to host Gates and the arresting police officer for an innocuous kiss-and-make-up session at the White House. In contrast to then-Sen. Obama’s race speech while running for the presidency, it was a disappointment. Schlessinger’s on-air behavior was offensive to be sure, but then she is not the political or moral leader that we hope Obama is.
It’s not as if the ugliness of racism rarely comes up; it is all around us. Some would say it’s part of our very fabric as a nation. And each time a Don Imus or a Michael Richards is caught making racially-tinged remarks–indeed, when African American comedians get laughs from the use of that horrid word–we are reminded that it’s really okay to harbor notions that relegate dark-skinned people to a sub-human existence. Oh, we go through the motions of punishing the offenders on some level, but nothing ever really changes until the next gaffe when we feign collective outrage all over again. It’s almost as though we know we ought to be profoundly offended at such things, but are not.
A few years back, the folks at Sojourner’s published a study guide in which racism was called out as America’s unique original sin. Our inability or unwillingness to deal with race has led to historical accommodations to our blindness that have played out in phenomena like slave galleries in churches and the legal doctrine of “separate but equal.” Ecumenical Theological Seminary president, Marsha Foster Boyd, has recently asked why the furor over the proposed mosque near ground Zero when there has never been the same outrage over churches being constructed over the remains of slave dungeons. Why, indeed?
I submit that we cannot purge our collective sin unless we first name it–and here’s the kicker–not until white Americans stop believing they have no culpability for it. Only then will we no longer tolerate ugly words that are born of a soulful darkness which permeates the American experience and defies expungement. America has dodged the issue of race for 400 years, moving from rationalization to confrontation to denial. It is time we stopped whistling in the dark.
Raising Basileia 