The following is just part of a thought-provoking post by Theodore R. Johnson in The Washington Post:
I write about race because I care about America. That sentiment might come as a shock to some. It is rare today to hear someone who talks forthrightly about the ills of structural racism lead with a declaration of patriotism or pride in the nation’s progress. But this is squarely within the tradition of Black America, from historic stalwarts Ida B. Wells and Langston Hughes to modern-day activists such as the Rev. William J. Barber II and Colin Kaepernick.
Race isn’t the problem with the American experiment so much as it is the best indicator of the experiment’s structural problems. Consider slavery: It’s not the nation’s original sin because a significant number of White Americans enslaved Black people; it looms so large for America because the nation was supposedly founded on the idea of human equality yet allowed this grossest of inequalities to persist and expand.
The criminal justice system doesn’t need reform because it disproportionately confronts and punishes Black, Native and Hispanic Americans, but because abuse of power by the state should not be tolerated in a nation founded on the idea of government by and for the people — all people.
The racial inequalities we see in health care and education outcomes — even when controlled for class — do not exist because of Black Americans’ race or some imagined cultural carelessness, but because those systems are from a different era and poorly designed to account for Black people’s distinctive American journey. As structured, they hinder the ability to pursue happiness, stability and security unless they are tailored to the communities they serve. The democratic backsliding the nation is experiencing today is an indicator of the way race factored into the cultural, political and legislative conflicts of the past three decades.
The nation’s trouble is not that it has a racist bone that simply needs removing but that it is disturbingly slow to recognize that racism is the sharp pain that helps us locate the fractures. I write about race because finding the fractures in our society and our democracy is a necessary step toward healing and strengthening, not destroying, the whole of the nation. . . .
I write about race because you cannot love America and avoid the issue. Yes, there are other topics — some of critical importance — but nothing reveals where the nation is most vulnerable like the question of race. If we want a United States that more fully realizes its potential, and I believe most of us do, fixing the structural flaws revealed by race presents the most promising path.
