The persistent and peaceful protests we have been seeing for more than two weeks because of the murder of George Floyd are an encouraging sign that change is coming.
The energy in our country for confronting racism in both the daily behavior of individuals and that which is deeply embedded in our institutions is palpable.
But turning passion into action will not be easy. Indeed, I suggest it will depend on one thing above all else, that white Americans admit that our country is a very long way from being the country too many of us believe it already is.
Most white Americans live unconsciously, never giving a thought to the inequities minority Americans encounter because of the color of their skin.
We go about our lives taking for granted the white privilege we enjoy to the point where we live under the illusion that people of color can have the same kind of life white Americans do if they want it.
When you hear someone say we are the greatest nation on earth, you can be sure they believe that illusion.
When you hear someone say we have the highest standard of living in the world, you can be sure they believe that illusion.
When you hear someone say that people are poor because they don’t work hard enough or work at all, you can be sure they believe that illusion.
When you hear someone say there is no systematic racism anymore in America, you can be sure they believe that illusion.
This illusion has led us to where we are now, a point in which, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey this week, 85% of all Americans believe our country is in chaos.
Truth be told, it is. We are in chaos, for many reasons, but the situation is not hopeless, and I think a man named Umair Haque has a way out if we are willing to make the effort.
No, I had never heard of him either until a British friend of mine sent me a link to a very provocative article he wrote entitled, “Is This The American Spring?” When I read that Hague attended both Oxford University and the prestigious McGill University in Canada, the article got my full attention, and it did not disappoint.
Haque suggests three “epiphanies” we Americans need to experience in order to seize this moment in making progress toward becoming the country we have yet to become.
You can read the entire article for yourself (https://eand.co/is-this-the-american-spring-ff1ffebb145b), but I want to summarize his key points.
The first is that we must wake up to the fact that we now have some of the lowest living standards in the rich world, for that matter, he says, a uniquely low living standard, period.
The metric he uses for this assessment is what he calls” the trifecta of ruin: falling incomes, savings, and happiness.” Building a new social contract as protesters are calling for will not happen without white Americans facing the myth that our economy is producing far more winners than losers. It is the opposite, with many of those losers also being white.
The second epiphany is related to the first. It is the realization that we have underinvested in everything that really matters, while overinvesting and mal-investing in things that don’t.
Haque sees what most of us have failed to see altogether, that our priorities as a country point to the fact that we have “invested in the stuff you’d expect of a society of people which hated one another.”
He’s talking about such investments as guns, bombs, policing, a bloated military-industrial complex, gated communities, while neglecting investment in healthcare, retirement, education, pensions, childcare, and elderly care, and the like.
The third epiphany is the realization that race is at the heart of our failed social contract. He argues that racism not only hurts black Americans, it is also producing a failed society for whites, acting as a kind of boomerang that comes back to cause immense injury to white Americans after injuring those who are black.
Perhaps this is why Martin Luther King had the foresight to see that the civil rights movement offered freedom to whites as well as blacks.
Racism injuries everyone, not just its direct victims, which may account for that poll showing that 85% of us feel like the nation is in chaos.
I wish I could say that Haque’s article ends on a hopeful note, but it doesn’t, for one primary reason.
In his words, “…it’s still truer, sadly, that white America still favors Donald Trump, and the age-old racism, hate, brutality, and violence for which he stands.”
Here Haque may not be seeing the full potential or impact of the movement of hope that is beginning to show itself in our country.
I would argue that the chaos we feel as a people is why Trump and Trumpism are already in decline and will continue to go down in the months ahead.
Still formidable, both are under attack from many sides that will lead to a humiliating defeat in November.
And when that happens it will be an affirmation that the majority of us – regardless of our color – are joined together in the hard work of making this great country of ours into the more perfect union it must become in order to be what we have always believed it was.
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