RACIAL CHASM
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
BROKEN PROMISES LITTER THE PATH FORWARD
There has always been the promise that it won’t keep happening, that things will get better. There has always been the mantra that there is a diminishing racial chasm in America that will somehow generate a better economic and social order for Black and Brown people in the nation. But nothing better seems to happen, again and again. Today, in fact, even past promises have been forgotten amid a new wave of bigotry and the racial injustice it spawns
This time, and apart from the racial caldrons that play out in every region in America in often different guises, the government of the United States of America has become a centralized source of the daily drumbeat of White supremacy. From the foul mouth of a racist president to so many of the new policies and practices of his regime, anyone paying attention can feel the palpable racial animus.
Black males and Black youth are targeted, Brown Latino immigrants are targeted, and programs and funding for housing assistance, food aid, equal educational opportunity, and increased healthcare access for the poor and disadvantaged are targeted. Meanwhile and purposefully, the Trump administration presses forward with its force of federal masked marauders sowing fear in communities of color and filling more and more sordid detention facilities with those caught in the dragnet.
From sea to shining sea, abhorrent racial profiling can now be an open and ongoing component of the new-order “justice” system and the law enforcement efforts that support it.* Mass detention with little or no due process of law creates the added impact of lost freedom, lost family, lost jobs, and lost lives. Every day, human beings of color in America are ripped from the communities in which they live and locked in cages made in America and filled to the brim by today’s distorted “justice” system.
Then, just to make sure that those Black and Brown people who remain out of jail and in the country are further degraded, there is the daily flow of “cultural” detritus that emanates from the Trump White House. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), once the litany of progress, have been relegated to an historical footnote. Many corporations, universities, professional firms, and other institutions that once at least paid lip service to DEI don’t have to bother anymore.
It is so bad now that even the pitiful attempts to confront the national shame of slavery on display in federal buildings and museums is being whitewashed and the cultural depth of our national parklands is being cleansed of the stories about those who were on that land long before anyone charged admission to enter. Voices that had been raised to celebrate America’s supposed diversity now are largely silent.
However, this is only the administrative and institutional piece of the racism puzzle. Perhaps, the more pernicious aspect of the growing drumbeat of racism in America today is the overt messaging that gains traction every time it is repeated or allowed to go unrefuted. From the loud right-wing obsession with White Christianity to the permissive violence it has spawned, a new message is taking hold. It is again OK in America for White Americans to target Black and Brown people through overt and covert means in order to ensure a “more pure” national profile. “We” are coming for them.
Both a symbol and a reality of the new order is the continuing gun violence epidemic in America. This is not surprising since there are estimated to be over 500 million firearms in civilian hands in the US. The most recent readily available mortality statistics are from 2024. In that year alone, 44,447 people died from gun violence, including both homicides and suicides. Not surprisingly, guns were the leading cause of death for young people ages 1-17 for the 5th consecutive year, including a staggering 85% of all homicides of young Black people ages 1-17. A 2024 Center for Disease Control and Prevention study further focuses on and amplifies the racial disparity in gun violence deaths.**
Of course, there are many different ways to give context to the raw statistics. But they can’t be seen as an accident unless you are willing to crawl into the depths of the racial chasm in America, a place where some people will tell you that you can expect nothing less from “savages.” While it is hardly just White people who pull the trigger or take a life, Black and Brown people seem to know that America’s violence is more acceptedly directed at them and punished more when committed by them.***
As with many critical issues confronting the nation, I wish there were a happy ending to the tale of two Americas. However, not only is there no happy ending, but any fact-driven conclusions seem to suggest that the racial and ethnic divides in America are deeper than ever. And, importantly, those divides are being driven by entrenched public policy made more damaging by the now overt presence of racist messaging from the highest offices in the land and from the right-wing media outlets that have been unleashed to amplify that message.
I do not believe that there is a solution or a public presence on the horizon capable of addressing the chasm and reducing its poisonous impact. So many, myself included, dedicated some measure of our lives to trying to find a path forward, only to so often see a step or two forward followed by slow, steady, and inevitable retreat. Today’s America is not only a nation in retreat, but it seems that running away from the truth primarily benefits those with the resources and power to profit from the divide.
Perhaps, it will come to pass before too long that those for whom White supremacy is a given will have worked their will to the maximum and ridden the current wave as far it can go. Then, the nation will wake up once again to inch its way out of the darkness. Who will remove our trash, mow our lawns, care for our children, bathe our dying aged, and do so much for so many for so little? Who indeed, when those who are doing precisely that and more are currently being rounded up like animals, locked up, and often shipped somewhere else?
There are some protests now, and there will be more. There will be renewed talk about living wages, housing reform, expanded educational opportunities, universal healthcare, humane immigration policies, gun reform, and the like. There may even be a little legislation just to say we’re sorry. But sorry for what? Sorry that we again have failed as a nation to address racial and social injustice and rampant economic inequality? Or just sorry that White folks have to go to the trouble of making promises that are never kept?
For now, a hopelessly divided American populace cannot even remotely entertain the notion of transformative change. Those who suggest it remain on the margins trying very hard to persuade even progressive elements of that beleaguered populace to fight for something so much better than a return to a delusional past.
In this context, it seems wise to remember that Trump and his acolytes have well over two years left of his four-year term to continue their corrupt assault on the nation’s institutions. It will take decades to try to undo the damage. Worse yet, there is little reason to believe that even tomorrow’s America will find the collective will to move forward from the world of prior broken promises.
*** https://everytownresearch.org/issue/impact-of-gun-violence-on-historically-marginalized-communities/
Note: John Grisham’s novel, The Confession (Doubleday, 2010) is a gripping fictional account about the intersection of racism and the justice system with the death penalty as a backdrop.
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