Talking about race, part 3: Two Americas

THE GAP between the two different perspectives of America has never been more starkly delineated than in the last few weeks by the recent events in in Ferguson and New York City.

There is the one America we wish we could be and the alternate America where lives the poor, the disenfranchised and the neglected. The believers in the former can't see or hear the latter and the latter find themselves further and further from obtaining the so-called American dream. 

As always, the true America lies somewhere between the two perspectives. 

Ferguson is just the latest chapter in the ongoing story of this country's race relations and is the latest example of the sharp divide between the two camps.

No doubt, the United States has come a lo-o-ong way from the days of slavery, but Ferguson shows that we have a lo-o-ong way to go. The video below shows James Baldwin on the Dick Cavett Show in 1968 explaining his perspective to those who just don't get racism and how insidious and how deeply ingrained it is in the "perfect" America of our dreams.

It's hard to have an honest and substantive discussion about racism when one party doesn't want to talk about it, see it, reminded about it or even admit that it still exists.

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If Baldwin didn't get his message across, sports icon Muhammad Ali expressed the same message on another interview in 1971 where he shows why he is the greatest.

Yeah, he's got some funny lines there but he made his point. Sometimes, humor can get be more acceptable for people who don't want to listen to the hard truth.

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More recently, just last week, comedian Chris Rock used humor to speak about race and America in an interview in New York Magazine. He may not have the gravitas of Baldwin, but amongst the sarcasm and humor, you can find the truth.

Rock turns the general perspective of (white) America looking at African Americans as if they were outside of our society and puts that white perspective under a microscope to by analyzed, dissected and talked about on the Sunday news shows. Its brilliant how he puts the onus on white people to change.

When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it's all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they're not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before…

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he's the first black person that is qualified to be president. That's not black progress. That's white progress. There's been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship's improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, "Oh, he stopped punching her in the face." It's not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn't. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let's hope America keeps producing nicer white people.

Nice!

About white people, he said they needed to own up to their role in race relations besides just tsk-tsking about slavery and white privilege:

Owning their actions. Not even their actions. The actions of your dad. Yeah, it’s unfair that you can get judged by something you didn’t do, but it’s also unfair that you can inherit money that you didn’t work for.

About racism, he said:

But the thing is, we treat racism in this country like it’s a style that America went through. Like flared legs and lava lamps. Oh, that crazy thing we did. We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You’ve got to get it at a lab, and study it, and see its origins, and see what it’s immune to and what breaks it down.

Rock is a comedian so people may not take him as seriously as academics, but in his role as Everyman, he's hit a bulls-eye.

The interviews of Baldwin, Ali and Rock are decades apart but as they show: the conversation on race may have started, but has anybody been listening? There's a lot more that needs to be said.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was written before Chris Rock's gaff joking about Asians when he hosted the Academy Awards in 2018 amid the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Needless to say, those racist jokes were one more piece of evidence to show that America still has a lot that needs to be said about race.