Burning crosses aren't our only problem

Cash Michaels had some most insightful things to say in his June 2nd "Cash in the Apple" column in the Carolinian. (Link is to the Wilmington Journal version because the Carolinian is still not on the web.) Scroll down to the subheader "Burning Crosses in Durham" for the commentary.

You'd think that some yahoos burning crosses is a repugnant throwback to an era we had thought was long past. And you'd be right. But that's not the only example. Cash digs deeper and notes some examples that few in Durham want to acknowledge.

"First," Cash writes, "a federal jury agrees that seven black NCDOT workers suffered in a 'racially hostile work environment,' but didn’t believe anyone was responsible, so they awarded no damages. Weird."

Before you start arguing about political correctness, you tell me if you'd be comfortable in a work environment where your co-workers attach hanging nooses from the rafters, or spout racist junk with impunity and then claim they're just "making jokes," or scratch pro-KKK graffiti into the bathroom walls. Not only did the court find that no one was responsible and awarded no damages, no disciplinary action was taken against the employees who admitted they did these things.

Cash also cites, "the white leader of a petition drive in Durham to replace the black members of the Durham School Board, who went on television recently and said the 'little black' children of the Bull City have poor role models on the school board, and the Concerned Black Citizens of Durham was a 'racist' organization, simply because it had the word in its name."

Here I think he let them off too lightly. It's not just one person but a whole group, at least if "Concerned Citizens for Accountable Government" leader Charlotte Woods is to be believed. Unfortunately, they only want to hold black public officials accountable.

First, a little background. Our county school board has a bizarre "4-2-1" system of districting which pretty much guarantees a board of four whites and three blacks, and thus a racial division on all school issues which the whites always win. This racial gerrymandering is wrong and needs to change, certainly. But I can't go with the current petition to change it because more White Power isn't the solution I am seeking.

Our school board meetings are chaotic at best because they are bogged down over whether or not they are even going to listen to parents. Angry protestors being dragged off the jail is a regular part of the agenda. Many like Ms. Woods want to make the protesters the issue, but few want to ask the obvious question, why are they so angry?

I'm not endorsing every issue of the angry parents. Anger does lead to some sloppy thinking. Some issues are silly, like the accusations that one black principal is somehow a race traitor because she insists on discipline and higher academic standards in her school. But I can tell you what angers me.

Black boys are treated as potential criminals far more than they are treated as potential scholars from the moment they enter the system. The goal of most government schools is to control children first, and then fill their minds with government propaganda. That leaves little time for actually teaching anything. So much the intersection of law and education these days centers around not letting kids simply be kids. You can see this even in predominantly white schools like in Chapel Hill, but this ugly dynamic produces truly absurd results in a system like ours which has far more black students.

Our school board and our (white) superintendent adamantly refuse to address this issue. They want a one size fits all standard, typical of government thinking. Not only does this ignore obvious racial and cultural differences among our students, it denies the uniqueness of all human beings. And because anger puts people off, these alleged leaders are somewhat successful at making the anger itself an issue while completely ignoring what makes these parents angry.

They would be wise to heed the wisdom of John Kennedy when he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Meanwhile, black parents would be wise to vote with their feet and check out options like the National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance.

But I digress. My point is we must recognize that our racial divide in Durham is far deeper and more subtle than simply a few burning crosses. We just don't listen to each other at all. My own recognition of this came when a few years back I got involved with a group of folks seeking justice for Catherine Capps, an elderly black woman who was the victim of an errant police raid in the insane war on drugs. Long story short, I and other local Libertarians saw this as simple matter of justice. We didn't think about the race of the victim. I appealed to several white-dominated political groups who agree at least in theory that the war on drugs automatically leads to such dramatic infringements on liberty. But when it came time to act, I looked around and the only white faces I saw were ours.

I tried the line of, "how would you feel if it were your grandmother?" But I discovered this appeal had no resonance, because this kind of thing simply doesn't happen in white neighborhoods. People have a strong tendency to only see what happens to them, to their own, or in their own neighborhood.

We can't solve racial problems this way, never venturing from the comfort zone of our own little communities. We have to get together, talk to each other, and most importantly listen to each other. We have to set aside how we live for a moment to be able to understand how others live. Insisting that black people act just like white people is not a working solution. We have to start thinking in terms of what is the right thing to do, not what is the white thing to do.

What can one person do in the face of all this? All I know I can do is live my life according to the kind of society I want to live in. That starts with honoring the uniqueness of every person, along with the understanding that every human being is indeed another person like myself and not just some "other." It starts with accepting that every person has their own right to life, liberty and their pursuit of their own happiness just as I do, simply by drawing breath. It starts with automatically giving all people respect for being themselves rather than wishing that they were all more like me.

I said this a lot better in an old column on Libertarians and Race.

Despite all these problems, I have to say that I have lived and traveled all across this country and Durham has better race relations than just about anywhere else. We have shown that we can work and live together in most aspects of life. We can get together socially and culturally without indulging any racism. Most all of us have friends of all races and don't think about race when making new friends or accepting new coworkers. It's only in politics and in education that we clash.

I would even say that these public arguments are a positive sign. At least we deal with them out in the open, which is preferable to ignoring them entirely as many communities do. It's something we all have to work through to get to the other side and truly start living in the colorblind society. But we still fail to extend our racially easygoing lifestyle to our politics.

It's this positive aspect of our racial conflicts that makes Durham a target of the cross burners. They don't want us to move forward to the colorblind society. They recognize that Durham is where the battle is engaged.

The cross burners need to be brought to a harsh justice to get us some healing in Durham. But we would be making a critical mistake if we just go back to our complacent state of not listening once that happens. Solving this crime will not solve the underlying problems.