When will we ever learn?

As a white male growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s and ‘60s, my awareness of systemic racism was very limited.

And now, after a college education and seven decades of life in America I am confronted with the stark realities of historic racial injustice. Birthed in 1619 with slavery, it carried forward with similar acts of oppression and genocide as it related to the indigenous people of North America and to people of color south of our current border with Mexico.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Riots are the language of the unheard.” American history is replete with circumstances where our country has been in need of cultural and societal hearing aids. American cities were burning over 50 years ago; have we as a nation, as a people, as family units, not learned anything of substance in these past five decades?

From the daily newspaper headlines it appears we have not.

Clergy, teachers, law enforcement and parents have a responsibility to live out and speak out for equality and justice for all. The tectonic plates of racism may be hidden from many but they lie beneath the surface of American society, and we ignore their inevitable fractious movement at our peril.

We must heed the words of Dr. King when he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

In the [buildup to] our Civil War, President Lincoln stated that a nation divided against itself cannot stand. America is a divided country today: divided by race, class, education, wealth, regional and cultural mores. Building bigger and higher walls is not the solution to our pandemic or to our endemic social ills. A transformation of values and priorities must be in the mix if we are to leave a better, more equitable society for our children and grandchildren.

The virus of racial unrest and despair has spread from Minneapolis to Georgia, from east Texas to Oakland, from Detroit to D.C., from Philadelphia, Mississippi, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There is no vaccine for prejudice and bigotry.

But there is hope if we “do unto others what we wish them to do unto us.” May we be blessed and challenged with the foolishness to believe that we can make a difference, and then to go forth and give our best effort for the team we call America.