Lake reminds us all, again, why reparations need to happen

Some people won’t have the stomach to read this column beyond the headline. That’s OK. This column isn’t for you.

For everyone else bold enough to talk about racial progress in an authentic way, we need to discuss some recent happenings around Central Florida.

Lake County offered a blasé dismissal of racist and violent language by 16 deputies on social media after the Plain View Project reviewed Facebook posts from eight law enforcement agencies across the country. One of the posts by a Lake County deputy celebrated the beating of a black suspect.

This was only compounded by Lake County commissioners’ blatant disregard for citizens’ pleas to reject a Confederate statue that holds no actual relevance to the region.

Beyond Lake County issues, the ACLU released a disturbing statewide report on student discipline that showed black students are being arrested at alarmingly higher percentages than other races across Florida, including Orange, Seminole, Volusia, Osceola, Polk and, of course, Lake County.

This is just the past few weeks worth of local news.

We don’t even need to get into the weeds of Washington, D.C., where President Trump dispenses bigoted remarks about people of color, women and immigrants like a human vending machine. The only difference is that he spits out junk for free.

But these local examples about racial bias aren’t isolated circumstances shaped by the missteps of well-intentioned officials working inside public institutions. These are examples of systemic discrimination festering inside law enforcement, local government and schools built and shaped by a legacy of the oppression and segregation.

These are also reasons why H.R. 40 in Congress, which calls for a commission to study and develop reparations proposals for African Americans, needs to be taken seriously.

This isn’t about a money grab. This bill calls for thorough data research to document the role of federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery, discrimination in public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants, and the lingering negative effects of slavery on living African Americans and society.

Lingering negative effects like Lake County having never elected a black official to hold a county commissioner’s seat or any countywide office.

That same county on Tuesday approved moving a statue of a slave-owning Confederate general to a tax-supported museum.

Some reveled in the idea of bringing a treasonous artifact to Lake County’s courthouse. But others protested the move for months.

During a three-hour hearing, Barbara Hill, a retired local government attorney from Eustis, implored commissioners to vote against bringing the Edmund Kirby Smith statue to Lake County. Hill said it would dredge up old wounds of racial injustice like separate bathrooms, segregated schools and an old rule forbidding blacks from swimming in the Leesburg city pool.

Grace Arnold, the great granddaughter of two Confederate soldiers, tearfully testified about the damaging effect a Confederate soldier would have for some of her black neighbors.

“I think as a descendant of Confederate veterans and slave-owners, the least I could do to atone for the pain my family has caused them is to oppose the statue,” she said.

Of the 40 people who spoke during a threehour hearing on the subject, only four were in support of the statue, according to a Sentinel report.

And yet, Lake County Commission Chairwoman Leslie Campione responded with the apathy and privilege of a woman who doesn’t understand the horrors of domestic terrorism that burned down black-owned businesses, murdered blacks for attempting to vote and forced a group of black men to admit to a rape they did not commit 70 years ago in her county.

She said she felt sorry for people who view the statue as a sign of the city’s current racial climate.

“It is important to preserve statues and monuments which tell the story of where we’ve come from and where we are today, even if those artifacts invoke strong emotions,” Campione said.

Translation: We don’t care about your suffering because it disrupts our agenda, and we make the rules.

Sounds like she’s doing a fine job preserving Jim Crow history.

There is a better, less painful way to share America’s complete story about race and it’s called H.R. 40.

If we’re really sincere about racial healing in this country, then we need more than another apology.

Our government needs to have an official story on record about the system of slavery and its victims, as well as the perpetrators and how their descendants continued to benefit.

It’s past time.