A white police officer brutally killing a handcuffed black man shown live on social media for the world to see. Mass protests taking place in cities access this country big and small. Rioting. Looting. Police wielding billy clubs. A narcissistic polarizing president. A thought police new left stifling freedom of speech.
My optimism for America has never been greater.
And thank God for our country’s black people with their uncanny collective moral compass in leading the way for yet another great American social leap forward.
And if I had to venture a guess on why and how blacks have historically been at the forefront of positive social change in this county, it’s because while they been victimized again and again and again and again and again in this country, they have never allowed themselves collectively to play victims.
They’re like the Rocky boxing movies, where a battered and bloodied boxer from a humble background will not go down and stay down. Rocky actually motions the champion to bring the fight forward towards him, winning the movie theater audience over to the great mythological American heroic underdog.
And so it has been for American blacks. Through the brutality of slavery where they played a large part in America’s gaining wealth. Through a hundred years of Jim Crow where they were routinely lynched, beaten, raped and had any accumulated wealth violently taken from them as in the Tulsa Race Massacre. All the way until they finally ended Jim Crow in the often violent civil rights struggle of the 1960s.
And now we are in the new Jim Crow, where blacks are routinely guilty until proven innocent.
And through all this sordid history, blacks in this country has made us nothing but proud n the world stage. They’ve given us Jesse Owens who showed Hitler and the world that there is no such thing as white Arian supremacy – or any racial supremacy – all while living under Jim Crow.
Blacks have given and continue to give an oversized list of contributions to this country in art, culture, sport, science, thought and invention. My personal top five in my lifetime include Martin Luther King Jr., Mohammud Ali, Louis Armstrong, Toni Morrison and Donna Summer (Ok, I threw Donna Summer in to catch readers sleeping, but hey, she was the Queen of Disco).
But the point is that although victimized, American blacks remain defiant until they come out winning, which is about as American as apple pie. It’s what Gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos did when they raised their black power salute fists on the podium after the 200 m race at the 1968 Summer Olympics. It’s what Colin Kaepernick did in taking a knee.
If I had to guess what gives American Blacks such a great socially moral compass, I’d say that collectively the American black culture is generally more forgiving than other cultures in this country. In fact, I’ve been privy to the argument in some black circles that blacks forgive to a fault, but I don’t buy that. Forgiveness frees the forgiver much more than the forgiven, who must learn to forgive themselves to move forward.
So once again, American blacks are leading the march to move us closer to the Promised Land that this country’s white founding fathers – slave-owning and flawed as they were – had idealized and envisioned in penning the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. That premise is that we all have the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
In every existential social crisis lies the opportunity to take a great leap forward. I’m optimistic.
