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Be Your Best in 2010 & Beyond: Downside of the Upside

Be Your Best in 2010 and Beyond: Downside of the Upside
By Brenda Hoffman

I have always tried to look on the upside of things,   and at times I have been called a bit of a dreamer.  I wonder how many people.....

The Hope For America

I don't fear for America. I fear for the hope of America, As one President once said, "...the dreams, the devotion that we bring to this endeavour will light our country and all who serve it - and the glow from that fire will truly light the world."  That was JFK and he was talking about sending men to the moon in a decade. An impossible task. And the success of that endeavour emboldens us to this very day.

We watch with clear eyes black men being confronted with unfriendly situations with law enforcement that lead to their immediate deaths. Not wounded, not accidentally shot, not amidst chaos and confusion, but killed none the less.  And while we ask ourselves what can be done to stop this, as we progress through the slow and determined process of reform that must come,  the darker question prevails. Is this is what it took for white America to validate what African-Americans have been living with for two centuries?  Is this what is left of our better selves? That we must see  this played out before us not just once or twice, but in a succession of situations where men and women sworn to protect us, endowed with certain powers in the commission of those duties, are socialized to believe that shooting African-American men is a neccessary form of immediate conflict resolution.  

How many African-American men, women and children had to be enslaved before society got around to deciding that maybe slavery wasn't necessarily consistant with our values?  How many pictures did one have to see of another disaffected white community gathered around a lynched African-American before we were outraged enough to act to stop it? How many Jews had to be imprisoned, experimented on, gassed or shot before America decided to send soldiers to fight and die in Europe during WW 2?  Well, we know the answer to those questions. It took a civil war against "state rights" as the catalyst to end slavery. The organization of a civil rights movement as the engine that spurred the end of  lynching in the South. The invasion of Pearl Harbour by the Japanese to drag America into WW2. And time and time again we are left to ask ourselves: How much does the suffering of the few have to bleed into the lives of the many for things to change? What is the tipping point when we say collectively "enough"!   

We worry about who will be President? As if that matters. Because politicians can't fix this. Legislation won't fix this. Again, quoting JFK in 1961, "I believe we possess all the resources and talents necessary. But the facts of the matter are that we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule, or managed our resources and our time so as to insure their fulfillment." It might sound like I'm comparing the fight against racism and inequality with going to the moon. I'm not. Going to the moon. with all due respect to the many people who were directly responsibile for that to happen, was a walk in the park compared with the challenges facing us today in 2016. There is nothing that we begin today in our efforts to end racism that will be resolved in a mere decade. JFK concludes by saying,  "But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon - if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there."  

JFK rallied Americans toward the goal of landing men on the moon by appealing to our sense of scientific endeavour, exploration and exceptionalism.  The truth is what really galvinized the country is the "space race" against the Russians and our deep fears of losing our democratic way of life and the freedoms therein from the prevailing threat of dominance from a communist country. The question is:  What will be the catalyst to engage ourselves collectively as a nation  to take on racial inequality? Because It doesn't seem to be watching endless videos of  African-American men being killed before our eyes.  

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The Magnificent Sean Hoffman