I’ve had a few people this year encourage me to acknowledge and/or celebrate the advances America has made towards racial equity.

No doubt we’ve come a long way. We’re not the country we were 50 years ago.

But I’m not ready. I think it’s inappropriate. First, the people encouraging me are white. Being white’s not a bad thing, it just comes off fishy to me. I don’t have any black friends talking about “how far we’ve come,” and I certainly don’t see anyone from that community celebrating.

It might be that it’s not time to celebrate, or hang our hats on whatever advances that’ve been made towards racial equity in America.

Given the current landscape, here’s how I see it:

Let’s say that you and I had an arrangement where I punched you in face, once a day, 7 days a week. There was nothing you could do about it, and we lived that way for years. Imagine what it would do to you, how it would tear you down, rob you of dignitiy, hope, and all the other things required to be a healthy human being.

Imagine what it would to to your children.

Imagine what it would do to me.

Then let’s say that I come to you one day with great news. Instead of punching you in the face 7 times a week, I’m only going to assault you only THREE days a week.

That’s improvement. That’s advancement. That’s moving towards justice, equity, fairness. And while myself and those who’ve been watching this debacle from a distance might celebrate, I doubt you would. Sure, you’d be thankful to avoid being beaten as frequently as you did before, but celebrating, or calling me “good” for treating you “better” wouldn’t be appropriate.

Fairness is the goal, and that can’t happen until a) I stop punching you in the face altogether and b) I face appropriate justice for what I’ve perpetrated against you all of these years.

That’s our racial landscape. Things are beyond unfair, and nobody’s taking responsibility/facing consequences for it.

But you might not agree that things are so bad.

Who’s getting punched in the face?

That seems to be one of our biggest problems. There is a vast expanse between how people view the magnitude of racism in America. I hear whites saying, “Yeah, racism is a real thing in our country, but it’s not so bad that football players need to take a knee, or Black Lives Matter folk need to run around making a nuisance of themselves.”

“We’ve got some work to do, but equating racism in America to people being punched in the face?”

“Ridiculous.”

Are things that bad?

Earlier this year, President Trump announced that unemployment was lower than it’s ever been in the US. Loads of people in the live audience stood up to clap, as they should. Unemployment is, many times, a lethal proposition for impoverished Americans. We’ve done a good job here.

But when the president added that black unemployment was also lower than it’s ever been, there was a group of black people who didn’t stand, and certainly didn’t clap.

My social media feed lit up with guess-what-color-folk aghast that this group, of all groups, didn’t celebrate. They should be happy, partying with everyone else. What’s wrong with them? Are they entitled? Compulsively unhappy?

Why they didn’t clap:

Unemployment in America is one of the most obvious telltale signs that we have a problem – a big one. The black community in America is more educated, motivated, and empowered than ever before, but black unemployment is consistently 2x that of white unemployment.

It’s always been that way, year after year, for the last 60 years.

There’s a system here, and it’s not rigged in favor of non-whites.

You can talk affirmative action till you’re blue in the face but it doesn’t seem to be working. In addition to overtly obvious unemployment stats, whites are still 50% more likely to be hired than equally qualified black people. We’re still the first to be hired in times of economic upswing and last to be fired when things go south.

We still get paid more.

I’ve written about this in previous articles. My perspectives here are the result of months of personal research and can be backed up with legit statistics, surveys, studies. etc.  If you’re feeling not-so-convinced, please take a look at these stats, and consider this article. At least you’ll be more equipped to articulate the point of view of someone who doesn’t think like you do.

A personal dialogue with someone else’s perspective never killed anyone.

Obviously, I believe that things are bad, and that equating them to people getting punched in the face is far from ridiculous.

Bowing one’s knee at a football game doesn’t begin to address how screwed up things are.

As our country begins to more frequently ask “is this true?” I’d like to offer some thoughts about the do’s and don’t’s of moving forward.

Who’ll take responsibility for historic racism?

Joe Biden was recently asked this question. He responded with the idea that he shouldn’t take personal responsibility for what’s happened in the past – the things that he didn’t perpetrate. He vowed to take responsibility for what’s happening now, and I applaud him for that, assuming that he’s not simply pandering to his intended audience.

Sorry. I’ve grown sour on politics in America.

I agree that taking responsibility for someone else’s actions is unhealthy. But if we all adopt Biden’s take on this, nobody will take responsibility. That’s not healthy either. Are we excused from all of this because we weren’t there?

For my Christian friends, let me remind us that that’s not how things work in the Bible. Scripture takes a hard stance on issues of equity. God’s the one who said, “I’ll visit the sins of the father on the 4th and 5th generation.” It doesn’t sound fair to me either, but we can’t expect God’s take on justice to jive with our own.

The idea of nodody taking responsibility is just as unhealthy as the other option. We’ll have to decide which flavor of unhealthy we want – the one that’s easiest for us, or the one that involves sacrifice on behalf of people that don’t have what we have.

Appropriately Acknowledging Advances in Equity

I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t take note of the different ways that we’re advancing racial equity in our country. We need a barometer and scale by which we might measure our progress. It’s good to talk about “how far we’ve come,” so that we might have a better idea of where to go next.

But we don’t move forward by patting ourselves on the back. We move forward by bulldozing the systems, attitudes, and closet racism that keep our country’s racial bullsh@t on life support.

Sure, let’s not mope around feeling awful about ourselves, and let’s move forward with care and concern for all races, but our non-white fellow Americans are not being dealt with fairly – not even close.

And we’re still – still – not making any moves toward addressing what was done in the past, still excusing ourselves from some kind of recompense for the torture that our ancestors perpetrated on an entire race of people – abuse that continues to echo via generational trauma, exacerbated by our cornucopia of systems rigged in favor of American whites.

What Do We Do Now?

I’m frequently asked, “Assuming you’re right about all of this, what do we do about it?”

That’s hard to answer because we’re divided here, too much to be able to come up with any good, workable solutions.

If we were, for the most part, on the same page, we’d be kicking this problem in the keester. That’s what Americans have always done when faced with a common enemy.

A house divided cannot stand, and the things dividing the house can’t be dealt with until the house decides to come together. Because of the divisions in our country, the powerful talking heads making money from them, and the rampant anger/suspicion/refusal to listen when folk talk about how bad the racial landscape is, it’ll be a long time before we come together to tackle the stuff that’s keeping so many of our united statespeople from equity, equality, justice, and fairness.

Until we do, please forgive me when I don’t celebrate.