BY TONY BOUZA
Gilbert and Sullivan had it right—A policeman’s (today’s grammarians would insist on an androgynous “police officer”—and be right) lot is not a happy one.
Cops shoot black males. Riots explode. The Criminal Justice System contorts itself and produces grotesque outcomes. The Dallas killing of five cops evokes memories of The Black Panthers and hints at nascent insurrection. Where’s it going?
No one can tell—but we can look at harbingers and take a couple of sensible guesses.
The prophets?
Rappers, mainly. As usual look to the artists to define the age.
What do they speak to?
A quarter of a millennium of slavery.
A century of Jim Crow.
Decades of segregation.
And now?
Incarceration.
By any measure—jobs, education, income and prison population—America’s blacks are excluded from mainstream life—where you and I live. Drive up and down this nation’s Division Streets (Chicago’s aptly named black ghetto) and you’ll see black males, hanging out with no place to go. Trump’s uneducated, white, male, lower-class voters are determined to keep their feet firmly planted on black necks.
Has there been progress?
Oh, how we love to remind ourselves of the Blacks’ March to Equality.
Really?
Gunnar Myrdal’s “An American Dilemma” had—and still has—it right—our biggest challenge is “the Negro problem.” Written in 1944!
Roe v. Wade was a big help, in 1973—a peace dividend proffered by the great Minnesotan Harry Blackman [of the Supreme Court]. It reduced the population of black males and resulted in a big drop in street crime 17 years after its declaration.
It seems beyond us to do the right thing when it comes to race. And even our President doesn’t seem to get it—witness his comments on the July 2016 shootings and his reaction to the abuse of a Harvard prof (black male) by a white police sergeant. Obama invited them to a kumbaya moment in the White House and turned the abusive cop into a big hero to his colleagues. He’d put an uppity black in his place!
Our Governor Dayton had it heroically right when he said, of a black male shot dead by a cop, that he’d “be alive today if he’d been white.”
Brave words.
And on and on.
Doing the right and decent thing eludes us.
People ask me—to cite G and S again—What’s to be Done?
The issue transcends police-black male relations.
The issue is racism.
I want President Obama to convene a national commission on race. This should generate a desperately needed debate. The Veep could chair it if we can deflect him from attending weddings and funerals.
So, to those asking, this geezer’s suggestion is to generate debate.
