I know some folks have requested that I find a new line of blogging (i.e. talk about something besides race problems in Arizona), but this story really should be broadcast. The Huffington Post reports that a mural depicting children (actual students who attend the school) of different ethnicities is going to be repainted (under direct orders from the school authorities) because of constant community drive-by slurs, often while the children themselves were helping professional artists with the mural. And by repainted, I mean painted white. Here's the story.
So let me recap. Because members of the community shouted "nigger" and "spic" as they drove by, the rational decision by the school is to whiten the black and chicano students' faces. Brilliant. That's the exact right decison...for a sniveling coward living in fear of a resurgent racist movement akin to the KKK.
Once again, I fear we forget our history. How long did we, as a nation, help Jim Crow persist because we deluded ourselves into thinking that patience with racial slurs and racist actions would help it go away? "I'm sure the police will wake up soon and treat people decently." Wrong. Caving to pressure like this, deciding to whiten the faces of students of color, will only prolong racist sentiment.
What's worse though, the more patience we have with racism, the more opportunity it has to poison the national consciousness as a whole. Slaveowners in the antebellum South had to create an entire narrative that allowed them to deal with the cognitive dissonance involved in a situation where Christians "masters" abused other human beings to make money. The resulting narrative? Black people are inferior. It helped massa sleep at night. This disgusting idea was allowed to persist in the South, and the result was a poisoning, not only of the minds of each subsequent southern generation, but of generations throughout the United States. 150 years after the abolition of slavery, that idea persists. This is the longevity of racist thought left unchecked. It will NOT go away quietly. Official silence will NOT give racists an opportunity to cool down. And most importantly, giving into to racists demands will NOT bring peace to the community. Quite the opposite. Ask Neville Chamberlain.
Let's not delude ourselves into thinking that either 1. This is a problem only in Arizona or 2. All Arizonans are racists. But as bloggers throughout the sphere have commented, it appears as though President Obama's elections has unleashed the darkest tide of racial violence (psychological, verbal, and physical) in years. To paraphrase the Bible, Jesus Christ once overheard some less-than-upstanding folks discussing their ancestors. They said, "If we were alive when the ancient prophets taught, we would not have stoned them like our ancestors did." We know how that worked out, and Christ certainly called their bluff. Likewise, how many of us have thought: "If I lived in the 60s, I wouldn't have been racist. I would have helped in the civil rights movement. I would have been at the March in Washington."? I know I have. My friends, we now have an opportunity to prove we're not the kind of hypocrites we so easily excoriate in biblical contexts. Speak out. Speak out everywhere, but especially where you are. Make racial epithets and actions unacceptable in your presence. Fight to make sure racially-motivated laws are not passed or enforced in your community. If you do nothing, you're just like the Arizonan authorities who, through their action (or lack thereof) said loud and clear: "It's ok to call our children niggers."
