Editorial: In racially divided America, it’s soul-checking time

How can we untangle the Gordian knot of grief wrapped around our hearts?

Marv KnoxContinuing a sickening pattern, the past week began horribly. Two white police officers in Baton Rouge shot and killed a black man, Alton Sterling, after pinning him to the ground. It worsened when a police officer near St. Paul pointed his gun through a car window and shot and killed yet another black man, Philando Castile. Then the agony swerved and multiplied in Dallas, when a sniper or snipers killed at least five police officers, wounded seven others and injured two civilians near the end of peaceful Black Lives Matter rally.

If you haven’t cried at least once in the past week, you need to check your soul.

But grief is one thing. Time heals that wound.

Racism, fear & hatred

The greater question is this: What are we going to do about the triplet insanities of racism, fear and hatred that are destroying the fabric of our society?

These problems are all so deeply ingrained, politicized, acculturated that even talking or writing about them is fraught with peril. Do we risk making matters worse when we risk being misunderstood? Can we swallow our pride, maybe even forfeit some turf, to seek the greater good?

On Thursday night, the Dallas police officers—if you watched them on TV, you saw they were black, white and Latino, male and female—provided a metaphor for how to respond to our national polarization.

By all accounts, the 100 police officers and the 800 marchers who gathered to protest police brutality got along well that evening. Some joked with each other. Some took selfies together. No doubt, some conducted tense conversations. But they smiled and talked and seemed to end the event on a great note.

Then shots rang out. Protestors fled for their lives, as they should. And police protected the protestors while advancing toward the shooters. Placing themselves in harm’s way is what good cops—the vast majority of police—swear they will do. In the streets of downtown Dallas, police ran to shield people who distrust and even despise them.

Hostile culture

We live in a hostile culture of racial strife, and America needs courageous people of goodwill to run into the line of verbal fire. We need people who are willing to engage in hard, painful, honest conversations about race and about what our social institutions—particularly government, business, churches and schools—can do. We need people who learn from those conversations—and act upon them.

The primary burden should fall upon white people, because people who enjoy the greatest privilege owe the greatest responsibility. But unlike most occasions when we interact, white people mostly need to shut up and listen. Rather than defend, we should ask questions to clarify, because if we can’t actually, fully understand each other, we can’t solve our problems.

Those problems are multitude. Obviously, gun control should be on the table, as well as police-civilian relationships. We also need to talk about education, criminal justice, economic opportunity, housing, health care, voting rights, transportation and simple civility.

Taking on these challenges demands courage and fortitude. Talking about them probably won’t imperil participants’ lives (but then, it could), but being misunderstood comes so easily. And since the default mode of discussion is to vilify someone with a different opinion, participating in the great-needed debate about America’s future is and shall be perilous emotionally and spiritually. People who aren’t willing to risk losing some friends in order to gain others—not to mention in order to do the right thing—won’t have the heart for this journey.

The best first step

In this moment, across the next few days, the best first step is to talk.

First, talk to God. Yes, prayer sounds like a “Sunday school answer” to our crisis. But prayer is of ultimate value, and we’ll never cross our chasm without God’s help.

Second, talk to friends of other races. Ask them how they see our situation, how they feel. Tell them you want to know the truth. Learn from them.

And if you don’t have friends whose skin is a different color than yours, you need to check your soul.

Follow Marv on Twitter: @marvknoxbs