How Many Light Bulbs Does It Take To Change America?

Don Henley’s “The End of the Innocence” is playing as I write this because for the last few weeks (and more) that’s what’s happened for a lot us – those of us paying attention, those of us who don’t have the money or the heart to get lost in the Christmas hustle that feels so unimportant and unreal this year. We as a nation have been awash in waves of shame and pride: our own, each others, those of leaders and idols and ordinary people turned into symbols they never wanted to be.

Yesterday’s CIA “Torture Report” was so revolting it actually inspired bipartisan anger and shame in the Senate. We already knew “intensified interrogation techniques” (G-d save us from the danger of euphemisms) had been used after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the governmental zeal to preempt further assaults. But we didn’t how deeply, cruelly “intensified” they were, or for how long they went on, against so many people, and how ineptly and chaotically the process was handled. “This isn’t who we are,” said an aggrieved President Obama about the program approved by his predecessor. But it is. It’s a big part of who we are and have always been, in spirit, from the genocide of the Indians through Slavery, Jim Crow, Vietnam, and the deeply divided country we’ve become.

And from Ferguson to Staten Island to Cleveland (among others), the recent racial conflicts between police and young Black men (and a child) have made it plain that largely White law enforcement still doesn’t know how to cope with Black communities; that the Judicial System is equally broken and ignorant; and that Americans of all ages and colors are still capable of uniting in peaceful, nonviolent protest against the cancer of racism. Dirty waves of shame, cleansing waves of pride.

A lot of people – mostly White – thought the election of President Obama showed that racism was over in America, an idea that would be hilarious if it weren’t so treacherously untrue. I recall the young, rousing, Barack Obama speaking at the 2004 Democratic Convention saying there was no Black America or White America, just One America. I understood how much he wanted that to be so. I too am biracial and when I was still quite young, I believed it was my destiny, my responsibility, to be a communicator and a racial unifier, because I had a foot in both worlds. I never did figure out how to do that and, it turns out, neither has Barack Obama, even though he’s a whole lot smarter than I am and worked a million times harder.

The unfortunate, revealing, truth is Obama’s election fueled a resurgence of rampant, outspoken, unapologetic racism. I’m sure he expected some push-back, but I think even he was taken off-guard by how forceful it’s been. I don’t think he expected it would grind Congress to a halt, or lead a right-slanted Supreme Court to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act in the midst of a nationwide Voter Suppression Movement, or that he would be called an illegitimate president who is behaving like a king because he’s done the same kinds of things the White presidents did – mainly, behaving like The President.

As we enter a two-year campaign for the 2016 presidential election (please, shoot me now), the pundits are discussing the Obama Legacy, as if it can be assessed just like any other presidency. His legacy, for the record, is that he kept us out of another Great Depression, re-grew the economy quite impressively with no help from either house of Congress, achieved a first attempt at something resembling national health care insurance even though it’s woefully sloppy and over-detailed, accomplished a bushel of things few people either know about or remember (take a look at the White House website), appointed two progressive women to the Supreme Court, conducted himself with presidential dignity in the face of consistent disrespect, managed to get re-elected and be a two-term president, and to date has avoided assassination, even though, it would appear, the Secret Service doesn’t entirely have his back.

Now the media are asking what he’s going to do about racism in America – especially since he’s worked so hard to be The President, not The Black President, and hasn’t wanted to make White people feel…excluded? ignored? uncared for? The irony here (one of several) is that even though White people hold all the cards, a lot of them always feel short-changed because they think poor people and minorities get all the breaks and benefits. They really believe that! The same way rich people (who, except for a handful of entertainers and athletes, are pretty much exclusively White) think they’re taken advantage of because they’re rich. The mind reels.

I guess we’ll have to [hope and] wait for Hillary Clinton. Maybe she can do something about “race relations,” since paying any attention to women’s issues would clearly be favoritism. Shame and pride, pride and shame, and the increased loss of personal and national innocence as the eternal foibles of reality bubble up. And I don’t even have room left to talk about Bill Cosby.