It is apropos that the paint used on the reflecting pool in Washington DC is peeling. Everything in politics is temporary, though scars of events may linger. We have sustained a social and an ethical set back in this country taking us back to a time I didn’t grow up in. It is painful to see that patriotism has been replaced with nationalism. Common decency has been replaced with entitlement and it’s getting worse, but it will get better.
In the 1920’s, people freely expressed the horrific thoughts they had in their tiny heads. Everything from James Bond dressed as a Japanese fisherman, to Micky Rooney dressed as a Chinese stereotype, to Judy Garland in blackface… there was no end to ignorant and hurtful portrayal of racial insensitivity in media. Far worsse, lynching was commonly used as tactic to keep blacks down and “in their place”. From the 20’s to the 50’s, confederate monuments were erected at state capital buildings across the south to keep blacks from voting, another scare tactic used by terrible people to disenfranchise others. By the 1960’s, lynching as a form of control had all but stopped but still those damn statues went up as a direct response to the civil rights movement and the end of Jim Crow.
Don’t get me wrong… I know things haven’t been roses for minority groups in the US from the 70’s on. It has gotten progressively better. There seemed to be fewer bigots and racists feeling free to speak their minds. The advent of the internet and message boards in the 90’s gave them places to congregate and gave them a voice again to freely, and in most cases anonymously, spew their bile but for the most part… in polite society and public spaces, most of the time they kept their mouths shut. They were, of course, still there.
For the last decade or so, they’ve been given a public voice again. It’s been made “OK” for people to say hateful things about those they don’t understand, fear, or disagree with. It’s a disgusting turn for a country that is still healing from wounds that date back to its founding. There are many wronged ethnicities, religious groups, and sexual identities in this country. So… how do we fix it? How can we turn the clock back just a little bit and push these people back into the shadows?
Accountability is the key. Knowing when someone speaks from a place of hatred vs a place of ignorance is the hard part. We should instruct the ignorant and figuratively flog the hateful. The only way to make them climb back into their holes and hold their tongues is to stand up and say something when they spew hateful rhetoric. It’s hard to think about right now, but the paint is peeling and we can pick at it until we can see the clean parts again.
“Layers of peeling paint are like pages of a book left open to the weather; each layer represents a different chapter of a building’s life, a different color chosen by someone who once cared.” ~ Jonathan Meades