America’s Enduring Pandemic
by G. Alfred Kennedy
The existence of a pandemic unleashes the creative genius of the best and brightest minds in societies across geographic boundaries to seek a proven cure within the shortest possible time frame. To preserve and enhance the quality of human existence is the essence of humanity, is it not? That is the history of mankind. That is the expectation of organized society; that expectation fuels hope. That cycle of logic keeps the rest of us from curling into a fetal position while awaiting the pandemic’s visit to our threshold. You get the picture.
Now, what if there was a perpetual pandemic for which this country has assiduously avoided the search for a cure for over four centuries, not because a cure did not exist, or was beyond our intellectual grasp. America’s enduring pandemic is racism. A cure for America’s pandemic has not been sought because a cure would be inconvenient; a cure would have toppled the edifice of white male supremacy, and the myriad grotesque ways that doctrine has manifested itself throughout history, and continues into 2020. The pandemic is the foundation upon which this country rests. Therefore, the thinking has been, better to manage the American pandemic than to cure it.
Societies evolve, questions arise, and challenges persist, and change is sometimes the end result of a dynamic process. Is that where we are today? We have fought a War of Independence to preserve our right to be independent as a country, and to hold an imported race of people in permanent and pernicious servitude. We fought a fratricidal Civil War to preserve the American union, ostensibly to end slavery, but in a bitter bargain with former slave-holding southern states, a President agreed to end Reconstruction and the right of Blacks to build lives of purpose. The federal government accommodated the birth of the KKK and other white citizens’ councils, and decades of Jim Crow law and practices. Those formerly enslaved were hunted, terrorized, held once again in economic bondage, locked out of the political process, and then told they were responsible for their condition – the bootstrap theory. Again, the goal was to preserve white male supremacy and preferences. The pandemic endured.
This country entered two world wars, the Korean War (Conflict) and the Vietnam War to break the shackles of bondage of others in their march toward freedom while the pandemic of institutional racism engulfed us at home. Flags flew, bands played; returning veterans of color fought, died and marched, and the country turned the page.
Hundreds of thousands of lives were sacrificed during the centuries of the pandemic, most under horrific circumstances, but that level of sacrifice was – and remains – acceptable despite the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Act, the highly circumscribed Voting Rights Act, and other pieces of legislation whose combined effect was to merely pick at the scab of racism, not heal it. To add insult to injury, dozens of statues celebrating the lives of those most committed to the preservation of the pandemic were erected in communities across the country.
For centuries, thousands of ordinary citizens, elected officials, the learned – including several of Nobel Laureate distinction, stepped forward with solutions to the pandemic, only to be labelled extremists, leftists, terrorists, and ultimately murdered, incarcerated, or consigned to the margins of debate. We elected the country’s first African-American President and America congratulated itself for having entered a “post-racial era.” America then pivoted to absolve itself of its original sin by electing the most incompetent, malevolently-intentioned, norm-busting, self-absorbed President in American history; a President steeped in the virtues and the perpetuation of this country’s unique pandemic. There was no bridge too far.
In 2020, we continue to resist calls for a cure and the pandemic rages on our streets having engulfed another new generation. Random daily public killings of African Americans by members of law enforcement serve to perpetuate, entrench white male supremacy in its most odious form: control the bodies of people of color while devaluing their lives. Calls for structural reform – analogous to a cure – are resisted, deemed unnecessary.
Undeterred by the prospect of ossified institutional resistance to reforms, or failure, young, nimble, and able minds are again presenting themselves willing to do the hard work of curing the disease that fuels the pandemic. They have the wind at their back, but will they persist when the winds subside? Is this new generation made of the sterner stuff able to resist the gale-force storm headed in their direction?
It is a universal truth that America’s pandemic is part of its identity, its heritage, and those who would resist a cure are motivated more by a fear of loss than any commitment to equality and justice for all. And the band plays on.
