I
spent the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in a rural white republican community
where Fox News rules the airways 24/7.
There are few minorities living in the area. There are fewer residents with progressive
views. I found that political or social
debate is futile when an individual’s news media input consistently reinforces
his or her view of the world. Even the
business and human interest reporting on Fox News seems to be devoted to Obama
baiting. I quickly learned that discussing
family, weather and sports were the safe topics to avoid controversy.
No
one at this extended family gathering could find empathy for a muscular young
black teenager with a chip on his shoulder who was killed after a police stop
for stealing cigars. The fact that he
was unarmed and shot 6 times did not seem to matter. It was simply impossible for this crowd to
place themselves in the shoes of African Americans, where the historical
experience with white police officers is quite different from their own. It was beyond the pale for them to consider,
under similar circumstances, whether a pretty young white teenage girl with a
chip on her shoulder, who was stopped for shoplifting, would have ended up
dead.
There
was even less attempt to understand why a poor minority community would burn
and loot its own neighborhood following the grand jury verdict in
Ferguson. Fox News consistently ran a
conspiracy story over the Thanksgiving weekend, that the White House had
commanded the Missouri National Guard to stand down, insuring that the
destruction would take place. Another
constant news story was that well known civil rights leaders had entered the
fray and encouraged the violence.
Apart
from these rather ridiculous opinions, presented as facts, there was no attempt
at role reversal or to understand how members of this poor black community
could express their anger and rage over what was perceived as an unfair and
biased application of justice. No one at
the dinner table was thankful that the aggrieved did not exercise vigilante
justice as the white community has so often practiced in the past, when the
legal system has not matched its expectations concerning black defendants.
Colin
Powell has stated that despite all of our progress on race relations: “a dark
vein of intolerance” prevails in America.
Intolerance or the: “unwillingness to accept views, beliefs, or behavior
that differ from one's own”, is not as destructive as overt racism, but it is
close and certainly a byproduct of times gone by. I am not advocating shoplifting, disobeying
the police or looting. I am suggesting
that more tolerance by those in authority can avoid a crisis in the first place
and help a community heal, after the fact.
This is the message that President Obama delivered immediately after the
Ferguson Grand Jury decision.
The
proven solution to intolerance is diversity.
When homogeneous communities diversify, different views are incorporated
into the community and the whole is richer than its parts. Anyone who has spent time in NYC or Toronto knows
what I mean. When communities of color
diversify the local justice system, everyone benefits from perceptions of
understanding and fairness. In regard to
Ferguson, there is no question that poor urban communities need policing. However the police force must be diversified
to include black officers with its members living in the community and being
sensitive to the needs and views of their neighbors.
Unfortunately,
rural America will remain white, protestant and conservative with no desire to
diversify and little tolerance for what goes on outside its boundaries. Fox News is the perfect media source to
encourage the lack of diversity and to perpetuate the intolerance. Sometimes it takes a Thanksgiving weekend to
remind me that while the wide open country is a beautiful place to visit, I
would never want to live there.
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