The Fragility of Racial Equality: What It Demands at This Moment

 

THE FRAGILITY  OF RACIAL EQUALITY:  WHAT IT ENTAILS AND WHAT IT DEMANDS OF US AND ME AT THIS MOMENT.

 

 

I’ve often remarked that the pursuit of racial diversity, inclusion and equity cannot be put on automatic pilot.  There are too many other pressures that can thwart making racial diversity and inclusion a reality which is sustained.  In a business, it’s the pressure to deliver sales and profit targets.  In government, it can be the pressure imposed by a financial crisis or, as is the case at this moment, a health epidemic.  It can also be thwarted by changes in leadership, some leaders believing in its importance more than others. 

 

This is not an academic concern. I have seen us lose momentum in realizing our commitment to sustain progress in  diversity and inclusion in companies, on university campuses,  and I’ve seen it in our Nation.  

 

A fresh light was shed on this challenge for me by a series of lectures which I recently listened to by Professor David Blight of Yale.  The lectures actually occurred in a course on Reconstruction he was teaching in 2009, eleven years ago. 

 

Professor Blight noted that the concept of racial equality has rested on three foundations: 

 

The first foundation grows from the belief that we are all creatures made in God’s image and that everyone deserves the respect which that belief imposes.  

 

The second foundation is rooted in law.  It didn’t really come until the end of the Civil War, with the passage of the 13^th Amendment, outlawing slavery, the 14^th Amendment, confirming the right to due process on all people regardless of race, and the 15^thAmendment, conferring the right to vote on all citizens without regard to race.

 

It was felt at that time, even by the Radical Republicans  that this pretty much did it.  Racial equality had now been embedded in law, it was acclaimed.  

 

The third foundation of racial equality didn’t fully come alive until the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and ‘60s.  This was the dimension of equal opportunity.  This has led over time to many things, including affirmative action, hotly (and I believe wrongly) contested, at this very moment. 

 

Professor Blight makes the point that the strong commitment to racial equality which, at least in the legal sense, existed following the Civil War in the three Civil Rights amendments faded quickly.  By the middle of the 1870s and for the next 70 or 80 years, it fell fallow.   

 

What changed in the 1870s which caused even the radical Republicans who had led the drive for equality to let up; to feel that their goal had been achieved?  

 

One element was the passage of the Amendments and the Enforcement Acts passed in 1870-71 which among other provisions gave the federal government the right to deploy federal troops to enforce the right to vote.  Treacherously,  the Supreme Court, in decisions occurring in 1875 and later, took the teeth out of the ability of the federal government to intervene.  It left the authority to enforce the rights conferred by the Amendments up to the states. And, of course, particularly in the South, states  were moving into Democratic hands. They were led by legislators, including many Klansmen, totally opposed to the equality which the amendments had called for.

 

But there was more than that which stalled momentum.  The severe financial panic of 1873 led people to worry about things they found to be of greater importance than pursuing racial equality.  The leaders of the Radical Republicans, who had led the drive for racial equality were dying:  Sumner, Wade, Phillips, among others.  And people were just getting tired.  They wanted to move on, and they had enough of a rationale to convince themselves, at least most of them, that it was time, it was okay to move on. 

 

Here is a classic example of the fragility of racial equality.

 

I would argue that we saw much the same thing following the Civil Rights movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s.  People got tired in the late ‘70s and ‘80s; we are just now waking up.  Ronald Reagan preached a convincing (for many) doctrine of a unified, happy, better America; the proverbial village on the hill.  

 

And something else was happening that gave credence for many to the belief that, surely, the issues Black men and women had faced were behind them.  There was the  progress of individual Black men and women.  The election of President Obama, Oprah Winfrey, celebrated sports figures, and many more.

 

And it went beyond the anecdotal.  There was a growing African American middle class.  The percentage of African Americans with college degrees doubled between 1995 and 2017, from 11% to 24%. And the percentage of Blacks living below the poverty line was cut in half from about 40% in 1966 to 20% in 2018. 

 

What more could Blacks be seeking, some asked—though it was more a declaration than a question. .

 

All of this brings us to today.  The murder of George Floyd and Covid-19's  revealing of immense racial disparities  have sensitized America, including countless White Americans-- like me-- to the continued burning reality of  of racial inequity and injustice  in our Nation. These inequities in education, wealth, health, the application of criminal justice and more are staring us right in the face. The facts are inescapable.  We have not seen anything like this in my lifetime.   

 

Still, the haunting question remains:  Will the fragility of racial equity which we’ve experienced many times come back to haunt us again?  Will our energy flag? Will this become another lost moment in time? Or can we turn this "moment" into a "movement"-- for it is a movement we need.

 

There are reasons to be concerned.  We live in the midst of a horrific health epidemic; millions of people face enormous financial challenges.  And for the moment, we have a president and any number of other politicians that seek to leverage the racial divide for their re-election.

 

To be clear, I am not despondent about what’s possible. I am lifted, for example,  by the relatively rapid if still incomplete change in attitude, policy and law with respect to members of the LGBTQ community. .

 

But I warn myself  and everyone who reads this paper that we’re going to have to be very intentional.  We’re going to have to mount enormous commitment—personal commitment—to put in place the systemic changes needed to overcome racial disparities. As my son, John, says, we need to keep showing up. Especially when it is inconvenient. Even when it's not clear that a "return on investment' will be realized. 

We need more than incremental improvement.  We need radical systemic changes in policy and practice--  in housing, criminal justice, healthcare and education. We need to confront the widening wealth and income gaps.  

 

Personally, and I am speaking to myself, we need  to  bring far greater empathy to our relationships with people who are different than we are. We need to let them know they count, that they matter.  We need to listen to them with an open mind and heart. That's how we will come to know and appreciate their stories as they learn ours. From this can come what I have discovered to be that most precious of gifts: a "positive transformational" relationship.

 

Transformational relationships build our expectation of what we can accomplish; they make us feel we matter; that we "belong", that we are '"in the house". They allow us to be freer to be our authentic selves  and to take risks. In my experience, it is generally harder to form such a relationship with someone different from you. That doesn't make them less important; it make them more important. 

 

As I chart my own small  part in converting this critical moment into a sustained movement, I intend to work on two objectives: 

 

1. Intentionally developing empowering transformational relationships with 4 new people. Covid-19 may make this more difficult but it won't stop me.

 

2. Working on systemic change in a) the support systems supporting the development of children, 0-5, and their families and b) the contribution to building racial equity through programs offered by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. 

 

I will pursue these objectives to the best of my ability.

 

 

John Pepper