The public conversation on the tragedy started with gun control, mental illness, the Confederate flag and somewhere spattered in is the ugly face of racism, but Whites are confused and cannot lead the conversation. The question is why?
When does White accountability for the injustices, discriminations, unfairness, lynchings, racial crimes, and the like come into the conversation? When does the talk turn to the White horrors , the atrocities of the Deep South, the crimes of burnings and killings that no one was convicted for?
When does the conversation address the concepts of perceived superiority and inferiority? When does the notion of “privilege” come up? The President said in his speech, we talk about race all the time. And we do. But what do we say?
We don’t talk honestly; we talk at best politely, we talk around, we tell stories, we speak to the embarrassments, we even talk about the horrors, sometimes. But we don’t dare speak to the White accountability for the Black disrespect and mistreatment.
America was built on the backs of slaves. Whites became rich from free hard labor, overwhelmingly that of Black folks. Our history is what it is, and that is the essence of the Confederate flag.
We wave a flag still at the State House in Southern states symbolizing White superiority, while we still struggle for equality at every single level in American society, even as we have a man of color in the White House. Even with the advances, there are injustices.
Whites are just really beginning to hear what Blacks endure in daily living in America, from the lack of opportunity to discrimination at every level from experiences as simple as catching a taxi on a busy street.
The pundits fear the discussion with those who can articulate it the most and who have spent lifetimes fighting for racial justice – they are sometimes called race baiters by those same pundits. But the talk shows dare not ask Minister Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, or Father Michael Pfleger their real thoughts on this crime. They might not express forgiveness.
The murders of the innocent people in Mother Emanuel Church will probably result in the Confederate flag being removed from the state capitol of South Carolina. A Black woman climbed the capitol pole recently and personally removed the flag. Of course she was arrested.
The flag is maybe dead, even as those who still fight for it are fighting for a continuing vision of White supremacy. The Confederate flag is an embarrassing symbol of what this country has been, and depending on what side you’re on, it becomes a question of heritage or legacy. That flag looks vastly different from the perspectives of the slave master and the slave.