Root Cause
5
By Richard Bakare
The ability and desire to relentlessly and honestly, dig deep down to the root cause of a problem, has been an American weakness for a long time. Du Bois, Baldwin, and Coates all arrive precisely on this fact in their respective open letters to America. The idea of American Exceptionalism is so ingrained in everything we do and think; that to question it is paramount to treason.
To ever look into the mirror and see the scars and blemishes of who we are is too much for most. To see in those lines of experience that maybe, just maybe, we are a racist nation. One built on the evil trade of men, stolen land, war, and soulless greed in its rise to power. Even more, the constant belittling and blaming of social ills on every new group that arrives is indoctrinated in its blood. Be they Black, Irish, Chinese, or Mexican, someone else is always the lesser.
If we are ever to be truly Great, we have to look in the mirror and face the root cause of the strife between races here. We have to stop changing and omitting troubling facts from history textbooks, we have to stop saying slavery was long ago while ignoring every instance of institutional racial disparity and suppression that has come after. As Baldwin put it, “The price of the liberation of the white people is the liberation of the blacks—the total liberation, in the cities, in the towns, before the law, and in the mind.”
That’s real freedom, finally facing, accepting and fixing the sins of the past. Letting go of those burdens by acknowledging them and collectively righting them the hard way, will be our arrival at the root cause and cutting away the tumor that has been killing us.