"An once of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
"A stitch in time saves nine."
"Why bother to close the the barn door after the horse is gone."
"Better to light a candle than curse the darkness."
These old sayings popped in my mind again this week when I read the news and heard the sound bites of our "leaders" decrying the race incident du jour. They gravely express their (check one) :
___surprise
___dismay
___horror
___disgust
that racism exists in
their fair (check one):
___neighborhood
___city
___state
___nation.
Then they call for understanding and harmony and blah, blah, blah, fasa, fasa, fasa, etc., etc., etc., and hop in the limo to high-tail it to the next fundraiser.
Of course this time the impetus for all the speechifying was the double-whammy of the beating of 13 year-old Lenard Clark by three promising young racists from Daley's old neighborhood, Bridgeport (and from his old high school, De LaSalle to boot), and the racist taunts of Brother Rice's rabid young "white" basketball fans.
Maybe if little Bill's or Richie's parents had told them the truisms my folks told me, we'd be spared another round of the canned speehes our "leaders" pull out after every (fill in the blanks) "______ , ______, disgraceful, ugly, un-American racial incident." Whether it's the Rodney King beating and trials, the resulting LA Riots, black church burnings, the defacing of Jewish cemetaries, the O.J. saga, etc., etc., etc., one speech fits all.
While Bill and Rich were cursing, I started lighting candles.
Almost six years ago I started Partnership Against Racism. PAR is a non-profit communications agency whose mission is to "unsell" racism. Modelled after other public service campaigns like the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, the anti-smoking efforts of the American Heart Association, MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving and many others, PAR uses the media to distribute messages designed to be an anti-dote to the racially divisive ones.
Our premise is very simple: Since racism was almost universally promoted and encouraged by almost all our institutions and leaders from before the U.S. of A's founding until the 1950s and 60's Civil Rights Movement, it is extremely naive to expect that its vestiges would just vanish in one generation. So even though tremendous progress has been made over the past 25 years, our ideas about race are still affected (and infected) by those of almost 20 past generations.
And how could they not be? Just as we point to the positive traditions and influences that have been passed down from America's founders, we must admit that we've also been shaped by the negative. The last generation did their part by changing outdated laws. Our challenge is to work on outdated attitudes.
Tellingly, there has never been a concentrated effort by the major institutions of government, education, religion and media to undo the damage of almost 400 years of divisive racial conditioning ...to re-educate the American public about the critical importance of racial harmony and equality to America's continued success and freedom...to "sell" Americans on their own professed principles. The media in particular has a pivotal role to play, especially because it does so much, in pursue of ratings and profits, to exacerbate the problem.
I also believe that our generation stands at a unique place in human history. The rapidly approaching end of our century and millennium...an event that has occurred only once since the birth of Christ...shines a spotlight on us to do something momentous. What could be more important for our nation and the world than to finally confront the last traces of our nation's longest and most dangerous 'birth defect"...the unhealed sore of racism and inequality that makes every pious pronouncement of our egalitarian ideals ring hollow and false?
I think the recent incidents one again give our leaders reason to seriously consider such a public re-education effort. Isn't it about time for Bill Clinton and Daley and all public officials who are great at expressing regret after each new race story to finally start actually leading? Will they finally lead rather than follow the news of another hate crime with trite cries for "tolerance" and naive questions of "why can't we all just get along?" At least Rodney wasn't on the public payroll.
Last year American companies spent over 150 billion dollars selling us everything from Amtrack to Ziebart. Is is too much to ask that those companies, our government, religious, education and media institutions spend a few dollars trying to sell us something we really could use? Even the most bottom-line business types see the inability of all our racial and ethnic groups to work and live in harmony as bad for business. It' a no-brainer that the monetary and social profits of an all-out campaign against our oldest...and only self-inflicted disease, would be tremendous.
And PARs premise is not untried. During the Reagan administration, the federal government started and has since spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund the Partnership for A Drug-Free America. The New York-based Advertising Council places over a billion dollars in public service announcements each year to educate Americans about the dangers of drunk driving, teenaged sex, AIDS, cigarettes...you name it, to our personal and societal well-being. What greater threat to a nation as diverse as ours than racial and ethnic hatred? In fact, a friend of mine says that on a trip to Europe last year he found that a favorite pastime is waging how soon we'll self-destruct in an all out racial/cultural war.
And if Bill Clinton, who may just be our most racially empathatic President , has any chance of getting a mention in the Top ten list of America's leaders, this is his ticket. But it requires him to take an initiative...without Civil War, Civil Rights marchers or race riots...that no President in our history has ever taken. He has to act, not just react. In fact, I'll send him this column. Stay tuned for his response.
And wouldn't it be great if Chicago, a city that once again rated a major story in last week's Time magazine as the most racially divided and segregated big city in America, led the nation in the campaign to erase (e-race?) racism?
Of course it's going to take more than advertising. But, as has been proven with many other threats to our national well-being, it can be a very visible catalyst to quickly get individuals and institutions thinking and moving in a new direction. I think it's at least worth a shot. How about you?
Besides, what's the alternative? More racial division. More violence? More innocent kids hurt? To just pass our foreparents' race phobias on to our children? And more Johny-come-lately speeches?
I think it's time to get out the old stitching needle.