Much ado…

I wonder how Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben feel about the Confederate Flag coming off the South Carolina State Capitol today.

Do you think they will feel any safer at church this Sunday with Colonel Sanders still skulking about?

More bullet points for the list (updated).

Add these to yesterday’s list:

• Baltimore rioter turned himself in, but family can’t afford $500,000 bail. 
• Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr, the driver of the police van, faces the most serious charges, including second degree murder charges. His bail was set at $350,000.

For the times are they a-changin’? (or “Why I’m not impressed.”)

Then: (1974)

• Richard Pryor “Niggers Vs. Police”

Now:

• Eric Garner (killed Thursday, July 17, 2014 – 43 years old)
• Michael Brown (killed Saturday, (August 9, 2014 – 18 years old)
• Walter Scott (killed Saturday, April 4, 2015 – 50 years old)
• Freddie Gray (killed Tuesday April 12, 2015 – 25 years old)
• Freddie Gray’s Death Ruled a Homicide (today)

Yet:

• FBI admits flaws in hair analysis over decades
• Hundreds of police killings are unaccounted for in federal statistics
• Blacks = 13% US population
• Blacks = 40% of US prison population
• The new Congress is 80% white

So: For the times are they a-changin’?

NOTE: A more exhaustive list of unarmed Black men killed by police can be found here.

The Paradox that is America

A close friend of mine for whom I have a great deal of respect astutely questioned my premise of a divided nation citing several relevant historical data points. (“Are labor protections worse today than in 1890? … As a nation, we’re certainly less divided than in 1862.”) Nothing is more divisive to a nation than a civil war; certainly we are less divided than in 1862. But can social progress coexist with social division?

Civil wars are a ludicrously absurd method for resolving ideological disputes: ideas are judged not on merit but rather on might ending with the suppression of ideas rather than resolution. I do not find it surprising that based on the 48 values questions Pew has been using for the past 25 years, the partisan gap has doubled. Nor do I find it surprising that a growing number of voters do not identify with either party, and support LGBTQ civil rights.

That said, perhaps we can agree that America is a country of paradoxes; a nation both politically divided, and capable of social evolution; a nation with a legal system that can both clear Officer Darion Wilson of any wrongdoing whatsoever in the killing of Michael Brown, and find “widespread civil rights abuses by the Ferguson Police Department.