The dead cry out for our attention

We were all rocked by the events in Ferguson. Military-grade weaponry patrolled a suburb of St. Louis as if it were Fallujah, while policemen violated the constitutional rights of peaceful protesters and even journalists. A common response to these events was “Why?”

Our predominantly white region seems genuinely clueless as to why any of this is happening. If this is you, it’s not your fault; we Chadronians don’t have much firsthand experience of the tortured history of black/white racial relations. Because this knowledge isn’t necessary to our daily lives, we’re understandably ignorant.

I can’t cure that ignorance in 700 words, but I can point you in the direction of two really good articles. One is by Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic, who explains how blacks were held down by various forces in American society, and calls for an accounting of just how much this cost black America.

The second article is by Dara Lind of Vox, outlining the history of racist policing in America, especially how the illegal violence of lynch mobs got outsourced to racialized police departments.

The history is ugly, and as a white person myself, I can’t claim much pride in its retelling. But unless we want to continue this sad history, we must learn it, so as not to repeat it.

Furthermore, there are still lessons we can apply here in Chadron. There is a legacy of racism here; not so much toward blacks, but toward Natives. Most long-term residents can recall stories of friends being pulled over for “driving while Native,” of other friends recounting negative Native stereotypes as if they were true. The Klan was once active in Gordon, and the death of Raymond Yellow Thunder there in 1972 is similar to that of Michael Brown.

The history of Native Americans’ struggle against white oppression is very different from that of blacks, but the white response, especially lately, has been similar.

We, the generation of young whites now attending Chadron State, did not create these horrors, and are not personally to blame for them. But as the supposed beneficiaries of this toxic legacy, it falls to us to address it. If we don’t, then it does become our fault.

The first step is making new friends. According to Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute, three-quarters of us whites have no non-white friends. If our social circles are closed off to everyone else, no wonder it’s hard to empathize with those we don’t know firsthand.

The second step is studying history. If anyone wants to learn more about the history of race relations in America, it’s very accessible to laymen. One of the seminal books about black/white relations was written by the conservative historian C. Vann Woodward, and it’s called The Strange History of Jim Crow.

On Native/white relations, our own Joel Hyer, dean of B.E.A.M.S., contributed to As Long As The Grass Shall Grow And Rivers Flow; and Vine Deloria Jr.’s Custer Died For Your Sins remains a classic in the field. Additionally, anyone wanting to know more about the subject is welcome to email me at [email protected]; it’s literally my day job to explain history, and I love my work.

The third step is speaking up whenever we see injustice. A society that tolerates small racisms paves the way for great racisms.

It is not in any of our individual powers to, say, end the racial disparity in sentencing tomorrow; but each one of us has been audience to tiny racist acts or thoughts, and if we confront it when we see it, we help crumble the edifice of racism in our tiny corner of the world.

I believe we have, here in Nebraska, some of the most fundamentally decent people in the world. But, as Edmund Burke once observed, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

The dead of Ferguson, of Gordon, and all the rest cry out for our attention, for us to do something. It is my earnest hope and prayer that we will heed their cries and break the back of white supremacy in our generation.