False reports, post-racial denial, and America’s reality crisis (op-ed)

In 2014, Michael Brown, an unarmed black teen, was fatally shot by a white police officer, in Ferguson, Missouri.   Witnesses said Brown had his hands up, and one witness claimed he heard Brown say, “I don’t have a gun stop shooting.”  And the picture was painted that Brown was gunned down by a trigger-happy racist cop. 

But the same witnesses confessed at the Grand jury that Brown held his hands up at shoulder level for a brief moment, then he dropped his hands and charged the officer.

The verdict was “Hands up, don’t shoot” never happened.

But activists continued to use “hands up, don’t shoot” as a rallying cry against another narrative, the increase of extrajudicial killings of unarmed black males by American police forces.  This too, was statistically inaccurate, but that didn’t matter, because the ulterior motive was to suggest the election of the first black president changed nothing and racism was more prevalent than ever.  

Since most people believe America is a racist society, first reports about white racism are accepted without question. 

Last month a video segment showed a Covington Catholic high school student, wearing a red MAGA hat, smiling at a Native American playing a drum.  The public rushed to judgement and accused the teenager of mocking the Native American’s ancestry with the smirk of white privilege.  But after a review of two hours of video footage, this turned out to be another false narrative, and an attempt to prove white racism was on the rise during the Trump presidency.

Not long after the Covington incident, where it was first suggested that red MAGA hats were the new KKK hoods, it was reported that in Chicago, black/gay actor Jussie Smollett was assaulted by individuals wearing red MAGA hats and the attackers put a noose around his neck.  After an investigation the Chicago police declared the incident a hoax and charged Smollett with filing a false report.

But the initial public response was a unanimous condemnation of racial violence, and one media host lamented, “This is the state of America in 2019.”  The insinuation was that racism in 2019 was rampant, but that notion is just as fraudulent as “Hands up, don’t shoot”.

The current state of America can be defined as a state of post-racial denial.

After the election of America’s first black president in 2008 the national dialogue centered around a single question: Is America finally a post-racial society?  The answer was a resounding - No!  Then the term was banned from any racial discussion, because post-racial was characterized to mean colorblind or a society where racism no longer existed.  But that definition was inaccurate.  The term post-racial first appeared in the New York Times in 1971.  Its original context did not imply the disappearance of racism, but an era when race relations were not the biggest problem.  So, when the term was reintroduced in 2008 the implication was that racism was not the preventive force it was in the past.

The implication was rejected, false narratives prevailed, and post-racial denial has turned into America’s reality crisis.

First published in New Pittsburgh Courier 2/27/19