{"id":5407,"date":"2016-07-08T12:04:51","date_gmt":"2016-07-08T16:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/?p=5407"},"modified":"2016-07-08T12:04:51","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T16:04:51","slug":"american-exceptionalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/2016\/07\/american-exceptionalism\/","title":{"rendered":"American Exceptionalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The news demands that I pause my reflections on the beautiful, peaceful natural wonders of the Adirondacks to comment on the evil, violent, oppressive man-made catastrophe that is the racism, violence and hatred coursing through the American body politic and raising the body count to unfathomable heights with each new tragedy.\u00a0 Dallas<\/a>. Baton Rouge<\/a>. St. Paul.\u00a0<\/a> From Louisiana to Minnesota to Texas, from St. Louis<\/a> to Baltimore<\/a> to Staten Island,<\/a> and too many other places, police officers have killed black men with scant provocation and wanton displays of violence.\u00a0 Rage and hatred surge hotter and higher and more dangerously with each killing.\u00a0 This week, the outrageous deaths of Alton B. Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile in a suburb of St. Paul now apparently incited the horrendous murderous attacks on police officers in Dallas.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake about it.\u00a0 The wanton murders of police officers is evil, wrong and deplorable.\u00a0 No excuses.<\/p>\n

The killings of Alton Sterling<\/a>, Philando Castile<\/a> and so many others without justification are also evil, wrong and deplorable.<\/p>\n

Nationwide, the Washington Post reports<\/a> that nearly 500 people have died in police shootings so far this year.<\/p>\n

America is, indeed, exceptional — this nation has an exceptional record for violence, racial hatred and oppression, and shamefully tepid political will to address the root causes of the evil that rends our social covenants to shreds.<\/p>\n

In his acclaimed, controversial and starkly lacerating work Between the World and Me<\/a>, Ta-Nehisi Coates<\/a> exposes the corrupt center at the heart of the myth of American Exceptionalism.\u00a0 Citing the history of slavery as the basis for building the wealth of the white power structure of the United States, Coats writes,<\/p>\n

“Perhaps there has been, at some point in history, some great power whose elevation was exempt from the violent exploitation of other human bodies.\u00a0 If there has been, I have yet to discover it.\u00a0 But this banality of violence can never excuse America, because America makes no claim to the banal.\u00a0 America believes itself exceptional, the greatest and noblest nation ever to exist, a lone champion standing between the white city of democracy and the terrorists, despots, barbarians, and other enemies of civilization.\u00a0 One cannot, at once, claim to be superhuman and then plead mortal error.” (Ta-Nehisi Coats, Between the World and Me)
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

The great problem of American history — the way it has been taught in most schools — is the denial of the truth that most of those men we call the “Founding Fathers” absolutely knew that slavery was wrong, and they had the power to end it in the first Constitution, but they chose their own economic self-interest over human rights and justice.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Thomas Jefferson, George Washington — men whose wealth and status was thanks to slaves — could not vote for abolition.\u00a0 We continue to pay a heavy price for the failure of our founders to bend the arc of history toward justice at a time that would have been heroic, and would have made this nation truly exceptional.<\/p>\n

America today is exceptional in its indulgence of violence as the means to preserve order — or power for some.\u00a0 What other basis can there be for the mindless exaltation of the Second Amendment, against all historical evidence that it was a period piece for revolutionary times.\u00a0 Instead, we have indulged a culture of violence against black people<\/a> in particular, and against others who threaten to upset “order” as some deem it to exist.<\/p>\n

In 1963, James Baldwin<\/a> wrote of the fear and anger propelling some white Americans to resist integration with violence, police brutality, fire hoses, dogs, incarceration of civil rights leaders, murder.\u00a0 He wrote of white Americans,<\/p>\n

“…They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.\u00a0 They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men.\u00a0 Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know.\u00a0 To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.\u00a0 In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.”<\/em> (James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time<\/a>)<\/p>\n

More than 50 years later, the violent resistance to the reality of integration and the imperative of justice for all threatens domestic peace more than any external threat from terrorism or other sources.\u00a0 Our nation is arming itself internally, facilitated by the gun lobby and despicable politicians who have only contempt for their responsibilities to the entire nation.\u00a0 One major political candidate gains fervid, frenzied support by declaring he will build walls higher, deport Muslims and Mexicans and other people who are not, in his view and the view of his supporters, “Americans” translation “white.”<\/p>\n

Echoing much of Coates, Michael Eric Dyson, a Georgetown professor, wrote “What White America Fails to See” <\/a>in today’s New York Times, saying that so long as white Americans persist in not understanding the fear that black people must live with every day, we cannot possibly address the root causes of the violence.\u00a0 He writes:<\/p>\n

“At birth, you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class. In fact the greatest privilege that exists is for white folk to get stopped by a cop and not end up dead when the encounter is over.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The fear of violence against the black body — stated so painfully by Coates — is centuries old and as fresh as today’s headlines.<\/p>\n

The New York Times Editorial Board asks today, “When will the killing stop?”<\/a><\/p>\n

The answer seems painful to say, but very clear:\u00a0 we cannot stop the killing until we accept the fundamental moral and legal premise that we say is the basis for our nation:\u00a0 that all people are created equal, and have equal right to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.\u00a0 Not just some. Not just whites.\u00a0 Not just people who arrived in ways we deem “legal.”\u00a0 But all people.<\/p>\n

America can only be truly exceptional on the day we can say with truth that equality and justice prevail for all.\u00a0 But saying that again and again is not enough.\u00a0 Just like “moments of silence” have become trite, and mourning is all too routine, we cannot simply spout more platitudes.<\/p>\n

This year America faces the most consequential political choices in generations.\u00a0 Not only the presidency, but also the Congress and among state houses.\u00a0 Will we choose to continue this virulent climate of hatred and obtuse fomenting of violence?\u00a0 Or will we choose leaders who can walk with us across this dangerous terrain to find some places of calm where we can start working again on repairing our social contract.\u00a0 We are not bystanders to history, we are the history we choose to write.\u00a0 We must choose peace and justice, because what is the alternative?\u00a0 A perpetual state of war within ourselves is unacceptable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our national shame of violence, racial hatred, and murderous attacks on police. America is exceptional but for the wrong things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[509],"tags":[1661,1663,1664,1662,366,1665,368,1272,409,1660],"class_list":["post-5407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-human-rights","tag-alton-sterling","tag-dallas-police-shooting","tag-james-baldwin","tag-philando-castile","tag-race","tag-race-relations","tag-racism","tag-second-amendment","tag-slavery","tag-ta-nehisi-coates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}