I’ve had this essay drafted for several months, now, but I’ve hesitated to finish and post it because I know that if I’m not careful the points that need to be made will be lost. But more recent events (personal and societal) have compelled me to do so. So here goes…

So here we are, in the aftermath of one of the most stressful and contentious years in modern history, where race and privilege and ideologies have collided violently, with casualties – fatalities – and billions of dollars in property damage. Entities both public and private are struggling to navigate the new minefield of public opinion in the midst of multiple pandemics: one a deadly disease, another the very real tension between racist and anti-racist rhetoric, another an equally deadly (if less actually lethal) “Cancel Culture” that could erase a business or career. Most aren’t getting it right…

It’s not an easy time to be alive.

Particularly since the issues facing us are complex ones, made no easier to resolve by our need to apply simple labels and black-and-white solutions, solutions that will not work in a shades-of-gray world.

But that does not stop people – and governments – from trying to apply them.

The fact is, the conditions that led up to this past year have been around for a very long time. If you’re a history buff and want to get into the nuts and bolts of it, go back a few hundred years and study slavery in the US, and the years that followed the Civil War. Learn what happened to the former slaves and their descendants, how they weren’t allowed to own land, vote, were only counted as half people… Saw monuments built to their oppressors, were excluded from schools, neighborhoods, even entire states…

We now have laws preventing that kind of discrimination, yes, but those are comparatively recent; in fact, most of them were enacted in my lifetime. We point to those laws and say, “See? Our system isn’t racist, so there’s no such thing as ‘Systemic Racism’.”

Remember what I said about simplistic labels for complex problems?

It’s not the laws that are in question.

It’s everything else.

It’s about opportunity, and the lack of it that comes from an underfunded and understaffed education system in poorer communities that make breaking the cycle of poverty almost impossible, each generation doomed to repeat it. While poverty knows no color, for most it’s a cycle that began with the Emancipation Proclamation, and continued through the lynchings and Jim Crow laws that didn’t get erased from the books until the latter half of the 20^th Century – and most of the people who were growing up as America started desegregating schools are still alive.

I was in school when schools across the country were being desegregated. My generation – MY GENERATION – was the first generation to attend desegregated schools – not that my schools weren’t predominantly white… But think about that for a minute. Think of the ramifications of just how recent that development was. It was only a moment ago, historically speaking. But even today, schools in those neighborhoods, which are still predominantly black, are underfunded and understaffed.

And now, thanks to “Black Lives Matter,” a light has been shed on that heretofore shadowed facet of our society. The laws may say “no discrimination,” but the real-world conditions that put these kids at a distinct disadvantage in the competition for the best jobs, of breaking the cycle of poverty, say otherwise.

And the rest of it naturally follows: the higher rates of crime and incarceration of the products of these substandard neighborhood schools, the increased likelihood of dying in a police action, the inherent distrust, even hatred… And this only adds to the “unbreakability” of the cycle.

I could go on, but I think the point’s been made. It’s cyclic, so it’s “systemic.” It mostly – not exclusively, but mostly – affects people of color. Therefore, “Systemic Racism” is as valid a simple label as any other for the complex problem.

And we’re not going to solve it by indoctrinating all the other children into a mindset that the US is a horrible place, the most racist country on the planet. Yeah, that’s an actual quote from a school kid in one of the more “woke” school districts. This is another example of how government (in this case, a public school district) does things bass-ackwards.

The US isn’t the most racist country (just ask the Uighurs in China), and this kind of teaching – this indoctrination, because that’s what it is – is only going to reinforce the negative instead of working toward the positive. It will do nothing but reinforce the divisions we’re supposed to be fighting against. But that’s exactly what this school district, and others, is setting out to do.

This is apparently much sexier than taking the other tack. Of saying “The US is a great place, but even in great places there are inequities. Let’s learn about them and solve them, together.” No, it’s far easier to exacerbate the divisiveness than it is to actually tackle the problem.

It’s also emblematic of the warehousing of our children under the guise of “public education,” of not wanting them to become critical thinkers, to form their own opinions. We teach them how to take tests, not navigate the increasingly complex real world, where thinking actually matters if you’re going to make a go of it. They don’t want us to make a go of it. They want easily-controlled drones, and we’re giving them what they want with each graduating class.

No, it’s not an easy time to be alive. Particularly for those of us who don’t toe the party line…