Before you read this blog post, please view this video clip for context. While it is sad and painful, it will be helpful for your understanding of my position on this issue.

Also, after reading this blog post, I recommend you visit the Mission Mississippi website for what I believe to be the ultimate solution for racial healing in the USA.

Hint: Build one-on-one, black-white relationships that cultivate TRUTH, RESPECT, and TRUST, which ultimately grow to one-many and many-many group relationships with the same characteristics.

Unfortunately, all I see in the short video clip referenced above is that we the people of the United States are still talking about “solutions” that address the symptoms and not the root causes of racial unrest in the USA that have continued to linger over the past 56 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.  In my view, just changing the criminal justice system (symptom) as reported in the video is not going to materially reduce the underlying crimes (root cause) that are committed in the first place.

Also, in my opinion, revamping the federal and state laws so that certain classes of heretofore criminal actions of people are no longer classified as criminal, providing better legal counsel for impoverished blacks, and/or providing custodial sentencing instead of incarceration for crimes committed are ideas that are not going to materially improve the health of our society for all of us, – blacks, whites, and others of color.

For the past 50 years, the Cato Institute (Libertarian think tank) calculates that the USA government (we the people) has appropriated approximately 15 trillion dollars for social/poverty/welfare programs including the educational systems in impoverished communities.  The Cato report also shows no appreciable change in the rate of poverty today in the USA relative to the start of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiative in 1964-65. 

All of this has been done with good intentions, but the significant majority of this money has addressed symptoms (e.g., food stamps for impoverished communities) and not root causes (e.g., 4th grade black male in the inner city who cannot read due to poor learning environment at school and home, who as a result of illiteracy as an adult cannot get a job, and therefore, must have food stamps to survive).

As for civil rights on “paper,” I believe we have “leveled the legal playing field” in the USA with the civil/voting rights acts of 1964-65 and subsequent congressional and Presidential actions. These two US Congressional Acts ended the dark period that had its beginning at the end of the Union/Southern Reconstruction period (1877).

This dark period was controlled by Jim Crow state laws which emerged quickly in Southern states after the Federal troops were withdrawn by Presidential Order from the southern states in 1877. The effects of Jim Crow lasted almost 90 years.

I am thankful for Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership and efforts with peaceful/non-violent protest groups which culminated in the Civil/Voting Rights Acts of 1964-65. Now, I believe it is long overdue for his actions/legacy to imbue all of us. For the good of all of us in our society, we must individually mitigate the “us against them mentality,” i.e., tribalism, which has grown and poisoned our society for the past 55 years in the USA.

Throwing multiples of trillions of dollars at the symptoms of this Racial Healing problem has not worked.

We must address the individual hearts, family strengths and weaknesses, and moral (religious and secular) fiber of our society from a “we are ALL in this together” mindset. 

For the health of our country, we must do a better job of loving one another and treating each other with respect and kindness. A former pastor of mine in Atlanta, GA, said we need to “tell the truth, and trust the people.”

We of all races, creeds, cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, political ideologies, and religions must sincerely, honestly, and transparently research and expose these core root causes of our societal illnesses before we can come up with cures that make a significant difference. If we don’t work together as the collective human race in the USA to analyze real root causes and potential solutions for those causes, we’ll throw another 15 trillion dollars at the problem over the next 50 years and still be in dire need of racial healing.

We all are the same race at the macro level, the human race.  Unless we – blacks, whites, and others of color – each accept responsibility for what has gotten us to this point in our USA history, I believe we all will continue to languish in this current counterproductive societal state of finger pointing and guilt tripping.  

Not helpful.