The President's Remarks

I may get in trouble for saying it, but I don’t hear anyone else saying it, and someone has to say it:  The whole thing about the Zimmerman verdict is that many black men have been executed in America on much less evidence than the people of Florida had against George Zimmerman.  Not only that, but many black men and women have been lynched without benefit of trial for petty crimes or no crimes.  If President Obama cannot address this issue, he should be quiet about the Zimmerman verdict and Florida law.  The prosecution had a weak case against Mr. Zimmerman, but many people consider that a lame excuse for his acquittal.

It is unreasonable to expect any president to repair a criminal justice system that is rigged against black males.  After all, it took Dwight D. Eisenhower – the man who had commanded the largest army in history and who had won the most decisive battle in history – to send federal troops to a high school in Little Rock so that some kids could attend classes without being burned alive.  It took Lyndon B. Johnson – a lifelong political wheeler-dealer – to push the Voting Rights Act through Congress.

When President Eisenhower sent the troops to Central High School he was enforcing a court ruling.  President Johnson needed a law to enforce to ensure that all citizens had equal access to the voting booth.  It is unreasonable to expect a president to solve our racial problems because that is the role of Congress and of the courts.  It is also the responsibility of us as individual citizens.  The president’s job is to enforce the decisions of Congress and the courts. 

If we do not like the decisions our government makes, we need to vote for or against people who run for offices other than President of the United States.  Many of our citizens do not understand the Three Branches of Government and the system of Checks and Balances between them.  They think of our president as The Big Boss who has to stand for election every four years.  This ignorance contributes to a too-powerful presidency.  The way I learned it in my high school civics class is that Congress makes the laws, the courts interpret the laws, and the president enforces the laws.

I can understand why President Obama felt compelled to speak.  He is a legal scholar and probably felt pressured to display some leadership.  But, George Zimmerman is now a free man and a private citizen.  Unless the president can announce a plan to address imbalances in the criminal justice system, it is inappropriate for him to voice his personal opinion on a specific case.  He cannot introduce a bill in the Florida legislature to change the Stand Your Ground statute there, so he should not say anything about that, either.  It is up to the voters and legislators in Florida to decide if they want to change that statute.  President Obama’s legal opinions can wait until he leaves office.  I cannot see how it can be useful for any president to comment on legal issues of which he can do nothing about.  It may lead to unrealistic expectations about what he can do to solve problems such as racial profiling.

Everyone is Racist

A recent article inthe Atlanta Journal-Constitution reminded me that one of the reasons I started a blog was to address racial issues.  I fear that the more I write about racial issues, the more likely I will be called a racist.  My qualifications for writing about racism and racial politics are that I am the parent of a biracial child and that I have been asked by both black people and white people if I thought they were racist.  I believe that most people perceive me as open minded and not bigoted.  I am a white man who needs to teach his mixed-race son what it means to be a black man in a white man's world.  The place to start is to teach him that everyone is racist.  Some people are openly racist.  Other people may not give racial issues very much thought.  Still other people think they are not racist, or do not wish to be racist.  In our heart of hearts, though, we all think that our own race is superior in some way to the other races of men.  There may be some enlightened individuals who are completely free from racial and ethnic bias, but they are extremely rare.

I believe the teachers who wrote the math worksheets mentioned in the Atlanta Journal Constitution article fall into the category of people who do not give much thought to racial issues.  They did not think through what might happen.  I know from doing market research interviews for textbook publishers that educators value instructional materials that can be used for more than one subject.  The teachers probably came up with the worksheets so that they could use them in history or social studies classes as well as math classes.  Just from reading the article, it seems as though the word problems were not well thought out if the idea was to generate questions about slavery.  The sentences quoted in the article give the impression that whoever wrote the worksheets has a rather flippant attitude about slavery, like they think it is cute to make students figure out how many whippings a slave might receive in a certain period of time.  Without actually seeing the worksheets, a person can get the impression that whoever wrote the worksheets does not take issues associated with slavery as seriously as they should.  That is what happens when you are a person who does not give racial issues very much thought, but has to teach children about racial issues.

Becoming not racist takes a great deal of effort.  It is an effort that must be taken before anyone can hope to teach children to be free of bigotry.  That is one reason we have approval procedures, which the teachers who wrote the math worksheets ignored.