The under-engaged conversation about racism in the United States

Please help liberate those whites who remain imprisoned in their minds, shackled by the terrifying fear of white race-extinction that undergirds 1800s theories of white supremacy and Social Darwinism, theories that led to WWI and WWII and Hitler’s Holodomor plan to exterminate Slavic peoples. Please remind them of the oppression their ancestors may have faced in Europe where being poor was considered a crime punishable by workhouse sentences and exile to North America and Australia. Please remind them that the British military whipped white sailors and soldiers with 500 and 1000 lashes of the whip. Remind them of social class oppressions against the poor whites across Europe. Help them to be brave enough to resolve their intra-ethnic/race trauma so that they can stop misdirecting it out of cowardice against people of color. Herein is the under-engaged conversation about race in the United States. Help. Talk. Bring peace.

Help employees talk about racism and police

 

Need a way to start talking about white police officers killing black men? Try British military history and ask if such white anger is directed at the wrong target. The British Army used such “barbarous punishment…at a time of evangelical revival, the spread of humanitarian ideas, and efforts to reform slavery.” Many white sailors and soldiers had more scars than black slaves did. Displaced, multi-generational resentment?

In the British military, white British male soldiers were punished for being late, sleeping on post, being drunk, or insolence toward an officer with punishments like:

• 500-1000 lashes
• riding a wooden horse (astride a sawhorse, weights tied to legs to increase pain.)
• strappado (intended to dislocate both shoulders)
• mutilations
• “bloody backs” civilian nickname to soldiers after floggings

Arthur Gilbert, “The Regimental Courts Martial in the Eighteenth Century British Army,” Albion Journal, 1976 link

Roger Norman Buckley, The British Army in the West Indies (1998) p 206.

The Global Bottom Line: “We”+”And”>”or” in Dallas, Baton Rouge and Minnesota

 

I am also sorry that we have allowed zero-sum game political theory to replace e pluribus unum. Perhaps the business model has been applied too long in the field of education, so long that we no longer have time to teach the core principles of the social contracts that create opportunities for the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Perhaps we need to restore funding to the humanities so that we can all strive more ardently to be humane even in our business dealings.

We have worked for centuries to make a more perfect union in this country, a nation where “and” is more powerful than the “or” of zero-sum game theory. “We” is the first word of our social contract. This includes police officers who are civilians first and always, as are their employers – every single citizen of the United States. The document that begins with “We” is the one that put the United States into position to be a global player in international trade. Prior to the document that begins with “We” our merchants were vulnerable to pirates. That document is so effective that in 1945 “We” became the first word of the United Nations Charter. “We” is the word that protects the people of the planet, your customers. “We” is the global consensus. I hope that you are comforted by the word “We” and that you, too, are part of the team working to bring those who prefer the fear instilled by zero-sum game thinking into the warmth of the national and global family of “We.”

“We the People, in order to form a more perfect union” -The United States Constitution