What we have here is failure to communicate.
Except it’s not really failure. It’s actually unwillingness to communicate, fear of what communication might mean. After all, if you communicate, you might understand some painful truths – and then where would you be?
That’s why discussing race with a white person is often one of the most vexing things an African-American person can do. You quickly come to understand that understanding is the last thing they want.
Take “Black Lives Matter.” Those words, if you are black, are both an assertion of self-evident truth and a way of saying you are sick of unarmed people like you being killed under color of authority while juries and judges shrug and look away.
That message would seem to be as clear as mountain air, which, for many white Americans, is precisely what’s wrong with it. So they do everything they can not to comprehend.
They pretend confusion: “Black lives matter? Don’t all lives matter? Are you saying black lives are more important?”
They rationalize: “It’s not the cop’s fault. If the man had stopped moving/talking/breathing hard, he wouldn’t have been shot!”
They feign outrage: “Black Lives Matter is an anti-police terrorist group. They’re the black Ku Klux Klan.”
At some point, you begin wondering if the words you hear in your head are coming out in English. How is it you’re both speaking the same language, but you’re doing such a miserable job of being understood?
It’s a frustrating, exhausting experience. If you’ve ever had it, you’ll likely be touched by a recent story out of Vermont. It seems that, with the unanimous support of the school board, the Racial Justice Alliance, a student-led anti-racism group at Montpelier High, is commemorating Black History Month by flying a flag on campus. A flag that says, “Black Lives Matter.”
Lord, have mercy. Just when you think you’ve seen it all.
It’s stunning, you see, because there are no black people in Vermont.
OK, so that’s not quite true. There are some, but so few – 1.3 percent out of a population of 623,000 – that Vermont didn’t muster its first NAACP chapter until 2015. For the record, the student who founded the Racial Justice Alliance is a black senior named Joelyn Mensah. Still, we’re talking about one of the whitest states in the Union. So this flag-flying at one of its schools is no small thing.
Not that everyone is pleased. As paraphrased by the local NBC affiliate, state legislator Thomas Terenzini – you’ll be shocked to learn that he’s a Republican – has denounced Black Lives Matter as “a national anti-police organization.”
That isn’t surprising. But the moral courage of these students and administrators is, pleasantly so.
We are indebted to them for a message that couldn’t be more timely. As appeals to our lowest selves flow down like sewage from the nation’s capital, they remind us that conscience has no color.
It is a point proven in the past by white people such as Elijah Lovejoy, William Lloyd Garrison, Andrew Goodman, James Zwerg, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland and Viola Liuzzo who fought – and sometimes died – for black freedom.
One hopes white people of today will take note. And black ones, too.
Because, for as much as that flag flying in that place speaks to the broad sweep of conscience, it also rebukes excesses of cynicism, shows what can still happen just when you think you’ve seen it all. To be black talking to white people about race is never easy. You’ll be frequently frustrated, often exhausted. But once in a while, you will also be something you never expected:
Heard.
Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, is a columnist for The Miami Herald. He can be contacted at:
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