The Whitewashing of America
The first con job in my experience was as a kid reading Mark Twain’s ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’. The part where Tom conns his friends into whitewashing the fence that Aunt Polly made him paint as punishment for getting into trouble. He showed them that it was fun, not work, to expressively slop the paint onto the fence. They went for it hook line and sinker. Hmmm ...rubes. I guess that’s why I was attracted to the advertising business like a moth to a flame. The media. Communication. Journalism. Politics. Show business.
All one in the same.
Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain was an American writer and humorist. He was a publisher, an entrepreneur and a lecturer. Mark Twain is an American Icon, famous for such quotes as, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything”, and “There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence” ...and “Virtue has never been as respectable as money.”
Twain, who some considered a racist, was outspoken on the issues of race and slavery but he evolved in his thinking from accepting slavery as a necessary evil moving toward a more enlightened perspective and moral understanding of how we humans think and operate. Twain objectively observed, “The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder’s moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.”
We in America today are confronted with the effects of slavery on our moral perceptions as much as we we were in 1864, and it is an issue greater and more compelling than any other confronting us here at home today or at any point in time. Black America won’t give our blunted moral perceptions a pass, nor should they. The down side is that this continued grudge just exacerbates the problem. They are using stereotypes about their race as justification for their actions offering an excuse for their rage.
The whitewashing con job I’m talking about is that some of us foolishly think that we are the same “white” society today that we were in post war 1950’s America. White home, white mom, and white apple pie. A Fox news commentator recently stepped in it by lamenting about how we’ve lost the (white) America she has fixated in her mind. She claims that it was not a racist comment. Maybe we’ve all become too over-sensitive to the hair-trigger race issue. Easy to say if you’re white. Easy to say if you’re black. We’re subliminally blinded by the fact that people of color existed in post war America, fought in the war, but we somehow put that aside and go on our merry way to suburbia and American ‘never never land’ where all things white were good and all things black were inner city bad.
Seems like many of us are still adrift in that stigmatized thinking.
Here’s the bubble-bursting reality of the situation. We’re are not the America we were then. We are not a “white” America anymore. White Americans are fast becoming the minority race. Like it or not, that’s the situation. So, deal with it ...hop on the bus, Gus, make a new plan, Stan, slip out the back, Jack, and set yourself free from the constricted, small minded thinking that is making many Americans look and act like fools. Dangerous fools. Nazis, anti-semites, skin-heads, fascists ...
”Nightsticks, and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks,
Molotov cocktails, and rocks behind every curtain,
False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin,
Only a matter of time ‘til night comes steppin‘ in ....”
(From Bob Dylan’s, ‘Jokerman’)
People of color, many colors, but predominately black and brown are here to stay. They are multiplying, they are immigrating, they want and deserve freedom and safety as much as you do or as anyone does. To my mind it’s not as much a race issue (or it shouldn’t be) as much as it is a logistics issue. If you want to blame someone, blame the English salve traders.
There are multi-level issues associated of which none can be ignored or given a pass. Demographics, education, socioeconomic factors, integrity, character, moral fiber, shame, guilt, ego. It’s complicated. One-on-one we can all agree that a human being is a human being. We have a black friend, the brown guy next door is okay, nice kids good family. But somehow the broad stroke racial initiative applied to segregated groups by small-minded racists and trouble-makers adopts a gang, ‘lynch mob’ mentality that corrodes the American machinery we call our free, lawful society and only strengthens the walls between us.
The people you see on the news, black and white, on both sides of the issue, politicians, pundits, sports stars, community and agency leaders and administrators, even the news hosts and hostesses, generally do not represent anyone but themselves and their own interests. They are mostly there to incite dissidence and stimulate controversy. This is show business and a ratings game, designed to get your blood up and crave for more.
This is the great American con game. Don’t be a rube.
Generally, we all need to simmer down. Specifically, the radicals on both sides need to be isolated and contained. Moralistically and lawfully, and heavy on direction, a broad stroke racial initiative must apply fairly to all human beings of all colors. Anywhere.
Sadly, the odds are this will never happen. Because it will take changing people’s mindset, their psychology, and in some cases their very DNA to initiate the changes necessary for all to live in peace and harmony. This is not who we are and it has never happened throughout history, and it won’t happen in the future.
We will continue to whitewash that fence, in fact we will build more walls and fences and whitewash them too to keep our fellow human beings out of sight out of mind, and our frightened, racist, ideals inside. The con game will continue.
‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ is filled with racial commentary. Much of its language is straightforward, even disturbing, but remember, it was written in 1876. Not an excuse, just a note. Black folks are used to show injustice. But, one character, Injun Joe, an Indian, is used to show the dark side ...crime, violence, malcontent. Talk about racial profiling.
There are many quotes from Mark Twain about race and the human condition, most of them humorous, very funny. I think his views were objective and truthful, however, and ‘truthful’ is as much as anyone can ask or expect. Here’s one that stands out ...“Such is the human race. Often is does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.”
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
http://newsbout.com/a/John+Kushma
