Remember the Tina Turner hit, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” In the lyrics, love is referred to as a “second-hand emotion.” That song popped into my head as I watch what is happening to our country.
Love has got a lot to do with it and, unfortunately, it seems to be a second-hand emotion these days — second to a lot of hate. We see that hate on television, hear about it on the radio, read about it in the newspaper and watch as hate is fanned with irresponsible social media postings.
Hate seems to have gotten its impetus from well-publicized examples of highly questionable police tactics and spread into something approaching anarchy in cities across the nation. Some people are demanding law enforcement agencies be defunded. Others wonder how we can stop the rioting and looting without the police.
Kneeling at the playing of our national anthem is seen as a heroic gesture by some and patently disrespectful by others. We hear that Black lives matter — and they do — but many whites perceive that statement as a wholesale indictment of all white people who, in turn, wonder why no one brings up the killing fields in places like Chicago, where Blacks are killing other Blacks in alarming numbers.
Yet, many white people don’t seem to understand or appreciate the inherent frustration of Blacks. I can’t imagine how I would feel today had I grown up watching parents that I loved dearly having to sit in the back of the bus, be denied service in a restaurant because of the color of their skin, serving their country in war and yet being prohibited from voting when they returned. Many would say we are long past those days, others would say we have a long way to go.
As for this day, we seem to be at an impasse in race relations in this country. We aren’t talking to each other. We are yelling. It is only going to get worse as election time nears and politicians pander to their supporters on either side of the racial divide.
What is keeping us from reaching out to each other? Arnie Sidman, former senior vice president at RJR Nabisco and an Atlanta tax attorney is author of “From Race to Renewal: It’s Not All Black & White.” In a recent opinion piece in the Atlanta newspapers, he says, “Any plan to improve race relations between Black Americans and white Americans must be voluntarily implemented outside the political realm” and that “the initial goal should simply be making Blacks and whites more comfortable with one another in a social setting.” If we get to know each other up-close-and-personal, we might find out we have more in common than we realize.