Every American should read this man.
The divide between who we like to think we are and who we are is unbridgeable by our most important leader:
On Monday night, watching Obama both be black and speak for the state was torturous. One got the sense of a man fatigued by people demanding he say something both eminently profound and only partially true. This must be tiring….Black people know what cannot be said. What clearly cannot be said is that the events of Ferguson do not begin with Michael Brown lying dead in the street, but with policies set forth by government at every level. What clearly cannot be said is that the people of Ferguson are regularly plundered, as their grandparents were plundered, and generally regarded as a slush-fund for the government that has pledged to protect them. What clearly cannot be said is the idea of superhuman black men who “bulk up” to run through bullets is not an invention of Darren Wilson, but a staple of American racism.
I have not written in a while because the general state of affairs in this country drained me of hope; a stance I cannot really bear for long.
We cannot act morally if we act without hope. But then it also seems to me that if we do not act, we cannot be truly moral. Most of us don’t try to change anything except the channel.