Darrell Laurant: Looking through history's sharp lens

This is the time of year when we talk about race relations, just as we talk about peace and love at Christmas and gratitude at Thanksgiving. You can thank the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for that.

And this year, the conversation on race is even more combustible than usual. You have the first mixed-race president in American history up for re-election, with all that entails. You have the 150th anniversary of the Civil War — and, locally, the 50th anniversary of the integration of E.C. Glass High School.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked for thoughts on the Glass integration from people who remembered it. Since then, virtually every white respondent has told me the same thing — it was no big deal, everyone took it in stride, etc. Then I went to a panel discussion on race relations in Lynchburg at Lynchburg College on Thursday night, and several black audience members took the microphone to say: “Nothing has changed. Racism is alive and well.”

It’s almost as if people look at the same events through two sets of glasses — white glasses and black glasses. Yet with all of these anniversaries converging, perhaps it would be helpful to use the lens of history, instead.

When you do that, it becomes obvious that the road from 1619 (when slavery was instituted in the New World) to today has been defined, as much as anything, by human nature.

It’s not surprising that the racial attitudes of southern whites developed as they did (northern racism is more complicated). For it is our nature to rationalize, and the rationalization of many slaveholders was that their slaves were inferior, child-like beings who needed to be guided and protected. Weren’t they far better off here than in Africa?

Meanwhile, human beings are also remarkably adaptable. Having no choice, most slaves adapted to slavery, thus confirming the low opinions of their “masters.” These perspectives, white and black, then had hundreds of years to be passed along through generations and engrained.

When you think about it, we’ve since come a long way toward eradicating these toxic attitudes. But the 2008 election of Barack Obama – an event many thought would put the American race issue to bed for good — wound up summoning forth some of the old ghosts.

Seen through black glasses, the widespread hostility to Obama is just another example of overt racism. Seen through white glasses, it’s actually a sign that we’ve stopped thinking about his race and are now treating him like any other politician.

I believe that the racists, white and black, are in the minority. They draw attention because they’re loud.

I also believe that an unintended consequence of a good thing (integration) was that most African-Americans who could leave the ghetto did, leaving a shortage of role models.

It is those who couldn’t leave that should now be our focus. If you give people an excuse not to succeed, many of them will take it. There are no jobs beyond the inner city. The schools discriminate. So why not live for the moment?

Unfortunately, some segments of society benefit from the presence of an underclass. It creates a lot of jobs for social services workers. It gives the George Allens of the world an excuse to build more prisons and call it economic development. Every young black person who throws away his or her chance at a future represents a job someone else can have.

Someone with credibility needs to tell the school dropouts and the gang bangers that they are actually playing into the hands of those who disdain them. Our society needs to change the inner-city schools from hellholes with metal detectors to launching pads for success.

The best revenge, as the saying goes, is living well.

That’s just human nature.