Strange fruit
So this is what post-racial America looks like.
Businesses are burned and looted in a black suburb, not by white supremacists a la Tulsa's Greenwood in 1921 but apparently by some residents a la Watts in 1965, only this time in suburbia.
The spark was a grand jury declining to indict the white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man. Other outrages gained national attention. Among them, New York City police wrestling a black man to the sidewalk and his death following a "chokehold" and a Cleveland officer shooting and killing a 12-year-old black boy with a pellet gun.
All the progressive Web sites and MSNBC programs are unanimous in their verdicts: the police are at war with unarmed black men and black communities. Indeed, the police are dangerous to American society. Traffic and ratings increase with the coverage — the visuals are great, as are hashtags such as #HandsUpDon'tShoot and #ICan'tBreathe.
Protests against "police violence" repeatedly disrupt the downtowns of progressive cities. Again, great visuals. They are largely peaceful, so far. The grievance is that this injustice is obvious and intolerable.
Meanwhile, progressives are dealt their most devastating electoral defeat since the 1920s. From the U.S. Congress to most statehouses, political control is even more in the hands of those who see none of the above as serious problems.
At the risk of being crass and reductive, many are supporters of a new Jim Crow. What is undeniable is that the new entirely reactionary Republican Party's "platform" was opposition to the nation's first black president. It succeeded largely because of an irrational but instinctive backlash against him in the majority white electorate. The same happened in 2010.
Welcome to post-racial America.
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