Painting With a Broad Brush

If you ever visit an artist in their studio, you'll see many things.  Drop cloths.  Easels.  Paints.  Pencils. Charcoal.  Canvases.

And lots of brushes.

Brushes of varying sizes.  Brushes with natural bristles.  Brushes with synthetic fibers.  Short ones.  Long ones.  Very fine tops, and wider heads.

One brush does not fit all.

An artist learns over time which brush yields the most desired results.  How to use the brush to get the details of the picture just so.

This past week has been a violent and turbulent one.   Two persons died at the hand of police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota.  And six officers died at the hand of a sniper in Dallas, Texas.  Six more were wounded.  The officers were on duty at a peaceful protest related to the two other events when shots rang out.  (It should be noted at the time of this writing that no officer had been charged with any wrongdoing, pending investigations.)

In a society with 24 hour newsfeeds, the coverage has been understandably constant.  The news is on at least one television in our home all the time.  Although we are working to try and stop inundating ourselves.

I write this piece not looking to give answers, but merely to raise more questions.  Maybe spark some thoughts.

All of these incidents, like the ones in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland last year, center on race.  For all the working that has been done over the last few decades to erase race from our daily conversations, race relations are probably lower now that they have been in a very long time. 

Using race as the basis for the argument against the police is certainly easier than accepting that sometimes people do stupid stuff and make very bad decisions. 

I heard one man keep yelling at the television camera "white men hung us from trees!"  Yes.  A very true statement.  From a time long ago.  There were times in our history when a lynching like this describes were known to happen.  Not commonplace, by any stretch, but not unheard of either.  They were known to have happened during the years before the Civil War, usually as a warning to runaway slaves, and again in the 1960's during the height of the civil rights movement, and probably more than a few times in between.

However, the implication from this man was that it was okay to kill a random white man because in history a white man had done something terrible to a black man.  He was painting white men with a broad brush that all are evil.  That all should pay for the sins of the few.

I remember times in the 1980's when it seemed every other day carloads of young black men were conducting drive by shootings at the homes of other black men.  For those actions, sometimes, all young black men get painted with a broad brush that they are trouble.

And neither brush is the proper tool for the picture.

No group in humanity is without its faults.  The history of this country is not always pretty.  Slavery was a low point in the development of our nation.  But slavery is not unique to the United States.  The Europeans that came over in the 1400's brought their slaves with them.   The Egyptians enslaved the Hebrews, the Romans their conquered, Greece, China, Mongols, Africa - all have histories of slave labor.

To imply that all modern day white people have to continue to pay for actions over 150 years ago isn't fair.   That assumes, also, that all white people went along with that practice and thereby invalidates all the men and women that fought, and died,  for the Union in the Civil War.  I have a picture of my great-great-grandfather in his Union army uniform.  On my dad's side of the family, my cousins and I are all first generation Arkansans.  My grandparents were born in Oklahoma and Missouri.   Their children were all born in Oklahoma.    Oklahoma was still the Indian Territory during the Civil War years.  No one in my personal history owned slaves, or condoned slavery.

So why does it keep getting brought up?

The 1960's were a time of change in this country.  Even though all men had been free for 100 years, everything was not equal.  There were still divides.   Some were natural and organic and should have been left alone, and others were absolutely right to be abolished.  But, again, that was over 50 years ago. 

At some point, the past must be left there, in the past. 

Unless it is, we will continue with the violence we have witnessed this week, and in recent months.  It is impossible to move forward if you are always looking in the rearview mirror.

All white police officers are not bad.  Neither are they all good.  Each officer is an individual who makes decisions in each situation they face.

Not all black men are bad. Many have been instrumental in the growth of this nation.  George Washington Carver.  J.C. Watts.  Frederick Douglass.  Martin Luther King, Jr.  Jackie Robinson.   

The same is true for every group.  Male and female.  White, black, brown.  Gay and lesbian.  Young or old.  Doctors, lawyers, teachers, soldiers.  Every group that can be defined can be found to have both the most exemplary members, and those that are merely a waste of the air they breathe.

You cannot paint all peoples with one brush.