How to Unite People on Race

If I am going to accuse Obama of dividing America on the issue of race, it is only fair that I should offer my own solution, right?

First, we have to define what is causing the problem. As I have said before:

As humans, we have within our survival instinct the need to recognize dangerous animals versus non-dangerous animals. If we see our buddy Bob getting eaten by a tiger, we quickly learn to identify tigers in the future, so we can avoid and/or kill them. 

Sadly, we also apply this to people who look different from us.

Like anything else we get from our instincts, we can override this innate tendency. For example, when someone frustrates us enough, it can kick in our survival instinct ("fight or flee"). Instead of bashing in our boss's skull, we instead swallow our feelings and try to work out some kind of reasonable compromise.

So it goes with race. Even the worst racist is capable of making exceptions for people of other colors once they become familiar with them on a personal basis. This was the thinking behind desegregation. Unfortunately, while desegregation can work sometimes, putting two people in a room together who don't want to be in the same room, often leads to even more intense hatred between them.

Where the desegregationists get it wrong is by looking at it strictly as an issue of skin color. What they are missing is the socioeconomic status of people who cling to racism: They are usually poor or lower middle class. As long as people in these classes have no hope for economic advancement, there is no reason for them NOT to get rid of their racism. They have to find some way to justify their own self-image in the face of soul-crushing poverty.

I am not just referring to white racism. This applies to many poor blacks as well, who are also facing the same kind of soul-crushing poverty. Frankly, we should stop referring to black racism as "reverse racism". When black men start shooting cops in the name of racism, why should we separate it from Bull Connor-style racism? Racism is what it is, regardless of which skin color initiates it.

But those are the extremes of racism. We need to concentrate on the everyday. Here are my suggestions:

1. We need to improve the economy. As the old saying goes, "a rising tide lifts all boats". There is less reason to look for reasons to hate when everyone is doing well financially. Too much time is spent improving the economy for the wealthy and not enough for the middle class and poor.

2. We need to remove race from the political discourse. This is actually the hardest part, because it is far too easy for politicians to demagogue the race issue. For politicians, this is the equivalent of poking a bee hive with a stick: It gets the poor people riled up and voting. But they aren't voting for solutions, they are voting out of self-pity and blaming the other side for racism. This isn't productive discourse or action. Trump blames one side, while Hillary blames another side, and round and round we go, but nothing ever gets solved. Somebody may say, "But how can we solve it if we don't talk about it?" I say all the talk is causing most of your problems. If 99% of talking is finger-pointing, then what good is it?

3. Kill affirmative action. If I said the government or a private company or a school was giving preferential treatment to whites, most people would scream bloody murder over it. Yet we don't have an issue if preferential treatment is given to whites. This is the definition of institutionalized racism, which was at the very heart against which the civil rights movement fought. But we say it's ok for it to be done FOR blacks? Hypocritical much?

In summary, this is a simple 1-2-3, but they all come down to one simple reason: Quit giving people reasons to hate each other.