The New Orleans City Council voted 4-3 against the Chevron proposal presented by Mayor C. Ray Nagin.  Council President Arnie Fielkow, Councilmembers Stacey Head, Shelley Midura and Jackie Clarkson all voted against the ordinance that would authorize the purchase.  Councilmembers Cynthia Willard-Lewis, Cynthia Hedge-Morrell and James Carter voted in favor of the ordinance.  The Times-Picayune article outlined each member’s rationale for his/her decision, which appears to reveal rational/thoughtful consideration regarding a complex matter.  Yet, I can’t help wonder if our community is looking at this decision through a racial lens.

Despite this concern, however, I feel that we do need to look at how we can honestly address the ongoing race-based tensions playing out in decision-making that affects the entire community.  This means that we have to make an honest assessment of our biases before we enter the fray, before we speak, pass judgment and motivate others to join us.  The council decision on the Chevron purchase, on the very surface, looks suspicious.  I am not saying that any decision made by the council was motivated by racial politics, but I am saying that on the surface it can definitely spark this sort of perception.

President Barak Obama, after making negative remarks about police action in the Henry Louis Gates Jr. incident, had to apologize.

His statement that the police acted stupidly was called a racist remark by Glenn Beck.

The President’s remarks, while unfortunate, I believe touched on the very issue that we have to deal with in a thoughtful way.  The national debate the the incident inspired about racial profiling, racism in our country, and the like failed, and continues to fail, to adequately look at the people who continue to promote hatred, bigotry and fear. These pundits echo what we know is going on across the country.  On the radio, on TV, in newspapers, and in our political decision makers, we see too often what looks like race-based politics at play.  Meanwhile there seems to exist intractable issues that have caused real human suffering in this country for decades.  When will we, as a nation, stop acting from fear and begin acting from faith in ourselves?

Too often I hear friends, colleagues, and strangers in the street make racially laced comments about why one piece of society doesn’t work.  Each time I hear this sort of anger and fear I wonder why it is that these same people can’t seem to give the same amount of energy to creating solutions.

Isn’t it time we begin to create solutions for the problems that affect all of us?  To do this, we, every single one of us, have to understand how life is lived by the person across the street who is different than us.  We don’t this very well in this country.  Heck, no one does this well in any country.  But if there is one place on the planet that can move towards a society that truly incorporates all of the people in its community, it’s this country.  Why?  Because the constitution already provides the framework, and our immigration history has brought the entire world to this land.

It’s hard to come up with a solution to a complex problem if we are busy accusing the other side of being the sole reason to blame for all problems.  We seem to still have an old, tired, and out of date racism lens that no longer works for us. This United States has always been multi-ethnic, even when it was blatantly denied.  This United States has always been multi-tongued, despite the fiction that “America” is an English only country.  This United States has always been multi-colored, despite all efforts to ensure the dominance of a worldview held by the majority of people of one color.

If we keep giving in to our fears and hatred, then we will continue to be a country that squanders away one of its greatest resources-its diverse people.  It doesn’t really fall on politicians to change the way we look at ourselves.  If falls on us as individuals to take a moment and truly consider the meaning behind our words.  Once we begin to do this, then we begin to envision a United States that is capable of more than it can even imagine at the moment, a United States in which an elected official makes a decision that is based on how the least among us affected rather than how his own tribe would benefit.

Tags: barak obama, c ray nagin, henry louis gates jr., latinola, lucas diaz, new orleans, new orleans city council, new orleans mayor, puentes, racism

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 9:15 am and is filed under Puentes Director. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.