It takes two to tango

Race relations in America is never going to be a graceful waltz, but it doesn’t have to be a drunken conga line breaking apart everywhere with people falling all over each other.

Maybe a structured carefully orchestrated dance, like a tango, might be the best we can hope for.

As we all know, it takes two to tango.

In a race relations tango, the two participants are the long arm of the law—government propositioning for a dance, and the willingness of white people to accept.

How our nation has dealt with the issue of race is a 200-year awkward dance that generally has left everyone unhappy for good reason. The two participants, government and white people often appear to be tone-deaf, dancing with two left feet, and with no sense of timing, almost as if they were listening to different music.

In the years immediately preceding the Civil War, white people were split on the issue of slavery; the south was for it, the north was against it, and neither side was particularly in favor of recognizing the civil rights of Negroes. Government was neutral at best, and disinterested at worst, so for thirty years the nation staggered along allowing a very real problem to fester.

People were still split by 1861, but the government finally took a stand. Actually, two governments took two different stands. The four-year Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy decided the issue of slavery once and for all. At its conclusion, however, the people were still as divided as ever. There was dancing in northern streets, but as a nation, people were still hunkered down along their respective walls looking at an empty, uninviting dance floor.

A lot of legislative noise was heard after the war during Reconstruction, but none of it was music to the ears of southerners. Legislation regarding race in the north was non-existent. The only dancing taking place anywhere were Indian war dances, which seemed to take everyone’s minds off the still empty dance floor.

Reconstruction slipped into Jim Crow as easily as bad bitter apples rot when left untouched. The south, tired of the iron fist of the north telling them what to do, fell into old bad habits as individuals and small mobs operating more like packs of wolves began dancing to the beat of their own drummers.

Race relations took a back seat during the Jim Crow era as everyone’s attention shifted to wars and economic strife.

Congress simply tired of passing legislation as government pulled the covers over its ears so as not to hear the music. If white people were dancing at all, it was around the race issue. Everyone had retreated to their own corners. Segregation was the tune being heard in every city, north and south. Finally, the noise got too loud to ignore.

For the first half of the 20^th century, government did it best, see no evil, hear no evil routine, until suddenly the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954 caught everyone’s attention.

It caught their attention, but didn’t garner much support. For the most part, white people were still not ready to dance. A few hit the dance floor, but they were uncomfortable and looked out of place.

By the sixties, black people were screaming to get on the dance floor. Government heard their cries and again passed legislation designed to bring everyone together, but white people were still not ready. They might have been tapping their toes and snapping their fingers, but they still weren’t receptive to the government telling them they had to dance.

For the last fifty years, another problem has arisen. Government was also becoming divided. Federal laws were pushing in one direction, red-state and local legislation in another, while the strong arm of police were taking matters into their own hands. No one was dancing in the streets, but everyone was taking to the streets.

The question on everyone’s lips was, could black and white people and legislators and police ever meet each other on the dance floor, recognize a common tune, and do anything that didn’t look like a drunken conga line?

The question is still unanswered, but people are slowly pulling themselves away from the wall, inching toward to the dance floor. They are still unsure, afraid of how they will look, hesitant to be the only ones out there, but something is happening.

People—white, black and brown people—appear to be coming together, at least on the single issue of heavy-handed police violence toward blacks. Governments—federal, state and local—seem to have heard their cries, which to be honest had to be shouted at them, but at least they’re listening.

The wild cards are police unions, which in the past have always circled the wagons in defense of obviously bad cops, and the increasingly small number of whites who are not going to dance no how, nowhere, no way.

Our Constitution decreed over 200 years ago that all men are created equal with certain inalienable rights. For the first time in our history millions of white and black people, marching together, seem to finally be in step with the government, admitting that as a nation we have not been true to that promise. These voices in the streets are drowning out the now small minority of people who continue to reject that promise that all men of all races have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Too many people are dancing in the streets, and no one appears ready to go home. We just may have found a dance we can all do together. It doesn’t even have to be a tango.