America is taking too long to address its divisions

The Michael Brown case in Missouri has prompted Deborah Williams to ask how far the US has come in addressing its racial divide.

Protests broke out in Ferguson after a white policeman was cleared by a grand jury over the death of an unarmed young black man. Adrees Latif / Reuters

This past week, the paradox of America was on full display for the world to see. On the one hand, the country celebrated Thanksgiving, a holiday that commemorates the apparently harmonious meal shared by Native Americans and Pilgrims.

A few days before Thanksgiving, however, a grand jury handed down its verdict in the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American man killed by a white police officer in August. The grand jury declared the police officer not guilty, which triggered protests in Ferguson and across the country. The verdict sparked yet another series of discussions about American racism, particularly the treatment of young black men by police.

An oft-cited study by ProPublica, says young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than young white men.

Therein rests the paradox: the country based on the premise that “we are all created equal” and that we are constitutionally entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is also the country where, for centuries, it’s a great place to be a white man, but everyone else has had to struggle for access to those constitutionally mandated principles.

When I was a child at school, making pictures of turkeys by colouring in the outline of my pudgy little hand, the Thanksgiving story featured a generous “Indian” (as we called Native Americans back then) named Squanto, who taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn and then, they all enjoyed the bounty of an autumnal feast.

No one talked about centuries of broken treaties, entire tribes being wiped out by European diseases, or a legacy of imperialism that has not yet been erased. Those stories don’t lend themselves to crayons and craft paper.

After my 10-year-old read about the Ferguson verdict, he told me that if we lived in the States, we would have to be out in the streets protesting against the inequities of the US justice system. I found his comment oddly optimistic: vocal public outcry can’t bring the dead to life, it’s true, but the history of the US illustrates that sometimes, if enough people speak out, public opinion can be galvanised for positive change.

Watching the news of one’s country from afar affords the luxury of detachment. I’m not joining the protest marches in Manhattan and I don’t have to caution my non-white students to be careful – a statement that I never complete, as if I don’t want to name of what it is they have to be careful. But even from afar, it is painful to see a country predicated on ideas of freedom and equality treat the lives of its citizens with such blatant – frequently fatal – disregard.

In response to my son’s comments about Ferguson, I quoted Martin Luther King Jr’s famous line about the arc of the moral universe being long but ultimately bending towards justice. His response? “How long is long?”

That’s really the question, isn’t it? How long will it take to root out the fear, ignorance and anger that seem embedded in the United States’ DNA? The US has an African-American president. Yet, as Ferguson demonstrates, this simple fact has not been enough to change the facts of life and death for young African-American men.

The American paradox of freedom, unequally administered, has proven difficult to weed out. If anything, change at the top seems to prompt people into ­ever more fearful behaviours.

“How long is long” is a question that looks different depending on where you stand. “Long” in a country nearly 250 years old looks different to “long” in country like the UAE, that has just celebrated its 43rd anniversary.

Before I moved to the UAE, I thought of the US as a fairly young country that would, I hoped, outgrow its divisive racial politics.

Now, living in a truly young country, I see the US as a place that’s old enough to know better. That slow arc towards justice has taken too long.

Deborah Lindsay Williams is a professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi. Her novel The Time Locket (written as Deborah Quinn) is now available on Amazon