Iterations Remnant of the Past, Ideations that Will Turn Back Progress

By Norman Franklin

Norman Franklin

This election cycle has resoundingly stated the character of the nation. We gravitated to the divisive rhetoric, disrespecting verbiage describing immigrants, fear mongering and disinformation.

This is us, raw, uncouth, and motivated to serve only self-interest. We disregard the potential trauma it may cause others. Mass deportations, draconian cuts to critical programs and services paves the road with stones of austerity and assures hard times ahead for retirees and the working poor. Are the working poor prepared for stringent cuts to their social safety net: health care, housing, and supplemental assistance for food and childcare.

Are immigrants - Hispanic, Haitians, and others caught in the broad deportation net, prepared to process the trauma of family separation, and friends and neighbors caught in the sweep and deported. These are realities that will be considered once the emotional hype of the campaign dissipates. It’s tantamount to the January credit card statement that attests to the irrational spending for the holidays. The mood of the country, social and political, are iterations of an era when society and the political landscape were toxic. The atrocious acts are exhibits in museums, eschewed in school curricula, but accessible to the curious.

I made a visit to Montgomery, Ala., on Saturday. It was a weekend of poignant reflections. I strode through The National Memorial for Pease and Justice, The Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, and The Legacy Museum.

We made a day of it. I saw exhibits and read details of atrocities committed during a dark and troubled time in America. I watched video clips that captured beatings of African Americans by white citizens and police to deny them access to government institutions and services.

These elder men and women, these working men and women paid taxes that supported government operations, and the salaries of the police and fire departments. These First Responders were used to oppress citizens of melanin-rich skin; government authority stood impotent and complicit.

Tax dollars working selectively. Most exhibits, if not all, strained the facility of rational thought. You were forced to question how humans could feel justified in committing these harmful acts upon another human created in the mage of God. These were God-fearing people captured in the exhibits.

There is an ominous parallel between the God-centered rhetoric of today and the God fearing good people whose atrocities are chronicled in museums and prohibited from retelling in school curricula today. History has a lot to teach us. But we can only learn if truth and accuracy is the standard of sharing the American experience.

Museums are developed with the understanding that there will be the need to capture events and heroes of a new era. If the current ideations play out as in past generations, museums will add many new exhibits, some champions of good, others dark and tragic endeavors of flawed humanity.

We can do better. Truth is a powerful salve for healing.