Reflections on America’s Racial Divisions

By Jim Holbrook

I grew up in St. Louis about two miles from Ferguson. Michael Brown and I are both graduates of Normandy High School. When I attended Normandy, it was a virtually all-white school due to neighborhood segregation. Then, many graduates went on to college and into professions. Today, it is a virtually all-black school, which has lost its state accreditation due to a different kind of neighborhood segregation. Many of today’s Normandy grads do not have access to the American Dream, and may never.

I grew up in a racist country in a racist period in a racist city in a racist family and attended racist public schools. All this has become clearer as I’ve gotten older. I now realize that one of the reasons I left St. Louis forever when I graduated high school was I wanted to get away from the perpetually unresolved racial divisions there. About three months ago I went to lunch with a young black lawyer who grew up in St. Louis, who also is living in Salt Lake City because she, too, wanted to get away from the perpetually unresolved racial divisions in St. Louis.

As a 70-year old, I am heartbroken that our country seems not to have accomplished much in terms of overcoming racial divisions since the ’60s. We seem unable (or maybe even unwilling) to meaningfully address America’s perpetually unresolved racial problems. Much of the hostile opposition to President Obama, for example, seems to reflect our country’s profound racial hatreds.

“Diversity” is not a slogan and real diversity is not easy. If we as a nation are ever able to make real racial accommodations, it will be because of individuals feeling and expressing genuine concern about and commitment to attempts at sincere diversity, however painful and difficult and frustrating these efforts may be.


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