(5 of 5)
Blacks might be reminded that a flawed judicial system will not be corrected by lowering penalties for, say, drug crimes--even though there is clearly a double standard for sentencing. Whites might be reminded that every day mostly black juries send criminals, black and white, to jail. It might be said too by whites that they have been speaking in code (their own secret language and knowledge) for too long, about everything from welfare to real estate. It might be said by blacks that rap lyrics that advocate cop killing are abhorrent to them or even that they have known a few honorable policemen in their lives. Both might tell each other that they are tired of posturing about victimization, pro and con, or that they are sick to death of talking about race, though they acknowledge its usefulness. Those who do not think about race at all might explain why.
It might be said that relations are, in fact, more comfortable than they have been portrayed; that some polls before the Simpson trial showed a considerable lessening of tension and a growing respect among races. It might even be said, or discovered, that deep in their newly pained hearts, blacks and whites know that they do not really live in different countries after all, that they have together made the same country, which has always been a complex of heaven and hell, as alert to its failings as it has been intent on repeating them. The black American Dream shares much with the white American Dream; one could never be realized without the other. That might be said. And it might be added that a shaky economy frightens everybody into behaving badly. And that a difference of generations may be as significant as a difference of color. And that more than a few blacks are ambivalent about affirmative action. And that most people think in more subtle and nuanced terms than the heat of any moment reveals.
By the end of last week, television was beginning to run dry of experts, and there was less talk of what had happened, not more. One could hear the creak of the hinges again, as the old, heavy doors were starting to close. If that should occur once more, the country will wait for the next occasion to demonstrate its division by symbolic action, and the form of the demonstration may be far less benign than Tuesday's.
But perhaps something else will happen this time--a change of direction, a pilgrimage together toward another country--undertaken by the great majority of blacks and whites, who, beneath the skin, know perfectly well that hatred destroys the one who hates, and this is an immutable law.