Racial unity and America’s ‘greatness’

‘Make America Great Again’ was US President Donald Trump’s principal policy stance in the run-up to his 2016 presidential poll triumph and during his first term in office but four years on and amid a tense re-election effort by him, the observer cannot be faulted for bestowing on the incumbent President an overall ‘negative score’. To be sure, the US remains the world’s mightiest power but whether she is qualified to be considered ‘great’ is an open question.

President Trump’s lot is most unenviable as election day draws near and his principal rival Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden shows clear signs of moving ahead of him in opinion polls. To begin with, the US economy’s problems have been compounded by the lingering COVID-19 pandemic and its debilitating consequences. Putting the US economy into shape is by itself a challenge of the first magnitude and the average American would judge the Trump administration mainly by its efficiency in putting ‘food on the table’.

This will require a fine balancing of public well fare expenditure against other top priorities, such as, national defence and security. As matters stand, the Trump administration is yet to make any marked headway on the well fare front and it is on this score that the administration would primarily stand or fall, besides other crucial areas, such as, the reduction in national unemployment. The economy is, as usual, ‘the thing’.

However, what’s worrying for the watcher of ‘democracy in action’ in the US is the recurrence of police violence against members of the country’s Afro-American community in particular. For instance, the massive wave of countrywide unrest against the killing of George Floyd by the US police in Minnesota in May this year has hardly died down when the US is being rocked by the news of the shooting by the police of yet another Afro-American, Jacob Blake in Wisconsin. The victim is expected to suffer life-long disability. One would not be wrong in taking-up the position that what we have in the US in relation to the Afro-Americans is a form of institutionalized racism.

The fact that Joe Biden is very much in the lead over president Trump in opinion polls points to the crucial importance of national integration in the forthcoming presidential election. It ought to be plain to see that the Trump administration’s handling or mishandling of ethnic issues is weighing quite strongly with the US public.

Thus far, management of ethnic relations has not figured as a top priority for the Trump administration but the fact that the protests against the killing of George Floyd attracted the participation of almost all the country’s ethnic and cultural groups, including quite a number of whites, establishes that the issue of ethnic relations could be ignored by US central administrations only at their peril. It has become a priority national question that calls for urgent, continual and proactive addressing by the country’s political leaders and other sections whose opinions and perceptions matter in the national policy formulation process.

However, there’s proof at hand that the totality of Americans are not racists or white supremacists. On ethnic questions they could rise to a degree of greatness and a solid piece of evidence to prove this is the American public’s voting-in of Barrack Obama as President. The US public did not allow itself to be blinded by racial prejudice when it saw Obama’s strengths and gave him their ‘thumbs-up’. The majority of US voters were, in short, guided by merit when they voted for Obama. And Obama made the correct appeals that drew an empathetic response from the majority of Americans.

It seems that political leaders could bring the best out of their publics or help bring the worst out of them. It is up to political and opinion leaders to be catalysts in this process of bringing the best out of their electors, or their humanity, by striking an empathetic chord within them. Usually, humanistic appeals by opinion-moulders to their audiences help in bringing out the better side of their nature. Inspiring, humanistic speakers, then, are a crying need.

While President Trump could be said to be wanting in this respect, his wife, US First Lady Melania Trump has gone some distance in appealing to the inherent humanity of Americans. Recently, at a Republican Party convention she was emphatic on the point that racial unity is one of America’s principal needs. ‘Like all of you, I have reflected on the racial unrest in our country…It is a harsh reality that we are not proud of parts of our history. I encourage you to focus on the future while still learning from the past’, she was quoted saying.

Such appeals are unlikely to draw immediate positive responses from audiences but they are likely to prompt soul-searching among the relevant publics. These pronouncements of a soul-stirring kind usually prompt people to think long and deep and enable them to make correct choices in the medium and long terms.

What President Trump conceives of as ‘America’ when he refers to its greatness is not clear but his anti-minority proclivities over the years indicate that his favoured power base is the country’s whites. In other words, it’s the whites that the President intends making ‘great’. From that arises the question of what ‘greatness’ consists in, in President Trump’s perspective. Is it merely greatness in terms of military and economic strength, for example, or something more?

While the strengths just referred to make countries great, such pluses are inadequate if they are not accompanied by moral advancement and maturity. The latter qualities are usually seen to inhere in only cultures that are humanistic and united in a spirit of brotherhood. That is, it is humanity that makes a country truly great. In South Asia, Mahatma Gandhi is one of the foremost exponents of humanity.

It ought to be plain to see, considering the foregoing, that the world is witnessing a tragic shortfall in informed, humane and sensible discourse and discussion. Almost all over the world, what publics are burdened with, in the main, from public platforms and ‘pedestals’ comprise of unenlightened and uninformed views and opinions. Sensible people need to feel compelled to clear the ‘world stage’ of such ‘stony rubbish’.