It was in March when I saw the Facebook meme, “I would like to exercise the 90-day return provision on the Year 2020.”
As more than one person has observed, 2020 has proven to be the conflated sum of cataclysmic elements from the 1918 flu pandemic, the financial crisis of 1929 and the social seismicity of 1968.
My high school history teacher came to class one day and said, “Unlearn what you have learned.” That was all he said for the day.
We made fun of him for weeks. Little did I know those words would stick with me for 50 years.
Many of us are looking at the reality of race relations in America today with new eyes. We are listening to those giving voice to the pain of the black experience with new ears. In a moment where every possible calamity has seemed to befall America at once the familiar tragedy of the historic relationship between law enforcement and the black community has suddenly spilled forth among all other issues as the great moral reckoning of our moment. Who among us saw this coming? Yet all of American history has led us here.
Black lives matter. But black lives are American lives. Like all American peoples, the African-American journey is made up of not one story but many. Understanding the streams of these experiences can help us to understand the journey of a people whose aspirations lie at the heart of our path to a more perfect union.
Currently, the African American community feels that policing in America is prone to abuse. Therefore, they distrust the police. All too often, African Americans put all the police in one box labeled “the police are generally bad for black people.” However, not all officers are bad; so, the good officers get painted with the same brush as the bad officers.
Like the City Council and County Board of Supervisors, the Sacramento Transportation Authority continued to meet during the coronavirus closures. What did our transportation leadership focus on during two meetings at the height of hysteria in March and April?
You might assume they talked about an emergency plan related to the pandemic. You would be wrong.
