America's Greatest Threat

The next ten years the United States will try to come to grips with the financial problems we have and what compromises of which principles must be made to solve them. Charity, our military responsibilities and our admitted obligations to vulnerable citizens will all be on the block. But these new problems, as difficult as they are, pale before an old unresolved problem that corrodes the nation: Its history of slavery and the nation's relationship with Black Americans.

It some ways it is remarkable. The Americans have fought savage wars, two in Europe and one in the Pacific with brutal, ruthless and remorseless enemies all of whom have been accepted back as trading partners and military partners and who have been accepted as new citizens without difficulty.

The Japanese position would be expected to be worse than the German: A different race, a surprise attack, savage wartime behaviour that seemed cultural, a horrific American retaliation. Yet the Japanese have overcome this wartime animosity to be admired competitors in the nation and, in some areas, preferred marriage partners. And the American Japanese, segregated and interned during the last war despite being American citizens, seem unfazed; in my memory I have never heard an American Japanese suggest he deserved reparations for an unquestionably shameful and illegal act. All this in two generations.

The Black American community, however, seems captivated by their past and are unable to shake it. And it has been 150 years. Interned Japanese are still alive; so are American Pacific troops. How have these enemy races made peace--indeed become close--while the Black American still languishes in his history?