{"id":1320475,"date":"2020-06-11T22:20:01","date_gmt":"2020-06-12T04:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/mulhall-column-breakfast-in-america\/"},"modified":"2020-06-11T22:20:01","modified_gmt":"2020-06-12T04:20:01","slug":"mulhall-column-breakfast-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/mulhall-column-breakfast-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"Mulhall column: Breakfast in America"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image p402_hide\">\n<div class=\"caption-container\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"454\" height=\"620\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/08\/Mulhall-gpi-080919.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/08\/Mulhall-gpi-080919.jpg 454w, https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/08\/Mulhall-gpi-080919-220x300.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 454px) 100vw, 454px\"><\/p><figcaption><strong>Mitch Mulhall<\/strong><br \/><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText DropCap\">A few weeks ago, I couldn\u2019t imagine anything bumping COVID from the news cycle. Then, Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd\u2019s neck. Now, COVID\u2019s playing second fiddle to civil unrest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">And just like that, racism is what\u2019s for breakfast in America.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">A common thesis about racism is that it\u2019s uni-directional: It emanates from folks with white skin, particularly those in law enforcement, and it targets all minorities, but mostly African Americans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Of course, the uni-directional thesis is myth. Processing the characteristics of others that make them different is deeply-rooted human psychology. Everyone does it, and it may be one of the few traits humans share in something like equal measure.<\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col\" readability=\"6\">\n<div class=\"row gspi-donation gspi-donation-mobile p-0\" readability=\"7\">\n<div class=\"col-xl-4 p-2\">\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/03\/PI-logo-white.png)\" class=\"p-0 mt-2 mb-2 h-75 text-center rocket-lazyload\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.postindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/03\/PI-logo-white.png\" class=\"logo m-0 p-0 invisible\"><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><h3 class=\"d-inline mr-3\">Support Local Journalism<\/h3>\n<p><button class=\"btn d-inline\" type=\"button\" onclick=\"handleDonationButtonClickMidArticle()\">Donate<\/button><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">For those, however, who view this psychology as discrimination, as the canons of the political left and revisionist history dictate, the fall-back axiom insists, \u201cif you\u2019re white, you\u2019re racist,\u201d even though inferring what\u2019s in the hearts of a population based on skin pigment is genocide\u2019s Rubicon.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">A more helpful way of sorting out the depravity of racism may be through the human capacity for good and evil.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Slavery in America illustrates this.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The same folks who will tell you white skin makes you racist will also tell you that racism is systemic in America because slave owners wrote our founding documents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">What\u2019s closer to truth is that what goes with slavery in this country is every evil that came after it: Jim Crowe and Plessy v Ferguson and the KKK and lynchings and every other kind of wretched act that could make a claim to slavery\u2019s place in Hell, including the death of George Floyd.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Less acknowledged but equally relevant are actions in every branch of government arising from the human capacity for good, like the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Brown v Board of Education, and more recently University of CA v Bakke, just to name a few.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The big takeaway from this is that every respectable executive action, every regulation, every court ruling within my lifetime and before has fallen short of delivering what\u2019s wanted \u2014 not merely for some perceived inadequacy, but also because time ages them out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cThose old things lack nuance,\u201d someone will say, \u201cbecause they don\u2019t address the problems of the here and now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">So you can look at this at least two ways.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Maybe, despite all the failures of the past, the right government measure exists. We just haven\u2019t figured it out yet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">On the other hand, it\u2019s possible that anything government does will never be enough.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">I find that over the course of going on 250 years our government is, has been, and will continue to be a dismal agent of racial harmony, not because the founding fathers owned slaves, or because white people are inherently racist, but because even the best government has offered has left Americans short of what the idea of America promises.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Any sufficient or even passable government action would have by now made appreciable progress if not actually hit the moving target of what\u2019s wanted. But government actions, individually and collectively, haven\u2019t done so thus far, and from everything I can tell, they never will.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">What, if not government, is there then?<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">When I contemplate a solution to racism, I often think of a friend I grew up with who has adopted more children by far than he\u2019s sired, and while he\u2019s white, most of his children are not.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Government can\u2019t hold a candle to what, when it comes to \u201crace,\u201d which is to say \u201cskin color,\u201d he knows.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Unless I see all people as God\u2019s children \u2014 which I think at least partly sums up what my friend sees \u2014 I miss the big picture.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">When enough people miss the big picture, the best we can hope for is whatever measure government comes up with to placate outrage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Some of those who founded America understood this. Perhaps too many of us do not.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Tagline\">Mitch Mulhall is a husband, father and longtime Roaring Fork Valley resident. His column appears monthly in the Post Independent and at postindependent.com.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/opinion\/columns\/mulhall-column-breakfast-in-america\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mitch Mulhall A few weeks ago, I couldn\u2019t imagine anything bumping COVID from the news cycle. Then, Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd\u2019s neck. Now, COVID\u2019s playing second fiddle to civil unrest. And just like that, racism is what\u2019s for breakfast in America. A common thesis about racism is that it\u2019s uni-directional: It emanates from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1320475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-28 17:32:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1320475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1320475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1320475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1320475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}