For nearly 140 years now, we have repeated this mantra of “self-help,” stopping only in limited instances to question whether in fact it is we who are the problem. But Sharpton’s remarks, his own call for us to finally deal with the problem of militarized and racist policing of Black communities, suggests that we are not in fact the problem.
His remarks did not meet a contradiction they did not embrace. While demanding that Mike Brown’s death be a turning point for the nation, Sharpton also suggested that the real turning point needed to be first within Black communities. That kind of argument is deeply dishonest, and places Sharpton adjacent to more robust traditions of prophetic leadership in the Black church that have called the nation to account for failing to meet its stated democratic ideals.
If the U.S. would “clean up its act,” this would necessarily mean a real commitment to due process, protection of voting rights, a livable wage, the dissolution of the prison industrial complex, funding of good public education at both K-12 and college levels, a serious commitment to affirmative action and food security. Those are the kinds of conditions under which Black communities, and all communities, could thrive. That kind of commitment to the ideals of democracy would require us, as my friend activist Marlon Peterson did recently, to “ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can undo for you.”