Race Relations, Guns, Government and We the People ... Rodney King's Question Still Rings True ... "Why Can't We All Just Get Along"?

There has been a great deal of troubling news lately concerning American race relations. In that regard, some really despicable things have been said and done.


From the rancher in Nevada to the NBA owner in Los Angeles to the inner city Chicago shootings, it certainly hasn't been pleasant viewing, reading and listening.


So what can be said and done by us mere mortals who just want to get along and not judge or be judged by the color of our skin? In other words, what can those of us do who still ask the same question that Rodney King of Los Angeles asked us to answer more than two decades ago, "Why can't we all just get along?"


For that answer let's take a look at what two 'regular' people did recently, each on their own and each in a color blind manner. It's a lesson which speaks to all of us.


A Beating in Detroit is about two 'ordinary' people, one white male and one black female. In my opinion they are true American heroes:


"AS Detroit burned to the ground on a hot summer night in July 1967, my grandparents stood on their front lawn listening to the sounds of our civic suicide.

“Pa,” my grandmother is said to have said. “We’ve got to get out of this neighborhood.”

To which my grandfather replied, “How many of them can there be?”

Grandpa was talking about black people, of course.

Grandpa wasn’t black. Not anymore. The census of 1920 may have listed him as a “mulatto” down in Louisiana, but he was light-skinned and when the family moved north to Detroit he was able to become “white” by the time the 1930 census rolled around.

I don’t judge him. Life and race and class in America are complicated and murky things. But it is easier to be white. Grandpa knew that. We all know that if we’re being honest.

In any event, the next morning, my grandfather got a gun. A few years later they got out of town. Their home is for sale again. Asking price around $500.

I’ve been thinking about my grandfather and his gun these past few weeks, ever since a mob outside a gas station in Detroit beat up a man who had accidentally hit a child with his truck after the kid stepped into traffic, perhaps playing a game of chicken. When the driver stopped to come to the aid of the child, he was attacked.

After what happened, I suspect lots of people in Detroit are getting guns. And if they’re not getting guns, then for sure they’re not stopping for gas.

The motorist, Steve Utash, was white. The mob, witnesses say, was made up of a dozen black men. A crowd of onlookers gathered while the mob beat Mr. Utash within an inch of his life. He was saved by Deborah Hughes, a black woman and a retired nurse who carries a .38. After attending to the child, who was not critically injured, Ms. Hughes lay across the body of Mr. Utash and promised herself that she would put a bullet in the next person to strike him.

Four adult men were bound over for trial this week and charged with intent to murder. A teenager has also been charged with ethnic intimidation. Mr. Utash spent nine days in a coma, and is now conscious and recovering in the hospital.

Was the beating race-related? Probably. This is America, after all. This is Detroit. We have a history. The city has endured three major race riots. In my lifetime I remember two out-of-work white autoworkers in 1982 beating a Chinese-American man to death because they thought he was Japanese. In the early 1990s, white cops went to prison for beating a black motorist to death. Last year, a white man shot a black woman to death after her car broke down and she was wandering the neighborhood, presumably looking for help. Now this. So the circle spins on. Black mob. White fear. More guns.

Sadly, the talk after the attack on Mr. Utash wasn’t about a man who stopped to do the right thing. It wasn’t about Ms. Hughes, the gun-toting angel of mercy who saw no color except the red of his blood. It wasn’t about the use of justifiable force or the value of carrying a sidearm.

Instead white people asked: Where were the old-school civil rights advocates who usually spoke out against such beatings? Where was Reverend Al? Why did it take Jesse Jackson almost two weeks to say something? Not that any of them really wanted famous civil rights leaders coming to town and marching around. What they seemed to be demanding was an admission from black leaders that blacks harbor racial hatred, too.


But leaders nationally and in Detroit stayed curiously silent. A medical fund was established for Mr. Utash, but it took more than a week to convene a vigil for him as he lay in a coma. Until that vigil not even Mike Duggan — the first elected white mayor of Detroit in 40 years — made a public appearance about it. (Though he did put out a press release and a tweet.) Nor did any City Council person that I’m aware of. And nothing from President Obama. Rage and hopelessness are no excuses here. All Detroit, whether black or white, noticed the silence.

The fact is, it’s often hard to be white in America, too, especially in a struggling city like Detroit. Just ask the Utash family.

Three black men I spoke with at the gas station a few days after the beating acknowledged this two-way street. They called Mr. Utash an honorable man for stopping to help when too many people in this city don’t. They mocked the silence of civic leaders. They wanted to know why the mayor had not come to their neighborhood. They knew the score. They’re Americans. And they also know that we can’t expect those leaders to solve this riddle of ours called race.

If you’re looking for any hope in this story, go back to the corner of Morang and Balfour on the east side of the city of Detroit, where two very good people named Steve Utash and Deborah Hughes met one very bad day."

Summing Up

Perhaps Rodney King said it best after the vicious 1991 beating he received from Los Angeles police officers, "Why can't we all just get along?"

Well, for that to happen, we'll need more good people like Steve Utash and Deborah Hughes.

We need to recognize that government won't solve these problems for us for one very simple reason --- they can't. It's up to us. Each of us and all of us.

We also need to resolve once again to become a color blind society based only on things like freedom, individual choice, hard work, personal responsibility and merit.

And we must resolve to come to the aid of our fellow American citizens when they are in need, whatever their race and sex, just as Steve Utash and Deborah Hughes did just because it was the right thing to do.

Our self interested political leaders, aren't now, never have been and never will act as the force for good that Steve and Utash and Deborah Hughes did in Detroit, without fanfare.

They did what they did because it was simply the right thing to do, and that's what makes America the greatest place on earth and in the history of the world.

But we still have lots of work to do to realize our potential, both as individuals and as a community of equals.

That's my take.

Thanks. Bob.