The Tragedy of the Politics of Race in America

[alice wellintown]

“Sophocles implies that incest and exile, too much unity and
too much diversity, are not opposites but are, literally,
two sides of the same coin. He also suggests, what the
audience believed, that incest and parricide are acts that
obliterate the distinction between man and beast, inside and
outside, the wild and civilization. What Oedipus lacks (and
Thebes as well) is some middle term, an Aristotelian Polis
that mediates between our divinity and animality, making us
whole in a community constituted by diversity” 287.

J. Peter Euben in  The Road Home: Pynchon’s The
Crying of Lot 49, the concluding chapter of his The Tragedy
of Political Theory (1990).

The shooter thought he was working on the side of Divinity, that the
younger man was on the side of Animality. He was wrong. But his
actions are not tragic and what happens to him, whatever it may be,
will not be tragic. Nor is the tale of the young man in the hoodie
tragic. He is dead, the other is in the hands of a polis. Let the
politicians and papers have their day. But let us not be fooled again.
The tragedy here is not one man's death, but the failure of a Nation
to make a community constituted by diversity.

There was great hope that this President, this Attorney General, both
black men, would do something to improve the lives of poor young black
males. They have done little. If a tragedy is in the making, it is a
tragedy of these men, the President, his Attorney General, not of the
shooter or his victim. The First Lady has no fear of her obligation to
the black community. The President, to use the Attorney General's
words, "is a coward."

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting
pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too
many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Though race related issues
continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion,
and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation,
we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about
race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our
nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we
are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with
one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank
conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us. But
we must do more- and we in this room bear a special responsibility.
Through its work and through its example this Department of Justice,
as long as I am here, must - and will - lead the nation to the "new
birth of freedom" so long ago promised by our greatest President. This
is our duty and our solemn obligation.

http://www.justice.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090218.html