We recently celebrated the 249th birthday of this great nation. On such an occasion it is only fitting that we stop and take an inventory of where we are, how we got here and what our future might portend. Like all honest efforts at self-examination there are moments of pride but also instances of shame. No matter what attempts are made to discount our faults and failings they are very much part of the national fabric we have woven.
In the course of this country’s development, our predecessors manifested great virtue, but they were not free from significant moral lapses.
When European settlers first arrived at these shores, they found land already occupied by Native Americans. The historical interaction between the two groups would be contentious, leading to genocide and oppression that we have long failed to properly acknowledge. Indigenous people were demonized and forced onto reservations where they could be contained and controlled. Ironically, it was not until 1924 that an act of Congress granted citizenship to Native Americans in a land they had populated for at least 15,000 years.
The year 1619 saw the advent of slavery in the colonies, bringing Africans against their will to build a new world. Not until a civil war divided us were we able to partially resolve this hideous affront to human dignity. It is conservatively estimated more than 1.5 million people died during the imprisoned transport of a total of 12.5 million enslaved human beings. Sadly, race remains a divisive issue in our society.
At the outset of World War II, Japanese Internment Camps were constructed to hold more than 120,000 U.S. citizens of Japanese descent. Their only crime was their ethnicity.
Now we face another chapter in our history when an ethnic minority is being defamed and scapegoated.
Alligator Alcatraz is a reminder of the darkest times in US history
We cannot ignore that we stand at the threshold of repeating some of the darkest chapters of American history. In many parts of this country there is ignorance of what is happening, indifference to the plight of people deprived of the rights of due process, and finally those afraid of voicing opposition.
I do not want to believe we are capable of such inhumanity, but our history tells us otherwise no matter how many others seek to ban the books or limit its discussion. Calling places of mass imprisonment like Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” detainment or detention facilities is an attempt to avoid admitting their real identity – concentration camps. They are not our first attempts to imprison those we label illegal to justify their abhorrent deprivation of basic human rights.
Finally, I have a remedy. It is found in these lines from William Bullard: “Opinion is the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires one to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.”
To this I would add the comments of GM Gilbert, a psychologist from the United States who was sent to interrogate the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg in 1945. He wrote, “I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I have come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It is the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
I urge parents, educators, religious leaders, everyone who is a mentor to others, to teach them empathy. Without it, I do not believe we can survive as a nation or a world. Empathy is our only hope.
By: Rev. Leo F. Armbrust is a founding member of GRACE in the USA, a nonpartisan group of community leaders.
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This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Alligator Alcatraz reflects a pattern of American history we can’t repeat | Opinion
Reporting by Rev. Leo F. Armbrust / Palm Beach Post
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