“Minority Harm” In America, Defined: Toward a Unifying Narrative Outside of Identity Politics and Majority Benefit.
Our Achilles heel in America is our willingness to ignore or tolerate minority harm — so long as “our own kind” or “the majority” benefit.
This willingness to accept minority harm has crept into our federal government and its agencies in 2021.
When we accept harm to minority subsets of people in this nation, we are tearing at America greatest power: The American phalanx.
The American phalanx is our republic’s ability to defend and protect those individuals or minority subsets of people, however they are defined, from harm.
But when WE, THE PEOPLE, and our government stop doing so, individuals and minority subsets of Americans in every corner of our diverse society and our economy get harmed and fall to disaster — unjustifiably, as WE, THE PEOPLE do nothing.
These minorities harmed can be black, brown, red, yellow or white. They can be Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist. They can be from the North or the South or from the mid-West or from the West. They can be sheltered suburbanites with fat bank accounts — or street smart and tough urbanites living day-to-day. They can be innocent, law-abiding citizens or confused and angry thugs.
When we, and our federal government, carelessly allow “majority benefit” and “market preference” to dominate our national discourse and marketplace over “minority harm” - and when we tolerate, accept and downplay “minority harm” in all dimensions of American life….an inflection point will eventually come to America.
And at that inflection point the harmed minority, becomes the “harmed majority”.
And the “harmed majority” will not trust government. The “harmed majority” will be disenfranchised from America. The “harmed majority” will have no commitment, nor ability, to be part of the American phalanx.
We have already caught a glimpse of the “harmed majority”. We saw them when our cities were burnt and looted in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder — and we saw them when the US capitol was invaded and desecrated on 1/6/2021.
Here I tell you, friend, that unless we guide our federal government and her agencies to re-focus on preventing “minority harm” and on protecting individual rights in America — unless WE, THE PEOPLE, each one of us commits to this American idea — The “harmed minority” will soon become a “harmed majority”. And the “harmed majority” in America will be angry, irrational, mistrustful of others and disenfranchised from America herself — as we are now witnessing.
You see the American phalanx is where our democracy, the majority of us, ALL of us, rise in unison to defend minorities and individuals, whose rights and lives are in harm’s way.
The American phalanx takes shape when we are able to recognize that any one of us, not just those defined by a race, an ethnicity, socioeconomic class or a religion, can become a member of a harmed minority — there, and only there, we will recognize that the American phalanx, WE, THE PEOPLE, are gathered under a constitution and a flag for the purpose of defending EVERY one of us.
Let us not accept or tolerate “minority harm” in our world, our marketplace, our government, our cities, our towns, our schools, our churches, our neighborhoods or our homes.
Because when we thoughtlessly allow minority harm in America, the enemy within has struck the Achilles heel of the American phalanx.
