A Stridently Polarized Society

Dallas Police    Mark Hughes, an open-carry activist, incorrectly identified a suspect by Dallas police

A man with military experience who took pains to get additional training in the use of firearms and stealth assaults meant to extract the greatest possible harm inflicted specifically on armed but unprepared-for-assault police gloated even as he was wounded and surrounded by police preparing to send in an explosives-charged robot if he failed to surrender his weapons, has created intense social and political turmoil in the United States.

The perennial, divisive issue of lax gun laws and easy procurement rises and ebbs with each new report of yet another atrocity. The death toll by firearms in the United States is legendary, but the American appetite for gun ownership is equally legendary. Average citizens who support the right to own and bear arms, cite distrust of their own government and the need for citizens to protect themselves not only from criminals but from government agencies.

Micah Xavier Johnson did not personally suffer grinding poverty and lack of opportunity to plan his future. He did suffer the effects of bigotry within the general society of the United States since it is endemic, though strides have been made in recent decades long before a mixed-race president was elected to the Oval Office. The profiling of young black men, leading to interceptions and interrogations vastly disproportionate to their numbers, and the fatalities associated with them demand answers.

Biracial and very-culturally-black Barack Obama was led by his social conscience but it did not necessarily focus on black empowerment though his administration elevated competent black elites to as many positions in high office as possible. These black elites have comported themselves no differently than their white counterparts, yet the power of the presidency vested in a black man has not raised the bar of relations sufficiently between black and white in America.

The general atmosphere of racial disharmony is as firm as construction cement; strides in black empowerment and entitlements aside. The harm done by black-on-black violence stagnates opportunities for those who consider themselves oppressed. The reputation of black street gangs is such that law and order focuses on precedent, seeing stereotypical expectations of criminality singling out blacks.

The combination of gun ownership and black resentment sees a black open-carry activist at a protest rally organized by his brother, being arrested as a possible suspect in the shooting of thirteen police officers leaving five dead and seven injured. In the immediate aftermath of the killings how could it be known there was only one skilled and armed assailant? The blithe assumption of 'profiling' under these conditions is absurd; it represents instead a logical response given the conditions.

Mark Hughes, 25, fails to see his actions as provocative under very tense conditions of unspeakable violence that horrified black and white alike. His personal sense of entitlement leads him to consider legal action against the Dallas police who, under immediate threat, moved swiftly to disarm one other perceived threat, however temporarily. And the "open carry" permissiveness in law in the state proves its rank stupidity.