What Should We Do About the Tulsa Massacre?

The Memory of Tulsa Should Drive Us to Act

Recently, the news has been full of stories about the horrendous massacre and destructive race riot that occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma 100 years ago this weekend. That event was among the worst and most shocking in the long, tragic history of racism in the United States. In a prosperous and peaceful neighborhood, hundreds of black people were killed, and millions of dollars of property was destroyed by a white mob. Families saw their children killed. Family wealth that was the product of years of struggle and labor was wiped out in a few hours.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should remember these tragic events, but we should also remember the words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address because they apply to us now just as much as they applied to his audience in 1863:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us … that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

The work of building a just and equitable society in our country is far from finished. There is much still remaining to be done. The racism of the past has produced inequities in the present. We cannot go back and undo what was done in the past, but we can work to reduce or eliminate the inequities of the present, and remembering the events of Memorial Day Weekend in 1921 should reinforce our commitment to that task.

What Should We Do?

In his book, How to be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi shows us what that means.  He tells us that the job of an anti-racist is to reduce and ultimately eliminate “racial inequity.” And what is racial inequity?

Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. Here’s an example of racial inequity: 71 percent of white families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to … 41 percent of black families.

The job of antiracists is to work to eliminate inequities of this kind. Two approaches to this work have been proposed. One is to focus on reparations. In this approach, payments are made to black people to counterbalance the effects of past racism. Pres. Biden’s proposal for payments to black farmers is an example of this approach. Ta-Nehisi Coates discussion of reparations for black Americans is a broader example.

The other approach to eliminating the inequities of our society is to focus on broad, redistributive policies that are not directed explicitly at black people but that reduce the racial wealth gap because black people fall disproportionately into the groups that are benefited by such policies. William Darity’s proposal for a publicly funded trust fund for every child is an example. Forgiving students’ debts is another example. It would reduce the racial wealth gap because black people carry more debt on average than white people do.

Both of these approaches are valid, and each of them has its place. Both require action, and we must act. As we remember the horror of the Tulsa Massacre, we must find in it a motive to act to reduce the inequities of our own time. It is not enough for us white people to recognize and accept that our prosperity has been built in part on such events. It is not enough to be “woke.” Ringing our hands and bowing our heads in shame will not do anything to reduce the wealth gap between black and white Americans. Purging our hearts of the sin of racism is good, but it is not the goal. The goal is to build a just society.

To do that, we must act, and our actions must be political. We must support policies like those mentioned above that deal with the inequities of our time. We cannot erase the injustices of our past, but we can make our society more just now, and that is what we must do as we remember the Tulsa Massacre.