The US is still segregated – but is our democracy up to the challenge? | Wynton Marsalis

We’re seeing the same problems with race that Abraham Lincoln once complained about, but blackness is threaded into the heart of America’s identity and can never be erased

With the crescendo of public outcry around the killing of George Floyd, I fear there’s little need for another person voicing a commonly held opinion. I also believe that these now commonplace tragedies should be addressed when they happen, not when so much pressure has built up in the system that it must be let out. It is also much more difficult to draw a crowd every day for the sanctioned forms of corruption and disrespect of black Americans that are shouted from countless recordings and videos – and even more powerfully whispered in the form of discriminatory laws, practices and procedures that result in unfair housing and employment practices, and, more tragically, lengthy unjust prison sentences.

Much of this “cacophony of crazy” is executed officiously and with a warm and innocuous smile. Therefore, Americans of all hues pass quickly from anger to acceptance and, as months turn to years, our daily silence and inaction is wilfully misread as endorsement. Then back we go to the illusion that “we’re past this”.

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