Mac-Coleman

18 July 2013 –

The Trial of the Century This Is Not!

It has been five days since the not-guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman murder trial.  The news bombarded us throughout the four-week trial and continues to exploit predictable reactions to the verdict. 

I found a counter-message to the news in a course I wrote and taught to senior military officers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Entitled Senior Officer Leadership Traits in a Counterinsurgency Environment, the course attempted to professionalize the Congolese military and to help stabilize one of the richest, yet most corrupt regions on earth.  The course started with a study of individual and societal attributes, such as loyalty and cohesion.  These attributes are fundamental to forming modern, functioning nations.  The curriculum finished by teaching leadership traits senior military leaders need to successfully “win the hearts and minds” of the diverse peoples of the Congo.  Simply put, the course attempted to answer a profound question: “How does one create a Congolese?”

We should now ask a similar question in America:  When such events as the Zimmerman trial arise, how should our leaders reaffirm and maintain the concept of being Americans?    

Individual loyalties define societies.  People who have things in common form cohesive groups that  have historically coalesced into sovereign nations.  The loyalty flowing from family to clan to tribe to ethnic group often is a powerful source of national cohesion.  Usually, we are more loyal to those who look like us.  Japan, as a modern nation, has stable foundations of common race and ethnicity. 

Another buttress to societal stability is a common language.  The French speak French and expect it of immigrants, future citizens, and even most tourists in Paris.  The Chinese written language has been the base of that civilization for millennia.

Another powerful determiner of loyalty and cohesion is religion.  If we all pray to the same God, in the same way, and for the same reasons, societal cohesion is far stronger than if we don’t.  Modern nations are largely defined by the presence or absence of such common loyalties. 

What about the United States?  What loyalties define us as Americans?  I contend that common ethnicity, language, and religion create enclaves of stability in our vast society; but, they must not define us as Americans.  The rule of law, under a constitution that ensures that these powerful, individual loyalties and rights are protected in society, must define us as Americans.  It is the idea of being an American that must receive our temporal loyalty.  Consequently, the level of our loyalty to the rule of law defines how stable, cohesive, and powerful we Americans are as a nation.  This concept of identity base on principle makes us unique in the world.  This concept creates Americans.   

What do the events around the recent Zimmerman/Martin trial reveal about us as Americans?  First, most Americans probably had only passing interest in the particulars of the killing and the trial.  Most of us were wrapped up in our own lives and loyalties; few Americans missed church, kids’ ball games, or tax deadlines because of the events in Florida.  Most of us who did follow the news also personally accepted the legal results of the trial.  By all expert accounts, the rule of law, i.e., America as it is defined, was justified by the verdict.  Normal life will go on for most Americans, including most Black Americans, because the priority of most Americans’ loyalties was reinforced or not significantly altered by the results of the trial.  That is good.  

     

Second, some leaders with predominantly racial loyalties have flamboyantly questioned the verdict.  Does it do anybody any long-term good when leaders’ racial loyalties dominate their public message?  If what defines us all as Americans is the rule of law, and the rule of law was justified in this case, then should not responsible civil rights leaders mourn the death of Trayvon Martin as a tragedy and not use it as a cause celèbre to ensure that their particular group’s rights, and their personal celebrity, be maintained? 

Another way to ask the question:  Wouldn’t these leaders increase their ethnic group’s members’ strength in society if they stopped encouraging the creation of permanently-hyphenated Americans with such a weak example of wrong-doing?  Will such a group’s loyalties to America continue to diminish when its members react harshly to the next late-night killing of a young black man? 

These leaders seem to want their ethnic group members to be loyal to them more than to the nation whose function it is to protect their rights.  These leaders do little to create Americans and a lot to create divisions.  Perhaps a course on leadership traits in a divided nation would benefit them as well.