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When asked the question, “What’s the biggest problem we face in America today?” what would your answer be? Some might say the economic status of our nation. Others would maybe say national security. A few might answer with drugs, education, or climate change being the nation’s biggest obstacle. But before we can tackle any of those challenges, we must first fix the racial divide that has been plaguing our nation long before the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Racial unity is the coming together of all races and cultures to exist peacefully amongst each other. In theory, that shouldn’t be too hard to achieve, right? Just be nice to one another, and everything will be fine. If only it were that simple. Prejudice is built into this country’s DNA, starting with slavery, and continuing today with mass incarceration, police brutality, and discrimination in every sense of the word.  

A’ndrea Wilson, professor of creative writing at Grand View University, is also the director of Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives as well as the advisor for the Black Student Union on campus. As an educator, Wilson said she believes that teaching cultural fusion to all students is, “a step in the right direction” toward racial unity. Wilson said that when exploring racism in her classes, students often say things like, “I knew that there was such thing as racism, but I didn’t realize it was this big of an issue.”  

Wilson said the biggest obstacle hindering racial unity is ignorance.  

“A lot of behaviors and prejudice often comes from ignorance,” Wilson said. “Not being aware of other people’s experiences.” 

In a society that is predominately white, those experiences tend to fall on deaf ears. When a person doesn’t need to care about the experiences of their Black and brown brothers and sisters because it does not affect them, this is white privilege. Being able to walk down the street without being looked at like a criminal is white privilege. Being pulled over by a police officer and not fearing for your life is white privilege.  

Once people are made aware of their ignorance and accept it, they are more empowered to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. And that solution starts at the top, according to Wilson. Making policy changes that are fair and just and enforcing those policies is a start. From there, change needs to trickle down through individual institutions like banks, schools, workplaces, and so on, all the way down to the individual level. Here is where people become more willing to acknowledge their own ignorance and work toward being anti-racist.  

“When you start at the top, people are more than likely willing to join in,” Wilson said. “But because (racism) is so deeply rooted in our society, it’s going to take more than four years and a president who says he cares. It’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of effort, a lot of hands-on (involvement).”  

Kevin Gannon is a history professor at Grand View as well as an author, speaker and abolitionist who is most famously known as the “Tattooed Professor” on Twitter. He was featured in Ava DuVernay’s Netflix documentary “13^th,” a film about the 13^th Amendment that explores racism, injustice, and mass incarceration as a form of slavery.  

As a historian, Gannon knows that history lessons in the K-12 world can be somewhat disconnected and, for lack of a better word, white-washed. This skewed perspective leaves students unprepared to deal with the past, especially racism.

“Any time we learn things or have to confront things that challenge the assumptions we already have, that’s a difficult process, and it’s a natural reaction for humans to be defensive, and in particular for white students,” Gannon said.  

“Unity is a really essential goal. We want to be a community that embodies unity, that gets over the divisions of racism. But we can’t get over divisions by just sweeping them under the rug.”  

Kevin Gannon

Aside from education, Gannon said he believes that a big obstacle hindering racial unity is the unwillingness to be honest with ourselves.  

“One of the main obstacles we have to genuine racial healing is that white people need to get over being defensive and uncomfortable,” Gannon said. “What the price of unity then becomes is docility and an unwillingness to talk about some of the things that we honestly need to reckon with.”  

According to Gannon, this reckoning starts at the individual level with critical self-examination. Who a person surrounds themself with, what kind of media they consume, how they see people of color being portrayed in the media are all factors that could change one’s perspective for better or worse. 

On a societal level, we need to address racial disparities like mass incarceration, police violence disproportionately waged against people of color, the racial wealth gap, access to education, and the resources available to black families versus white families.  

“In order to get to the future we want, we have to be honest about the present in which we inhabit,” Gannon said. 

Gannon said we should all be striving for the ideal of racial unity.

“Unity is a really essential goal,” he said. “We want to be a community that embodies unity, that gets over the divisions of racism. But we can’t get over divisions by just sweeping them under the rug.”  

On a final note, Gannon wanted to make sure to address the fact that nobody’s humanity should be up for debate. In a fight between the Black Lives Matter movement and white supremacy, finding a middle ground between the two sides is not enough. 

“Nobody’s civil rights, dignity, or basic humanity are things that we should compromise on,” Gannon said. 

Fixing a nation built on racism is going to take a lot more than saying we will do the work. We have to commit to a country that promotes unity and do something about it. By starting with being honest about ourselves and our past, it’s possible to slowly but surely wage peace throughout the nation and bring racial unity to the top of every person’s agenda.  

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”