Societal light amid darkness:

(Where it is and where it isn't.)

Sometimes we just don't get it.

Jonathan Jones writes for the Guardian, and he's apparently having one of those moments. I've never read anything he's written before, so I don't know just how usual this is for him. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is a rare slip, even as I observe that he has missed what is far and away the important point of this photo in his frustration over the viral status of the "hug felt 'round the world."

The cop appears to be comforting the boy. After all the anger, all the divisions, here is a moment of human reconciliation.

What nonsense. It is one moment among many, and the choice to look at it and celebrate it is clearly a choice to be lulled by cotton candy. It has got more than 400,000 Facebook shares. Each one of those shares is a choice of what to see and what not to see. 

He's right, of course, that anyone who interprets this photo as representative of the current state of race relations in America, particularly between minority communities and the authorities who are supposed to be - and who are largely dedicated to - making their neighborhoods safer, is choosing to embrace naivete, to don rose-colored glasses and sing Kumbaya 'round the campfire rather than take a hard look at the daunting work that remains to be done to address a huge set of complicated issues which the events of Ferguson (and Staten Island, and elsewhere in the U.S.) are calling into sharper focus. Or, as Jones puts it,

Liking this picture as a definitive image of America’s race crisis is the equivalent of locking yourself in and turning up the volume to weep at Frozen while the streets are burning outside. 

I was hoping that the majority of likes for this picture, which Jones decries as inherently untruthful, are for a deeper truth that we realize and he overlooks. But I've since seen this going around with text that underlines his concern, that seems to paint a prettier picture of the status of race in America. This divide is clearest to me as I continue to talk with my friends, most of whom are white and middle-class, who universally don't get what all the fuss is about. It is, therefore, important for commentators like Jones to continue to draw this picture for us.

But I suspect that, for many of us, our appreciation for this photo is not rooted in any assumption that it indicates the status of relations between minorities and authorities. Rather, we recognize that it offers an important part of the real and lasting answer to this problem. All of the systemic changes in the world are not going resolve this if they are not accompanied by real, person-to-person contact. That's the hopeful thing we like in this picture, not that "See, everything's okay!" but "Yes, this is part of what it is going to take."

And yet we still very much need to address systematic issues of inequality. It remains critically important to examine the many ways societal history has put minorities on a disadvantaged playing field and determine how to address them. It is important that we not repeat this history among the Hispanic population. We must understand that we can't have a just society when a whole segment of it has a well-rooted fear of the people who are supposed to be keeping them safe. Anyone who thinks that picture of one cop hugging one tear-filled boy changes that is indeed myopic.

And this afternoon in the news is another non-indictment that will make matters worse again. Just as I point out the truth that Mr. Jones claims this photo lacks, so too I must acknowledge the truth that he proclaims. Things are likely to get worse before they get better, and they aren't going to get better at all without everyone involved taking a hard look at their own part of the problem instead of blaming the other guy.

The encounter in this photo is still a good and, yes, a true thing.

If there are some who would use it to tell a false narrative, that has been the case even for the very Incarnation of Truth.