oreign and harmful to the body. Essentially, the vaccine is literally sourced from the virus that is ailing you. However, you need to be able to accurately establish the identity of the virus or you run the disastrous risks of creating the horrific consequences of a misdiagnosis as Malaan and his cohorts did in South Africa.
The testing of the hypotheses based upon shouting slogans, slurring others, scalping scapegoats, and fear-mongering are in: they do not trigger the desired immune response. It’s time to develop and test new hypotheses, using true and time-tested methods. Perhaps it’s time to reach deeply into our souls and emerge with the perseverance of Lemkin.
Maybe, a simple word might galvanize unity, guided by a love for the past, present and future of this nation-patient.
Like any other malady, the contraction of the disease of immipartheid has been a process. One theologian suggests; “The use of others begins slowly and then, over time, becomes the habit that not only dehumanizes the other, it dehumanizes ourselves as well.”[viii] Resolving the U.S. immipartheid epidemic contains the genetic code essential to begin restoring a fundamental dimension of our national integrity. The matter of the destructive duplicity exposed by the infection of immipartheid provides us with the opportunity to begin prioritizing our actions above hollow, time-honored, well-worn slogans. There is pertinent wisdom in the following: “We can’t change what we are known for unless we change how we live.”[ix]
What does that look like? Maybe it contains an element of a new tone that guides our political deliberations today, as the essence of the following has characterized our more lucid moments for national public policy development, since the birth of this nation:
“A new political message is therefore called for. It must begin with the age-old assumption that we are only as strong as our weakest link. It asserts that the judgment of a society will depend not on how it treats its most powerful, privileged, and wealthy, but rather on how it treats its most vulnerable.”[x]
Perhaps, the genetic code of the immipartheid virus contains important strains of a moral configuration that we are just now beginning to explore and unravel. My sense is that this is the arena where we must now re-focus our efforts. Maybe it’s the simple, time-tested, fundamental truths that we must learn to return to, in times as rapidly changing and complex as ours. Allow the simplicity of the following to speak to your senses.
“We gain something profound when we stand up for our beliefs, just as part of us dies when we know something is wrong, yet do nothing. We would call this radical dignity – if we remain silent in the face of cruelty, injustice and oppression, we sacrifice part of our soul.”[xi]
My prayer is that the soul of the body politic and the citizenry of the U.S. will begin to appreciate the term immipartheid for what it really is. I hope that this appreciation may birth a new posture that requires a reorientation in our attitudes, discussion and actions that respect the lessons of our Nation’s history. Just as we have identified anti-semitism and other racially-based slurs as a scourge, my hope is that we will apply this same fervor to the elimination of anti-immitism. The history of this nation reveals that we are capable of rising up and exterminating the social diseases we have somehow contracted. Our zeal to heal the infirmities of the world is presently hampered by our untreated condition here at home. Listen to the following:
“America is unlikely to play a different role in the world until it is a different America — until it finds ways once again realize the values of equality, liberty, democracy, and, one day, perhaps even of community in our own land. Efforts to alter the excesses of America’s international stance and to persuade the United States to respond more humanely to global problems are both essential and laudable. If we Americans truly hope to help others around the world, however, we have much hard work to do, first and foremost, here 