Race in Kansas City: Are we ever going to look at the bigger picture?

There already is, I'm sure, all kinds of writing and talking about the "mess on the Plaza" last Saturday evening.

All kinds of people will be shocked and surprised and disappointed and condemning and on and on and that's fine. It's to be expected.

And there will be much more. Some of it simply hand-wringing.

And it is/was unusual and odd and disturbing and it must be solved, for sure and quickly, as I wrote here earlier.

But last Saturday night's blowup, whatever the source, is only one smaller problem in a much bigger picture.

The situation is that we need to look at the bigger issue of race here in the Kansas City metropolitan area.

Before last Saturday night, we perceived our biggest short-term problem might be the possible Summer shootings--drive-by and otherwise--that might develop, heaven forbid, the way they did all last year.

Then we had Saturday night.

That will preoccupy our attention for a while, until it is, hopefully, soon solved.

But we really have to, eventually, look at the bigger picture and ALL the problems of race, collectively, in this city if we ever intend to solve all our problems. If we only look at different, smaller facets of us and our city, we'll never get to the core of our problems and different things will keep popping up.

We need to face up to the fact that, for the most part, our city is far too divided into East Side African-Americans, West Side Hispanic area and Southwest Side/Suburbs Caucasian.

Sure, that's a huge, sweeping generalization but there's a great deal of truth to it, too, and we all know it.

We've counted on extreme growth and sprawl and de-centralization for the growth of this city, financially and economically, and that has clearly also fed into "White flight", which separates us horribly.

We need to somehow examine our city schools, our city codes and sprawl I mentioned earlier, and the shootings and killings in the inner city and our separation--everything--as a larger package so we understand truly what the problems are and what solutions might be available to us.

This has gone on far too long and we know that. In our "heart of hearts", we know that.

We need to come together, as one, entire city, and start looking at what we are and who we are and fairness and equality and how we all live so we can come up with solutions.

If we don't, Saturday night's messy episode on the Plaza will just be one more smaller chapter in the rather long and ignominious story of a city that isn't living and working well after all.