Five black students at the Air Force Academy preparatory school awoke Tuesday to find the words "go home" followed by a racial epithet scrawled on the message boards outside their rooms. It was, regrettably, a sign of our times, as overt racism and white supremacy enjoy their most concerted public resurgence in decades. But there is a way to fight back. As Lieutenant General Jay Silveria demonstrated with a formidable combination of empathy and forcefulness, the way to deal with incidents like these is complete, unequivocal rejection of those perpetrating them and the ideas that fuel them. In a speech before the 4,000 cadets at the main Academy Thursday, Silveria distilled that notion down to the simplest terms:

"If you can't treat someone with dignity and respect, then get out."



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It's hard to find fault with much of anything in Silveria's message, one that, if we're lucky—we're not—might make its way to the West Wing. Silveria certainly represents the baseline requirement for how people in an organization, and in society, must treat one another. He also goes a step further to actively celebrate diversity as a source of strength for an institution:

But I also have a better idea. And it's about our diversity. And its the power of the diversity, the power of the 4,000 of you and all of the people that are on the staff tower and lining the glass. The power of us as a diverse group. The power that we come from all walks of life, that we come from all parts of this country, that we come from all races, we come from all backgrounds, gender, all makeup, all upbringing. The power of that diversity comes together and makes us that much more powerful.

This is a winning argument for this nation's new moral majority. But if we are truly going to take this problem on, we will need to go further and address the systemic, structural issues that prove discriminatory against some and divisive to all. That extends from severe racial inequities in the criminal justice system to the stories we tell ourselves about why there are monuments to Confederate generals in our public squares.

Still, dignity and respect are a great place to start.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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