I come from a place of immense privilege. As the country hurts and struggles to express the frustration seething through so many of our brothers and sisters, I’ve struggled with how to address, how to cope, how to understand. In many ways I simply cannot. I read the tales from black Americans, the details of how differently they have to approach tasks that I simply take for granted and my heart breaks. How can I, who has never once been pulled over for simply existing and possibly “fitting a description”, who’s never once had to strategize how I react to a police officer to avoid escalating a conflict, who’s never once had to have a conversation with my child on how to do the same… how can I truly understand? How can I, as an awkward middle class white dude help the people that simply want to be treated as I am already?
This I know… there are absolutely 0 significant genetic differences between myself and anyone with a different skin color. There is absolutely 0 difference in our capacity for good or evil, our ability to love and be hurt, our capacity for talent and genius. There is no difference in the chances of us making a mistake, committing a crime. But even in 2020 in America, the statistics for arrest, incarceration, sentencing, and mortality in an encounter with law enforcement draws a stark difference that should not exist. This is still only a small part of the problem, the statistics are just as grim for employment opportunities, economic upward mobility and credit, educational opportunity… all of it. There are simply no valid reasons for any of it, which should concern each and every one of us whether we are affected or not.
This whole situation isn’t even remotely new. The history of America is much longer under far more blatant and disgusting organized oppression than it is under whatever level of institutionalized racism we are living under today. The Civil Rights movement of the 60’s was less than 1 lifetime ago. Many today were alive when it was just plain acceptable to lynch a black man in the streets for making a white woman uncomfortable. Of course, it only gets worse before that. As Americans, all of us need to face that shameful history and learn from it. It is our burden to bear, and we must not go back into a collective state of denial with comforting self-assurances that we ourselves are not personally “racist”. The fact remains that we live in a racist societal structure, if this was not true the statistics wouldn’t be so skewed to highlight the problem.
I don’t know what I can do right now honestly. All I can think of are little things, I can just hope they add up. I can be brave and call out anyone, anywhere who exhibits a racist reaction. That could be as simple as fearful reaction, a lady clutching her purse as a young black man walks by, or the obvious under the breath racist comment. That could mean standing up to family or acquaintances to make sure they know that I believe their position is wrong and challenge it not through more hatred but by rational discussion if possible. I can’t predict these things, and only hope that I have the clarity to see it happening and the courage to act when the time comes. I do know I can act with my vote, and support those that mean to enact reform in the justice and law enforcement systems and I plan to do so to the best of my ability. It’s hard to determine these days with the complete erosion of what used to be easily discernable facts, but I will try. I will try through rational discussions, through seeking the truth and never immediately believing what is presented to me, especially if I already agree with it. That’s very, very hard, our human brains have evolved social conformance for survival over the millennia and are not designed to do this very well, but I will try.
These issues should be a moral imperative, this is not about party or long term economic theory used simply as a talking point to sway the masses and maintain control. Party doesn’t matter, in fact none of these arbitrary dividing lines matter: race, gender, political affiliation, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, toilet paper over the top or under the bottom… none of it separates us from our fellow humans. It is up to each and every one of us to stop dividing on these surface characteristics and look to all of us as equally valid and love ALL as ourselves. We are ALL fellow travelers on this crazy rock hurling through space. All of our ideas and feelings are equally likely to have merit and are only separated by the perspective granted through our little window frames to the world around us.
It’s time we all lived like that individually, and strive to emulate that as a society.