Here We Are Again

Will White Americans ever heed the call for racial reckoning?

My best man, and likely my best friend in this world outside of my wife, is a police officer. We have talked often about the perils and difficulties of the job. He has told me crazy stories that are difficult to fathom for someone not on the job. I have often worried about his safety and talked with his wife about the anxiety you feel when someone you love is a police officer. However, he is a police officer in Canada. While I think he would admit that they do not have a perfect system, he and I regularly talk about the differences with policing in Canada versus the US. With the frequency of highly publicized cases involving police use of force here, particularly against people of color, we have had ample occasions to talk about the differences, in particular the quick use of guns and the lack of accountability, following these cases.

This period in American history has been difficult for so many. Not only have we been enduring a pandemic on a scale we have not seen in a century (I hope that does not diminish the AIDS pandemic), but we have been in a moment of racial reckoning unlike any we have had since the 1960’s and the Civil Rights Movement. At least, I hope it is a reckoning. I hope we are realizing that we still have much to reconcile as a country as it pertains to race. I hope that those who have thought we are post-racial realize that is fantasy. Race is a construct, created to place people into a hierarchy, with white people stationed at the top (although there has been nuance and changes as certain groups have transitioned to being recognized as fully white). Our society has had that hierarchy baked into the system, before we were even an independent country. Even our constitution equated Blacks as 3/5ths of a person and only that much because they wanted to increase the representation of our rural states within our government.

I am not as sure as I was a couple months ago that this moment will impact the country appropriately. By that, let’s be honest, I mean predominantly White people, that they will be impacted in a way that will mean substantive change in public policy that will ultimately result in the equality of all Americans. Growing up, I had many experiences that most White people in this country do not have the pleasure of having. This is largely due to their own choices, and the result of systemic racism and segregation. It hurts me when so often what White people hear about regarding communities of color is the pain, the poverty, the crime. I, in no way, want to diminish that the great inequities that exist in communities of color in comparison with white communities need to be addressed. The dual and intersected evils of racial and economic inequality are staggering and can only have occurred when there are systems in place that assure their existence. I do, however, wish that more white people knew the joy, the love, the resilience of these communities. It is sad that white Americans love the culture, the fashion, the athletes and entertainers, the music, the speech of the Black community so much, without knowing the people of the community and the history. It is because we live in a country that continues to be so incredibly segregated, that has increasing racial disparities across every aspect of life, and where Black Americans and white Americans have so little genuine interaction outside of work. It is because of all of that that we must focus on the bad, focus on the inequities. It makes it all the more alarming that people continue to ignore Black voices just asking to be heard and respond to the truths these voices are trying to share with the same tired, ignorant narratives.

We live at a time where there are so many intellectually dishonest arguments about history (not to mention free speech, civil discourse, real vs fake news, and the right to air all points of view with no regard to societal boundaries or ramifications when these points of view veer into extremism). Monuments glorifying traitors and racists are claimed to be necessary so that we remember our history. Yet, there is a call by our president, a person who has proven himself to be a racist time and time again, for focus on a US history that will minimize, if not erase, our worst moments. This is including those embodied in these monuments, so as not to upset the mistaking nostalgia for history by his supporters. This is a president who, counter to the prevailing thinking of his party at the time, increased his base on his way to becoming the party nominee, and ultimately winning the election, by embracing the alt-right and white supremacists who previously felt left out by the party. It is only in that embrace of the most racist in our midst that the hypocrisy of fighting for monuments to the Confederacy AND wanting to re-write American history, erasing, or at least minimizing, our most racist and abhorrent acts can be accepted as compatible. I believe that the contrary is true. It is not that we are hurt by allowing for a history that includes the most horrific of our failures alongside our greatest achievements and successes. It is that we are ignorant of so much of our history, particularly our racial history. Can you imagine a coach who ignored all of the mistakes, to only focus on the good things? How about a teacher who just handed out A’s because it was best to ignore anything that was not representative of the students’ best work? Should we, as a country, not learn from the bad things that we have done? How can anyone understand why we are where we are racially without understanding the context of that history? How can we make things equal without accounting for the 400 years of disadvantaging those who are not white? Willful collective ignorance has so much to do with our country’s collective continued racism.

With policing, as with racism, I believe we focus too much on the individuals instead of the institutions, the systems. Yesterday, there was an announcement that two of the three police officers who were involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor were found innocent of any wrongdoing. The third was found guilty of wanton dangerous action because some of the bullets he fired wildly into Breonna Taylor’s apartment, in fact entered another apartment and endangered the people who lived there. He was not guilty, however, of anything involving Breonna Taylor, who was the only person killed. Under the law, and the system we have in place, this was the outcome that had been predicted by experts. This announcement has already elicited dramatically different reactions. What troubles me most is that so many White Americans cannot find the empathy to understand how people would be so upset that a woman sleeping in her own bed with her fiancé, can be murdered without repercussions. What troubles me is that so many White people do not care to understand the history of policing in this country, it’s dubious past racially, and do not care to listen to the pain from Black Americans regarding their relationship with police that is so dramatically different than their own experience. As a coach, it breaks my heart that so many of our Black players would not call the police under any circumstances. If there is no accountability within our system for the killing of a woman sleeping in her own apartment, how can you blame them and how can our system not be broken? Each time there is a case, such as this one, there are so many White people that cling to certain tidbits to distract from the collective and resounding truth. I have heard little to none of these same White people discuss the incongruence of No Knock Warrants and Stand Your Ground Laws and the preponderance of guns in this country, purportedly necessary for self-defense. How about the discussion that that excessive number of guns makes the job of police exponentially more difficult? This is certainly part of the problem of why police in America unholster and use firearms so often. Where is the discussion about the accountability for police that have not done the pre-work to know information that would have not supported following through on serving the warrant? Not only have the majority of police in cases involving the mistreatment, the brutality against, and the killing of Black people not resulted in criminal charges, but they have also not resulted in ending the police officers’ careers. Whose lives matter? Do we need to be reminded?

There have been far too many cases of police brutality against and killing of Black people. It has spawned a call to remember that Black lives matter. The missing word, the implied word at the end has always been ALSO. We have almost always found ways to value the lives of the police in this country and we have generally valued White lives as the barometer by which all other American lives are measured, but we have failed over and over to always value the lives of marginalized communities, Black Americans foremost.

I often wonder about White Americans’ reticence to accept and desire to learn Black American history. Whites do not to try to empathize with the situation of Black brothers and sisters or try to listen to them when they speak of what it is like to be Black in this country. Whites are reluctant to hear and respect their feelings when they react to something, like yesterday’s announcement, with so much pain and anger. This is because we see this as some sort of zero-sum game. Like the book Strangers in Their Own Land, White Americans feel their standing and power in our country slipping away with the growing numbers of non-white minorities, quickly moving to become a majority. Certainly, our president speaks directly to this collective white fear. Like Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball, they feel that allowing for Black lives to matter or actual equality would mean that mediocre white baseball players or the average white citizen is going to lose something. I would argue that society does not mirror sport in this instance, and one person does not have to lose for another to gain. Instead, we are all going to have our lives and our country be enriched by allowing for these discrepancies to be eradicated, and for there to be equality. Think of all we have lost by purposely holding a large segment of our population down. And for a country that thinks of nearly everything in terms of personal financial interests, we pay greatly now for the disparity in wealth, in health care, in the criminal justice system, in housing, in education. Whatever we save initially, we pay exponentially more for in the end.

I have been haunted by the voices of many people during this time. One was Doc Rivers, head coach for the LA Clippers, who had an emotional interview while in the NBA bubble, following the murder of Jacob Blake. In that, he said, “We keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.” (Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhqKda79Lys). It is heartbreaking. It is my impression that Black people feel they have been told over an over that this is not your country, not just that you are valued less but that you are guest to this land of Whiteness. From our use of patriotism and the flag, “Love it or Leave it”, focus on property damage and fires when 93% of racial justice protests have had zero incidents of property damage or violence, the decreasing support of the black lives matter movement amongst White people, the support for White vigilantes dressed and weaponized as if the second civil war they predict is upon us, and especially after another case where police officers are found justified in the murder of a Black person; all of it feels like a marking of territory for a White majority that sees the statistics that there majority is diminishing. It feels like a White majority desperately fighting to keep their power and their country. As Howard Bryant says in his book Full Dissidence, if the Blue Lives Matter movement was about respecting and appreciating the service that police provide, why did it only originate as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement? As we shout “Blue Lives Matter” and display its flag, as we nitpick each case for excuses as to why the police are not responsible, it feels like it is more a condemnation of anyone, particularly a Black person, who would have the audacity to question police and want them to be held accountable for the unnecessary deaths of Black people at their hands.

Another voice I have been haunted by is Kimberly Jones, an author. Her video How Can We Win (Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go) uses the game Monopoly (originally a game created to warn Americans of the perils of a winner-take-all society but became America’s most beloved board game -Howard Bryant’s book Full Dissidence has a section that references Monopoly’s history-) to outline the disadvantaged existence of Blacks in America. She then goes on to discuss the social contract and how it is broken and not applicable for Black people. Finally, she looks at the camera and says, “And they are lucky that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.” It is amazing that Black people have continued to love this country. It is amazing the resilience that they collectively demonstrate as they are repeatedly told that they value less. It is remarkable that they have not decided to take up weapons of war, dress in camo, and declare themselves a “militia” to enact justice against the repeated lawlessness and disorder that has been perpetrated against them. I hope that more and more White Americans can heed these calls to hear the pain and anger of their Black countrymen.