I have three boys. My neighbor is currently pregnant with
her third boy. We live in the same town, in the safe affluent neighborhood, on
the same street, two houses from each other. Her boys and my boys come from
parents with advanced degrees. They come from loving homes full of opportunity.
Her boys are kind, outgoing, and polite. Mine are too…most of the time. Her
boys and my boys will go to the same schools. And yet, I know that her
experience as a mother, particularly as her boys get older, will be vastly
different from mine. Why? Because my boys happen to be white and hers are
black.
I will fear for my sons’ safety as they learn to drive and
get behind the wheel of a car because of reckless drivers and the poor
decisions teens sometimes make. She will have these same fears, but she will
also have to fear that her sons’ lives could be in danger for buying a bag of
skittles or driving with a broken taillight. I’ll worry that my sweet boys don’t
get caught up with a “bad crowd” or that they aren’t picked on or bullied at
school. She will worry the same. But she’ll also worry that her sons will be
seen as a threat to someone else’s safety if they happen to choose to wear a
hooded sweatshirt. She will live in fear of how people will falsely view her
children and how they might react when they sense a false threat.
Parenting is a fear-filled endeavor for anyone. But having
that fear magnified by 1000 simply because of the color of one’s skin is an unfathomable
injustice. I can’t begin to imagine what it is like to live with that fear. I
would be angry…I would…Actually, I don’t know how I would feel. And the truth
is, I will never know. I was born white and so were my boys. And because of
that pure luck, and because I will never know what it’s like to be anything
other than white, I have a responsibility
to try my absolute best to understand the
experience of people of color, like my neighbor, her husband, and their three
boys.
The recent killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile
have put in pristine focus for me the extreme ways in which other human beings
react in a moment of perceived threat. People can believe what they want about Mr.
Sterling and whether he did something to attract the attention of the police.
But that is a moot point. He was tackled on the ground and clearly overtaken by
the police officers. There is no reason he should be dead. As for Mr. Castile,
there are no reports anywhere that he did anything other than drive with a
broken taillight to attract the attention of the police. He reportedly told the
officer involved that he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, which he
disclosed was on his person, and that he was getting his wallet and
identification as was asked of him. And now he is dead. Perhaps worst of all,
as these men lay dying the officers involved did NOTHING to provide aid or
prevent their death. They did not provide first aid. In the case of Mr.
Castile, who it seems was shot only in the arm, imagine if instead of pointing
the gun at his girlfriend and handcuffing her if the officers had instead
placed a tourniquet on his arm. A simple show of humanity could have saved his
life.
We have all walked or driven through areas that we perceive,
sometimes quite accurately, to be unsafe. But what we have to remind ourselves
is that those areas are not unsafe because black people live there. They are
unsafe because there is little opportunity in those areas. There are few
programs for children and adolescents. The schools and other educational
opportunities are limited. In the areas most in need of services and support,
even basic needs are more difficult to attain. There are fewer grocery stores
and department stores. People have to drive/walk/use public transportation to
go further to get less. And when people are desperate, and they lack education,
and resources, and support, they react out of fear and desperation, and do
things and behave in ways they otherwise would not. Yes, these situations are
desperate, and no, there are no easy solutions. Knowing where to begin, and
what we can do to help is challenging and sometimes seems so impossible that we
freeze. Donating money seems superficial. Volunteering time can be a struggle
when we are doing our best to care for our own families. But one place we can
all begin is by opening the conversation and committing to better understanding
all of our fellow human beings.
I read today an
article on race that compared racism to a gigantic societal-sized boot. The
author asked, if racism is a boot, then who is “fighting the hardest to avoid
being squashed by the boot?” Yes, people of color. And who is it that is
wearing the boot? Yes, white people. And who then should be responsible for stopping
the boot from squashing anyone? The people who are already fighting against the
pressure of the boot or the people wearing it?
I hope you came to the correct answer yourself. But if you
didn’t, let me spell it out for you. White people. White people have a
responsibility to stop the boot. This author was not saying all white people
are racist, and neither am I. I certainly don’t like to consider myself racist,
and I hope I have never acted in a way that is. But, I also know that I have
not openly acted in a way to challenge the racist beliefs of those I encounter.
And as a white person, I am in a unique position to open the dialogue and
potentially change the viewpoints of other white people who may be racist; a
position that people of color are not in at all. And so, with this post, that
is what I am attempting to do.
I also commit to better understanding
issues of race in our country. I have already reserved the book “The New Jim
Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander at
my local library. It was on hold and I am 3rd in the queue. This
fact in and of itself gave me hope. Maybe other people in my community have had
the same idea I did. If you too would like to better
understand issues of race, so you can open a dialogue that is not at all open
enough, then check out the article I linked to above and check out this
article which includes links to a reading list on issues of race.
Now, I started writing this article on
Thursday before the horrific shootings in Dallas occurred. And so, I would be
remiss to not address that tragedy. Those officers were assassinated. The
actions of the people who carried out those killings are not justified…not even a little bit. Those individuals were no
doubt angry. But they only made the situation worse. Instead of drawing greater
attention to issues of race, injustice, and excessive force by some police
officers they have provided fuel to the fire for people who will say, “See? It’s
them. They are the problem.” And that
will only serve to shut down an already difficult conversation even further.
And I fear that because of the actions of these snipers in Dallas
that the overwhelming message will now be “black lives will only matter when police lives matter.” And that is not true. In fact, Dallas was an exemplary
example of how the black community and the police community can work together. The police were out in full force making it safe for a Black
Lives Matter protest to proceed peacefully and successfully. And yet, so many
people seem to believe that you either have to support law enforcement or support people of color; that police
lives and black lives can’t matter
simultaneously. But they can, and they do. As John Stewart (seriously, when
will that man run for office?) so eloquently said today “You can truly grieve
for every officer who’s been lost in the line of duty in this country, and
still be troubled by cases of police overreach. Those two ideas are not
mutually exclusive. You can have great regard for law enforcement and still
want them to be held to high standards.”
And so, we will all struggle with what to do and how best to
react to the tragic events that have occurred this week. But please join me in
my commitment to more conversations, more understanding, and more willingness to
see both sides of this issue; an issue that is of utmost importance to the
survival and success of our great Nation. It is my hope that I will raise boys
who will grow up completely confounded by the idea that someone would ever judge someone differently because
of the color of their skin. It is my hope that my three boys and my neighbor’s
three boys have life experiences far more similar than I expect they will given
the state of things at this time. But I have to believe there is hope that can
change.
Together, let’s ask questions. Let’s try to understand. Let’s
accept that some people may not use the exact, most politically correct words
when trying to better understand and instead of judging, let’s educate. The
future truly rests in the hands of our children and it is our responsibility to
raise children who will make this world a kinder place than it is now. We can
only do that by opening and changing the conversation, by working together to
lift the oppressive boot of racism. Start now. Start tonight. Open the
conversation at your own dinner table. I know I will be.
