The year began with the global pandemic. Enough said. #COVID-Exhausted!
Now, the second wave has hit. Not coronavirus! Instead, a wave of global protests over police brutality.
Honestly, I’ve been struggling with what to say. I have friends and family on both sides of the debate. I have friends who are police officers. One of these friends ran towards bullets in 2017, during the Las Vegas mass shooting that killed 58 innocent people. Then we called him and law enforcement heroes. He is white.
Today, if you are white and in law enforcement, you’re being called racist.
To say that all white police officers are racist is a broad generalization and exaggeration.
To say, racism does not exist, is naïve.
However, I have more family, friends, and colleagues who have been the victims of racial prejudice and not only at the police’s hands. Being a black man, I have experienced racism all my life. I feel and understand the protesters’ anger, frustration, and anxiety because I have experienced these emotions and injustices. I do not condone violence (by police or protesters) nor the destruction of property by an opportunistic few (both black & white).
But what I don’t excuse is the killing of black people by police in custody.
In 2019, Black Americans were 2.5X More Likely Than Whites to Be Killed By Police
– Source: Statista.com
This is a startling statistic! Being pulled over by the police for me, my son, or any Black American, to paraphrase a line from the movie The Hunger Games, “the odds are not in our favor!”
I’m not going to share my me-too stories. Sadly, there are so many; you don’t have to go far to find one.
My white friends are genuinely attempting to understand the degree of anger. I even had one very naïve acquaintance, say, “I thought racism was done!”
Here is the homework assignment I gave to her:
In August of 1963, Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech.
Google the text and count the number of issues that are still being protested today, in his 57-year-old address.
Sadly, Dr. King could give that same speech now, with only a few modifications.
Imagine protesting the same issues for 57-years! Here is another way of looking at it.
Imagine you are in a 100-yard race. You are at the start-line, however, another competitor starts 10 yards away from the finish line. Someone says “go.”
Who would win this race, every time?
Would you feel frustrated? Angry?
Imagine being in this race for over 400 years.
How patient would you be?
Would you protest?
Get the Picture?
I can’t solve world peace in a blog post. But I do have one suggestion. If you are white and have black friends, check in on them. Have a conversation. Listen.
Don’t worry about getting the words right. Get the behavior right. Show that you care.
If you are black, check in with your white friends. Have a conversation. Listen.
If you are white and don’t have friends of color or are black and don’t have white friends, get some.
Spread the word. Spread the conversations.
At the end of the day, we are people, coexisting on a rock, spinning around an exploding star at 67,000 miles an hour.
We can’t outrun COVID-19, but, we can make these conversations a peaceful movement where we all can participate.
