“On the radio talk shows and TV
You hear one thing again and again
How the USA stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends?
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can’t take anymore
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone”
~ Jackson Browne, Lives in the Balance ~
I remember the first time I used the word nigger. I was in first grade in Newbury Park, California. To my recollection, there were only two black children in our school at the time. They were brothers and they lived up the street from me. I would walk past their house everyday on my way to and from school.
Although I had been raised by a mother who came from the rural deep south who was well versed in racism by nature of the geography of her upbringing, it was a topic we had not addressed in our home. At that age, why would we I suppose. But it came up.
A somewhat mischievous friend in my class had a knack for coming up with things for me to do or say that garnered some responses and usually got me into trouble. He taught me how to hold up my middle finger at people. A trick I would later come to learn by way of an angry passer by walking me to my front door and telling my dad, was to be reserved for the more special occasions and perhaps used with some discretion.
One day, while walking home from school, he was cackling from afar at one of the black boys, Reuben, for how his hair looked. He told me I should call Reuben a nigger because it would be funny.
Wanting to impress my friend I blurted out, “Hey Reuben, you nigger!”
Reuben ran towards us. David ran like the wind. And I stood there wondering why Reuben was chasing David, right up to the point where he instead, beat the hell out of me.
When it was over, he walked away and I made my way home pretty bloodied up and crying. When my mother asked what happened, I simply told the truth of it and the rest marks the beginning of my understanding about how deep the roots of human behavior go – and how to choose my friends with a little more discretion.
In my youthful naivety, I had carelessly touched a nerve in that young boy and while I was pretty afraid of him, I was more afraid of what it was that had moved him to act out with such hurt and anger.
I was six years old when I learned that words do in fact have meaning and can cause immeasurable pain.
That was 1973. A year not long after the Civil Rights Movement supposedly had righted the injustice of segregation and inequality towards people of color. Segregation being the placated remedy offered up by an American populace who seemingly could not grasp the tenants of equality laid out in their founding documents, going so far as to reluctantly accept the Emancipation Proclamation so long as they could still use their rights as business and property owners to deny access to blacks. A thinly veiled perpetration of ignorance, hate, and racism.
Looking now upon the reactions to the shooting of Micahel Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, one might wonder how far along things have come since 1973. Have we progressed at all?
It really is not the intent here to argue the legitimacy of the shooting itself. I will say I found the facets of the investigation into the incident questionable, as well as the grand jury proceedings. If in fact that boy was innocent, he was murdered. If in fact, that boy was trying to take the officers gun, he was killed in an effort to save the officers own life. The mitigating factor of whether or not the officer had plenty of opportunities to de-escalate the situation not withstanding, what is certain here is that Michael Brown’s life ended tragically and his family, Darren Wilson, and the rest of us are forever at a loss for it.
But what strikes me to the core in the debate here is the persistent notion that race plays no significant part at all in this tragedy. That there is not just a denial that they themselves are racists, but that racism as a whole does not exist but on the minutest of scales in twentieth century America.
How can any meaningful change take place when this much intellectual dishonesty is so commonplace in the lexicon of the American fabric?
A friend here locally recently attempted to persuade me that the problem was not as large as being purported by the media. She said she did not know of anyone who was raising their children to be racist at all. She lives here locally and belongs to the LDS Church so I thought it appropriate to ask if the fact that the teachings of this faith include the ignorant notion that God made the color of some people dark to curse them.
Is it possible to say in the same sentence that this is a core tenant of an American faith and that it does not perpetuate racism in our culture?
My good friend Chase Nichter gave me permission to share a recent Facebook post with you. He said:
“Today, I experienced discrimination, because a white cop killed an African-American young man all the way in Missouri. Today, I was discriminated in a public establishment by a man who called African-Americans foul names, blaming all “blacks” for violence against the police, hoping to get a rise out of me, a rebuttal of some kind, a public display of anger. Today, I was discriminated against… I briefly felt an intense feeling, more potent than I have ever felt before… the feeling of being black, alone, and different. So, I stood up, packed my things, and left the public establishment, for it is my personal policy to value peaceful discourse over social conflict. I will not be a player in the escalation of racial tension. I will not banter words with the ignorant. I have brown skin, but my heart-light shines the same as everyone else. And if you want to know my race, I have one word for you… American.”
And therein lies the rub.
How is it that this is still an issue in America? But more importantly, how is it that there are so many Americans who deny that it is an issue at all?
Perhaps the unreconciled hypocrisy of the founders having produced some of the greatest documents in the history of human governance regarding sanctity of life and liberty most supreme, having owned human beings for labor and profit whilst drafting these great works, is a place to start.
Perhaps championing these great yet fallible men is a bit much to bear for someone who say, has lineage in the people who were held slaves? Lineage in a people who after emancipated from slavery spent a century still fighting to be treated as equals rather than merely placated with symbolic gestures thereof.
The notion that racism is not an issue in Missouri is as ignorant as racism itself.
But the notion that this problem is going to go away by simply denying it, is perpetual and willful stupidity. It is tantamount to trying to make a flawed system work.
An honest dialogue about the events surrounding the death of Michael Brown must be had. It must be, because it defines us, like it or not.
See you out there.
