I've started, revised, and rewritten this post several times. I began it just about the time of the Ferguson riots. Then something happened and I had to add to it, while altering other parts. Something else occurred, and so on. Certain issues continue a narrative over time, and that is the nature of news.
The post I was writing was specific to the riots in Ferguson. Then Eric Garner's Grand Jury results came in and it morphed. Then my ultra-liberal sister posted an article about how white people simply can't understand the black narrative and we need to be sensitive to why they feel the way they do about cops. This was followed by a discussion over a post by my friend which supported the #crimingwhilewhite tweeters. Then I picked up my son from college and heard about how 'white privilege' is now a hot topic among his classmates. Finally, two cops were shot and buried in the last week. I spent time trying to decide whether this was a post about race, cops, or something else altogether. In the end, I realized it's probably a number of things, because there wasn't just one narrative here. Brown and Garner were not about race, no matter how much people wanted them to be. Nor were they only about how bad cops are, or can be. Nor was any of this about how poorly the media handles these topics, or how those who consider themselves the intellectual elite manage the discussion. It's really about all of these items, but none of them, either. Ultimately, in the end, it's about each of us and how we individually think about unconnected events which we try to connect through some kind of hive mentality. It's about whether we really care about these events, and how we care about them.
At first, I planned to discuss how far we'd come in race relations. We have come very far. It's impossible to look at how we deal with race today and say we are in the same place we were in any year from 1880-2000. My friend said that improvement is relative, that we have further to go. Perhaps we do. But I'm not benchmarking myself against an unclear ideal which no group of people fully agree on. What will represent the final 'best' format of race in our nation? Nobody knows. All we can do is be aware of ourselves, individually, and try to be better about how we treat people when it comes to race, gender, nationality and religion. I include all of these together because as a society we have issues in every single one of these categories. We need to stop letting one word, used out of place or out of context, produce rage. We need to ignore things like "trigger words", which are nothing more than words which certain people have designated for censorship because they lack the courage to accept that language is malleable and can sometimes offend even slightly. As a nation, we need a real dialogue. Not about race, in particular. We need a dialogue about values and what is truly important. Race may be part of that value structure, but it's only a small part. Individual responsibility is really the larger value structure we need to focus on. Responsibility for our own health, our own minds, our own speech and our own education. We can't let small parts of the 'society' value chain derail us from the goal of crafting a nation which is unified entirely by how different each person is.
Race is a small part because there isn't any nation which has gotten it 'right'. If anything, up to this point I'd say the U.S. has come further, done more and is the most open and honest about its own experience. Other nations tend to just not talk about it, or avoid it all together, if they are not busy repressing some group within their society and turning their own blind eye to their issues. In truth, the U.S. has always had a dialogue about race, certainly more than any other nation on earth has.
We can improve, and we should. Every time a black person is discriminated against, or treated harshly, simply because of their race, the person engaged in that activity is blight on society. But we can say this about anyone who behaves this way against whites, Asians, Hispanics, Catholics, Teens, Women, the disabled, etc.
Blacks tend to be more visible, and often louder than other groups, which means we hear their grievances frequently. That's not a bad thing. Spinmasters like Al Sharpton, who are closer to criminal activity than the people they often speak for, will make it a bad thing. They are using race as a leverage to power. The people with real grievances are not a problem, but their spokespeople can be, and often are.
Ulitmately, neither Michael Brown or Eric Garner were racial incidents. Neither was killed because of their skin color. These were not cases of anti-black lynchings.
Both were tragedies, horrible and possibly avoidable. Brown's possibly less so, if most of the information regarding that event is true. Brown was not shot in the back, as claimed. He was not surrendering. Autopsy results indicate he most likely was going for Wilson's gun. He had robbed a store, and may have overreacted to Wilson stopping him. This is all speculation on my part - but the situation stinks of human error on the parts of both Wilson and Brown. Human error is not racism, we've all committed errors before. Except possibly Al Sharpton, who wanted to make it clear he knew who was right and who was wrong - and in doing so, committed possibly the most grievous error by inflaming a situation which could have been handled better.
Garner may have been a greater tragedy. Having carved a niche for himself selling 'loosies', he was being cited for the illegal sale of cigarettes - basically being arrested because he didn't give the state it's fair share of tax revenue. Cut a ticket and move on, I'd think. No, the police had to get rough, claiming he 'resisted arrest'. Based on the video I've seen, I don't see any resistance, though the beginning is cut out. If he did start out resisting, why would he suddenly stop? Why did the police use a chokehold? Why did they continue with their overly physical arrest as he complained of being unable to breathe? Why did they take so long to get help? This was a greater tragedy because it was avoidable, and it was unnecessary. Even if he did resist, the response was disproportionate in nature.
Again, however, race wasn't the issue. Plenty of people are killed by the police each year, and it's not just black people. The police do use excessive force far too frequently. My friends have asked if I'm a police supporter. I say I am - I support the good cops and I want the bad cops drummed out. I've seen bad cops, even in my neighborhood, harassing teens for no reason other than they were driving with their friends. I've seen good cops, too, knocking on my door to tell me the dome light of my car was on and my iphone on the front seat. Police are, more often than not, good at doing their job. Sure, they sometimes enforce stupid and unwanted laws. Generally speaking, they do their job well. I just would prefer they stopped getting more physical than they need to be. But some politicians egg them on, by providing them with more weapons than they logically need.
So when Ferguson and the issue of 'awareness' of the 'black plight' are raised, people ask if I care. I do care. Probably more than liberals or progressives do. But, as I explained to my friend, #crimingwhilewhite is idiotic. For one, it says nothing about white privilege. If I was ever caught doing something illegal, my mother made sure I made amends somehow. As a result, many of the stories on #crimingwhilewhite are just examples of bad parenting. Secondly, if any 'white privilege' existed, what will the #crimingwhilewhite solve? The Twitter hashtag doesn't fix anything, and only draws attention to stupidity. It doesn't advance the cause of eliminating racism, instead it drives the wedge deeper by pointing out presumed examples of preference due to race. Presumed being the key word.
In order to make more progress, in my estimation, we have to stop delineating one group from another on the basis of race, gender, nationality, etc. It's nice to say "the first Indian in space" or "the first openly gay sports star," but in saying these things we simply set them apart. We keep the idea of 'separate but equal' alive. This then begs the question of how one can become 'more equal', which is impossible.
All we can ask for is to stop caring one way or the other about what is a presumed differentiating factor and focus on people.
Yet when I say this, my liberal friends say I don't care. I don't care about the "fact" women make 70% of what men make (ignoring all the inherent problems with that 70% figure), I don't care about the "fact" black people are killed by police more often (ignoring all the crime that takes place in those neighborhoods as opposed to others), I don't care about whatever it is they care about.
I do care. I just don't care the way they want me to. That is the essential problem. I don't believe we have to make special laws or provide special treatment or believe that we need to atone for our parents' mistakes in behavior by treating this generation better or giving them more. That's how they want me to care. They want to force people to think like them.
I don't agree with them, and they can't respect that. I respect their point of view. They can #crimingwhilewhite all they want, and protest at Grand Central, and they can even burn down their neighborhoods in protest. But they can't ask me to pay for any of it, take part in any of it, or support laws to give things to people who haven't earned those things. They also shouldn't ask me to use the words they feel are right and proper to avoid offending people. They shouldn't feel they have some special knowledge I lack, like what it's like to grow up black. Having that knowledge is meaningless. It doesn't provide context. It can make things worse, actually, and evidence of that is currently in Gracie Mansion. A man who claims some special knowledge has managed to alienate his office.
Change comes from within and can only be benchmarked from where we've been, not where we are going. It cannot be forced by fiat or dictate. Do we want a more colorblind/genderblind/religionblind society? Yes, hopefully that's what we'd all like. But I'm not going to tell someone who doesn't want that they MUST be that way. As much as I think #crimingwhilewhite is a waste of time, I have no claim on how these people should spend their time. Hashtag away, but don't pass a law telling me how to speak, act, or spend my money because that's what YOU think I should do.
Am I concerned about the deaths of black people at the hands of police? YES! But let's also discuss the issue of black on black violence, the preponderance of crime in neighborhoods where these deaths take place, and the fact - the very real fact - that the police are overly militarized and treat many groups, other than just blacks, poorly. Part of the reason police get out of control is one of expectations. The lack of riots in my hometown is more an issue of what we expect from the police (not much, really) than it is due to the large percentage of white people in my neighborhood. We don't expect the police to behave a certain way because we're white. We just expect them to behave a certain way because that's what good neighborhoods do - they develop a general sense of trust with their police force. Bad neighborhoods, whether they are populated by white, black or Asian, develop a sense of distrust, and that leads to accidents and problems.
I do care. I just don't care the way you want me to. I care in a way that expects to see real change, not the kind of change that has taken us from Rodney King to Ferguson. There has been plenty of change in that period, most of it good, positive steps. So why are we still getting back to the same complaints, and having the same riots?
Because we focus on the wrong things. Rather than focusing on what's good and where we've improved, we focus on a what a few self-appointed people's opinions are of where 'we should be'. The problem is, when we get to where 'we should be', there will be a new list of grievances. We let politicians determine who 'could be their son' and make a statement which is unnecessary, even as those same politicians ignore larger and potentially more devastating crimes in society.
Let's focus on what we've done well. Let's build on the positives. While there isn't much I can say about Obama that I consider 'good', I do think the fact he was able to be elected speaks volumes about how far we've come. That, in and of itself, isn't the end goal. But certainly it shows we are capable of ignoring things like race when it comes to making important decisions as a society.
Yes, I think we all care very much about our society. We just all care somewhat differently. I have no problem with that, until you start telling me I don't care. Then you're wrong. I just don't care the way you do, and it's up to you to learn to deal with that, not the other way around.
