Month: June 2020

I woke up Saturday morning with my heart racing because of yet another nightmare. I’ve been plagued by them lately as my subconscious struggles to deal with the fears I suppress during the day in an effort to be productive. This nightmare was based on a combination of two fears: white supremist terror and COVID-19.

In my nightmare, I was shopping in a local store wearing my mask and minding my own business when this older white man, looking like one of those stereotypical Trump supporters, stepped up to me without a mask, blew right into my face and said, “I hope you die.” I startled awake and could no longer set aside my fear that there really are a few people in this country who would do something like that.

The day before, a dear old friend from high school posted a June 25th article on Facebook from the New York Post about a county sheriff in Washington state who used a bull horn to tell residents, “Don’t be sheep” and to defy the governor’s order to wear masks in public. That sheriff, Robert Snaza, is a republican and a law enforcement officer who deserves to lose his job for encouraging people to break the law, endangering public health, and all while wearing his law enforcement uniform. He was in a church parking lot, surrounded by a crowd of those stereotypical white Trump supporter types and a second sheriff. He is precisely the kind of officer we need to take off the streets and I hope both officers are summarily fired. You have the freedom to speak, but it is not the freedom from consequences of that speech, especially when you are being paid with public funds to protect and serve.

While I believe these officers violated the public trust and their duties as law enforcement officers, I also think that people like them are going to help usher in disparities in survival rates between the educated and the uneducated. The sheep are the ones who listen to Donald Trump, the politician who refutes science and common decency clearly influenced these idiots in a uniform. Too many Trump followers willingly and stupidly expose themselves and their loved ones to a deadly virus to prove an irrelevant point in this situation: freedom. Freedom to jeopardize the health and well being of other human beings. Some have gone so far as to threaten public health officials and governors over their promotion of mask wearing to protect against this virus. How inconsiderate can people be? For people who say they value life, where is that value now? Sadly, COVID-19 will have its way with people like this and everyone unfortunate enough to encounter them. That’s why I’m having nightmares.

As a society, we have generally agreed that our collective public health should not be left to the whims of individuals. We’ve enacted speed limits, safety belts, traffic lights, alcohol limits for driving, driver’s licenses, age limits on cigarettes and alcohol consumption and many other laws to curb human behavior. Why? Because we recognize that some people are not wise enough nor considerate enough and as a result they risk the lives of others.

The requirement to wear a mask in public during a pandemic is no different. Clearly we cannot depend upon the wisdom and good will of our fellow Americans. So, I’m for making the wearing of masks in public places the law of the land and imposing stiff fines or community service on those who refuse. It’s an issue of public safety, not freedom, and it might help end my nightmares.

I’m tired. I’m tired that we’re having a public debate over whether or not human beings should wear masks in public to protect each other from a deadly virus that doesn’t care about individual freedoms, political affiliation, age, religion, or race. I’m tired that a president who has shown himself to be corrupt, lacking in sound judgement and leadership, lawless, and morally depraved is even on the presidential ballot this November. I’m tired that in 2020 anti-blackness is still a thing that has to be spotlighted, explained, argued about, and protested against in the streets. I’m tired that it takes the Supreme Court to rule that LGBTQ people have a right to work. I’m tired that the debate over Dreamers remains an issue. I’m tired that Mitch McConnell is still the Senate Majority Leader despite his devil’s horns on full display.

Being so tired this week and looking for a way to rally, I called to mind a poem I often read in my youth titled, “Don’t Quit”. The author is none other that American Quaker and abolitionist, John Greenleaf Whittier. It just so happens that this past week, his statue was vandalized and that, too, makes me tired because the vandalism was an assault on what this man stood for. But even before I heard about that incident, I was fixated on one particular line in the poem that I repeated over and over this week as a mantra. The line was, “…..rest if you must, but don’t you quit.” This week I will simply share the first part of this poem as I rest. But rest assured, I will NOT quit.

When my children were young and they injured someone, I taught them that it wasn’t enough to simply apologize. An apology was to be followed by, “Are you okay?” with the responsibility attached to it of repairing any damaged resulting from their actions even if unintended. The collective of the U.S. has injured black Americans dating back to 1619 when the first African slaves were brought to this country. It is not enough to only now acknowledge the injury of slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, and anti-black systemic racism that has finally been exposed for what it is. An apology isn’t enough. Just as freeing slaves in 1863 without education, money, and a place to work or live was not enough. America literally said, “You’re on your own now and because we see you as inferior to us, we won’t hire you unless you work for less. We won’t allow you to go to our schools. We won’t let you compete for our good jobs. We won’t let you live in our neighborhoods. We won’t let you go to our hospitals, stay in our hotels, or eat in our restaurants. And when you build your own, we will burn them down. We will do whatever we can to keep you from voting. When you talk back to us, question us, or make us feel uncomfortable, or run away from us, we will kill you with impunity. In fact, we look for legal reasons to lock you up and throw away the key.” America can finally see that the lingering poverty, lack of opportunity, exclusion, health and education disparities, and emotional and physical vulnerability of blacks was caused by 400 years of systemic racism towards blacks. Reparations are required, starting with an acknowledgement by every governmental and educational institution as well as corporate business that black lives matter.

I actually smiled a little at the June 12th announcement by Band-aid that they are launching a new line of band-aids that matches the range of skin colors in this country. This is a form of reparations. It is righting a wrong that has existed since they introduced the band-aid. Walmart is unlocking the cases that prevent black people from accessing black hair products without assistance in their stores that implemented that practice. Removing that indignity is a form of reparations. Cofounder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, gave up his board seat to be replaced specifically by a black person as an act of reparations. The University of California removed the SAT from its admission requirement. Eliminating a test that has long been known to privilege wealth is a form of reparation. The NFL finally acknowledged that it was wrong to denounce and punish Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee and is now supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. This is only the start of repairing their wrong. When we see Colin signed to another team, then they have truly acted to repair their damage.

Reparations are not handouts or charity. They are acts to take responsibility for damage inflicted by proactively working to repair the damage. In my mind reparations from a state and federal government means that we fully fund our public schools so that a child who walks into a school in the inner city will have access to the same facilities, materials, activities, and quality teachers as children in the suburbs. But in addition, repairing the damage in minority schools means putting in place social services to repair the years of financial, mental, and physical neglect. Reparations means that police and the criminal justice system are held accountable for their desperate treatment of people of color. Those who have been given sentences greater than their white counterparts for the same crime, should have their sentences reduced. Those who served longer sentences should be paid for the extra time served. Communities who have been over-policed and fined should be provided with community development grants by their state to build libraries, parks, community centers, business development centers, free health clinics and hospitals and mental health centers. Police departments should be dismantled and rebuilt under a model that truly seeks to protect and serve all humans. Mental health screening must become a part of the police hiring process to root out the sadists, bullies and white supremacists. And finally, police departments and offending officers should be subjected to civil lawsuits for excessive force that ruins the lives and livelihoods of many black families. A new name was just added to the list of racist police deaths in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks. In health care, reparations means providing blacks and Native Americans with Medicare. The physical and emotional toll on the health of Native Americans and Blacks specifically because of this nation’s racism is well documented and must be repaired. Price gouging in stores in communities of color should be illegal and fines that benefit the community should be imposed on violators. State and local governments need to pass laws that require banks to pay fines directly to victims who experience discrimination in lending. Trade schools, community college, and state universities throughout the nation should be free for blacks and Native Americans for the next 20 years. And finally, black social security benefits should be raised to compensate for the years of discrimination that stifled the earning capacity of current retirees.

For all of this nation’s history, Black lives have been devalued, oppressed, and discriminated against to their detriment. Black lives have been diminished, denied opportunities, and even lost too soon as a result of systemic racism. It is time to acknowledge the collective wrong of a nation and to not only acknowledge that wrong, but to repair that wrong with real investment that actually pulls people up to a level playing field. The time for reparation has come.

I listened to people in powerful leadership roles this week deny the existence of systemic racism. It occurred to me that the denial of such a system actually helps keep an effective system of white privilege in place. These leaders keep insisting that racism is the problem of a few depraved individuals. They refuse to acknowledge that the system in place (the institutional and societal set of policies, processes, and practices) actually enable the individual acts of racism to proceed largely unchallenged and unabated. It is important to understand how systemic racism operates under the radar of most white Americans. And at its roots is a fairly recent anti-black mindset that was introduced to promote and perpetuate the institution of black slavery throughout Europe and the Americas.

Before institutionalized black slavery, the tribal mentality built into the human psyche had led to constant Us versus Them tribal conflicts. It is surreal to me how these basic conflicts continue to plague the human race today. Throughout the world, the tribe with the better weapons of war, immunity to diseases, or cool new gadgets dominate and enjoy the spoils of both land, power, and subjugated human labor. It was once normal for conquered people to be turned into slaves. Originally, slavery wasn’t based on the notion of the innate human superiority of one race over another. In fact, racially homogeneous societies operated and continue to operate under a class system where there is a ruling class, an educated and merchant class, and then a working class (which includes slaves) based on inherited family status. Humans also seem to be trapped by an instinctual need rank each other. These hierarchies serve those at the top while brutalizing those at the bottom. And to this already unjust societal norm, humans added a new layer of ranking: ranking according to skin color.

What began in the 1500s as white tribes seeking to dominate the world for wealth and power (greed) became scientific racism by the 17th century wherein white tribal success lead scientists to began to speculate that some races were inherently better than others, with the White race on top. These false notions gave moral fuel to a highly profitable system of black slavery, providing justification to classify blacks as only 2/3 human, inherently inferior to every other race, and therefore deserving of perpetual slavery. Later, the eugenic movement, led by Americans and taken up by the Nazis has solidified itself into the mentally of people all over the world. It’s like racism easily latched on to the human brain’s proclivity for tribalism and ranking. The notion that one tribe is better than another based solely on skin color has infected the entire human race. These deeply embedded beliefs pollute the minds of almost every American, including black Americans themselves (internalized racism). Since the 1940s the Black Doll Test has consistently shown that the majority of young children, including black children, associate white skin with good character traits and dark skin with bad ones. When whiteness is the standard for all that is good and right across the world, it is impossible not be a little scared and repulsed by blackness.

Racism is a combination of this inherent belief in white superiority mixed with the power to make decisions. It is the belief in the inherent inferiority of a particular person and the power to act negatively toward them. Systemic racism is the societal set of policies, processes, and practices that the ruling class has in place to uphold, excuse, and permit individual racist behavior. The following example should help to illuminate how this works.

An apartment owner has an apartment for rent and places an add in a local newspaper. A black couple shows up to view the apartment and the apartment owner, believing that black people are too poor, too dirty, and will lower his property value, tells the couple that the apartment is no longer available. This is individual racism. The individual is acting on his belief in the inferiority of the black couple and has the power to simply deny them the opportunity to rent his apartment based on his racist behavior even though there are fair housing laws on the books. In order to pursue their rights, the black couple would have to spend money, time, and energy to prove housing discrimination. And even if they did sue, they would likely face a white judge who is sympathetic to the plight of the apartment owner. The system works in favor of the racist apartment owner who can act with impunity because the process and practices in place to ensure fairness even when the policies are fair are is too cumbersome.

Examples like this are everyday happenings for people of color. With policies, processes, and practices in place that signal to people of color that the individual racist will not be held accountable for his racist actions, the system allows for teachers who have low expectations of their students of color to continue teaching with racists views, employers who don’t hire qualified people of color or set higher barriers for employment and promotion to continue to discriminate, for bankers who require additional layers of financial scrutiny for home or business loans to continue to deny loans to people of color, and for the criminal justice system that arrests blacks for crimes they ignore among whites to continue to fine, brutalize and incarcerate blacks in unpresented numbers and for longer sentences to continue to do so.

This is what systemic racism looks like and this is why people are taking to the streets. This is why black people are screaming that their lives matter. Not that they matter more than brown or white lives, but that they matter at all in a nation that continually demonstrates that they do not matter. Despite the debunked science of racial superiority or inferiority, we continue to live among racist individuals in a system that protects the racists. We are tired of living in a nation that continually demonstrates that black skinned people deserve less and that black lives do not matter. On every metric of survival and success, black lives are at the bottom. Many want to deny the racist system and blame black people for their own plight. There is no equal protection under the law and no ability to pursue life, liberty and happiness when a system of policies, processes, and practices block black people from receiving it.

I hope I have adequately explained systemic racism. I hope that now is the time that our society will begin to dismantle it. Change only begins with acknowledging the problem, confronting it, and then working really hard to fix the problem. I hope and pray that protesters will be able to force the ruling class to acknowledge the system they have upheld for centuries and then force them to tear it down. All of that is a heavy lift, but we are capable together.