Where Do We Go From Here?

As I follow the news coverage of the protests across the country following the grand jury decisions not to charge the white police officers in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York, I am moved to take a public stand in support of blacks in this country. I was disappointed with the decisions because I think there was sufficient evidence of excessive force in both situations. The decision not to indict the police officer in the New York case was especially disturbing because there was video evidence of what happened. But what disturbs me even more than the grand jury decisions is the public reaction, primarily the reaction of whites, to a civil rights movement that is long overdue, in my opinion. 

A typical reaction at the sign of any conflict is to immediately pick sides. Us versus Them - this is the American political and cultural mentality. Either you have to be for the police officer or for the person the police officer killed. Either you have to support the protesters or find fault with them. And what more convenient way to choose sides than to align yourself with someone you can easily identify with? Someone of your own race.

Another common reaction is to blame the victim. If a person is a victim of violence, there must have been a reason. He provoked it. He was someplace he shouldn't have been or did something he should not have done. And God forbid that anyone should question the actions of "The Law." Yes, we should respect the authority of police officers and be grateful for their public service. Their jobs are dangerous and unpredictable. Most officers of the law are good people. But the police are not above reproach. Police officers occasionally do use unnecessary or excessive force and that issue needs to be addressed.

In the haste to choose sides in these conflicts, many people miss the big picture. If you focus too much on the facts and/or allegations in the tragic encounters between these black men and the police officers involved in their deaths, you will not see the forest for the trees. If you focus too much on who was right and who was wrong, you will not hear the important message that blacks are trying to send.

This is not about the wrongness of destroying property because you are angry about a decision. This is not about whether there is a right or wrong way to protest. This is not about who was the better man or who deserved to live or die. This is not about Eric Gardner or Michael Brown. These black men have been pilloried; their lives have been dissected, scrutinized, and dismissed by our justice system. Yet the lives of these black men matter. They were human beings endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Individually, they each had promise even if they weren't living stellar lives when they died.

I read a beautiful blog post yesterday written by Erin Brown, titled Current Events and Compassion. Unfortunately, many people are incapable of empathy, of understanding life from another person's point of view. To put yourself in a black person's shoes, ask yourself: how would I feel if I spent a lifetime being judged by the color of my skin? How would constantly being treated with suspicion influence my choices? How would I want to be treated? 

To fully understand current events, we must examine both sides of the issue and we must not jump to conclusions. We've got to ask deeper questions and we've got to learn from history. When it comes to racial issues, we've been living in a state of denial for too long. We hold up black people who have achieved fame or fortune as if to say, "See, everything is okay now" while ignoring the plight of those stuck in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness. This is not a post-racial America. Racial stereotypes continue to persist in this country long after the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 60's.

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked the question Where do we go from here? in his last speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. When I read this speech, I was struck by the fact that the socioeconomic issues he raised persist even today - higher levels of black unemployment, poverty and infant mortality.

Now, in order to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?" which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare he is fifty percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. Of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites. Thus, half of all Negroes live in substandard housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When we turn to the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share: There are twice as many unemployed; the rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites; and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population.

This is why I stand behind those who protest against social injustice across this country. Michael Brown may not be the poster child for a civil rights movement but his death has "made an indifferent and unconcerned nation rise from lethargy and subpoenaed its conscience to appear before the judgment seat of morality on the whole question of civil rights."

My hope is that from here, we will "massively assert" the value of blacks in this country and "develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values." I hope we will move on to a discussion of how to improve the lives of African Americans who still languish on the fringes of society. Black lives matter.

Is the Bank of Justice Bankrupt?

12/7/2014 

This is an essay I wrote sometime in 2013 after George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the tragic death of Trayvon Martin. I did not have the courage to post it on my blog then. Today, I find myself asking the same question but am encouraged that we are having a national discussion about racial issues.

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The senseless death of Trayvon Martin and the fifty-year anniversary of King's I Have A Dream speech this year made me wonder what King would think of the current state of racial equality in this country. Do African Americans still languish "in the corners of American society?"

I was a young child during the Civil Rights Movement, too young to be aware of what was going on.  Although I spent most of my childhood in communities with little racial diversity, I was taught that racism is wrong. We learned to sing "red or yellow, black or white, all are precious in His sight" in Bible school. I remember hearing someone say the N-word when I was a teenager waiting for the school bus in Topeka.  Shocked, I turned around to see who said it.  A black teenager laughed; it was she who called her black friend the N-word.

Today, I live in a predominantly white suburb. I work for a somewhat diverse company, though it is also predominantly white. The company has a diversity training program so we can learn how our unconscious biases affect our perceptions and behavior. One of my brothers is married to a woman from Viet Nam, another brother is married to a woman from Thailand, and one of my sisters adopted an African American baby. They are all precious in my sight too.

Having our first black president is certainly a good sign of how far we have come as a nation since the Civil Rights Movement. Before Obama was elected the first time, I heard a coworker say that if Obama were elected, any criticism of him would be seen as racism. Our nation is so divided ideologically that I don't automatically see criticism of Obama as racially motivated. While I generally give people the benefit of the doubt, I do not believe that Obama would face the same degree of animosity and opposition if he were white, regardless of how liberal his politics. How in the world did the Birther Movement get any traction if not for racial prejudice?

We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. - MLK

MLK wrote in his dream speech, "we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt." Sadly, when it comes to criminal justice, the bank of justice can be bankrupt with respect to race. There was no justice for Trayvon Martin's senseless death. Florida's stand your ground laws have given armed citizens the license to kill - and not just in self defense. Martin was doing nothing wrong, yet he was profiled as a thief because of his color. He was denied the benefits of our criminal justice system, the system that says you are innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.

The Zimmerman case is just one example of unequal justice. New York has its "stop and frisk" policy that results in blacks being stopped for no reason. A black woman was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison for shooting a gun in the air. Black men are routinely sentenced more harshly than white men for drug crimes.

We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. - MLK

President Obama was criticized for his comments after the George Zimmerman verdict. There have been times when I have wished that Obama would keep his opinions about social issues to himself, yet he has a right to share his own personal experiences of racism. When Reverend Al Sharpton commented about the Zimmerman verdict, he also was criticized. Some said, why complain about the death of a black man when thousands of black men are killed as a result of so called "black on black" violence?

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In 2014, many Americans still want to deny that racism exists. They still try to claim that "black on black" crime is a bigger social concern than racial profiling. When is the bank of justice going to start recognizing the worth of African Americans?