RACISM vs. racism...

I think that we need to get a few things straight.  Somewhere out there, there is a group who is planning a meeting in the woods.  They have hoods and robes and keychains and speak about 14 words for preserving the white race.  They have jamborees and burn crosses and they have a lot more nefarious things in mind.

There are also black people out there who hate whites.  They are not that organized and they don't have the backing, the history, or the gravitas of a 150 plus year old organization behind them but yes, there are blacks who hate white people.

The thing that we need to realize is that racism has levels of intensity.  Can we agree on that?  The thing that we are forgetting is that it is not a binary state.  I know plenty of people with whom I can sit in a room, laugh and joke.  Those same people would let me crash on their couch or share a meal with me, but would probably be a bit uneasy about letting me date their daughter.  It is a racism that is founded on a fear of difference; the other.

Those people I mentioned before, the ones who go to meetings?  They are RACISTS and their racism
isn't about keeping me from marrying their daughter.  Their racism is about killing me for having dark skin.  There are people all along the spectrum from not giving a rip about the color of someone's skin to plotting my elimination.  The thing that we need to realize is that people are entitled to their thoughts.   It is a freedom more sacred than freedom of speech; it is the right to think what you will. It is when they make those thoughts real in the world is when we begin to see problems.

We find ourselves all too often in the camp of making something a binary, either or situation and I think that is a mistake.  There is lower case racism and then there is RACISM.  On September 4 an officer in South Carolina opened fire on a man just reaching back into his car to get the license that the officer had requested.

I have no doubt in my mind that the man was stopped because he was black.  I have no doubt that he opened fire because the man was black.  The issue for me is whether or not his intent was malicious or not.  Was he being racist or RACIST.  As you can see from the video, the young man survived.  The officer was fired and then arrested and will likely spend some time in jail.

Why do I say that this is small racism, because looking at the way the officer treated him after the incident was somewhat compassionate.  Watching the video, I never feel as though there are real attempts to to cover his ass.  He immediately calms down and gets help for the man and if you listen carefully, you can even hear him call the man "brother".  This does not absolve him of his sins, but it does go a long way towards showing penitence.

So why is it important that we keep this in mind?  It is important because the desire for retaliation is the same when you look at the responses.  There were people who were out for blood when I read the comments.  There were people who were calling for marches and more and all I could think was "why?"  Justice was served and sadly a point is proven.

I think the thing that makes me so amazed and angry at the other incidents are the same things that make me so calm about this one.  It is the thing that the collective "we" have always wanted, and that is the situation that cannot be denied or dismissed by naysayers and the RACISTS.  See when a story like this is posted on social media, I tend to read the comments.  Few of them are very intelligent and even fewer still post cogent points. Still, they are the ones I fear.

They serve a useful purpose in that they define the parameters of the discussion.  Looking back at the Michael Brown discussion the RACISTS said a lot of things and said that Mr. Brown should have done certain things and said certain things and that those of us watching the case, who were not there, had certain responsibilities as well.

Let's look at what was said pretty much across the board by those who would be malicious and RACIST.
1.  "We need to make sure that all facts are in before we rush to judgement."
This was an interesting way of looking at things and the idea was to let things calm down a bit.  The only thing it really did was give people time to dig up dirt, smear a person, and create false information. During this time, while we found out very little about the officer, we found out so much about Michael Brown like that he had marijuana in his system and that he is accused of having robbed a store a few blocks away.  The officer who shot Michael Brown had no way of knowing that.  In the meantime the young man was painted as a thug who was hopped up on drugs who beat the officer and was going back to beat and kill him.
The video shows a young man who did none of this.

2.  "These people need to pull up their pants and get jobs."
The young man in the video was coming from work and his pants were up.

3.  "They need to respect the officers who stop them!"
The young man in the video never stopped calling the officer "sir" even after he was shot.

4. "You weren't there, you don't know what happened."
The officer's dashboard cam was on the whole time and caught every moment.  We see an officer stop an SUV after having passed him by and uses the excuse that the driver was not wearing his seatbelt.

5. "Stop playing the race card!  Stuff like this happens all the time to all races."
True.  It does happen to all races but with remarkable frequency to black males.  When it happens to people of other races, it is often for other reasons.

So the racists are calm and they have that moment to adjust, to think.  The RACISTS are still the ones saying that the young man did something wrong.  The RACISTS are the ones who have no excuses yet keep trying to justify why this young man was shot and why the officer is not such a bad guy.

So, the RACISTS back a little bit.  They say that we will never know what it is like to be an officer.  They minimize what happens and say that we would never do it ourselves. That may be true, but it is not what we are talking about.  They say that there are lots of great officers out there and positive engagements every day.  True, but that is not what we are talking about.

Was he stopped because he was black?  I am nearly positive.

Was he shot because he was black?  I have to say yes.  If this were a white man, reaching back into his car, it is likely nothing would have happened.  The officer may have gotten a little more aggressive with  a white man, but I doubt he would have been shot.

We are looking at making a huge statement with these cases.  We are saying that black men are something "other" and that just by virtue of the color of our skin, we are dangerous weapons and up to something.  I think we need to take a step back and wonder, am I a weapon?

Until we are all one color in about 500 years (hey, it could happen, right?) I can deal with racism.  Hate me all you want believe that I am out to rob you, clutch your purse closer, roll up your windows when I pass, I don't care.  We cannot institutionalize the ability to shoot me just because of the color of my skin.