From One Racist Human to Another

I try to keep up to date on the news. It’s tough to read. I suppose to an extent it always has been. News really means extreme events, often rare, that scare us and make us angry. It’s almost like the news is appealing to some sort of base human instinct that makes us…turn on the news. Our news is like a drug, but I digress.

It’s hard to pull out any conclusions about our society or world from the news without over generalizing, but I think it’s fair to say this about mass media, and really, much of humanity. We are a dualistic, polarized people.

Black Lives Matter vs. Blue Lives Matter

Democrats vs. Republicans

Christians vs. Muslims

I’m writing this post because of some events that have happened recently, and some interpretations of those events that I believe are over generalizations. To paint a dualistic picture requires a broad brush, and if there’s one commonality between all the talk I see on my Facebook page, and read in the news, and see on T.V., it’s a broad brush. 

This is my dad. He died when I was in middle school, but he’s still by far my greatest role model. Instead of going out with his buddies after work, he would come home to my brother and me. It’s hard to remember his voice now, but I can still hear him say as clear as day, “Hey buddy.” My brother and me—we were his buddies. My dad loved his family. He loved people. My mom told me that my dad never met a stranger. He worked to help people make better lives for themselves. He worked in schools to help children know they could be whatever they worked for.  He genuinely wanted to be a source of good in the world.

My dad was a police officer.

I guess it goes without saying then, given that my dad is my biggest role model, but I really look up to the law enforcement profession. It’s a profession that we’ve decided our government should provide in order to ensure our freedoms. To enforce the law and help ensure others do not suppress our freedoms.

I just watched the videos of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. I was going to post the videos, but it's far too disturbing. You can watch them for yourself if you want. They're everywhere. As a person who looks up to police officers, this breaks my heart. I’m not going to pretend to know all the details of these incidents, but here’s what I do know—our great Christian country has a real problem with confessing our sins, and I say that as a professing Christian.

It took until the 1960’s to put an end to the Jim Crow laws that perpetuated racism from the top down since the civil war. Legislation that, at best, disenfranchised an entire race of people. That's the 1960's. We're not that far removed, if much at all, from that world. Some of us just have the luxury of pushing it aside or explaining it away. And what’s the justification for this mentality, for those laws?  Every reasonably thinking person I know would say that the way our skin looks makes no difference to our humanity, so why do we do this?

Since the dawn of our existence, humans have looked for opportunities for their group to have security, and security comes through power, and power is achieved when other groups become the threat. We create stories to justify this behavior. But at it’s core are stories, and the stories are a fiction to solidify our in-group—Primitive, survival of the fittest, fiction. And beneath the reasons, the justifications, the stories that explain away our racism?  Somewhere in our primitive brains, we are still afraid for our survival, and the solution is to hold tight to our group and band together against the “others.” I say all this because we have to admit that, as humans, we each have these instincts. I’m not even talking about stated beliefs. I’m talking about reactions. Preconceived notions and biases. Racist urges.

We have to confess our sins.

And what happens when we don’t? We push them away and pretend we’re not in the wrong, but the monster still exists just beneath the surface, until something baits the monster and the monster reacts. This is why many police departments are using bias training. They recognize that as humans, we have biases, and until we recognize these biases and confess, we are held captive to our sins.

Police officers are humans. Some recognize their biases, keep them in check, and strive to make a real difference in the world. And some don’t. And on the sidelines we have our polarized debates, one side refusing to believe that people in 2016 could be influenced by internal bias—by racism—and the other side refusing to admit that there are so many police officers that live their lives to serve others.

But this post really isn’t about police officers. This incident is a microcosm of how so many of us are approaching the world. We see fundamentalist, violent Muslims commit atrocities and then it’s all Muslims who are fundamentalist and violent. We see an ignorant Christian who says Orlando victims had it coming, and then it’s all Christians who are ignorant and judgmental. We see police officers that violently react to fear, and anger, and preconceived notions, and suddenly all police officers are racists.  This type of rhetoric is all over the place. Us verses them. In groups and out groups. Survival of the fittest.

We have a choice right now. We can respond to these incidents in the news, appealing to our base instincts, and perpetuate this cycle of fear, anger, hatred, and violence, or we can direct our judgement and hatred toward judgement and hatred itself. I'm not saying we should stop standing up against injustice. I'm saying that the real enemy is driving us all. Here is my challenge to all who read this post. Confess your sins. You’re a human. You have fear, and your fear is a defense mechanism for your survival. Admit it, and then lay it down. Because here’s the deal, folks—There are no "others." The ghosts aren’t real. We’re all humans who happen to be on different rocks, with different pieces of cloth covering our bodies, with different materials covering our heads from the elements. We might look a little different, or have different sounding voices, or different names, or different stories about the meaning of life.

But we all bleed the same.

Let’s put down our broad brushes. We are painting an ugly picture. 

This Land was Made for You AND Me

The first semester of my bachelor’s degree in history, I took a political science course from a very angry professor. Most of his lectures involved yelling, and lots of choice words. I’ll never forget the first day of class.

“Who in here thinks America is the greatest country on earth?” He asked. He was mad, and his anger was clearly in need of a target.

No one raised a hand. I was astonished. I thought, “Maybe everyone is just too afraid to talk in class. Maybe they’re afraid of how he’ll respond.” I felt like I had to say something. I hate it when that happens. When I can’t keep my big mouth shut.

Like now.

 My heart raced. My breathing grew short. I raised my hand. He pointed to me, glaring.

“Why?!” He commanded my answer.

 “I like our democracy. I like that we can elect the people we want to lead us.” I uttered, channeling the founding fathers. 

 “What about all the other democracies in the world?” He (literally) yelled, looking like someone just punched his mom. 

I hunkered down in my seat. “Good point,” I said quietly. Defeated.

“What?!”

“Good point.” I said, even quieter. He shook his head and continued on with his lecture.

My adrenaline was pumping. My ears were ringing. I stood up for what I believed in, and I was tarred and feathered. To be honest, I never really thought of other democracies until that point. I was always told America was the beacon for the world, the city on a hill. Don’t get me wrong, that guy was a douche, but I learned a lot in his class. Yet after all the many ways in which my beliefs have changed, and boy have they changed, I know what I would say now. I would say America is the greatest country to me. America is my home. America is my family. America is my blood, and just like most families, mine has its flaws. We have the senile grandparents, and the uncle who can’t keep himself from dropping political bombs on thanksgiving dinners (turns out that uncle is me). But this is my family nonetheless, and I don’t turn my back on my family. America is my home, and my home was built upon a foundation. A foundation of equality. A foundation of freedom. A foundation upon which all people have the chance to build happy lives for themselves and their families, no matter where they come from, or the color of their skin, or their religion.

Now, I have to steal from MLK, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.” Our founders knew that those beliefs were indeed a foundation. A foundation to “form a more perfect union.” Because this union isn’t perfect. It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now. The foundation is down, yet the house is far from finished. But as long as we strive to keep building on our foundation, then we will move closer to the America that I envisioned when I pledged allegiance every morning in elementary school—the America that had enough room for different opinions, different beliefs about god and money, different languages and different national origins.

The great American melting pot.

I’m writing this post because I believe some people have hijacked a love for country and staked sole authority of it. They say they’re the ones who will make America great again, and anyone else can get out. I’m writing this post to say that the red, white, and blue belongs to me too. I'm writing this because this land was made for you and me. I’m writing this to say that I believe this truth to be self evident:

America is great because we can speak different languages, have different religions, come from different chunks of rock, and live free together. Just because Westboro Baptist Church protests funerals doesn’t mean that all baptists are Westboro Baptists. Just because the KKK was and is full of white southern men doesn’t mean that all white southern men are like the KKK. Just because a disenfranchised group of murdering, power hungry, angry ass holes who say they are Muslims are trying to fill a power vacuum doesn’t mean that all Muslims are murdering, power hungry, angry ass holes.

There are some people who say they want to make America great, and yet it is some of those very people that are spitting in the face of the very ideals that gave America its greatness. I will not divide us up by language, national origin, sexual orientation, skin color, or religion. I stand with my peace loving Muslim brothers and sisters, and I proudly fly the red, white, and blue. I stand with my LGBT brothers and sisters, and I proudly fly the red, white, and blue. We are all Americans.

And when someone who says making America great is to piss on the values that it was built upon, I’m going to raise my hand and speak.