For Anyone Wondering Why Black Lives Matter
Portrait of slain Wisconsin resident George Floyd, now a civil rights icon. From the Racial Justice campaign by the Ad Council. adcouncil.org
I hate racism, and you should too. It’s reprehensible, wrongheaded, boring. Difference is interesting. Just think how dull life would be if everything were the same. Well, actually, there would be no life under those conditions. Biodiversity is diverse for a reason. That’s for another article. Back to my main point. Boring is bad. Difference is interesting, which is good. Think about it. Would you want to be the most boring person at the party? Or the most interesting?
There is a certain degree of “fear of other” built-into the human nervous system that dates back the Paleo days. Back then, humans lived in ignorant tribes with scarce resources and built-in skepticism was a requirement to stay alive. The good news? In two million years the human species has (theoretically) evolved. Well, most of us. Those that haven’t, you really need to work on that. I mean, do you want to be known as the caveman at the cantina? (Excuse me! Caveperson.) No! You want to be the one oozing 20 eons of improvement.
Improvement requires work. We can’t leave it all to natural selection. As with a craft brewery, care and fine-tuning can produce amazing results. Prehistoric tribal mentality is no longer necessary for survival. In fact, just the opposite, it’s detrimental. But fear lives in the amygdala. And yes, there are those who try to manipulate that fear to their own advantage. In creative hands that results in horror movies, at the service of rascism it results in cruelty, tragedy. Bigots are bullies. Cowards trying to show off. So uncool. It must be tolerated.
How pathetic is it to need to subjugate someone in order to feel better about oneself? Very! Even fascists want to be liked (in fact, more than most). So speak up! Attaching stigma to bigotry may it may help people evolve toward different behavior. If Dante Alighieri were alive and writing today, he’d have Satan gnawing on the the despicable loser who killed teenaged Trayvon Martin.
I have deep respect and sympathy for the police. Most of them. The majority are decent individuals with very difficult jobs. But the brute who pressed his knee to George Floyd’s neck for nearly 8 minutes? Grotesque. Life in prison is too good. The squad that busted into Breanna Taylor’s house at 12:45 a.m., waking the 26-year-old EMT eight times before murdering her with eight bullets. According to Wikipedia, the wrongful death lawsuit filed against the police says they entered Taylor;s home without knocking or announcing a search warrant and opened fire “with a total disregard for the value of human life.” It is incomprehensible. Don’t lecture me that “all lives matter.” This type of thing seems to happen more to African Americans.
In these post cave-dweller days, racism and prejudice are mostly learned traits. While my informal research indicates most people have had it bred out of them over the millennia. Where it exists, active cultivation is the only way it can hang on. Racism and prejudice are instilled in an individual from someone else. Kind of like a virus. The innocent are infected. The baby human brain is extremely plastic and prone to absorbing toxins from the environment.
It is reprehensible that 24-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was consigned to death sentence for jogging through a “white” neighborhood. It’s also sad that the 34-year-old videotaped shooting Arbery could have grown up to be quite different had he not been steeped in ignorance by a racist father, one three charged with murdering Arbery, who was pursued as if by a pack of wild dogs.
I consider prejudice a form of child abuse. That’s not to give racists a free pass. As one matures, judgment and discernment kick in. Of course, different people possess those qualities to varying degrees. But learned behaviors can be unlearned. Thought patterns too. It amazes me that even in this modern age, seemingly intelligent people will argue with me that Black Americans are not subjected to institutionalized racism. To them, I recommend changing the channel; make an effort to explore other perspectives.
A life-changing event for me as a young reporter was being assigned to cover an NAACP event at UCLA. I am Caucasian, and at the pre-event cocktail mixer I was, literally, the only white person in a room of at least 500 people. It was an extraordinary experience, and would have been hugely uncomfortable except of course for me it became a social science experiment. Everyone was talking and interacting and I was apart. That’s not to say I was being treated rudely. I didn’t know any of the attendees in whose immediate midst I found myself, and they didn’t know me. Quite naturally they were focused on acquaintances and having a good time.
I was invisible. It a strange and discomforting sensation, and occurred to me that in professional, middle class Los Angles, this is probably how my black black people feel much of the time. I had been in plenty of situations with where there was only one black person in the room. It was an eye-opening experience and I would urge all white people to buy a ticket to an NAACP event and go solo. (But make sure it’s an obscure event, or there will likely be many white attendees.) The unhealthy habit of gravitating toward only opinions, environment and images of reinforcement will be the ruin of civilization as we know it. (And while civilization as we know it is ailing, there’s hope for recovery and overall it’s still pretty great.)
People can change. It is part of the joy of being human. Imperfection is an opportunity; it’s fun to improve. I strongly recommend everyone try it. Unlearning racism would, necessarily, make anyone a happier person. And more interesting, too.