Far From the Dream

The Silent Race War

I’ve been fooled.

Duped is another word that aptly fits my current condition.

In 2008 I watched a black man rise to popularity in my country. In 2009 I traveled to Washington D.C to watch him become inaugurated as president. I had assumed that we were moving toward the dream that Dr. Martin Luther King had so eloquently spoke about on August 28th, 1963.

I was wrong.

Even though I am too young to have been in attendance at this historic event, I’ve heard the speech countless times throughout my life.

One specific part of the speech rings out to me constantly.

Well, I’m much younger than his children and I can honestly say that I don’t live in the nation he dreamed about. We’re closer, but we still have a long road ahead of us.

The Problem

Much has changed since that warm August day in 1963. Voting laws have been passed and civil rights and anti-discriminatory rules have been enacted. Our land is legally an equal place to live. It is illegal to discriminate and the penalties for doing so are quite harsh. The problem is, we still judge people by their skin color without giving their character a chance to speak.

Philando Castile was minding his own business when a white police officer pulled him over for a broken tail light. Within minutes, Mr. Castile was shot dead in his car. The public found every reason imaginable to side with the white officer. “If Philando had only complied.”….” He shouldn’t have reached…”

Castile’s criminal history was brought up immediately. It was almost as if folks were standing ready to run background checks on black victims of police involved shootings. People were quick to justify the officer who was not convicted of any crime.

Recently, a white woman from Australia named Justine Ruszczyk was also tragically shot by police — a black officer in this instance. She called 911 to report something suspicious and was shot in her pajamas as she stood in the street. One would have expected her background to be brought up. That there was an expectation that she was menacing or didn’t comply. None of that happened. Instead, the public sought to vilify the officer. His Somalian heritage was brought up and questioned. In turn, the police chief was forced to resign within a week.

The attorney representing Ruszczyk’s family stated that she was the “most innocent victim of police shooting to date.”

People have a tendency to be biased against others, often without even realizing it. This is called Unconcious Bias. The University of California has it defined like this:

When you have a bias against a group of people, you will treat its members accordingly. If you believe that black men are violent, you will have a heightened fear as a white officer stopping a black driver. If you’re a white attorney representing a white woman, you’re going to assume she’s the most innocent victim when all the previous victims were black.

A Collection of Symptoms

The police are more of a symptom than the source of the problem. We tend to focus on police brutality because it has tragic consequences. The reality is that the general perception of minority groups in the United States hasn’t changed much over the past few decades. Black men are stereotyped as thugs, black women are stereotyped as having attitudes and being unprofessional and Muslims are stereotyped as terrorists or sympathizers. The list goes on.

The bias in this country is deeply rooted and doesn’t seem like it will change any time soon. It’s a bias that stems from hundreds of years of oppressive behavior. Unfortunately, that bias is killing our young black youth.

Colin Kaepernick decided to use his celebrity status to bring awareness to the police brutality issue and has summarily been blacklisted within the NFL because of it. Kaepernick didn’t march, riot or take to the streets. He simply took a knee in silent and peaceful protest and the country went absolutely crazy over it. He has been called many derogatory things and largely deemed unpatriotic.

Kaepernick’s blacklisting within the NFL is another symptom. It shows that a black man needs to accept his place and cannot use a protest vehicle of any type to convey dissatisfaction about his current condition.

It’s All Out of Bounds

Unfortunately, we are still far from the dream. It might take a few more generations before the population in the United States begins to move away from its bias — but we’ll get there eventually.

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