Only one side of this issue has any right to be upset
2016 has been an awkward year for race relations. After decades upon decades of watching their rights to due process getting filled with bullets and forced to pay for the spent ammunition, the black communities of North America seem to have collectively said “no more”, and began to protest on a large scale. Although I don’t largely approve of the few protests that have turned violent, an enraged response to anyone–especially police officers–getting away with murder is completely understandable. The difference between justice and revenge can be a very subtle one, and, as someone who has often confused the two, I can’t rightly judge people for wanting the latter when denied the former. Watching someone get away with a terrible act is infuriating enough before you spend five minutes on social media and see dozens of people whining about how you can’t get over it.
As a white, heterosexual, middle class male, I believe I have a moral obligation to call out the reactionary response towards the righteous anger of a black community that has every right to be angry.
First things first: All Lives Matter? Nothing about the statement “black lives matter” implies that other lives don’t matter. In a twisted way, I’m kind of impressed. You took a seemingly neutral and obvious statement about the value of human life and turned it into a reactionary response that completely missed the point of the very thing it was reacting to. In a more serious way, that kind of apathetic dismissal is what led to police brutality against black people getting to the point where a violent reaction was practically inevitable. Find a mirror and look your monster in the face.
That being said, it’s important to realize that racism can be extremely subtle. That’s what makes it so pervasive and sinister. Some people seem to operate under the deluded pretext that systemic racism ended in the 1960s, simply because it’s no longer painfully blatant (or broadly legally enshrined). I understand that you shouldn’t attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity, but in this case, even a cynic like me struggles to believe there isn’t some malice involved. There are times when it looks like the Civil Rights Movement was a blessing in disguise to bigots. They can sneer at protesters for not measuring up to people like Rosa Parks or Muhammad Ali, or claim that the legal reforms of the 1960s sufficed to give black people full control of their own destiny (because centuries of oppression can be undone by giving people a fraction of what they always deserved). They’re wrong, but try telling them as much without getting a face-full of froth. People often look for anything they can to validate what they already believe, and the Civil Rights Movement has tragically given too many people a licence to shrug and say “hey, we tried”. Sweep the problem under the rug so you don’t see how you’re still standing on someone’s neck.
But it’s also subtle in ways that you can almost forgive someone for not appreciating. One of the many problems pertaining to privilege is that being privileged also means you have the privilege of not acknowledging your own privilege. I could easily slip into the standard refrain of the working class white male who claims “my race has never benefitted me”, but that would require me to ignore that my race (or sexual orientation or gender for that matter) has never worked against me in a meaningful way. Acknowledging my good fortune in being a white, cisgendered, straight male in a country that’s still functionally run by white, cisgendered, straight males takes some self-awareness, and one need only glance at the disaster currently going down in the States to see that a little self-awareness can be hard to muster. But it goes beyond that: it also means that even beginning to understand what others go through takes effort, and no matter what, I have to acknowledge that beginning to understand is the best I can ever really do. Check your privilege seems like an annoying buzz phrase that’s already been overused, but considering that a person is morally and intellectually obliged to do it multiple times every day for the rest of one’s life? Just don’t buzz it at people who are actually trying.
It really is just something that needs to be kept in mind. Take a personal example: I got in a car accident during a recent road trip to St. John’s. I couldn’t find a hotel in Quebec, and steered a rental car into a ditch outside of Moncton because you try driving for seven hours on two hours of so-called sleep in the front seat of a compact. No one was hurt, the car sustained only minor damages, but it had to be towed, and the RCMP arrived on the scene. As the officer collected the rental forms, he notified me that he smelled marijuana in the vehicle. It belonged to my passenger (a musician, so that wasn’t surprising), he immediately admitted to owning it, and was offered a chance to destroy it so as not to face charges. And thus did a modest quantity of the reefer meet its unceremonious demise, ground into the dirt shoulder of a New Brunswick highway. I’d call that the greatest loss of the day, because the rental car was a Yaris.
As my passenger and I were in the tow truck, he asked an excellent question: “how would that have gone down if we were black?” Obviously, we couldn’t know for certain. The RCMP officer was very pleasant, but would he have been less pleasant if he was talking to young black men, as opposed to two dubiously groomed but middle class white guys? Knowing what any halfway socially conscious person knows about issues of race and policing, would we have hesitated when he mentioned the pot, thus appearing obstructive and not being given the break he’d given us? Would awkward small talk about the rifle prominently displayed in the front seat (it’s for moose, by the way) have been misconstrued? Just because you can’t rightly know the answer to a question doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask it. Sometimes, that makes asking it all the more important.
At the very least, the last thing the world needs is more impotent rage, especially when it’s being directed at people who are simply making a stand (or a knee) for their rights. The enraged reaction to Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand during the national anthem is nothing short of pathetic, and stands out as the most glaring example of twisted priorities in personal politics. Kaepernick found a way to protest a continuing and serious problem in American policing without obstructing anyone in any way, and–while the outpouring of support he’s received is heartening – the fact that anyone is calling out for his blood is terrifying. Hapless men getting gunned down by the people who are sworn to “serve and protect” them is something you can shrug off, but a football player kneels during the national anthem and that’s crossing the line? Someone should start sneaking anti-psychotics into the American water supply; can’t be any worse than what happened in Flint…
Race remains a complex, persistent, and troubling issue in North American law. As long as people ignore it (and use their ignorance as an excuse for petty, seething, malevolent anger), everyone else has an obligation to consider it. If anything, more complicated issues require more thought, even if the effort seems futile, and watching the discussion unfold on social media makes it feel like your faith in humanity is having its organs carved out and sold on the black market.
…I might need some anti-psychotics too. Anyone know a guy?