I considered writing about my New Year’s resolutions but decided against it. Upon reflection I couldn’t come up with anything I really needed to improve upon, other than, perhaps, humility.
So I decide to write about race, a subject almost certain to warm our emotions, if not our brains. Specifically, I wanted to comment on the deaths of Messrs. Brown and Garner at the hands of the local police. Now seems a good time to comment — after the immediate fog of the events begin to subside but before Oscar buzz or more pictures of Kim Kardashian’s butt cause us to completely forget about these tragedies.
The deaths provide us an access portal to a larger discussion about race in America. The specific, murky and conflicting details of the two deaths are not my focus but rather why the discussion of their deaths was so polarizing.
Almost immediately the country divided into two camps — Team Victim and Team Police. That division was certainly exacerbated, if not created by the rabble-rousing, incendiary coverage of Fox and MSNBC, which used the story to confirm and inflame peoples’ prejudices in order to sell Viagra to their aging viewers.
As I followed the “debate,” it became clear to me that the problem of race and racism in America has been with us for hundreds of years, and although progress has been made, it will be many more years before there will be any kind of meaningful closure.
Money, legislation, judicial decisions, even electing an African-American president (twice) has not proven to be the path to true resolution. It will require a sea change in the individual hearts and minds of the individual. We will need to see and understand both sides of the Garner-Brown story. We need to better see life through the perspective of the young male residents of the inner city and the police officers working in those high-crime areas. Most Americans know nothing of these people’s lives and jobs, nor have they done anything to learn about them and their situations.
Instead, both sides fall back on the prejudices of family and friends and the comforting assurance of biased media. Oak Park is as guilty as Ft. Worth, Texas in its inability to understand and empathize with conflicting world views on race.
I suspect few Americans really want to challenge their beliefs and assumptions about race. Stereotypes are so much easier. Pursuing a better, more nuanced truth requires some heavy mental lifting.
So maybe a New Year’s resolution might be to, just once, try to see these sad, avoidable deaths from a perspective other than your own bias.
If not, then in a couple of years we can repeat the whole cycle again — with different young black males and young white cops. The names will be changed to protect our prejudices.
