On Tuesday the delivery truck driver arrived early to Hartford Distributors beer warehouse. The occasion was a disciplinary hearing regarding a matter of stolen beer. His employers presented him videotaped evidence - obtained by a private invetigator they had retained - and offered the choice -- resign or be fired.
He signed the letter of resignation and retrieved his lunchbox of guns from the kitchenette. Ten white men were shot -- 8 fatally - in a matter of minutes..
After retreating to an office to await the inevitable, the driver took the time to call both 911 and his mother. His message to all parties was clear -
"You probably want to know the reason why I shot this place up. This place is a racist place. They’re treating me bad over here. And treat all other black employees bad over here, too. So I took it to my own hands and handled the problem. I wish I could have got more of the people."
An hour after his arrival, 9 victims of everyday racism lay dead.
And one of them was Omar Thorton.
Although the company denies any allegations of racism, several attest to Thorton's racial harassment at work. His mother, his girlfriend, her family and a close friend and former employee all recount the stories of racial slurs, the mis-loaded trucks that made extra hours of work, all saw photos of the bathroom graffiti of racial ephipets and a stick figure with a noose.
While these injustices do not in any way justify Thorton's actions, they offer a glimpse in to the deadly toll taken by everyday racism.
Everyday racism consist of the daily manifestation of racist oppression. It is something people of color encounter on a daily basis. It can be interpersonal, internal, institutional, or in any combination.These manifestations serve as a reminder, in case we forget, that our very lives are perpetually in danger. It is a survival issue. ...it is the silent killer, the leading cause of stress amongst black people... every day of our lives we suffer untold indignities at the hands of individuals representing the system.
What is the cumulative toll of everyday racism?? What is the cost of the endless drip drip drip of additonal scrutiny from co-workers, colleagues, acquaintances and strangers, the police? What is the price paid daily for differnential treatment, avoidance, tokenism, paternalism, for days, for weeks, for months and years filled with encounters shaped by overt and covert hostility? What are the consequences of endless surveillance for shopping while black, job-seeking and working while black, renting or buying a home while black, seeking education while black, driving while black, walking while black, standing while black??
Everyday racism becomes the cornerstone that upholds institutionalized racism, for persistant discriminatory statistical gaps in wealth, employment, educational attainment, rates of home ownership, and a plethora of racial disparities in criminal justice, from encounters with pokce to prison/capital punishment.
But everyday racism is also a killer. And yes, it is mostly a silent killer - unlike Omar Thorton, who killed those beileved to be his tormentors and, after he took his own last moments to witness the role of racism, was later shot by police. Much of the toll of everyday racism is unspoken, unexamined, unnamed as the culprit.
This makes it no less lethal. The stress associated with everyday racism is now acknowledged by researchers as a major factor in differential rates of mortality by race.
More than 100 studies now link racism to worse health. Many people of color experience a wide range of serious health issues at higher rates than do whites,, including breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, hypertension, respiratory illness and pain-related problems. On average, African Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and some Asian American groups live shorter lives and have poorer health outcomes than whites....
In many instances, African Americans and other groups fare worse than whites at the same income levels. In fact, infant mortality rates among babies born to college-educated African American women are higher than those of white Americans who haven't finished high school. Recent Latino immigrants, though typically poorer, are healthier than the average American; yet the longer they're here, the more their relative health status declines even as their socioeconomic situation improves. Racism has proven to be a factor affecting health "upstream" and independent of class....
One risk factor researchers are investigating is how the lived experience of racism can increase chronic stress levels and thus worse health among people of color. According to their thinking, addressing unequal birth outcomes, for example, requires more than just better prenatal care; it also requires that we change the social conditions that produce negative experiences over a lifetime. African Americans have among the worst hypertension rates not because of their genes but because of difficulties they face in their lives.
As sociologist Troy Duster explains, the impact of race on disease is not biological in origin but in effect.
In the aftermath of Omar Thorton, there has been the expected anger at the crimes, but also no shortage of "white backlash". Everyday racism doesn't usually kill "white people." The commentary has turned towards complaints over stolen beer, racism used as "an excuse" and the evils of affirmative action, cries of "reverse racism", and the casting of blame on Obama and Holder, all spiced up with racial slurs and lots of screaming in caps.
An unsurpising but misguided explosion of "white" resentment.
A wasted opportunity.
Omar Thorton is just an extreme canary in the racist coal mine - he is simply the latest loudest rare witness to everyday racism and it's deadly toll.
Let us as progressives instead turn our attention to ending the death count of everyday racism --
See It, Believe It, Say It, and Act on It.