For clarity or comfort or food for thought…
Race relations in our country are not based on your skin color but on your perspective. In other words, your role in the dialogue and the solution is not dictated by your race, but by your point of view.
Processing race relations is not a zero-sum game. It doesn't require that all people of color be right or be wrong or that all white people be right or be wrong. Tragedy isn't some twisted, "winner-takes-all" scenario. We all lost this week. Every single day. Every single life.
The horrific loss of these five officers' lives doesn't take away from or replace the horrific loss of the many men and women of colors' lives. It ADDS to the tally.
We don't stop mourning the hundreds of victims of police shootings; we now also must mourn even more police officers shot in the line of duty. All because of race and how we are handling it in our country.
We have to stop simplifying race relations and racism in this country and in our conversations. Stop thinking about it simply; stop speaking about it simply. If it is simple to you, then you have been blessed to lead a life not deeply affected by it. Know that your experience of the world is not a universal reality. It is a subjective experience.
Race relations are not a Whites vs. Blacks thing. The murdered officers were White and Latino; the injured police and protesters were multicultural. Just because traditional and social media are not inundating us with images of Latinos and Native Americans and others who are being killed doesn't mean it isn't happening. And just because traditional media isn't filled with the agonizing efforts of the Black community to stop the violence in our own communities doesn't mean it isn't happening. It is everywhere on my timeline, so maybe it means you are not exposed to everything that is happening in the world. Before you post something flip or hateful, just search. See if it's true.
Speaking further to being flip and hateful, please stop telling people to “f*** off” or otherwise speaking disrespectfully and ridiculously to them in the dialogue. Stop. This issue deserves the level of respect and care and intellect and facts that you would exhibit in a Ph.D. dissertation defense. PEOPLE ARE DYING because of this. The subject and the country deserve your absolute best in the conversation.
Racism and its incredible reach and the navigation of it is incredibly complex. It is a daily experience for many of us, negotiating imagery and interactions and aggressions. We did not create racism or profit from it, yet we live with its intentions and consequences.
Don't tell the people who are trying to steer through someone else's system of marginalization that "all they talk about is race." Well, no, that's not all they talk about. And...well...yeah. Race is a big factor in our lives through no creation of our own. Instead of asking why we talk about it, maybe ask why you never do?
If you are a woman or LGBTQ or any other "other," just swap the language above out; it is a shared experience. Whenever it is not your group that is being marginalized, and you are benefiting from the privilege of not being a member of that group, don't concentrate on how they survive marginalization and how you would like them to do that. Instead find a way to capitalize on your privilege to change the circumstances.
We also have learned that at least one sniper killed in Dallas last night designed a triangulated strategy, precisely targeted and shot these officers and planted IEDs around downtown Dallas. So now we find we are adding a vet and mental illness to this ungodly mess.
This morning, we now have lost more lives due to race relations in our country. It is a sickness that has crippled us for hundreds of years. You can spend more time explaining why there isn't racism, why everyone is the same, why bad things happen to you, too, etc.
Or you can say...I need a new lexicon for this. I can engage in this differently. I can find common ground. I can be sad about officers killing unarmed civilians AND, at the same time, be sad about heavily armed civilians killing officers protecting citizens. And posing with protesters in pictures.
You can stop trying to make everything wrong equally on both sides. "Fairness" isn't ignoring the facts and assigning blame equally to both sides. Fairness is evaluating the facts and using those facts and solid judgment to speak to the issues of what happened.
You can release reacting to what people "mean" and engage with what they "say" and "do." You can't call Black Lives Matter protesters "terrorists" because that word has a definition, and the movement does not remotely fit it. You can't say Pres. Obama and BLM "hate cops" or want to kill them because that is conflating the call for police to stop killing unarmed Black people with a call to kill police.
People get to ask that you stop killing them without you deciding they really mean they want to kill other people. People get to say that Black Lives Matter without you deciding they really mean that your life does not. If I said, in response to rampant child abuse, that "Children's Lives Matter," and you replied "Adult Lives Matter! All Lives Matter!," then you would be the least aware and useful person in the dialogue. Does that help?
Jesse Williams gets to discuss race without people calling it racist. If you've never talked about race in depth, for years and years, I understand that it's very simple to you - any mention of race is racist. Your family may have angrily shut down conversations or your young questions or washed your mouth out with soap for things you repeated in innocence or told you "we don't discuss race" or "everyone is equal" or "we don't see color in this household." They may, in fact, have been well-intentioned in doing so. But it means, these many years later, you are immersed in a dialogue that you don't have any tools for. So you fall back on that training, you try to shut the dialogue down, you deny it's real, you repeat that "we're all equal." You simplify it to the level you were allowed to process it.
But you may not realize that simplifying things to make them fit the narrative you were raised with invalidates the very real experiences of people for whom this is not a narrative or an intellectualized "life lesson." I understand. I am developing tools myself in other dialogues that are not my burden but are my responsibility. I have to because engaging respectfully and responsively reaffirms that these issues mean something to other people and to my country, even when they don't directly affect me. And it helps to change them.
So rather than shut down the conversation, or reframe it because it is unfamiliar to you or uncomfortable for you...consider stepping into the dialogue and listening and learning the ropes. You will see the skill it takes to navigate this craziness effectively.
You have two choices. You can invest energy in invalidating this dialogue, or you can invest that same level of energy in rendering the dialogue no longer necessary. By helping to solve the problem. I am stepping away from my desk today to go volunteer. To always remember that I am the change I want to create.
This is a serious and very real problem in this country. It is not all in people's minds, they are not "hyper-sensitive," etc. It deserves serious and smart and fact-driven and heart-filled engagement. The country deserves it. The thousands and thousands who have died deserve it.
Thanks for listening. After all of the craziness on social media last night, I saw the most simple but profound message. I will end with that.