Black and White

Black and White

John Paul Derryberry

There is an idea that we all run to our corners and look for information that validates our opinion instead of allowing new information to adjust our views. It an easy trap to fall into because circumstances of different situations will enable us to explain away the stuff we don't like about a particular case.  We all want our beliefs to be right, so we all are prone to validate our views instead of changing them. Do we think, I have put so much thought into them, how can I be wrong?  Well, we are wrong, a lot of us. 

Republicans always point out a failed Democratic city, such as Detroit, because Democratic policies fail in the long run.  We never see them mention that Kansas' all-conservative government nearly bankrupt the state with all its tax cuts a couple of years back. Democrats always show where charter schools have failed to down-play school choice.  But in New Orleans, after Katrina, charter schools propelled education forward in a time of great need. Even as some of you read this, you will fact check my points and dismiss these notions based on your already held beliefs. I know this as I type and I know that the cases for Detroit, Kansas, charter schools, and education are complicated. They are way more complicated than I can even imagine and listing all of the evidence would make this a 4-day read instead of a blog. The facts are, in some places Democratic policies work tremendously, and in some places, they don't. The same is true for Republican policies. 

But this week, two horrible events in the same town take away our ability to use variables as a way to explain away racism. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, two men -- one black, one white -- interacted with the same law enforcement personnel while breaking the law. One was shot seven times in the back and the other was handed water. Both of their lives were ruined for the same reason: our collective failure to admit racism and reform.  People are dead, a man is paralyzed and a 17-year-old kid's life is forever altered because we failed to lead when we had evidence all around us that we needed to change.

I won't make heroes or villains out of anyone involved because it's all a tragedy. Yet this tragedy revealed an undeniable truth. The policing system viewed a black man with his back turned, who may or may not have had a knife, as a significant enough threat to shoot seven times in the back. They viewed a 17-year-old white kid carrying a deadly weapon safe enough to hand a bottle of water.  All the other aspects of this situation do not matter; as we say in the behavior intervention world, don't get lost in the weeds of details.  Anyone who comes to the conclusion that race isn't playing a role in everyday society has come to the wrong conclusion.  

Maybe this will evolve into the starting point for our nation to reform and step into the difficult position of admitting it was wrong: wrong for supporting law and order instead of seeking justice; wrong for saying I don't see color when we all know the color of others' skin; wrong for not confronting micro-racism among our friends and co-workers because we don't want people to be uncomfortable; wrong when we said racism is harder to detect because it's no longer black and white when we have ample evidence it is; and wrong for thinking we were beyond this because we elected a black man to the highest office in the land.  

Racism will always exist because too many small-minded people will pass it down to impressionable kids, who turn into 17-year-olds who take a gun to a protest, pull the trigger and become murders. But that doesn't mean we can't lessen it with every generation by reminding ourselves every day that for too many of us it is still black vs. white. And, by asking how do I take action today, tomorrow, five years from now, to move us away from that notion.