Hey White People, This Is Normal. Unfortunately Some of You Just Noticed.
Well how’s normal going for you guys?
Me? Oh I’m doing great.
I am so tired of hearing about the new normal. There is no new normal. Change is normal. Dire straits are normal. Tragedy is normal.
The fact we’re all dealing with it, (or refusing to deal with it), at the same time is a little different. But it’s not a new normal.
There is nothing unusual about the murder spree of the last weekend. It’s perfectly normal for this to happen. It’s always the backlash of protests about police brutality. It always is. It’s normal.
Black guy gets killed on camera, by police, protests and possibly riots ensue, police are put in a sticky situation, some continue to protect and serve, some pull out of problematic neighborhoods partially, some wholly. And as per the reaction, normal continues.
Sorry folks. This is normal.
It’s a societal norm. It’s a wave, with an undertow. For every action, there is a reaction. And for every reaction, there is another action. At the end of it all, hopefully, a movement forward to change the initial action occurs.
It would be nice if we had a national leader, pretty much anyone, who could step up and have a calming reaction. Perhaps in that case we could have an earlier movement to peace. Perhaps we could all, on both sides, have a lessening of animosity to the other.
I’m not seeing a leader like that. All I’m seeing is anger. And hence the actions and reactions continue.
We’ve never really been in a spot like this. With every person elected President since Rodney King, we’ve had national leaders, on both sides of the aisle, who have tried to calm the seas, who have attempted to bridge our differences.
We have. And we have had results.
That’s right, I am saying that. I do believe, despite what we see, and what we feel, and the oppressive and almost impossible to perceive change, there is, and has been movement.
Seventeen years after Rodney King was beaten, after one Democrat and two Republican Presidents, we elected one of African American descent.
“Seventeen years, Dan! Do you call that change?”
Others looking back may say, particularly from my people’s point of view, that it was no big deal. Barack Obama was a unicorn. The perfect person for the job, no matter his color.
But anyone living in the south, either black or white, you know. You know. We know.
I’ve got friends with kids now, who constantly complain about school teachers who basically are teaching from a Fox News broadcast.
Normal. Damn sad, but in the south, normal.
A friend of mine, only as far back as the mid 90’s had a history teacher tell her entire class, there would never be a black man or woman elected President. Never!
So, we know, there has been change.
And we know that same man, that same President fostered change not only for people of color, but he championed rights for the LGBTQ community.
Societal evolution is an awful lot like biological evolution, for eons nothing happens and then bang! From out of the blue, an outlier, a new perspective, or an errant gene flourishes and we burst with new life and new opportunity!
And that was the Barack Obama Presidency.
And so now, as we know, with each wave is an undertow, and each action there is a reaction. And so we have been mired in a time of regression and some might even say open repression of our freedoms.
But there can be, and there will be another side to this. There will be another action. And we shall find ourselves with opportunity again ahead of us, and the flaccid, elapsed old men of oppression, again behind us.
Black Lives Matter. And as someone said once, “The time is always right, to do what is right.”