Talk is Easy, Sometimes. The Talk of Freedom, Not So Much!
I used to be that white guy who would say, “do we have to talk about race all the time?”
I just really wanted to be my own person, be good with all people, and I suppose imagine everyone else would, or should, or could do that too.
But as I’ve gotten older, as I’ve learned more, because I’ve listened more, it seems to be mainly a fairy tale imagined up in my mind.
Doing, or saying, or supporting nothing is as bad as doing something wrong. Especially when it comes to race. It’s the old saying “if you ain’t going forward, you’re movin’ backwards.”
The ebb and flow of racist events through this country’s history is amazing. We white people think there were only a couple flash points and in between all was a straight line of milk and honey.
We think there was:
1-Pre slavery
2-Post slavery
3-Civil Rights Movement
And that’s it. Problems solved. No big deal.
The problems, and quite frankly the worst problems were in between all these benchmarks. And I think it should be easy for us to see that right now!
We are in a very chaotic time of division in our country, and in our nation’s politics. And we can see now as white people, how simply declaring a law as a law, doesn’t necessarily change anything.
I read an article today where a Navy Seal, who now owns a café, declared on social media, “if you voted for Biden, you aren’t welcome in my business.”
That’s tough isn’t it? That’s tough that it’s come to this.
The backlash is real. And the backlash is nothing new.
The backlash from electing Barack Obama, the first Black President, was to form the Tea Party, a largely uneducated lot of political armchair quarterbacks who promptly began to elect their members across the South.
And so what we gained locally, was John Stevens and Bruce Griffey, who have accomplished nothing for our community. Nothing.
What we gained as a state, was higher healthcare insurance than the rest of the nation, because of Tea Party resistance to Medicaid expansion.
What we got as a nation was four years of Donald Trump, four years of crazy lies, and now a large chunk of Americans who refuse to believe science, math or any news media except maybe Fox.
Last week I listened to a friend of mine, who manages hundreds of people, who has a college degree, and who is quite successful, rail on and on about how China obviously created Covid-19. Then two days later, another white guy in Atlanta, shoots up a bunch of Asian spas.
In 1871 William W. Holden was governor of North Carolina. Prior to the Civil War he had been opposed to Black suffrage. He was pro slavery! He was for slavery.
But fast forward a few years, after North Carolina was accepted back into the Union, he was elected governor and pledged to support Black suffrage as well as defend citizens from the lawlessness of the Ku Klux Klan.
The lawlessness of the KKK, if you were unaware, focused primarily on lynching Black people.
The governor was not successful. Instead, his supporters were threatened and assassinated. That’s right, assassinated. Sheriffs were assassinated. Mayors were assassinated.
The governor would end up being impeached, convicted, removed from governorship, and prohibited from ever again holding statewide office.
There is law and there is order.
Right now, we have law. But we have people, like our Navy Seal buddy, and people, like many police officers in Washington DC on January 6, who are actively becoming part of the disorder. These people are actively storming our capitol and discriminating based on our politics!
And so we can quietly shut up, so our racist friend can have a place at our table, and ban us from his café, and shoot up our grocery stores. Or we can continue to have a voice.
And with that voice, and only with that voice, can we till the ground, where hope can grow for those to come.