We hear it all the time – “I’m not a racist.” Typically coming from white citizens (most recently white Police Officers), but occasionally coming from non-whites as well. I am confident that these folks really believe what they are saying, but that leaves me unable to resolve the dilemma that I am left with. Specifically, how can we have so much evidence of racism when we have so many involved citizens declaring themselves not to be racist? Let’s consider this together.
First, we need to recognize that racism is just a specific form of prejudice and/or prejudicial behavior and not all of those possibilities are defined under our laws. We have legal descriptions of what are known as “protected classes” of persons and prejudicial behavior against them is against the law, but we shouldn’t think that the absence of a “protected class” definition somehow means that prejudice has not or cannot occur. An extreme example of my point might be a person of color acting in a prejudicial way toward a white person – since I don’t think we can find a “protected class” definition for white citizens, does that mean that prejudice has not occurred? I don’t think so.
But I don’t want to artificially limit the conversation with legal definitions so let’s just say that prejudice is prejudice whether there is a “protected class” definition or not. So, when one person acts in a prejudicial way towards another person prejudice has occurred even if a court case cannot be the result.
And let me ask a different question as well just to sharpen our focus. Are there any behaviors that make prejudicial conduct acceptable? In other words, if I behave badly does that give someone else the right to behave prejudicially towards me? I don’t think it should.
With this as our foundation, if I see a white Police Officer kicking a black man who is sitting passively on the curb, am I witnessing racism? Do I need to know what has taken place before the cameras started to answer that question? If the Police Officer is not heard to be using racial slurs does that change anything? We need to get comfortable with our thoughts on these questions because we are seeing more and more of them as time passes.
For me, there is NEVER an acceptable excuse for prejudicial conduct, but I think there is a tiny bit of room in the conversation for genuine ignorance of the sensitivities involved. That said, how many times has someone said to you that ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law? When I ask myself if that Police Officer seen kicking the passively seated black man might have been inclined to kick a passively seated white man, doubt enters my mind and I can’t make it go away. It is for this reason that I believe I am witnessing racism in its most raw and brutal form.
There have been several incidents in the news this year dealing with Police use of deadly force against minority members of our society. I have often heard officials making comments to the effect that the Police will stop using force when the suspect complies with their orders. So when that black man sits passively on the curb, I have to wonder just how his behavior is considered not to be compliant with the Officer’s orders – just how is his behavior threatening to that Police Officer. I must be missing something.
I am certain that the Officer would be the first to say that he is not a racist, but I think his actions clearly tell a different story.
Our Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These are important words in the history of these United States, but the Declaration of Independence is not one of our governing documents. The Declaration of Independence does not tell us how our Government is to be organized nor does it give us details regarding our laws and/or the enforcement of them. For that level of detail we must turn to the Constitution of the United States.
Our Founding Fathers, in drafting our United States Constitution, struggled with the best way to deal with the rights of our citizens. In the end, they controversially chose to use the Amendment process because the majority of the elected members to the Constitutional Convention took the position that a citizen’s rights could not be infringed by the Constitution unless and until it had been ratified. Further, it wasn’t until the Fourteenth Amendment that we find the concept of equal rights codified. Passed by Congress on June 13, 1866 and ratified by the States on July 9, 1868, AMENDMENT XIV states:
“Section 1.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
In my mind, these important words, if they are to have any meaning at all in our society, must be the end of this argument – that Police Officer was behaving prejudicially, racially towards the black man seated on the curb. That Police Officer brought discredit to his uniform, to his Police Department, and to the Law Enforcement System more generally. What that Law Enforcement System does about it only explains whether his conduct was personal or systemic or both.
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