Is Race Really A Side Issue?

I must admit that, as a Yankee, I am somewhat of an outsider in my adopted home just south of Birmingham, Alabama. I was told by my father of a time when he was an outsider in the South when I was a small child. He was repeatedly told that "He didn't understand." when he tried to bring dark-skinned brothers and sister in Christ into the Church where he ministered in North Carolina. Now I am being told that I don't understand.

I have been told by people with light-colored skin that racism is a thing of the past in our country, and that Black people are the problem because they keep bringing up the issue of race. In other words, my dear "white" friends here in Alabama truly believe that black people use race as a means to avoid the bigger problems of all the poor choices of the members of the black community. When a dark-skinned individual is attacked by police, and killed, my "white" friends tell me how the injured or dead deserved what they got for not complying with some order even though the facts don't always support that conclusion. Its interesting really. My friends often have the belief that the facts will prove that the "black guy really did something wrong" and they post false or dubious articles to their Facebook page to support their assertions.  

We can play with numbers, how more "white" people are killed by police than "black" people, though, admittedly, it makes statistical sense that it should be the case that the population with the highest numbers have the most run-ins with the police. It is interesting though, that my friends and family that have darker skin and dark curly hair have more negative encounters with the police for "routine checks" than do my lighter-skinned family and friends. It has been brought home recently when my aunt, who is a Native American from Western NY described to me how she is treated as a dirty Muslim or Mexican, and my friends who have adopted darker-skinned children or married someone with darker skin see their kids treated very differently than the light-colored kids they tend to be around.

 As illustration of this point I don't call these friends and children "black" because some of these friends are dark-skinned, but not necessarily from an African heritage. Our culture is so racist that they assume dark-skin is some form of an African heritage and worthy of mistreatment. The stories these friends and family recount are heartbreaking, and not all in the South. Children are called dirty, and told to stop playing with a group of children because they appear to have African heritage until that child's "white" mother steps in to correct those adults' behavior.

 I have been told that I don't understand true racism because I'm not from the South. I may understand better than you know. My grandmother, a Yankee by birth, used, to my father's horror, the n-word to describe dark-skinned individuals. She once told me how she wasn't racist because she didn't mind talking to "them". She really was more accepting of "colored people" than many of the people from which she learned culture growing up. My grandmother defined her racism based on how she compared to "true racists" that she knew, but generally felt that people who were darker-skinned were less trustworthy and not quite as industrious. In other words, though she didn't desire harm on others, she was racist and she didn't recognize it.

 I've come to see that my friends down here who are racist don't recognize their racism because they are comparing themselves to some pretty awful people. The fact is that we are all a bit racist, and most people who refuse to admit that they prejudge people based on their skin color are much more racist than they realize. This point really hit home when I heard one of my friends listening to the video Kalyn Chapman James posted on the internet where she admitted tearfully that she identified a bad attitude about police in her heart, and how she is trying to deal with the fact that the sniper who killed five police officers seemed like a martyr to her. In other words, she was using herself as an example of how one needs to recognize that they have to face the darkness in her heart and grow past it. The video was not politically correct. It was quite shocking, and I admired the girl's courage to admit something that will get her death threats. She insisted repeatedly that she would not accept this dark thing about herself, and was working on changing her heart, but my white friends could only see that she admired the murderer of five police officers. They totally missed the point. And they missed it because it came from a black woman.

 I don't have time to recount the number of times a white guy or lady admitted a wrong, very damaging, attitude of heart, and were forgiven by my friends for seeing their wrong attitude and trying to fix it, but my friends could not even hear this black woman's confession of sin that was coupled with a stated desire and plan for repentance. Donald Trump was more quickly forgiven for suggesting that black people should be beaten senseless at his rallies for being annoying, and he never expressed a desire to repent of his attitude. No, Donald Trump is lauded for refusing to be politically correct and saying what he really feels without worry about repercussions. The same apparently does not hold true if you're a tearful black woman wanting to change.

So don't tell me that racism is dead in 2016. Don't tell me that you don't see color. You may be better than your ancestors, but we are not out of the woods yet. It is not the imagination of dark-skinned individuals that police and the average citizen is frightened or wary of them simply because of their skin color. It is time to admit, like Kalyn did, that we have the wrong attitudes in our hearts, and there is room to grow. Refusing to face the darkness in our own hearts will only perpetuate one aspect of the darkness that creates such fear in the lives of so many law-abiding minorities in our country as they are held at arms length simply because they have more melanin in their skin than our favorite people do.