Time is Right for Honest Conversation About Racism in America

Seems like Pandora’s box was opened this week when a political cartoon in the right-leaning New York Post hit the stands. While some suggest Sean Delonas’s cartoon only meant to mock the federal stimulus bill and not compare President Obama to a violent chimp that needed to be gunned down by the (white) police, others saw it as blatantly racist. I’m hoping it wasn’t, that the artist merely had a lapse in judgment and his editor was out sick that day.

Then there was the suggestion by newly appointed Attorney General Eric Holder that Americans are cowards when it comes to dealing with issues of race, which created just as much of a stir.

Here we are, barely a month into the term of the country’s first African-American President and already such heated rhetoric on the topic of race.

Shouldn’t be surprising.

Much ado about nothing? Perhaps. But I think it’s clear that we are a nation bursting at the seams to have real dialogue about race, to which I say: It's about time.

I’m guessing that your reaction to these two news stories varied greatly depending on the color of your skin.

Reminds me of a few years ago when the ABC news program “20/20” accused Nissan and General Motors of participating in lending arrangements with car dealers that resulted in blacks paying higher finance charges than whites on new car loans. In living rooms from Spokane to Baltimore, reaction among most whites watching the show was “surely not,” and among most blacks was, “hmmm… that’s not surprising.”

You see, for whites, it’s easy to be blind to racism. White men like me, in particular, can conceivably live out an entire lifetime without ever having to confront prejudice on a personal level. I have (vicariously) because in the past few years there have been a number of people in my life who experience its pervasive sting on a daily basis – people important enough to me that I’ve taken time to listen to their stories and feel the hurt in their voices as they’ve told them.

Here’s what I think: Certainly there still exists pockets of true bigotry out there, neo-nazis and other hate mongers, boiling over that we have a black president. But for the most part I honestly believe that an overwhelming majority of whites are well-meaning. But incredibly naïve. Naiveté, along with denial and a guilty conscience contributes to a collective avoidance to the subtler forms of racism, which is all around us. White folk just don't see it. 

Several years ago, an organization where I worked was experiencing a fair amount of racial tension. The OJ trial was going on at the time which only added fuel to the fire. OJ demonstrated, as well as anything I’ve ever known, how people can view the same events so differently -- depending on the lenses they're looking through. To its credit, the organization spent a lot of time and money trying to heal its wounds and is stronger still because it did. We spent years going through a variety of cultural awareness and sensitivity programs which opened up lines of communication and opened eyes. And wounds.

During one of the sessions, my black co-workers, one by one, told stories of the kinds of prejudice they encounter on a daily basis: in check out lines, during job interviews, and, yes, while trying to get a new car loan. My white co-workers and I were astonished. Who knew?

One of my co-workers talked about the time she was walking home from elementary school when a white man who didn't particularly take to the idea of her cutting through his yard unleashed his pit bull dog on her. The dog chased her down and bit her several times on the back of her leg. She remembers the man, red-faced, yelling at her, calling her the “n-word” as she looked up at him from the ground. It was a memory so painful that she had blocked it out of her mind all these years, only to have it resurface and come flooding back as we sat in a circle on the floor. As she told the story, her voice quivering, the rest of cried. And I remember, for the very first time, feeling nothing but shame because of the skin that I was wearing.

A friend of mine was recently the plaintiff in a lawsuit against one of Charlotte’s popular department stores. While Christmas shopping with her children she was accused of shoplifting and was harassed by the store manager. He ended up pushing her in the stomach. She was six months pregnant at the time, by the way. She contends that the store makes it a practice to target and harass black customers, and that they even have a code to alert staff that “one of them” has entered the building. A few years ago I would have thought the idea was preposterous. But it seems every black person I know has a story just as shocking, so it doesn’t seem as preposterous to me now. What the store manager didn’t know is that my friend is a very powerful attorney in town and that her husband is one of the more renowned physicians in the region. They could buy the whole store if they wanted to. They messed with the wrong lady.

I do think we’ve come a long ways since “coloreds” had separate water fountains to drink from throughout the south and MLK was leading marches from Selma to Montgomery. The problem is it’s a lot easier to see burning crosses than glass ceilings. You have to look harder to see that institutional racism is alive and well. But it’s only with eyes wide open to the dirty ways of the world that we’ll be able to hold lending institutions accountable, for example. And political cartoonists. 

As well as our elected officials – for the fact that the placement of most toxic waste dumps are in poor (mostly black) neighborhoods or that there is disproportionate levels of lead and toxic air pollution in inner city (mostly black) ghettos or that there is a 6 to 1 black to white ratio of incarcerated juveniles even when the crimes they commit are exactly the same or that 3 out of 4 children admitted to adult prisons are children of color even though most juvenile crimes are committed by white kids… the deplorable conditions of inner city (mostly black) schools, the racial disparity among death row inmates, or that at every turn minorities face barriers and obstacles most whites don't even know exist.

Nowhere is institutional racism more apparent than in the child welfare system where I’ve spent most of my career. 65% of children in foster care are children of color, even though they comprise only 35% of the overall child population. When a family is reported for suspected child abuse or neglect, minority children are more likely than white children to be placed in foster care rather than receive in-home family preservation services – even when the families share the same problems and characteristics. And black children stay in foster care twice as long as white children. Even though blacks are well-represented along the front lines, policy and decision-makers at public and private child welfare agencies tend to be white men.

Gone are the days when blacks had to sit at the back of the bus, thank God. But make no mistake, racism lives on. Even the most naïve whites need to own up to that fact. As long as whites hold the power in this country, which we do (electing a black president doesn’t change that), it will be up to us to take the lead in rectifying the sins of our past and present. 

Most whites would be intolerant of a Klan rally in our community or a noose hanging from a tree in a yard of a black neighbor. We need to be just as intolerant of the less blatant forms of racism going on around us, even though they're much easier to ignore.  

To do so we must first take our heads out of the sand.

The best way I know to begin the process is through individual relationships. Talking and a whole lot of listening. At least that’s how it worked for me. Then comes awareness, empathy, compassion, activism, and (hopefully) change.

But our society will continue to struggle along a racial divide as long as it continues to be segregated (and it is). Separate-ness causes complacency. And myopia. Work places are diverse, but diversity has to extend beyond the job to dinner tables and places of worship and living rooms and bowling alleys and other places where real friendships grow.

Because it’s hard to continue to think in terms of “us” and “them” when “them” includes people that you love.

It's a new day in America; the time is right for an honest conversation about racism.  

The First Retrospective on the First Decade of the New Millennium

Happy New Year!

Is it just me or is this decade flying by? Seems like only yesterday I was partying like it was 1999. That’s because it was 1999! I keep waiting for some scientist somewhere to confirm my suspicion that the earth actually does spin faster on its axis the older you get.

As the year moves along, I’m sure every blogger in cyberspace will offer up a retrospective on the first decade of the new millennium. I thought I would get mine out of the way early.

What a decade it has been! In your wildest dreams, did you ever think you would pay more than $4 for a gallon of gas? Or that you would seriously consider buying a hybrid?

This decade, there have been more scams and scoundrels than You Tube can keep up with -- Blegojevich and Madoff only notable because of the boldness and sheer audacity of their actions.

Technology exploded. The economy may be going down the drain but, hey, you could download any track Moby ever laid down and have it playing on your iphone in seconds. That’s hot. Facebook redefined how we interact with friends. Michael Jackson got even weirder (and whiter). Many of us barely making minimum wage were convinced that we really could afford that dream home then developed a love/hate/love relationship with our Adjustable Rate Mortgage. Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s home run record.*

Two events on either end of the decade, though, will certainly come to define it: the terrorist attacks on a morning in September toward its beginning and the emergence of a new leader promising transformation as it comes to an end. In between, President Bush proved he was in way over his head and by the end of the decade was among the most unpopular presidents ever.

In many ways, the country is still reeling from 9/11. Everything changed that day. In all fairness to Bush, what an ominous crisis with which to be burdened so early in his term.

Still, what we needed from the leader of the free world at that time was wisdom and sound judgment. We got bumbling bravado and incompetence, instead. In the months and years that followed, we squandered enormous amounts of good will from around the globe, incited terrorist activity to unprecedented levels and killed and maimed untold thousands of US and Iraqi soldiers and innocent civilians.

“Mission accomplished,” will undoubtedly be chronicled by historians as one of the more smug and irresponsible statements of the decade.

Osama Bin Laden still roams free and we the people have blood on our hands.

Meanwhile, the federal deficit ballooned. This president created more debt than the previous 42 combined. The country’s infrastructure continued to corrode and the gains we made affecting dozens of social problems in the 90’s (gun violence, teen pregnancy, delinquency, etc.), predictably, took a nose dive this decade due to inattention. No Child Left Behind was ill-conceived and the federal government’s response to Katrina was shameful.

Perhaps history will be kinder to President Bush. Perhaps I’m not seeing the forest for the trees. Today, however, it’s hard for me to conjure much sympathy. He was an awful president. Thank God it’s about over.

This decade will surely also be remembered as the decade in which the US free market system collapsed under the weight of its own greed and corruption. A little greed is important in keeping capitalism churning along, I realize. But decades of sleaze, gluttony, power mongering and deception (all while our deregulate-at-all-cost government looked the other way) finally took its toll.

This decade represents capitalism gone amok, the worst face of the free market system, and provided an abundance of propaganda fodder for socialism as a superior system to developing nations around the world. The gap between the richest and the rest of us grew wider as the poorest among us still waited for a little something to trickle down.

Here’s a little something you may remember from Sunday School: love of money is the root of all evil. Here's another: you reap what you sow. This is America paying for its sins.

About the economy: Certainly, cyclical downturns and bubble bursts are not uncommon. Markets bend and correct and bounce back. This isn’t the first time the sky was falling. But you have to admit, this time it seems different. Bank mergers, bankruptcies and bailouts dominated the financial news in late ’08.

My bet is that what emerges from the ashes won’t much resemble your father’s America, that this is truly a defining moment in US history – for better or for worse.

Now, comes one charismatic young man named Barrack Obama, representing change and hope at a time when both are desperately needed. Smart children everywhere now know that they, too, can someday be president.

For people my age, Obama is the first president who seems like one of us, someone we would have stayed up late hanging out with in college -- drinking “Pepsis” and debating politics while The Smiths blared from a boom box in the corner of the dorm room.

For America, whose not so distant legacy includes lynch mobbings and governors in University doorways barring "coloreds" from entering in, Obama's win is in and of itself a sign of change and hope, even before he ever sets foot in the Oval Office.

What we know about President-elect Obama is that he's intelligent, articulate, inspiring, charming and energetic. What we don't know yet is whether the policies he sets forth in the coming months to fix dozens of messes inherited from his predecessor will be effective. But we should have some idea by the time the decade is over. If he can successfully lead us out of this economic quagmire, restore some respect and credibility in the international community, and begin to impact some of the tremendous problems on the home front, then the decade will end on a positive note and the next one will start off with great promise.

But that’s a tall order. If he can accomplish just half of what he’s outlined during his tenure, then there should be a big rock in South Dakota reserved for his likeness.

For me, this decade has been equally eventful. On October 25, 2000, I showed up at the doorstep of a beautiful young woman who rocked my world. We got married, had two beautiful children together, moved to California (and back). We bought a house near San Francisco during a seller’s market and tried to sell it just as the housing market collapsed. Note: anyone interested in a beautifully remodeled art deco home halfway between SF and Napa Valley, please give me a call.

Also this decade: my father died, I started a couple nonprofits, changed jobs more time than I’d like to admit, took trips to both Alaska and Hawaii for my fortieth birthday and then wrote a book about taking a trip to the moon with my oldest daughter. This year, I’ll be working on launching an exciting new children’s law center in Raleigh. Whew. I crammed in a lot in ten little years.

To be honest, I’m ready to dig in. Get settled. Relax a little.

As for the country, I’m hoping for nothing more than a return to normalcy. I’d settle for another decade like the 90’s, which seems downright boring in comparison.

Then, I'd like some help figuring out a way to stop the earth from spinning so fast!

Earliest Childhood Memory

I call it my earliest childhood memory, but to be honest I have no means to prove it. I say I’m three and my sister, Renee, is seven, but those ages were arbitrarily attached some time later. Perhaps we were older.

It’s 1968 I believe. The place is my grandmother’s house in Eight Mile, Alabama, just outside of Mobile on the sandy, humid Gulf Coast – which is in equal parts antebellum aristocracy and impoverished backwoods.

We’re outside playing. It must be summer. Renee’s skinny suntanned legs are poking out from blue jeans cut off to make shorts. Her hair is almost white. We are searchers – hunters for roly polies and caterpillars and centipedes. We turn up brick and concrete slabs and look under garbage can lids for our prey. We hold them captive for a while in an empty Folger’s can Grandmother gave us, and then let them all go free.

The images are gray and grainy, like fading black and white photographs. But the memory of the cool, moist Alabama earth between my fingers is clear. Black dirt under fingernails. Curiosity emerges as we carefully pass a snail back and forth between little hands, its slimy body retreating into a delicate shell. Renee instructs me on bits and pieces of knowledge she has gained during her one year of elementary school and lifetime of exploration. Everything she tells me is indisputably truthful, as in my mind her wisdom is unquestionable.

Dusk settles in. Lightning bugs and bats fill the sky. Aunt Clista and Uncle Fred in their tiny house across the street call out our names. There is a smell of frying chicken in the muggy air, which mingles with a perfume-sweet fragrance – honeysuckle maybe, or mimosa. There’s another man. Who is that man? His face I see, but time has taken his name from me forever. Gospel music plays from a white box on Aunt Clista’s kitchen table.

I’ve wondered why this memory stuck. What characteristics of this typical afternoon experience caused it to be etched into my brain for 40 years, while other more significant events have fallen into the vast void of lost memory?

Perhaps that’s just the random nature of the human brain. I would like to believe, though, that somewhere in my subconscious I recognized this moment as special. And chose to store it away as representative of a boy’s first wanderings outside the close guard of his parent’s eyes – tasting freedom in the front yard of his grandmother’s house, yet secure within the parameters of his family’s call and older sister’s guidance. Knowing that it might somehow come in handy, as I try to figure out who I am and where I come from.

On Bailouts and Priorities

Predictably, once the federal government agreed to cough up some 700 billion dollars to bail out Wall Street, it wasn’t long before the next failing industry came crawling. This time, it’s the auto makers. I wonder who will be next. Interesting isn’t it, how big business wants government out of their hair until they hit rock bottom. Now they're first in line for a handout. Just think of it as Medicaid for the white-collar set. "Welfare Queens" revisited.

Certainly, there are arguments to be made whether these bailouts are necessary to salvage our economy. I’m not smart enough to figure out that one. But what I do know is that the feds don’t have billions of dollars to spare. That’s debt my children and their children will inherit and be repaying to China the rest of their lives.

But I’m thinking, if money really is no object then who else deserves a bailout? If the government can arbitrarily decide that some problems are so big that we can just write imaginary zeroes onto imaginary checks and that the ends justify the means, that opens up a world of opportunity for a do-gooder like me.

If that’s the standard, why can’t we just write a check with a bunch of zeroes and bail out all the overcrowded, underfunded, poor performing public schools in America? If that’s the standard, it seems unconscionable that there’s even one elderly person in America who can’t afford her medication. If that’s the standard, why are their hurricane victims in New Orleans still waiting for federal help to rebuild their homes and lives?

On top of the bailouts, Uncle Sam finds 10 billion dollars each month somewhere to destroy and rebuild a foreign country. Again, this may or may not be justified. Only history will tell. But if we can use Monopoly money for war, your telling me we can’t find the money we need somewhere to fund a high quality early childhood education system in this country (which every economist in America tells us is critical to developing economic viability in the future, by the way)?

If the NIH and all the major university hospitals in the country had a blank check to fund their research, how quickly do you think we could find a cure for cancer?

I’m just not sure I fully understand the definition we’re using for “crisis.” Isn’t a War on Poverty as important as a War on Terror?

I guarantee you that if money were no obstacle, I could sit down with a handful of my colleagues and we could figure how to dramatically reduce homelessness, juvenile delinquency, high school drop-out, substance abuse, teen pregnancy and any number of other crises facing our country which many of us believe are big ones.

You see, there’s no shortage of bright ideas, effective interventions, proven methods and workable solutions to the social problems we’re faced with today. It’s always about resources. And resources always come down to priorities. I just happen to believe that we need to do a lot of soul-searching about our priorities.

Here’s the point that a few corporate CEO’s may finally understand now: nobody wants government in their lives. But when your house is floating belly up in the Pontchartrain or you don’t have a thing to feed your hungry children or your multi-billion dollar company is going down the drain, a little government intervention doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.

What do the Crips, the Lutherans and the Cheese Heads up in Green Bay all have in Common?

I’ve come to believe that the drive to affiliate is one of our deepest, most primitive instincts. This “pack” mentality reminds me that we humans are, in fact, animals moving along the evolutionary process (some more slowly than others).

To me, an allegiance to a football team, gangs, church denominations, political parties and racism all come down to the same fundamental dynamic: the allure of “we.”

Admittedly, that’s what kept me up past 2 AM on election night, long after the electorate had overwhelmingly picked a new president. I so desperately longed for my adopted state of North Carolina to go “blue,” I outlasted Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper and John King (even as the wizard of the CNN electoral map conceded that it may take days to call the Tar Heel State).

Since I identify myself as a North Carolinian, it seemed incongruent that “my” state could favor someone so diametrically opposite my own values. Fortunately, we went Democrat for the first time since Carter and I started making plans to market “Blue State” tee shirts. Go team.

This drive, how else can you explain the frenzy of sports fans? I’m not talking about cheering when the fullback plunges into the end zone. I’m talking about the despicable behavior of overzealous fans who somehow rationalize suspending all semblance of decency toward players wearing colors opposite the home team.

When Alabama football coach Nick Saban returned to Tiger Stadium last week to face LSU, a team he once coached to its first national championship in decades, it took throngs of State Troopers surrounding him to ensure his safety. How can a man who was once so revered become so vilified in just a few short years, based solely on a career decision he made?

Simple, human instinct doesn’t follow the rules of logic. In Louisiana, Coach Saban willingly went from one of “us” to one of “them.” Enough said.

Politics is football, really. Rules of logic are suspended. The desire to win supersedes all else. Imagine two scenarios during the next four years:

(1) Under the leadership of President Obama and a Democrat congress, the financial crises eases and the nation enters into a period of economic prosperity… balanced budgets, deficit reductions and tax breaks for all. The wars end with no more American or foreign casualties and the Middle East stabilizes. And with our newfound wealth and clout the US is able to lead a worldwide effort to dramatically reduce world hunger, AIDS, terrorism, genocide and global warming. We’re well on our way toward implementing innovative domestic energy alternatives which will eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and are certain to bring about hundreds of thousands of new high paying jobs -- the likes of which we haven’t experienced since the industrial revolution. Our streets are safer; school test scores are up and, just for good measure, let’s say baseball players all stop taking performance enhancing drugs.

Obama is recognized as a brilliant leader around the world and the Democrats get to say “See, I told you so.”

Or;

(2) The economy continues its downward spiral and the country is mired in a painful recession with no end in sight. Unemployment and inflation soar. Obama pulls troops from Iraq which leads to an escalation of violence and instability in the region. Gas prices top $10/gallon in some places. Taxes are raised in every bracket in an effort to somehow fund any number of failed domestic initiatives and to put out fires in trouble spots across the globe.

Internationally, the President is viewed as ineffectual and the US continues to lose clout and respect. Oh, and baseball is cancelled.

The Republicans are certain to regain the White House and control of both houses and they get to say, “See, I told you so.”

Now, really think hard about this: Which scenario do you honestly believe a majority of Republicans would pick?

I hope I’m wrong, but the cynic in me thinks scenario #2… for this simple reason: people would rather be “right” than “happy.”

And, ultimately, that’s what blind allegiance is all about: “we’re right, you’re wrong,” despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s human nature. It’s the power of “us” against “them.”

I'm not trying to pick on the Republicans. I'm sure most Democrats wanted President Bush to fall flat on his face at every turn, even if the consequences were to the detriment of the country. See, if he's "wrong," then, obviously, we're "right."

Racism is merely us against them based on skin color. And as long as there are those who identify “us” based on physical distinction, prejudice and racism will live on. Every “ism” follows the same pattern.

At the risk of seeming irreverent, I would also suggest that church affiliation is mostly about identification, the affirmation one gets from congregating with others of a like-mind. It’s about a need to belong. Fundamentalists pick orthodox churches to attend. Gays and lesbians seek tolerant ones. It’s about a need to be right.

Most of us are who we are. For the most part, we come into the world with a blueprint and follow it pretty closely throughout our lives. Along the way, we find others who share characteristics with whom to flock.

To be honest, I've never known many people who changed their behaviors or attitudes because of the church they attended. Instead, they get enough reinforcement on Sunday morning to sustain their belief that they are, in fact, right, for another week.

When the sermons become incongruent with assumptions to which we are predisposed, we find another flock.

I’m not pointing fingers. Here’s my own ironic example: I deeply value diversity (in the myriad ways the word can be defined). I seek it in neighborhoods I choose to live, in the schools I send my daughters. And, I want to be around others who share an appreciation for diversity. My “them” includes those who don’t, which seems contradictory, I know. We have our banners and tee shirts, too, diversity being particularly sweet when we all think the same about it. Hmmmm....

Reminds me of the self-identified non-conformists in college who all wore black from head to toe.

So, where do we go from here? Should we fight to overcome prejudices and injustices that result from all our dichotomous us/them ways? After all, the greatest harm comes when the “us” holds the power and the “them” is power-less. Division makes it easier to dismiss the disenfranchised.

Maybe we should just accept human nature for what it is? Coach Saban has thick skin, after all.

Still, wouldn't it be a better world if "us" simply meant all of us?

Transformation or Status Quo?

Question: Will President-elect Obama successfully unite the country? Or will divisiveness and blue state/red state politics as usual continue to tear us apart at the seams?

It's easy to be cynical and expect the worst in people. But for me, this election signified such a sea-change of historical significance that I truly am allowing myself to hope, for once, that we rise above the differences that divide us and pull together, collectively, for the greater good. Obama clearly is a transformational figure and the country is at such a low point, I actually believe that this is the best opportunity in my lifetime for real change. So, I'm optimistic (albeit cautiously). You?