George Floyd, Donald Trump, & All of Us

There’s way too much to say.

A uniformed man with three armed pals keeps his knee on the neck of a prone man for many minutes, and when the prone man politely says he can’t breathe, his tormentor taunts, “Then get in the car!” – keeping his knee on that neck until the man dies.

The “president” of a country threatens to turn the military on citizens. Embarrassed by mounting failures and by having been whisked away to a bomb shelter for protection, he wants to distract folks with a photo of himself holding up a Bible before the boarded-up windows of a church. Because peaceful protesters are in the way, including church people, he teargasses them to facilitate the photo op. (Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Syria? A dictator in some Latin American “shithole country?”) 

 

Black Lives Matter. All lives matter. We shout “Black Lives Matter!” because our country often acts as if they don’t, and requires reminding. Loudly. We don’t mean black lives matter more than white. If we shouted “Save the Eagles!” because they were endangered by people shooting them, would we be ostracized for omitting that cats and dogs matter too? If followers of some small sect were routinely thrown to the lions, would shouting “Christian lives matter!” mean centurions’ lives didn’t?

Blue lives matter too. And are sometimes endangered. While some cops are white supremacists or just-plain-bullies, most are not. Racist or not, cops are on the front-lines of the war between a racist society and people of color, and between people of property and people without. They need better training and pay. They also need to understand that a laudable loyalty to one’s “brothers” can make them accessories to murder. 

 

We are all part of the problem. All somewhat racist. That doesn’t excuse racist cops; but owners of property or businesses are the ones police are generally protecting; and if we are silent about police excesses – or a systemically racist police department – we are complicit.

At a recent vigil in Albert Johnson Park, a woman eloquently illustrated “white privilege” by reading a list of activities, such as jogging, going to the store, selling CD’s, asking someone to leash a dog, waiting for a friend in Starbucks, even sitting home watching TV. After each activity she said the name of someone who’d been killed or harassed for doing it while black. 

 

Where whites act casually, blacks must always be wary. My closest friend in San Francisco was a fellow lawyer, highly skilled and successful, a star in his field. But when he washed his white convertible in the driveway of the house he owned, cops often intruded to ask who he was and what he was doing. Wanna guess why? 

 

I could write whole columns (nay, books!) on white privilege, and the direct and indirect ways it has helped me; I’ve watched black friends have to be better and tougher and politer than anyone white, just to stay in the game. I’ve also seen firsthand how racism, broken families, and poor educations can stunt kids’ hearts and minds. Yes, whites have problems too; but people of color didn’t cause most of those. 

In November we’ll be asked to retain a personally racist President who has exacerbated a pandemic and is supported most passionately by white supremacists – or choose a highly imperfect alternative with better skills and experience and some human decency. I think it’s an important choice.

                                         – 30 --

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 7 June 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website ("White Privilege, Black Lives, and the Thin Blue Line").  A spoken version is availoable on KRWG's website ("A Nation in Crisis"), and will air during the week on KRWG and on KRAL, 101.5 FM (www.lccommunityradio.org)] 

12 Sept 2001 - copyright PGoodman

[This column was more than usually a struggle to write.  I knew and felt too much.  I have lived longer than most folks, and my life has been more intertwined with the lives of people of color than is true of most whites -- and I've been the foreigner, the "different" one, in many situations, from Harlem to eastern Tibet.  So I started to write about that, but wanted to take myself out of it.  A future post, perhaps.  Then I tried to write more abstractly of our current political situation, including but not limited to the ethnic question of blacks and whites.  (I try even to avoid using the word "race" because, damn it, we are one race, human.)  Way too long and maybe too intellectualized.  Another future post?  So I tried a third time.]

[I had forgotten this, until early this morning as I sat out back editing my soon-to-be-available novel, set in 1914, in which a black artist relates this to a white artist he has just met, but at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the painting "Under the Oaks" won the grand prize.  At the front gate, guards routinely turned away a Negro.  He was Edward Bannister, arriving to accept his award.  (I have also read that the judges, upon learning the skin color of the painter, discussed rescinding the prize, but were dissuaded by other artists' threats to withdraw their works from the show.)] 

[I should also note that on our 3June "Speak Up, Las Cruces!" show on KTAL, 101.6 FM, we talked to a number of people who had attended Monday's vigil at Albert Johnson Park and/or had experienced being of color in Las Cruces.  Particularly moving was the explanation of Russell Bell -- the 70-year-old gentleman who had first stood out on that streetcorner alone, just because he had to, wondering if he looked like a fool -- of what he felt and thought.  It's on our archive, at www.lccommunityradio.org]

[I should probably note that although my life has intertwined tightly with many black lives, reporting news as a young man and writing columns the past decade, and other activities, have given me the privilege of coming to know, trust, and care about a number of law-enforcement officers over the years.  I appreciate their situation, and like them as people, even while disagreeing vigorously with some of them about national politics.]

[ A [white] friend read this column and commented this morning:

 

Thanks for the excellent presentation of our “reality”.

My take on life has been an evolutionary journey.  My childhood was spartan by most standards but I always had what I needed and I always had kind people in my life.  Not all people were kind but the scale was heavily weighted in favor of kindness.

Since I lived in 9 states from coast to coast I felt like an alien at times and I observed injustice far more often than I experienced it.

So it has been quite an experience to see so much crap being dumped on people who are simply living the best they know how.  It’s been reassuring to see that kindness is always lurking in even the worst situations.

But at the end of life I truly would like to see this country overthrow the rotten commercial politics once and forever.  ]