It’s time for another debrief. Back in 2014, in the aftermath of the events that transpired in Ferguson, I wrote about where I believed things stood. More importantly, I wrote a little about where I felt things needed to go. It’s been about three years since then and I think it’s worth taking stock of how things have changed - and how they haven’t.
I will put together a wider geographical spread of data when I have time. I include this as a reminder that ownership is massive.
I suppose that it’s important to mention why I’m even writing about this. It turns out that I’m black and some days, as a black person, you are reminded of that fact. Earlier this year I went to dinner at an Italian restaurant/pizza place with a friend. When we walked through the door, no one greeted us. Most of the seats were unoccupied except for an elderly couple in the corner, working on a large mushroom and peppers pie. I approached the counter. The two cooks behind the counter didn’t say anything until after 12 seconds of awkwardness(yes, I was counting) I volunteered, “So, can we just sit anywhere?” At which point we were told, yes, feel free. We picked a table and I returned to the counter and placed my order and paid. This in my mind was all standard. But it wasn’t until other tables began to be filled with guests and the previously busy waiter began attending to people’s needs that it became clear that the playing field wasn’t level. A family’s dishes were being carried to their table. I was called up to the counter pick up my cheese ravioli from the cook. A young asian woman, who had ordered ahead of time, had her plate brought out to her a few minutes later. The elderly couple began cleaning up their table and were quickly aided by the lone waiter. When the young asian woman finished her dish he passed by to take it while she fiddled with her phone. But, before the elderly couple had decided to head out, I decided to experiment. I finished my ravioli and pushed the plate to the middle of the table and waited. And waited. And then the elderly couple was helped with their cleanup. The young asian woman had her dish swept away wordlessly. And for 10 minutes my plate sat on the middle of the table. Finally, I took my plate and returned it to the hands of the cook. Sat back down at the table and began to toy with the idea of leaving a tip. I did leave a tip, in case you’re wondering. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure why I did. As I was leaving the waiter had stepped outside briefly and was on his way back in as we were leaving. You know how most times, employees of a business hold the door for customers as they leave(if it’s convenient) or yield the right of way? He rushed past me, continuing his long streak of not making eye contact with me - yes, I had been trying. We had left and that was that.
Now, I know what you’re(I’m) thinking - the waiter might have been having a tough day and genuinely didn’t notice me. That I’m consciously making the decision to make this about race when I don’t have reason to assume that it was. And you(I) would be right. But you(I) would also be wrong. Given my knowledge of the demographics of the area around that pizza place, it’s relatively safe to assume that the whites and asians in the area are more likely to be financially stable while the blacks are less likely to be - you’ll have to take my word for it. And that, given that, the blacks are more likely to tip less, steal, make a scene, I don’t know. So, maybe the waiter had recently had a poor interaction with a black person. Maybe the majority of black people who decided to eat in didn’t leave tips, so it wasn’t worth investing the effort. If it’s not clear, this is becoming very convoluted. Both sides have a point. Valid points, in my opinion. So, I mention all of this to explain two things: 1. I am biased. The last time I wrote about this topic, racism, I put a disclaimer about my being biased. ← This is that disclaimer. DISCLAIMER 2. There are multiple sides and perspectives in this conversation. To make the claim that one person is on the right side is foolish, ignorant, and arrogant. “Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement; for even the very wise cannot see all ends” - Gandalf. I’d rearrange it a bit to say, “Do not be quick to deal out judgement; for even the very wise cannot see all beginnings.” You don’t know people’s backgrounds. You don’t know what’s happened during the course of their day. So, please. Please consider that from their point of view, their actions made sense. People are the sums of their experiences. Without getting too philosophical, consider that there are perspectives on the world besides your own and that they are neither right nor wrong, they simply are. With that, shall we begin?
Let’s talk about about Charlottesville. I honestly, didn’t pay close attention to it while it was in the news. I did so intentionally because the media unfortunately doesn’t do the best job of conveying the truth let alone the news. My understanding is that the rallies were an attempt to protest the impending removal of a Confederate statue. So, out came the protesters bearing a plethora of symbols. Among them, the Confederate Flag and the Iron Cross. Chanting slogans of a variety of nationalist groups: Blut und Boden - Blood and Soil. Deus Vult - God wills it. You will not replace us/Jews will not replace us. White lives matter. I don’t think it’s worth unpacking what everything that was said means. But let’s talk about some of it.
The phrase “cherish our history” was used by the President of the United States(POTUS, just in case I end up referencing him again) in his response to the events in Charlottesville. Our history referencing the statue in question. I don’t have a particularly high opinion of a lot of American history, and I can’t claim to have a high opinion of this particular bit either. But the choice of words is important. Cherish: 1. to hold dear, feel or show affection for. To keep or cultivate with care and affection, to nurture. And 2. to entertain or harbor in the mind deeply and resolutely(marked by firm determination). I can’t help but consider that there are people who do indeed cherish our history in one or both senses of the word. I aim for the second. We can’t lose sight of our past. The ability to remember is potentially the single most important of our abilities. Being able to make decisions about the future based on the past is the only reason that we’ve seen society and technology progress, ever. If you saw someone die from a poisonous berry but couldn’t remember it, what would happen when you were hungry and encountered the same berry? “Learn from your mistakes”. “Never forget” in reference to 9/11. I think the phrase “cherish our history” is immeasurably important - but only in its second definition. I don’t think all of our history should be held dear or shown affection. Certainly not this section of it.
Anyway, the piece of history in question was a statue of Robert E. Lee. Honestly, I can’t claim to know much about him. I was taught, as pretty much everyone that I know was, that he was a confederate general. That his strategic brilliance could have won the war if the Union had not had the advantage of being more industrialized. I’m reminded of an article, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men”. In my mind, the best case scenario is that Lee is being remembered for his effectiveness as a general. If that’s the case, then I don’t really know how I feel about it. But, given the chants, I suspect that the ideals that he fought for are what are being shown affection. It’s only been 50 years since it became a crime to discriminate or to threaten, intimidate, injure, or interfere with anyone based on their race or religion, since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It’s only been 53 years since black people were explicitly given the right to vote in the south. That’s not a long time. 100 years before that there was a war over whether black people should be enslaved. It seems unsurprising that there is still backlash and attachment to ideals of the not so distant past. Add on top of that, the sizable section of the population being beaten for trying to learn how to read, being told that you're less than, and being excluded from opportunities for hundreds of years. It affects you. It affects how you see yourself. It affects how you raise your children. The reality of how the world has been for, a long time, has not been forgotten and is passed from parent to child - for better or worse, for the last 50 years.
It’s with that timeline in line that we have to consider profiling, the growth in the level of incarceration above population growth, and the use of force by police. In July 1965, President Johnson established a commission to study crime and policing in the United States. The purpose being to find ways to create a safer and more just society. I’ll boil down the findings of the report with a quote: “More than two hundred thousand scientists and engineers are helping to solve military problems, but only a handful are helping to control the crimes that injure or frighten millions of Americans each year”. There were other findings as well of course, but as usual I prefer to follow the money. There have been a great deal of improvements made since the 1960s in terms of training and investment. Consider even that the ‘911’ system is a direct product of the study. I reiterate that 50 years is not a long time.
Anyway, I’d love to dig into institutional racism and how it’s something that has to be managed better, but I think it would be better to start smaller - to start with perception itself. Humans are wired for pattern recognition - we’re very good at it. We’re so good at it that we often don’t even realize that we’re doing it. I think our ideas about race and racism are a prime example of that reality. I’m from NY, so I’ll use a couple examples from NY.
“In January 2016, Five teenage boys had approached a man and his daughter at night on a Brooklyn playground, ordering the man away at gunpoint before gang raping the 18-year-old woman in public. Video footage of the teens laughing and joking inside a deli just before the alleged Jan. 7, 2016, attack only added to the outrage. The five boys were quickly arrested, two of them turned in by their own parents.”
The charges were dropped against the teens as inconsistent testimonies from the Father and Daughter as well as cell phone videos made clear that things had not happened in the way they had been initially described. It would suffice to say that the true narrative wasn’t wholesome either, but the point that I want to highlight was the outrage. We(the public) very quickly jumped to the assumption that the 5 black suspects on the tape were guilty.
A more publicly noted crime was the 1989 rape of a female jogger in central park. Five minority juveniles(4 black 1 hispanic) were convicted and sentenced to between 5 and 15 years in prison. The minority communities of the area thought “What were these guys up to? Why did they do this? What does it mean for our neighborhood, our community, for them to do something like this?” That ultimately we(the public) had bought into the idea that they were at fault. The current POTUS took out full page ads in four NY newspapers: “Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police”.
In 2002, another man confessed and the “Central Park Five” were released and received a ~$40 million settlement from the city. Our perception of the event is the little piece that we are in a position to affect.
I relate these examples to make the statement that the road forward is not one of monumental change, but one of small yet focused self-discipline. I think the marches, demonstrations, and protests are important and good, but it’s not the policymakers that need to be convinced but ourselves. The reality is that we assign people credibility based on the color of their skin, how they speak, how they’re dressed, how attractive they are - by a bunch of unreliable metrics. A person dressed in a hoodie suddenly becomes more legitimate when they put on a suit. They’re the same person, but when you’re designed and conditioned for pattern recognition it’s hard not to fall into obvious traps. I’m reminded of a study that indicated that faster speakers were either perceived as more intelligent or were more persuasive than slower speakers. That having a southern drawl made you seem less capable or knowledgable than a fast speaking New Yorker. We have to get meaningfully better at understanding what is going into our thoughts and opinions, particularly with regard to race. So, what’s the play? I’m not completely sure, but I think a variant of the customer buying cycle is a good framework for it.
It starts with awareness. We have to start with developing a deeper awareness of the places that we come into contact with racism and the flaws in our perception. Then consideration. We have to consider where our perspectives are coming from and particularly whether they’re valid and line up with our beliefs. Then it’s intent and comparison. We have to choose from among those perspectives. I’ll admit, choice can be hard, but it is within our capabilities. In the customer cycle, the next stage is purchase. I think the analogous action would be, well, action. Once you have a sense of the playing field, you have to make your move. Sometimes that’s publicly marching and rallying around an idea. My choice to write about the issue of racism is part of my doing something. Writing is for my own benefit. The real work is living it. In any case, the final section is retention - making sure to embed yourself in the bigger community that’s on the same journey. It’s worth going a step farther and saying that this is about commitment. Commitment is choice over time - choice plus perseverance. Choice is hard mode; commitment is winning tetris. The issue is in our own heads, and it’s not something with a defined endpoint. But we’ll get there - we have to. I have a dream...
I started this wanting to think about how far we've come - we have come very far. Although the police state and criminal justice system are not perfect, they are better than they've ever been. And, within the span of my lifetime, I'm sure we will take strides in the right - I'll even settle for baby steps. But I've decided to start with the man in the mirror. It's time to change his ways and commit to unpacking his biases. If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, and make a change.