I Believe the Problem with Racism in America is That it is Not Intentional

I admit it, I genuinely feel sorry for police chief Thomas Jackson.

I don't know him, but I believe he is genuine. I also believe he made a very serious misstep when he released the video of the convenience store robbery allegedly committed by Mike Brown simultaneously with Darren Wilson's name. I don't think it was malicious, but it looks calculated, and so often, appearance is everything.

But I believe what happened with Jackson is symptomatic of a problem we have in our culture: we don't want to believe we're racist, and yet unfortunately, racism may be embedded in our cultural DNA.

For the past 40 years, TV has been our reality. And TV has fed us a world where blacks exist as a very small minority, and Latinos and Asians exist nearly not at all. And you have to look extremely hard to find Native American characters on TV.

Movies are somewhat more diverse, but there is a decided difference in roles cast for ethnic stereotypes. You almost never see a minority CEO, and it's just as rare to see a caucasion drug lord (Walter White being a prominent exception). Even music has genres that typically fall along race lines.

If I look across the people I count as friends in this area, I see people who are overwhelmingly generous, loving, and caring individuals. People who would never consider themselves racist, and you would never consider to be racist. Yet when officials were trying to place refugees some years ago in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, these same people stipulated that they were willing to take in white children.

And yet, in the wake of that, I would defend them against anyone who said they were racist. Because their actions consistently show otherwise.

But we need to look no further than America's justice system to see a disparity in treatment between minority offenders and caucasian. This connection is not speculative; it's been shown pretty conclusively. We look at the number of minorities in our prison, on death roles, their disproportionate representation on the poverty roles.

I remember years ago when I applied for a job in Wisconsin. I had a string of jobs prior to the one I was applying to, and had moved considerably. The gentleman next to me had somewhat similar history. He was black. The factory had not called for references on us, not drug tested either of us. I got the job; he didn't (and there were multiple positions to fill). I heard the owner specifically cite hjs inconsistent work history as the reason, and that was a common factor we both shared.

Now this was a small factory I worked at for 3 1/2 years. I knew this man. I saw him provide opportunities for a wide variety of people in the time I worked for him, and I don't believe that he had a conscious racist bone in his body. Yet I also know what I saw and heard that day. I was given an opportunity where someone of a different race with a similar resume was denied his.

Maybe it's time we start listening to minority voices in their criticism of our society. I really don't think if my lily white kids walked through a subdivision in Sanford, Florida, they would be profiled, let alone killed. I don't believe that had my lily white kid been standing in Mike Brown's case doing the same thing, they would have met the same fate.  And while that is wholly opinion, I also have a lot of empirical evidence that supports that theory.

We owe it to the Trayvon Martins and the Mike Browns of the world to take a very hard look at the cultural fabric of this country. And to adjust it, change it if we have to in order to create a more equitable society.

Because some mother in some community is due, by law of averages, to get the call tonight that her son was next. And because we owe our children better.