We want to believe we live in a post racial America. I want to believe we live in a post racial America, and for a long time that is exactly what I believed. I grew up largely in a community where I never saw racial tensions and struggle; yet the existence of the "black" high school made the past undeniable, even though it had closed some years before I started school.
It's easy to tell someone to "put aside" the crimes of the past, especially when you belong to the culture that perpetrated the injustice. But this is what I would like both sides of the debate to understand.
The problem is, we don't SEE white privilege. Most people in rural America's experience in the inner city is limited to a wrong turn on the freeway or a news article on CNN. We (meaning the royal "We"; I am trying very hard to change that on a personal level) shake our heads, lament the decline of good adult role models in the inner cities, and often simply write the whole region off as being full of thugs and gangsters. We don't see the part we play in the process.
We don't see how capitalism has caused the decline of the inner city, or how it becomes an issue that disproportionately affects minorities. We don't see how often the same conservative role models of minority race who lament the failings of their brothers and sisters in the inner city neglect opportunities to return to the inner city, to be mentors, to educate and lift those kids out of poverty. We have to subsidize teachers going into the inner city because that's a place that most teachers will not go.
When an inner city kid sees a white face, it's usually a cop, a social worker, or a judge. It's never someone wanting to truly connect, to truly speak to that kid as an equal, and as someone with worth and value. And I reject the evangelical outreaches that happen in that area, as I've seen the posts of some of those who attend those churches. While not all are outright slandering the residents of the inner city, very few have spoken up for them.
Perhaps in remembering Michael Brown, we should remember the de facto segregation that gave the kids of an inner city an unequal education system. We need to remember that we have an income inequality that is utterly frightening for a First World Nation, even one in as steep a decline as we are. We need to look to "blockbusting" strategies that devalued properties and left families in the inner city with nowhere to go.
It's all well and good to ask why families in the inner city don't get a job; it's a fairer question to ask "where are the jobs". To a kid in the inner city, the best way to make a living is to start working for the local dealer. There's nothing for them in the job market, even in the fast food joints, where they have to compete with older adults for scant jobs.
I won't pretend to know everything about the inner city. But I know enough to know that standing in a rural environment miles removed from that one and judging the actions of people in the inner city by my values is ignorant at best, racist at worst. I know that the problems go deeper than one incident involving a suspect and shooting, and I know that is why they are marching. The truth of the Michael Brown situation is not that he is innocent; the truth is that he did not deserve to be gunned down. Even affording Officer Wilson every benefit of the doubt, there are ways that he could have addressed the situation from the outset that would have left a better ending for everyone.
Maybe it's time that those of us outside the inner city start listening to those inside the inner city. There are people in the inner city with solutions for change. They need our help going forward.
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