Race (Tammy told me to post this one)

7-24-09

Your house is broken into, you call the police. Your car is stolen, you call the police. Someone steals your wallet, you call the police. Your neighbor is being too loud, you call the police. When there is a crime, and even sometimes when there isn’t, the police are called in to help. These men and women chose a profession in which not only are they helping people in their community, but they are also putting their lives on the line every day. You can’t really say that about most jobs. I am pretty sure accountants don’t have to worry about someone in the shadows pulling a weapon on them. Unless of course they have dealings in government, but that is a whole different situation.

These high stress situations that they have put themselves are needed in order to keep the peace. Without them there would be an indescribable amount of crime and problems in our towns. Law would be decided by the people, which let’s face it, is not what any of us want. People would run amok and would shoot first and ask questions later. So it is comforting to know that we have these officers there to help us sort out the bad from the good.

In this last week, though, there was an incident that once again, made the country question our law enforcement. A Harvard law professor was returning home from a trip and was having difficulty with his key. He ended up punching in the door a bit, which made a neighbor take notice. So they called the cops for a possible breaking and entering. One loan officer arrived on the scene, and when it was all said and done, the professor was in cuffs being taken downtown for disorderly conduct. You wonder what was said, what caused the owner of the house to be taken into custody for breaking in to his own house. The public certainly is ready to speculate.

The professor? He is black.

The cop? He is white.

Their stories differ slightly, boiling down to the officer probably being a little more aggressive due to the professor being angered for being investigated after he said he showed his identification. Note that he wasn’t arrested for breaking and entering. He was arrested for disorderly conduct, which means this man was pretty out of control.

Was his conduct just? Was this professor, who has now shouted it from rooftops to everyone who will listen, targeted because he is a black man? Was the white police officer reacting to his suspect differently because he was black, and therefore was less convinced of there being no suspicious circumstances?

My actual question, though, is should any of this color matter?

This professor is an educated man. Let’s face it, he teaches at Harvard so he is probably not a complete idiot. He has to consider that he was in fact, breaking into his house. His neighbor, concerned for his well being, contacted the authorities in order to make sure nothing bad was going down. Even if this cop was the biggest ass on the beat, is it a good idea to get all worked up while it is just you and him? We seem to have come to a point in our society where we no longer respect authority in the form of law enforcement.

Even if I were to believe his description of what went down, I don’t think that making a huge fuss with no witnesses was his finest move. Who are we as a society going to believe? A man with a temper, or a cop?

And yet, as I write that, I find myself saddened by the actual answer. We never seem to believe the cop anymore. There have been so many corrupt cops with the horrible attitude and really are just bullies with a badge that have been highlighted not only in shows like the Shield but on the front page of our newspapers and the top story on the local news. If someone says a copy roughed them up, it must be true, and it must mean the cop was out of line. Have we forgotten what the police has to go through on a daily basis?

On top of all of this, we have to recognize the golden ticket known as the race card.

I think that racism is appalling. In this day and age, have we not figured out yet that we are all idiots equally, no matter what shade we are? Trust me. I know white idiots, black idiots, Asian idiots, and idiots who are mixed races. People act the fool so often, it is almost impossible to pin it to one race anymore.

I also know that even though it is not nearly as prominent as it was even just 30 years ago, it is still out there. In place of the rampant race based hate, we now have hate for 1000 sub sections of diversity. If you are gay, a woman, retarded, old, young, foreign, or any other number of differences you will find some kind of discrimination in your lifetime.

I am white. I am a woman. I have experienced discrimination when I was 19 in the form of ageism. I was purposely overlooked for a position because of how young I was. In high school, I wanted to go out for the baseball team. But did you know you could not try out because baseball is for boys, and softball is for girls. I was disappointed, but I can safely say I didn’t call for a press conference. In fact, I complained to my friends, but left it at that. It was a shame that this is how it was.

Ironically, that same year I was passed over for the position I was accused of racism by a black coworker. In retail, as a manager you often don’t have the time for formalities when it comes to relaying information to a subordinate. It is quick paced, and when something needs to be done quickly, often orders are barked over a crowd, such as the instructions I gave to this gentleman.

I shouted for him to come up to get on his register due to the increasing line. He obliged, but later when the crowd had died down, he took me aside and chastised me for having not approached him, addressed him by name, and asked him nicely to essentially do his job. He told me he understood that I didn’t like black people and even told another manager (who is a friend of mine) that I discriminated against people of color.

I have to say, that may have been one of the most difficult things to deal with as a white person. I had not treated him any different because of his color. I can safely say I was annoyed with him when he wasn’t proactive in his position and that he needed a reminder despite the line to the back of the store. But never in a million years would I be rude to him because he and I don’t look alike.

The race card was in full effect, and it scared me to death. Would people believe my side? Would I be assumed forever as this punk kid who also was racist?

Luckily for me, I only had to worry about the store staff on this one. Jesse Jackson wasn’t calling for me to turn in my Blockbuster uniform because I was some kind of a disgrace to the profession of video rental. Rallies with me burned in epitaph didn’t fill the streets of Manhattan Beach.

What did occur was a general concern over every time racism was yelled.

I know I was innocent of any wrong doing. I am certainly not saying that every person who has been accused this behavior was innocent. Not everything that you see that results in the mistreatment of another person of a different color some form of racism. Sometimes it is really just raining, and the sky isn’t falling. Unfortunately, there are a lot of chickens running around assuming the former.

We want to explain why people are asses by giving it a fancy label. You hate your neighbor because he is black. You hate your mayor because he is gay. Sometimes the hate is just that, hate, and it doesn’t make sense. And sometimes, there isn’t hate at all, just a miscommunication that causes people to get all worked up. My employee didn’t understand that his job was fast paced and assumed that I would grant a different kind of respect. I assumed that my employee knew the rigors of the job because he had worked at another store prior to ours. We didn’t communicate correctly, but it didn’t mean that I hated him because he was black. It didn’t mean he hated me because I was young and in the position he wanted. It was just a disagreement that didn’t need that label.

Going back to this cop and the professor, I honestly think that although both parties were idiots, there was no real wrong doing. The police officer was doing his job by investigating a possibly burglary. He wasn’t called out because the suspect was black. He was called out because it looked wrong. When he asked the professor to come out of his home to essentially finish this up, the professor was angry, assuming a flashing of his driver’s license would prove he was who he said he was, and there was no reason to continue to waste time when it was, wait for it, a misunderstanding. The cop perhaps acted poorly by taking the anger personally, but really, wouldn’t you be a little concerned at someone screaming and carrying on? If everyone had stayed calm, acted rationally, I think that nothing would have come from this.

Yes, it is important to be aware of the jerks out there that do still feel that anyone who isn’t a white male is a lesser human being. There is part of me that thinks they should be somehow surgically altered, ala Robert Downey’s Jr’s character in Tropic Thunder so that they would have to spend the rest of their lives as a black man. It is one thing to walk in another man’s shoes, but how about their skin to make them really appreciate things.

But in the future, before we assume that every interaction with a white person dealing with a black person must include a white sheet and rope in their pickup, let’s really listen to the facts. Let’s see if maybe it was miscommunication, before we run them out of town. I can guarantee that the black community would want the same consideration if they had been the cop and the professor was white, and the professor called on the press to get support.

Once again, as I wrote that last paragraph I was sad to have to refer to a community by color. Perhaps none of this would ever be a problem if communities were not classified by the prominent characteristics of the members, but instead we had a rainbow community that didn’t look at things in terms of black or white, but in terms of right and wrong. In a perfect world, I suppose, but we have to keep trying, since if we are truly looking for that rainbow community, I guarantee the pot of gold at the other side is so worth the wait.