Taking Care of Business

We’ve had an 800 pound gorilla in the room. For a very long time. it is unjust and discriminatory treatment of people of color. Although its origin in America was slavery, it extends to people of any color who have come to our nation from other countries. Immigrants are now targeted. Brown from South America, the Caribbean, blacks from anywhere on the globe, and other nonwhite skins from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

If you are not ‘from here,’ you are suspect in the eyes of many. Treatment of you is different from others.

This is fact. Rampant discrimination is evident often. Minor slights are less obvious, but felt nonetheless. Just ask our fellow citizens of various hues. If they are empowered to speak the truth, they will tell you their experience in America. It will not be pretty.

What is obvious to them is not to us, those who think of themselves as pure white, or at least more pure than others. Let that statement sink in. let it ripple through your consciousness.

You and I may not feel discriminatory or racist, but in so many ways we truly are. It is so embedded in our being we are unaware of it.

2020 will be a year remembered in our history. For many reasons 2020 is memorable. Not all good. Certainly, the pandemic is a long lasting scar. So too the massive storms and forest fires. Learning on a computer rather than in a classroom is another jolt of reality, for all of us. But more than these, we witnessed shootings and killings of black people at the hands of police.

Those entrusted to serve and protect lost control and killed people in cold blood, in full view of us all.

This kindled more support for Black Lives Matter. This created a movement to Defund Police, although the label does not mean that definitively. Although protests filled many streets of many communities all over America, the focus shifted from the killings to the riots and damage done to innocent shopkeepers and store owners. In many cases these protests were taken over by people unrelated to BLM and made mayhem for other reasons.

Still, the message of Black Lives Matter and American society needs to finally and definitively do something real about this. Lasting outcomes need to be fashioned and implemented. Talking has been done. The time for action has come. Do not forget what this is about. Discrimination and racism.

This is a time of COVID. This is a time of Climate Change. This is a time of massive economic disruption.

But it is also a continuation of 400 years of racism and injustice. In spite of what we were given to believe as fact-based history, America is the current result of much racism. It must be recognized and removed. As best we can, this outcome must be supported.

The other major issues of this year will come and go. Not racism. Not injustice.

We feel we are Christian, or Jew, or Muslim, or any of many other religions. All teach love and acceptance. Not one teaches violence as a final takeaway.

Let us live up to this value, this promise and this hope. Let us rid America of racism.

Now.

August 27, 2020