Who Here Is A Racist?

Nearly as disturbing as the basic facts of the Sean Bell trial is the publics seeming insistence on separating the outcome from the issue of racism in America. Because two of the police officers were black, people insist, it could not possibly have been a racially motivated killing.

This thought process is completely backwards and flat out wrong.

Being a minority does not exempt you from believing stereotypes. When racism is as pervasive as it is in our society, it permeates everyone's thinking. The simple reality is that tragedies like the one that happened to Sean Bell to not happen to white people. They just don't. The fact that some of the cops on duty that night happened to be black, does not mean that they did not go into the situation assuming that a young black man at a strip club MUST be a gun-waving criminal. The police had no actual evidence of this, but they believed it anyway, and acted accordingly. It was a racist killing.

These thought structures cannot ever change if they are not recognized and admitted and brought out into the open. As long as we keep insisting that racism ended with the Civil Rights Movement we will always be crippled by racism. It's a pretty simple idea that acknowledgment is the beginning of eradication. So I'll start.

I think the same way as the cops who were acquitted of Sean Bell's murder.

This seems like a strange thing to admit, but it is the truth. In a dark parking lot I would certainly be more afraid to be approached by a young African-American man than an older white man. I'm not sure why this is, if it is media saturation of the stereotype of the black criminal or simply an increased comfort with the familiar, but I guarantee that I would feel this way in the above situation. Recognizing these feelings in myself is a disturbing process. I would like nothing more than to declare my liberal, educated self far above these faults, but I can't. And so, in admitting the presence of these ideas I can also decide to change them. I can now recognize when I am feeling this way and then push myself to use reason, instead of stereotypes, as a guide in tough situations. I'll vow to stop sweeping my own racism under the rug and hope that other people will also begin to do the same.

Something good has to come out of this whole situation.