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I’ll open this post with a Hmmmm! If you are among the 8,000 followers or one of the hundred thousand plus readers my words – I thank you - and if this is your first-time welcome.
I am looking forward to the comments and your thoughts with regard to the question. Since the Trayvon Martin assassination and the recent incident in Tulsa Oklahoma last week it begs the question or at least consideration of thought – “Does race matter?”
This is a conversation that most Caucasians struggle with, at least in an open or honest way, and most are scared to talk about race, and we aren’t any different. Now, African Americans see matters of race from a completely different perspective. It’s like; if you’ve felt the brunt of this wretched ideal you know it and see it.
The stories of oppression, racism, segregation and even slavery are very real and most African Americans have experienced it in one form or another and know it is real. Of course slavery was not physically visited upon us today by law. However, it exists mentally and institutionally.
You cannot view the history of America and not see that race has and still does matter. Naturally, the obvious differences in neighborhoods, employment, schools, and the legal system – causes one to ask why. I read a poll recently that said the Trayvon Martin story differed tremendously along political and racial lines. Many said, the murderer had a right to kill this child (white-conservatives) and others say absolutely not (Black-liberal). Personally, I side with the sane and not insane.
More to the point, there was a time in my life where I saw police trample peaceful protesters, marchers beaten in the streets, and fire hoses turned on people, American citizens called negro’s at the time, for asking and in most cases begging for the basic human right to live – it came to be known as Civil Rights. Then a few years prior to that, in the first half of the last half century, black men where lynched by the hundreds for entertainment. Yet, most of white America believed and by law supported these actions as moral.
Was this colorblindness that dictated these policies that allowed justice which is blind to permit the wretchedness of racism to exist in the hearts and minds of people? You may realize that whenever the conversation of race comes up; there is the usual quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “we want to judge people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” If the issue of race was that simple – the world would be a better place, but it’s not. So let’s talk about it – honestly.
Look at it this way, there was an old man who was bent over. Someone told him to stand up. The old man had been bent over so long – he said, “I thought I was!” And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…
