Not All Prejudices Are Created Equal
Prejudice comes in many forms. Sometimes it is racism, sometimes it is sexism, sometimes it is based on religion or how much money we make or the kind of job we hold. Sometimes it is overt, other times subtle. It is so insidious that sometimes we don’t even realize it is there.
People of every stripe feel the effects of prejudicial behavior. We ignore it. We fight it. We smile through it. Prejudice can even be used against us for the very thing that makes us privileged, like beauty or being part of a class that holds power.
Prejudice make us angry or sad or lonely or worst of all, it makes us doubt ourselves, for a moment or a life. It often makes us defensive, which creates more anger, possibly more prejudgments. And it is insidious, sneaky. It lives in the most unlikely places. The vast majority of racial prejudices (racism) is perpetrated by white people, but white people certainly are not the only ones harboring racial prejudices. Worst of all, those sneaky biases are even levied by people of a kind. In other words, sometimes the tendency to see an entire class of people in a certain light extends to some of the members of that class. A Jewish person might prejudge another Jewish person based on stereotypes, a gay person might make certain assumptions about another gay person, and a black person might jump to conclusions with respect to fellow black people. An expression of prejudice can even come cloaked as a compliment, sometimes feel like something we all share that brings us closer together. Prejudices are really nasty.
In America, we try to address prejudices with laws and by talking about it, and then by not talking about it, and then by talking about it again. And we make strides. And we lose ground. Periodically the righteous erupt onto the streets, demanding better than incremental change or protesting steps backward, raging against a far overtaxed patience.
Since humankind was just a twinkle in a protozoan eye, men have dominated…well, absolutely everything. In the United States, it is white men who have held the power. Understanding this history, I do understand how some white men could feel frustrated today. Whether or not a situation is just or fair, even if we recognize that it is not fair, we adapt to it, we get used to it, we especially grow accustomed to the good parts of it, enjoying the aspects that bring comfort and ease and make us feel like we belong. You, let’s say you are a white man, you see all people as created equal, but we have also lived in a world that has provided you certain benefits, or if not recognizable benefits, it’s not singled you out as someone who gets chosen last or treated especially harshly because of how you look. It is understandable that it would take you more than a couple of years to adjust to a society in which white men no longer control absolutely everything. I genuinely understand that it can be an adjustment.
This adjustment is made more difficult if you are someone who has had to overcome disadvantages in life. Maybe you were born into a home that wasn’t peaceful. Maybe your family fell on hard times due to illness. Maybe your local school wasn’t good. Maybe you made good and then lost it all in a fire. Maybe you have worked hard in a way that someone in a suit couldn’t understand, the kind of work that breaks your body, demanding much while providing little. But it’s good, honest work, so you’re not complaining about that or any of it. It’s just that you hear talk about the plight of black Americans and you think to yourself, maybe say out loud if you are with friends, “You’re not the only one who has it rough. I’m not complaining, why are you?” And, at first glance, that makes some sense.
“It’s not right,” you think.
To add insult to injury, you are doing your best to be a good man, trying your hardest not to say the wrong things, and BAM! you’re accused of being a racist. You think to yourself, “But it was only a joke.” You think, "I love people of all colors, why do you think I’m a racist? My brother-in-law is half Mexican.” When you watch TV and the subject of white privilege and racist behavior comes up, you think they just might be talking to you, and that upsets you, you think, “I don’t deserve this, I am not a racist.” You have a good heart, you don’t have hate in your heart. “Why am I constantly being attacked?” you ask. You’re sick of it, and you’re getting pissed off.
But you did tell that joke. Why did you tell that joke?
So here’s the thing. While all people may be created equal, not all prejudices are. We all have something that makes us different than the people around us, something that makes us stand out and feel vulnerable, something for which we are mocked or treated badly. Something about which we feel self conscious. And people of every background, every race and creed, have had to overcome adversity, some more than others. But in the United States of America, in 2020, it is unarmed black men and women who are disproportionately being Tased and shot and choked and killed and lynched. By the people who are sworn to protect them.
But, you say, he robbed the store. He stole the cigarettes. She committed a traffic violation. She shouldn’t have argued. He passed counterfeit money. He resisted and ran away. I know he’s so young, but he had a gun … the police officer thought it was real.
We come back to the insidious nature of prejudices, this time how they infect police officers, including many good police officers. There is no doubt that it was a white policeman who squeezed the life out of the unarmed George Floyd. It was a white policeman who shot 12-year old Tamir Rice as he played with his BB gun, and it was a white man who called the cops on him. It was a white policeman who stopped Walter Scott for a broken brake light and then shot this unarmed man in the back, 5 times. And it was two white men (retired and off-duty policemen) who chased down and murdered the unarmed Ahmaud Arbery in broad daylight. I will acknowledge that not all police violence is carried out by white police officers. The unjustified use of force is also committed by black officers and Hispanic officers and Asian officers and by officers of every background. And like prejudices themselves, not all officer-involved shootings are created equal. Some are awful mistakes, seeing a gun where there is a cell phone, a holster where there is just a belt. But these awful mistakes happen to African Americans far more than they do to other groups (though Native Americans are also treated with particular suspicion). I am sure that, even though rising adrenaline and fear play a role, prejudices do too. Nonetheless, a black man is twice as likely as a white man to succumb to police brutality according to the National Academy of Sciences, and yes, this is disproportionate to the percentage who commit crimes according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Europeans brought African men and women to these shores hundreds of years ago. They tossed living, breathing human beings into the bowels of ships to live on top of one another, in each other’s filth until reaching land. They were shackled and beaten, these human beings, they were tied up and whipped, they were raped. They were worked til they bled. They were forbidden to read. They were forbidden to learn. Their children were ripped from their arms to be sold to other white men. They were called animals. Grown men were called “boy.” For hundreds of years. Hundreds of years.
Please don’t get upset because someone took offense at your offensive joke. Maybe they said the joke is racist and they are right, and maybe they said you are racist and they are wrong. Maybe neither and they just took it the wrong way, made their own assumptions. You’re thinking, “Don’t assume you know me.” Or, you’re thinking, “Lighten up, it’s only a joke, don’t be so sensitive.” Don’t be so sensitive. You may not realize it, but that is a tactic used by bullies, to quiet the subjects of their taunts and attacks. To weaken their voices. Be like Captain America instead, stand up for those who have been knocked down, don’t join in the crowd that’s kicking them. Please do not minimize the pain of another human being, especially if you are not in a position to truly understand it. This is a lesson we all can learn, not just you. At any rate, just don’t say that.
“All that bad stuff, slavery and everything, it happened a long time ago. It was really bad, but it’s in the past.” You might be thinking that because the really bad stuff happened a long time ago, that people today should forget about it, move on, not let it affect them. But the past affects us all, just ask the people with confederate flags flying, the people who protest the removal of a statues 150 years after the Civil War ended. Maybe you think of yourself as someone who lives in the present, someone who doesn’t put too much stock in tradition. But you can’t stand it when players peacefully protest racist brutality on bended knee, thus breaking with the tradition of standing tall before our flag. Please try to understand that it is not just the joke, it is not just the cumulative effect of centuries of abuse, it is everything that a black person experiences every, single, day. In 2020. Not in 1865 or even 1965.
I ask you to imagine your legacy as hundreds of years of enslavement only to be freed into a world covered in Whites Only signs.
There are a number of white men and women in this country who still feel that they were wronged in the Civil War, that those losses are too much to bear, even today. This isn’t you, I know, but it is a good number of people, white people for the most part. Maybe they aren’t thinking about slavery when they feel their ancestors’ pain, maybe they are thinking about a war lost, a home destroyed, a legacy altered. But, re-writing history by ignoring its central theme doesn’t change the stark fact that the war was about slavery. The confederate flag is the flag of the Confederate States of America, Confederacy, the government of 11 states that seceded from the union, from the United States of America. Led by Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, they fought to preserve slavery in their states. To preserve it. The free labor provided by enslaved black men, women, and children was the foundation of their economy and of their way of life, and they were willing to die to protect that, for the right to continue to own and abuse humans who came from a far-away land and who did not look like them. They fought to preserve a way of life that put only monetary value on the lives of human beings. There are white men and women who claim this legacy, claim to feel today what their great-great-great-grandparents lost 150 years ago. Even though they emerged into a post-war world that benefited them, that favored them, a world in which they were allowed to vote, allowed to read and learn, allowed to compete for any job. They were allowed to sit at the lunch counter of any restaurant, they could drink from any water fountain, use any restroom. The courts did not rule that prohibiting black children from white schools was illegal until 1955 (a ruling that continued to be challenged until 1968). The law did not even outlaw discrimination until 1964, and it did not protect a black person’s right to vote until 1965. It wasn’t until 1967 they were granted the right to marry a white person, 1968 the right to live in any neighborhood. 1968 was also the year that federal law, for the first time, made it illegal to injure or intimidate a person based on their race. 1968. How is it that the great-great-great-grandchildren of slaves are derisively called “victims” for remembering their history by the white men and women protesting the removal of a statue commemorating a 150-year old war that their predecessors lost?
After the Civil War, slaves were freed. Sort of. Reconstruction was good while it lasted, for about a hot minute. Then the good was reversed as the men who cared enough to ensure progress left office and were replaced by small men. There was no more slavery, but there was indentured servitude. And there was Jim Crow. There was separate and we’re not even going to pretend it’s equal. Then there was separate and we’re pretending it’s equal. And while blacks were allowed to learn to read, write, and do arithmetic, they weren’t allowed the means. They were kept down and out, not allowed to attend schools of their choosing, not allowed to attend most colleges, not allowed to live where they chose, not allowed to eat where they wanted, not allowed to apply for good jobs, certainly not chosen for good jobs (the interviews were in person, after all). Back of the bus. “Use the back door, you should know better." Modern history, not ancient history. Not allowed to use the front door.
And then there was (is) the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses and lynching people. Do you know what these lynchings entailed? Sometimes it was a lashing that left its victim alive. Usually it was murder. Sometimes the lashings were so vicious, the victims’ backs were flayed. Flayed. The victims were beaten or whipped or mutilated or shot or some combination, then they were hanged. A crowd participated and watched and jeered, brought their children to see this ghastly “show.” It’s the crowd that makes it a lynching instead of a regular-ole-murder. Mob “justice.” “Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”
There was tremendous cruelty. And it was still happening even 100 years after slavery ended. Original sin. Repeated sin. Ahmaud Arbery
We come to the civil rights movement and, I think we can all agree, one of the greatest men who has ever graced this earth, Martin Luther King, Jr. Peaceful protests broken up with high-powered fire hoses and violent dogs. Thousands of brave men, women, and children laying it all on the line, year after year. An assist from President Kennedy and President Johnson, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 becomes law. Kennedy shot down. Bobby Kennedy continues the fight for justice. King shot down. Bobby shot down. Hard-fought victories, but many fights remained. Fights for equal housing, equal education, equal opportunity, equal justice.
Flash forward to the 80’s. You, let’s say you are a black woman, you only had to go through three realtors to find one who would show you homes in this neighborhood, so not too bad, right? You send your kid to an integrated school (see, all better!) and off to the local college. He, like most college kids, likes to party, but Ronald Regan is president and Nancy insists that you Just Say No and that the government have Zero Tolerance. Your son’s girlfriend (you don’t approve) takes him to a party in a crappy part of town, there’s crack cocaine at the party, then a police bust, they are arresting people, they arrest your son. Meanwhile, your son’s white classmate goes to another party at a big house in the hills, makes a deal with a guy to sell coke on campus, the party is raided, and he gets arrested too (which is really unlucky for him since it was three times more likely that he’d get away with it). Next thing you know, despite your best efforts, your son is off to prison for possession of 5 grams of crack (party guest stuffed it in his pocket) while his classmate, thanks to, excuse me, totally fucked up sentencing guidelines and a sympathetic judge, is picking up garbage on the side of the road that summer for possession of 5 grams of coke (kids will be kids, is that powder on his nose?).
Do you know the difference between crack and cocaine? Crack is watered down cocaine, basically. It costs less. So the black kid goes to prison for socializing with people who had the discount version of the same damned thing the white kid was about to start selling because…well, because he’s black.
I know, technically the sentencing guidelines don’t distinguish between the race of the person getting caught with the drugs, but because of the history I’ve recounted above, poverty hits more of black America than it does white America, so while the rich kid on daddy’s yacht can afford “the good stuff,” the kid on the other side of the tracks cannot. But they’re the same damed thing. The path to prosperity is dusted with coke, the broken sidewalk to nowhere is littered with crack vials.
March 3, 1991 followed by April 26, 1992…”can we all get along?”
The Fair Sentencing Act is signed into law in August 2010.
You, let’s say you are a black man, you are on your way home from work, still in your suit and tie, driving your 2020 Toyota Highlander in Blizzard Pearl. You get pulled over. You are told to get out. You ask what this is about. Your face is on the pavement. Your ID checks out, next time come to a complete stop at the stop sign, you can go home now. You are walking your dog along your tree-lined street, thinking that now would be a good time to plant those tomatoes in the backyard, and a white guy in a pickup drives by and yells “get out of here, n****r!”
Let’s assume you are a white man again. If you are still with me, you might be thinking, but I’m not like that! Yes, I am a white man and I drive a pickup, but I am not like that, so don’t call me a racist. And, putting your offensive joke aside for the moment, you are absolutely right, you are not like that. So, can you understand that every black American must feel the same way, being judged by their appearance, assumptions made, at just a glance? That the tomato-growing suburbanite must feel pretty awful after being insulted with the most demeaning word in the English language? I know that you understand that judging one person based on the actions of another who looks like you is hurtful and wrong. I know that you feel this yourself when others assume you are racist. Do you see how it is similar, what has been perpetrated against African Americans for hundreds of years and the assumption just made about you? Do you see how it is similar but so much worse? Do you see that you can remove your cap, that what you wear is a choice and that the color of a person’s skin is not? Can you see that not all prejudices are created equal
February 23, 2020. May 25, 2020. June 12, 2020.
A police department has not instituted community policing, so the police officers patrol in their cars, only jumping out when they see trouble. They don’t walk the beat, they don’t get to know the people who live in the neighborhood, and the neighborhood residents don’t get to know them. The police officers are white, to be sure, but they are also black and brown and yellow and all the colors. They are men and they are women. For the most part, they want to do right. But they are in their patrol cars, patrolling a largely black area of town. They only see the people who are committing crimes and making domestic abuse calls, and because it is a largely black neighborhood, they mostly see black people doing these things. Day in, day out. There is nothing to distinguish one human from another, no personalities or stories or shared experiences, nothing but the crimes they commit and the nonspecific aspects of their appearance, namely, that they are African Americans.
Yet, if these police officers patrol in an area that is mostly white, if the criminals they encounter are mostly white, if the domestic abuse calls they answer involve mostly whites, do they walk away with an impression of white people as criminals? Do they see nothing specific in the appearances of these white criminals they encounter? The next time they see a white person, do they assume they are looking at a scumbag? What about when the white person is groomed in business casual? Does seeing white criminals over and over make all white people blend together for them? I don’t think so. Let’s be honest, they might develop a pessimistic view of humanity, think that people are fundamentally flawed, but you would be hard-pressed to find a police officer who would start prejudging all white people as dispensable. Even worse, I think the same is sometimes true for the black officer, I don’t think he would start judging all white people as criminals either. It’s an awful truth. Not all prejudices are created equal.
Many prejudices are born not so much out of hatred, but out of a need to categorize. There is so much in the world for our brains to take in, an amount of information and experience and sensory transmission so vast, it is unquantifiable, seemingly infinite. So we look for patterns and we group similar things together. And, generally, it works well. Except when it doesn’t. It stops being helpful when we pass judgment based on stereotypes or superficial categorizations. Like a white woman seeing a black man on the street and clutching her purse a little tighter, like a black man seeing a white man in a pickup and trucker’s hat and assuming there’s hate in his heart, like any man seeing a pretty woman and assuming she isn’t strong or smart…you get the idea. But there is a world of difference between a black man assuming that a white man is racist and a white policeman assuming that a black person is dangerous or, worse, only an image of a person, not an actual person, not worthy of breath. While all prejudices can be hurtful and damaging, not all prejudices are created equal.
A police officer makes a terrible, terrible mistake, he (or she, but that is less common) uses too much force, doesn’t intend to but takes a life. There are no consequences. How must that affect them, to hurt another human, to kill another human, and have the society they live in tell them that it is normal and acceptable and not punishable? It might make a person numb, it might lead to self-hate and gnawing guilt, it might lead them to repeat their mistake. And if it was not a momentary lack of control fueled by adrenaline and fear, if it was worse and fueled by a rush of power or hate, it will happen again and again. If authorities do not pursue claims of wrongdoing by on- or off-duty police officers, do not arrest and prosecute white men who hunt down and kill unarmed black men, the violence against black Americans will not end. It is enough to make a person angry.
And what about their fellow officers? The police union ensures that none of them will be held accountable for their mis-actions. And if that doesn’t protect them, they are members of a tight brotherhood that protects them where the union cannot (I’m talking to you, Buffalo Police Department Emergency Response Team). Of course, the origin of this is that police work is perilous and officers must make life-altering decisions in seconds, so they (like anyone accused of anything, frankly) want their actions reviewed by their peers, by people who understand the dangers they face, the intensity of the decisions they must make. However, this thing that makes sense in theory has been twisted in practice, in the name of fraternal justice. Love is blind, justice and loyalty should not be.
“People are always assuming that I am a racist, and I am not a racist!” I sincerely believe that you are a good person. I have loved a white man or two in my time, I’m in love with one now. And I think that no one should assume you are a racist, ever. Just as no one should assume that a black man or woman is dangerous or inferior. I do not believe that you are a racist, but I also believe that you may be horribly uninformed and misguided and that that leads you to say hurtful things sometimes, like that joke you told.
It’s one thing to know that the civil war happened, that the north won and the south lost, that President Lincoln saved the nation and eliminated slavery. It is another to really think about what it would be like, to be a slave, to be three fifths of a person in the eyes of the law and the police. What it would be like to fight a war against Hitler and hate, and return home only to have your life cut short in a lynching. What it would be like to smile as your son jumps into the community pool only to watch all the white children jump out? How does a father explain this, any of this, to his son? How would you explain this to your son? What if it was still happening, every day, but largely invisible to the white world so that any time you raise the issue, you are accused of overreacting, of being too sensitive?
Not understanding the weight of history, how events from so long ago inform how we think about ourselves and how we think about others today, has clouded the judgement of many a man (and woman). Democrat and Republican alike. The woke man in the city and the redneck country boy. The salesman and the hippie. The man on the yacht, the man building the yacht, the man cleaning the yacht.
What came before is not entirely in the past, historical events are not just words in a text book or dramatic images on a screen. Just because the events of history have come and gone does not mean that their effects are not felt and experienced by us all, but particularly, every day, by African Americans. As breath is squeezed from George Floyd, new life is breathed back into old wounds. And it keeps happening. It’s the little things as well as the mortal. Until we let in the light, I am afraid, people will continue to stumble about and make assumptions. Until we let in the light, people will continue to make assumptions about you, too.
And so, people of every race, creed, and religion protest. We protest the abuse of power. We protest the violence. We insist that perpetrators be held accountable. We scream at those voices in our heads to go back where they came from and never come back.
I know that you, please continue to assume you are a white man, I know that you support these goals. You are a decent person, a good man. You are a considerate person, even would risk your life to save another. But there are a few hundred years of ingrained attitude bearing down on you. And that is a burden I beg you to overcome.
It probably isn’t fair, that you have to overcome this burden. It certainly isn’t fair that every black American has to overcome innumerable burdens of prejudice every day. And as my mother likes to remind me only too often,“Life isn’t fair.” I’ll make you a deal. If you think about the weight of your words, the impact of your assumptions, if you try to understand that as long as there is injustice there will be people drawing attention to it and that that means less attention will be drawn to you, if you try to adjust to a world where white, male power is no longer the only power, if you focus on the things we all have in common rather than on our differences…I will try to understand and help others understand that life is not always easy for you either, that there are more difficulties in this world than the ones we protest today, that assumptions are also made about you, that you value strength and quiet resilience and that your toughness isn’t ill-intentioned, that even though anti-discrimination measures are meant to even the playing field it sometimes feels to you like you are being sidelined because you are not a member of a minority group and that even if white men still hold most of the reins of power in this country, that doesn’t mean that you feel that power yourself or don’t miss what you once had. But I beg you, again, please understand that not all prejudices are created equal.
You should be given the chance to act in a manner that is as well-intentioned as your heart. Every man, woman, and child should be given this chance. You say in your most sober tone, “Absolutely, I will do all of these things. I hear you, I understand.”
This message is to you, particularly. It is to you because you represent the people who have held power all these years in America, from before our states were called states, from before we were united. It is to you because the color of your skin and shape of your face makes you the bearer of this burden, this burden that was created by people you never met and to whom you probably bear no relation.
This burden that requires you to not only refrain from judging a person based on the color of their skin but to work hard to use your rational brain and suppress your emotional one in matters of race. To make the effort to reject the stereotypes that pop into your head when you see or hear about a person of color.
But you do not carry this weight alone. We have all been imprinted with racist prejudices. White, brown, yellow, red, and beige. Black, too. It was done on purpose starting a long, long time ago, and though it is rarely done on purpose today, it is done still. Unwittingly, advertisers reinforce racist prejudices and we all buy the products. Film and television reinforce these prejudices, and we all watch. Laws and government programs play their role. Neighbors, friends, and family with their poorly retold jokes, quips, and old expressions, too. Like ostriches, our heads are buried in the sand clutching worms of tradition.
We all bear this burden, fairly or not.
So please stop. Just stop. Some of us might laugh, but this time, don’t finish that joke.
I’ll close with one of the best movie scenes ever created by Hollywood. A Mississippi lawyer defends a black man who, learning that the two white men who brutally raped and beat his little girl could walk free, goes after them. The father shoots and kills the two men who terrorized and nearly killed his 10-year old daughter and stands trial for their murder. This is his white lawyer’s closing argument to the all-white jury.
What is it in us that seeks the truth? Is it our minds or is it our hearts?
I set out to prove a black man could receive a fair trial in the south, that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. That's not the truth, because the eyes of the law are human eyes – yours and mine – and until we can see each other as equals, justice is never going to be evenhanded. It will remain nothing more than a reflection of our own prejudices, so until that day we have a duty under God to seek the truth, not with our eyes and not with our minds where fear and hate turn commonality into prejudice, but with our hearts -- where we don't know better.
Now I wanna tell you a story. I'm gonna ask y'all to close your eyes while I tell you this story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves.
This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl.
Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up, and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on, first one then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure – vicious thrusts – in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they're done, after they killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to bear children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice. So they start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw 'em so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones – and they urinate on her.
Now comes the hanging. They have a rope; they tie a noose. Imagine the noose pulling tight around her neck and a sudden blinding jerk. She's pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking and they don't find the ground. The hanging branch isn't strong enough. It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck, and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge and pitch her over the edge. And she drops some 30 feet down to the creek bottom below.
Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body, soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood – left to die
Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl.
Now imagine she's white.
“A Time To Kill,” conceived and written by John Grisham and Akiva Goldsman.