I've lived most of my life in a bubble. As a privileged white girl in Santa Barbara, it was easy to believe that at least in the states, society was almost completely post-racial. I honestly thought of racism as something that only happened somewhere else, and mostly in the past. I figured those little wannabe skinheads were just pretending to be racist so they would seem more scary and tough, because no one with even a modicum of intelligence could actually be a racist.
I was raised with the world events of the 1930s and 40s at the forefront of my consciousness. I had a dear old friend with a tattoo from a Nazi concentration camp. I grew up in a state where Japanese Americans had been sent to internment camps during WWII. How could anyone be racist with those potential consequences in our collective memory? The two most revered heroes of people in my generation were Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. At least that's what I thought. But maybe that was just me and my friends.
And yet I've hesitated to repost any Black Lives Matter posts, because my late husband was a cop, and I've so many friends in law enforcement. But I keep seeing these All Lives Matter posts from LEO wives, officers and other friends, and I've got to think that these friends just aren't seeing it from the other perspective. Maybe they're living in a bubble like I was.
Racism is a real problem in the world, even today. Just because you or your LEO husband isn't racist, that doesn't mean we don't have institutional and societal racism. For the proof of this, you need to look no further than the demographic makeup of our prisons. Even here in liberal, enlightened California. When I think of what racism looks like today, right here in my home state of California, prison demographics are the first thing that comes to mind.
I get that you fear for your life, or for your husband's life. We know that all lives matter. We know that blue lives, cop lives matter. That was never in question. Just take a look at the sentencing guidelines for someone who kills a cop versus someone who kills any other citizen for the proof of this.
The BLM movement and the treatment of the water protectors at Standing Rock are bringing our attention to what has been our reality in this country for a long time. It's just that now we've got our cell phone cameras and media attention on the problem.
2016-10-03
