[featured-image link=”null” link_single=”inherit” single_newwindow=”false” alt=”Eric Garner – America’s problem with race”]Eric Garner being killed by police[/featured-image]
Studies have shown for years that there is a gross disparity between how white people are treated by the police, vs black people. And yet, when black people complain there is a problem, white people automatically start insisting that it is only in their heads. That is such a strange phenomenon. We have the objective data that tells us there is a problem. We know there is a problem. But when a black person says there is a problem, white society says how dare you suggest there is a problem!
And right there, that is the problem.
Whatever that tendency is, that rush to minimize, to not listen, to act as if a problem we know is there is not there, there is the problem.
It is a huge problem.
Black people experience that problem every day in terms of tangible behaviors by white officers toward them. But white America cannot bring itself to admit there is a problem, even though the studies already tell us that, and we have known it for years.
That is a huge problem.
It is like I always say in my couple counseling, if one spouse believe there is a problem in the marriage, there is a problem. And that problem alone is enough to blow up the marriage. The partner who does not believe there is a problem ignores the other partner’s experience at the risk of the entire relationship.
It’s gonna get ugly, I promise.
So it is that the white community is ignoring the black community’s experience at the risk of our relationships in this country.
If white America doesn’t wake up, it’s gonna get ugly, I promise.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
