You’ve probably read the rhetoric on both sides of this issue, but I’m hoping to provide some clarity to better understand what’s going on. Of the eight people who will read this post, three will agree with me, two will think I hate the police (I don’t— I’m thankful for them and wear an armband to remind me to pray for them every day), two will think I’m racist (that’s likely, but I’ll get to that), and one accidentally tapped on this article while reaching for the TV remote.
What privilege?
In my years as a foster parent, it became clear to me that we are, all of us, post turtles. We didn’t get where we are by ourselves – we are the product of history, both global and familial. When I was a kid, my blue-collar parents assured me that I was going to college. They expected it, and they constantly encouraged me to live up to my potential. What I didn’t understand at the time was that my potential had a lot more to do with my environment than my brains and grit. Even though he grew up poor, if Abraham Lincoln had been black, you wouldn’t be able to finish, “four score and seven….” A white child in a middle-class school and with supportive parents is much more likely to graduate college than changing any one of those factors. It’s not that changing those environmental factors makes a person less capable — we all depend on encouragement, both from people we care about and from society as a whole. I received it from every direction, and I’m thankful for it. But because I’ve been so blessed, I have the opportunity and responsibility to use that blessing to benefit others.
All cops have racial bias (and so do you)
A frustrated (black) police officer friend told me, “We don’t get up in the morning looking to shoot black people,” and given the fear of riots that often follow in recent years, I believe that the overwhelming majority of police officers fear ever being in a position where they need to shoot someone, much less a black person, yet it still happens to black people more than it happens to white people under similar circumstances. Why? Because we all have racial biases and preferences. If you don’t think you do, take the test and see how it measures your gut reactions.
But we inherit prejudice from our environment, whether a racist joke heard as a child, the overwhelming majority of superheroes, CEO’s, media personalities, and politicians being white, or attitudes of family members. And even if we reject those attitudes like Harry Potter rejecting Slytherin, they’re still in our subconscious whispering lies from the pit of hell, telling us that melanin quantity affects a person’s trustworthiness. Like it or not, we really do inherit sin from our parents (Psalm 51:5), and it affects us on a gut level. Reject those ideas for the lies they are, but know that a piece of you, admittedly a tiny piece that you hate, has to wonder why 50% of black men end up behind bars at some point if it’s not genetic.
So if everyone has racist tinnitus, what happens when a police officer finds themselves in a situation when they need to make a snap life-or-death decision when they sense a threat and need to take control of the situation? In a Blink, instinct, not conscious thought, they make the decision. Hindsight can’t retrieve a bullet, but police officers get judged by those who understand what it’s like to want to live to go home to family at the end of a shift, but not always in a court of law, which both exacerbates and is a symptom of the problem. And that doesn’t make it right — black parents shouldn’t have to teach their children the safe way to handle a traffic stop, nor should they have to worry every time their child goes out at night.
Good is the enemy of great
We have undeniably come a long way since the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, but it’s easy to draw that comparison and think that our current situation is good enough, and people of color should just be thankful for how far we’ve come. (If you threw up in your mouth a bit at that thought, kudos.) But compassion and complacency rarely go together. Racism will always be a problem, so we can never be satisfied with the status quo and must always seek improvement. But responding to unjust violence with unjust violence or to hatred with hatred just exacerbates the problem. Rioting makes things worse, but at the same time, we can’t dismiss riots without looking into the heart of people that are upset to the point of violence and attempting to look at the world through their eyes. We have to ask, “What would it take to get me that upset? And given what happened, why is my blood not boiling to the extent that theirs is?” From a position of privilege, we can also ask, “Could what happened to them ever happen to me?” and if not, why not? The correct answer is not, “…because I don’t break the law,” because neither did all too many of those who were ruled cases of mistaken identity.
So how do we fix it?
This is a problem as old as humanity, so it should be obvious that there is no quick fix. But if you’re ever going to make things better, you have to get to the root of the problem and address the problem, not the symptoms. What causes those snap decisions? What causes that anger and the subsequent extreme actions?
HOPELESSNESS
When an officer feels like this is their only option to get home safely at the end of a shift, when a population feels like they’ve run out of options, having tried everything else, that violence and destruction are the only possible solution to the problem, these are symptoms of hopelessness. Hope doesn’t stop looking for alternatives.
So where does hope come from?
Through my work with TreeHouse, an organization dedicated to ending hopelessness among teens, I’ve seen hopelessness turn into hope. It starts when we recognize the lack of and need for hope in others. It starts when we recognize the inherent value of every person and strive to treat people according to that value. It starts when we demonstrate to others that they are not alone, because we are for them. It starts when we demonstrate to others that they have a future to look forward to, not to dread, and we will do what we can to make that happen.
As a Christian, I believe that every person has inherent value, because they are bought by the blood of the Son of God Who willingly submitted to institutional injustice and police brutality (Matthew 26:67) for all of us. I believe that God loves every person without strings, regardless of their actions, identity, or circumstances, and He has invited us to experience that love, both by receiving it and giving it by choosing to care enough about others that we’re willing to make sacrifices (Romans 12:1-2) to attend to their needs.
And this hope must be given on every level, starting with each of us as individuals in our spheres of influence, then from whatever organizations we’re connected with, then seizing opportunities to get to know people who are different from us to help us see through their eyes if only dimly, then from every level of society, like police departments that are training their officers in implicit bias, government on every level seeking institutional disparities and letting hope drive them to find alternatives, believing that those alternatives exist and not giving up on finding and implementing them, confessing our failures and seeking not just forgiveness, but reconciliation.
The riots over the death of George Floyd are headed down the road toward my home as I write this, but even though I’m nervous for my family’s safety, yet my heart breaks for the wave of hopelessness that’s flooding our city.
What can you do today to bring hope to someone? I started by writing a blog post to encourage hope. Feel free to comment with ideas.
