End Racism

Racial Justice Starts at Home

Learn from History

In 1965 and again in 1967, American cities erupted in flames from rioting by Black and Brown Americans. The response was a brutal crackdown by police and the National Guard. Many died as a result. Those were not the first times that peoples of color took to the streets to protest because their voices were not being heard and they were not the last. 

In 1968, then President Lyndon Johnson appointed a blue-ribbon commission headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner to figure out why the unrest took place and what could be done to keep them from taking place in the future. The Kerner Commission went into the racial ghettos and interviewed thousands impacted by the violence. 

The Commission’s report issued at the end of the study blamed institutional and systemic racism, poverty and inadequate housing, unemployment and underfunded schools in communities of color, inadequate police training, a flawed justice system, discriminatory credit practices and voter suppression as the major causative factors of the unrest and violence. The Kerner Commission report was followed by an in-depth article published by Newsweek that reached many of the same conclusions. Both the Commission and Newsweek proposed massive government programs to address the racial inequities and discriminatory practices they found. Nobody listened.

President Johnson wanted outside agitators blamed for the unrest and a report that did not address racism. He ignored the findings and the recommendations and Richard Nixon was elected President later that year after running on a “law and order” campaign. Sound familiar?

Now we are faced with similar, but less violent, protests by people of color and their allies demanding an end to police violence against them and of the institutional racism that still permeates American society. More and more white Americans are joining these calls and taking to the streets to demand change.

Institutional changes in how police agencies interact with people of color or those deemed outside the mainstream of society are coming. As more people of color reach leadership positions in law enforcement, they bring a different vision of how the rank and file needs to behave. These changes will be slow to emerge as institutional changes take place slowly. 

More important to the wave of change is how we Caucasian Americans look inward to discover and root our own biases against those who look different than we do. This introspection will be critical to the long-term success of the movement to end racism. It is not enough for the military and NASCAR to ban the Confederate battle flag, for the military to remove Confederate names from military installations or for Confederate statutes and memorials to be removed. We white people all need to stop reacting negatively, even subtly, to people who appear to be different from us.

Humans are not born to see race or to hate those with different skin tones. We are taught by those like us to make distinctions based on this perceived difference and impose the assumptions of inferiority that follow.

White adults need to look inward, recognize these learned behaviors and figure out how to put them aside and adopt a new way of perceiving and reacting to fellow humans who look different to white people.

For those who can’t figure out how, here are some resources that might help.

https://egbertowillies.com/2020/06/11/here-is-how-i-overcame-my-own-prejudice-white-people-must-do-this-and/?fbclid=IwAR2cpeOvXOkDJpaSwV7sWnTgNGhkYmqVNaLUmfHOA-xSxBFmEZziLekAymU

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/parenting/kids-books-racism-protest.html

http://www.resourcesharingproject.org/anti-racism-resource-collection

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/06/06/871023438/this-list-of-books-films-and-podcasts-about-racism-is-a-start-not-a-panacea

https://www.racialequitytools.org/act/strategies/training-and-popular-education

https://fortune.com/2020/06/05/antiracist-books-donations-black-owned-businesses-resources/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/talking-to-kids-about-racism.html

https://medium.com/wake-up-call/a-detailed-list-of-anti-racism-resources-a34b259a3eea

The Underground Railroad by Olson Whitehead

So you want to talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in an American City (Milwaukee) by Matthew Desmond

It is up to each and every one of us to change what is in our heads and hearts about people of color and seek out ways to live together peacefully. 

Racial justice starts at home.