The beat goes on: Racism disease won’t go away

ACHTUNG: The following is not a fair and balanced story. It is an editorial by the editor.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I published this editorial more than four years ago after reports of racial harassment against Hopkins High School student-athlete Jalen Kisner. Hopkins earlier this year held a forum on handling racial issues. It appears not much has changed nationwide, as white Americans still have not shed their disease of racism.

I have grown exceedingly weary of Facebook memes quoting the likes of Chuck Norris and Clint Eastwood on the right and Jane Fonda and Kanye West on the left, as if these rich, privileged and sheltered people really understand the important political and economic issues we face in these United States of America.

In a rare move for Townbroadcast, I asked Jalen Kisner, best known here as a terror on the offensive and defensive lines on the gridiron, if he’d allow me to pass along comments he made on Facebook in the wake of the police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.

In this case, I think of Jalen Kisner as more than just a local celebrity, a collegiate football player. I think of him as having a special and interesting point of view about what’s been going on because he is one of a very few African Americans who grew up around here in a white household and a predominantly white school.

Jalen didn’t disappoint. He let his feelings be known that he and many friends who also are people of color seem to have different reactions than white people. He has close ties to both groups.

Jalen seems to be telling us we still have a serious race problem in this country. I think he’s right. We’ve been in denial for a long time, suffering a national disease that stretches as far back as the Civil War and beyond.

I just don’t seen how we treat people of color in the same way as Caucasians. I honestly believe if those two black men who were shot and killed this past week were white, the outcomes would have been different — they’d be alive and perhaps facing charges, but at least have a chance for justice.

This goes back to Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed by a guy who since has shown himself to be thug. It goes back to the guy (Eric Garner), who was selling loose cigarettes on the street. It goes back to the 12-year-old boy (Tamir Rice) in Cleveland. They didn’t deserve to die, all three were unarmed. If they were committing wrongdoings, each should have been given a fair trial.

Furthermore, it didn’t seem as though there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth about shooting deaths until five police officers tragically were killed afterward by a lone gunman. So it just doesn’t feel like all lives matter.

I’ve long believed we’ve had a serious problem with racism in this country ever since it was founded, supposedly by a group of great men with vision. What we fail to understand is that many of the Founding Fathers had slaves. And those rights we cherish in the first 10 amendments in 1789 applied only to free, white males at least 21 years old and landowners. All rights that have been won since for those excluded have been earned by grass-roots movements of the people, not  lawmakers.

We are guilty of being delusional and practicing hubris when we crow about all the wonderful freedoms we have in this great land, while at the same time brush aside all evidence to the contrary.

Somehow, what people say in the aftermath of tragedy matters a great deal, but calls to do something about our illness are met with silence and indifference.

Alcoholics Anonymous has preached the gospel of owning your disease and then dealing with it. But it doesn’t look like we will.

Tragedies like the ones we witnessed this past week are the result. And they will continue. Talk is cheap. Hate speech is lethal. We need to focus on what we can do to heal the divide that still exists.

“Riots are the language of the unheard.” — Dr. Martin Luther King