Are we missing something with the pervasiveness of injustice?

I grew up privileged and sheltered, not fully understanding what it meant to be black in America until later in life. One of few black families in a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood, I understood instead what it meant to feel different because of the color of my skin.

It wasn’t until I entered college that I married the sentiment of feeling different with all of the implications of race. Coming into contact with people who hadn’t had black friends when they were growing up; meeting students who couldn’t quite understand that I spoke or dressed the way that I did because it didn’t align with their perception of what it meant to be black.

It wasn’t until I graduated college that the harsh realities of race began to crystallize. I soon realized that as an adult, the emotion that accompanies feeling different because of the color of your skin doesn’t disappear or soften with time. You instead just stop defining yourself by someone else’s perception of who they think you should be.

While my understanding of race changed with time, it was further sheltered because people idolized my father when it came to professional sports. Race need not apply when people assume you’re superhuman.

After certain events however, I realized the idolization only went as far as the court in certain contexts. He was no longer a basketball hero when the cops suspected he was a criminal simply because he was wearing a white tee shirt and khakis, riding his bike near the location of a robbery in a predominantly white neighborhood. He was no longer revered when a cop car cut him off in Brooklyn because they were searching for a suspect and he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. The journey to recognizing the force of racism after seeing my father worshiped in one arena and demonized in the other, was a poignant one. The only reason his story ended peacefully was because the cops recognized who he was.

The common thread between feeling different because of the color of your skin or experiencing injustice at the hands of power is a longstanding belief in a perpetuated stereotype.

We’ve all been guilty of making snap judgements based on ideas formulated by those before us. (You cross the street at night when you see three men where you wouldn’t if they were replaced by two blond women.)

The difference is that today the police officers who are killing innocent black people are in positions of power and it’s a snap judgment that can mean the difference between life or death.

If you want to truly fix the problem, you have to change the triggers employed for when those judgements occur during moments of fear. Police officers may be receiving better training to disarm without the use of violence but the real problem is that most white officers are scared when confronting a black man in a way they just aren’t when confronting a white one. And so they resort to extreme measures during snap judgements as a form of self preservation. The response to that fear though cannot be extreme use of power. People in positions of power with deadly weapons need more training in order to see everyone equally.

I don’t think anyone writing during the aftermath of the latest horrific events is naïve enough to think that one more article will make a difference. But remaining silent no longer seems like a viable option and sometimes the written word is all you have to help you make sense of senseless acts. Doing something feels better than doing nothing even if that “something” is sharing my family’s experience with race in a country where most of us so desperately want to believe that these are isolated events, not accurate representations of what it is to be a minority in America.

The tendency is to believe that most of these events occur on the periphery of mainstream society. But most black families regardless of where they call home or what’s in their pockets, can point to instances of injustice or racism that they have experienced at the hands of those in positions of power. While obscene videos and images force us to recognize the reality of these events, truly accepting the pervasiveness of injustice due to race might be a crucial step we’re missing in addressing the problem and making real change.