fbpx
Search
Close this search box.

Reaction to Ferguson

I’m on the other side of the world and I’m watching reactions to the Ferguson grand jury decision unfold over social media…and I’ve been struck by something in the nature of the statuses, articles, or photos shared by my facebook friends back home.

Each and every one of them reflect that person’s own experience in America. It’s fairly obvious to me who’s liberal, who’s conservative. I can tell who has experienced some form of racism, and I can tell who has been pretty sheltered from it. From my conservative friends, I often see a certain color-blindness and desire to uphold “personal responsibility” as the issue. They sincerely believe, with all their heart, that America is the same for everyone as long as you work hard and act respectably.

Now, I’m not a conservative, I’m definitely more progressive on most social and fiscal issues, but I have always admired that very basic ideology underlying conservative thought – That anything is possible if you work hard. Doesn’t matter what you look like, or where you started from. It’s all about where you want to go. It hearkens to an incredibly idealistic view of our country, which I sincerely want to believe in. But I think that where this way of thinking fails is in its inability to reconcile certain realities in our country’s past and present which go against this view of America.

There are very real harsh realities in our country. To put it in the most basic terms, life is different for people based on their background. If you’re black or brown or yellow, it’s different than if you’re white. If you’re a woman, life is different than if you’re a man. If you’re poor, it’s different than if you were rich. If you identify as LGBTQ, life is different than if you identify as straight. If you’re an immigrant, it’s different than if you were born here.

For young men of color, especially black men, these difficulties are all too real. These difficulties are institutionalized and present at every level of our society. It doesn’t matter how you dress, what degree of education you have, etc…Black men are always looked at with a level of suspicion and distrust, especially by law enforcement. And then, when things go wrong, the victims are blamed. As if their way of dress or demeanor was somehow responsible for the misguided perceptions of the perpetrator. This is wrong and it needs to change.

There’s something profoundly wrong in our national dialogue when all I see or hear is the dehumanization of the “other side.” This mentality must stop.
We must try to understand the other side. We need to stop vilifying the anger that is displayed at the verdict of the Ferguson case. There is a reason that this incredible anger exists.

To my friends (especially my white and non-black friends), who espouse the ideals of personal responsibility and to those that sincerely doubt the prevalence of racism in our society- instead of just writing off the peaceful protesters or even the violent rioters, please try and understand what these people are feeling. There’s a reason that so much emotion is behind this whole case. It’s opened all kinds of wounds in America that have long been simmering beneath the surface.

It is time for us to embrace true equality in America. And true equality doesn’t just come into existence by pretending that it’s here. We must all work for it. And we start that important work with a little empathy for people that are different from us.

 

by Kevin Varney, a former intern at Gandhi

Recent News