Racism and Police, and the “Yes, But”

There’s always a “yes…, but.”  It’s the temptation to defend, to counter, to argue the point, and to inevitably push back and “take sides.”

It may simply be a knee-jerk reaction, an instinctive drive to defend the status quo as one knows it, or a need to protect one’s assumptions about reality and what one believes to be true.  It may be a defense mechanism, a self-protective need to defend one’s turf to preserve one’s place where one’s rights and privileges are perceived as being threatened.

Whatever the emotional or psychological or rational reason, it is a refusal to hear and listen.  It is a disinclination to empathize with.  And its effect is to further divide rather than unify.

So, for example, must we choose between Police Officers and African Americans?  Are there sides to this issue?  If we listen to and begin to understand and sympathize with the complaints made by the “Black Lives Matter” movement, does it mean that we are de-facto anti-police?  If we say that we generally respect and support our law enforcement officers, must we automatically be deemed as racist and anti-black?  Certainly not!

But, again, the tendency is to take sides, to push back, pitting one side against the other, which doesn’t help much.

As we grieve together in behalf of those police officers who lost their lives in the line of duty last week in Dallas, and as we offer our condolences and affirm our moral support of police officers and their families across this nation, if we also choose not to lose sight of the grievances that the Black Lives Matter movement has stated, please note that we are NOT minimizing the value and significance of our police officers.

In short, YES!  Black lives matter.  And YES!  Police and other Law Enforcement Officers matter.  It is not either/or.  It is BOTH/AND!

Calls for harsher laws or a change of laws or a new batch of laws to restrict or deter bad behavior (on either side) will not in-and-of-itself make things better.  Pivoting one side against the other by accentuating individual’s negative behavior from one group over against the individual’s appalling behavior from the other group will not diminish the anger or rage that boils underneath the surface in either group.

What is lacking is a listening, sympathizing, empathic ear.  The two groups are not hearing each other.  There is the tendency to choose sides rather than to choose mutual respect and consideration.  That being said, the side which generally exercises greater power and authority (legal, social, and otherwise) over the other, has a greater obligation to listen more carefully to the complaints of the weaker side, the side with less power and authority.  And so, there is a reason why the Black Lives Matter movement exists in the first place.  Is that reason being respected, i.e., being truly heard?

They’ve got to be heard.  We, non-blacks, must listen and seek to understand what it is they have been trying to tell us.  The Black Lives Matter movement was not created in a vacuum.  It has context.  It has substance, rationale, and justified cause.  Yet, it would seem that, perhaps until now, the message has fallen on deaf ears.  But now the danger is that our deaf ears may become tuned-out ears, resistant ears, ears which refuse to listen out of a spirit of defensiveness and self-protectiveness.

Consider that, generally speaking, Whites do not fear for their lives and do not worry about whether or not they will be treated with respect or will be favored by a legal, just, and moral system when pulled over by a police officer.  Blacks do worry.  Blacks do wonder whether or not they’ll be treated justly, and all too often do fear for their lives when pulled over by a police officer—even when they know they’re innocent of any overt wrongdoing!  It is an experience only Blacks can relate to, that Whites just do not get.  And, until Whites ‘get-it’, Blacks will continue to be frustrated, angry, and defensive.  From the Black perspective, their very lives are at stake.  This is why the whole movement is called BLACK LIVES MATTER.

Listening is the first step toward respect and empathy.  And so, as a first step, we need to simply hear their experience as truth.  We must give them that much.  That is, we need to listen until we “get it.”  We non-blacks need to get what their saying so as to be able to empathize and mirror-back to them what they have been telling us.  They must know that they are being heard.  Have we heard?  Do we “get-it”?

A good sign that we have finally stopped to listen and have actually begun to hear in such a way that we really get-it, is when we no longer respond with a “yes, but…!” to what has been said.