Time to admit we have a problem, and to try to solve it
Imagine going to your favorite burger joint and ordering the cheeseburger deluxe. You’re with all your friends, and they all order the cheeseburger deluxe as well. Eventually, the server brings the food. All your friends get a cheeseburger deluxe. You? You get a pair of dirty underpants stuffed inside a hamburger bun. And when you politely mention this to the waitstaff, they insist what you’re looking at is indeed a cheeseburger deluxe and not a pair of dirty underpants. Your friends say the same thing. You feel like this must be some kind of joke, this can’t actually be happening, so you politely ask for a cheeseburger in lieu of the soiled underpants.
But the waitstaff - instead of recognizing there’s an issue - continues to insist that you are indeed the owner of one fine and dandy cheeseburger deluxe. This would get old quick, right? I know the above is so much silliness, but it’s as good a metaphor as I’m going to come up with today. Basically, a large majority of Black Americans feel like they’ve got an underpants sandwich in front of them, and a good majority of non-Black Americans keep insisting it’s a cheeseburger deluxe.
I’m guilty of it for sure - I tend to see a lot of cheeseburger deluxes in the world. But really: If a whole group of Americans keep insisting they’ve got an underpants sandwich, don’t you think it’s incumbent upon me (us) to at the very least - get back into the kitchen and see just what, exactly, is going on here?
Of course, I’m writing this after another police-involved shooting of a Black man, I’m writing this instead of putting together my NBA fantasy lineups, I’m writing this as confused and as angry and as sad as the next guy. And so when it comes to professional athletes boycotting their own games, I can’t say if it’s going to have an effect on our culture at large, but far be it from me to have a problem with it.
Listen: I may be many things, but Black is not one of them. I’ve gotten fire for the following statement before, and I’m sure I’ll get fire for saying it again, but it doesn’t make it any less true: I cannot know what it’s like to be
Black. Race is a social construct, there is no difference among humans, but we’ve all decided to make the color of our skin a thing. It’s not just America; when I was in Thailand, the pharmacies were overrun with skin whitening creams.
There just isn’t enough empathy in the world for me to understand what it’s like for my skin to be anything other than white, and there isn’t enough empathy in the universe for me to understand what it must feel like to be or assume to be - targeted by law enforcement.
I’ve heard the opposite side of this, and I get it. Heck, I like the police. A lot. Like, a whole lot. I like having the police around. I like law and order. I like knowing if I’m in trouble, all I have to do is call 9-1-1 and like a team of superheroes, police will come to help me, no matter what. And - I cannot stress this enough - I believe the vast majority of police officers are decent people trying to do their job and get home to their families. As decent as you, as decent as me.
I’ve also heard how if people would just listen to the police when they’re told to stop doing whatever is they’re doing, we wouldn’t have this problem. And while there’s obviously some truth there, it still doesn’t change the fact Black people - at minimum, and really, this is at min-imum - perceive there is an issue.
And for me, or you, or anyone to be like, “Nah, no issue here,” well, that’s simply an untenable position to take. Back to the metaphor, then: It’s one thing when one person claims to have an underpants sandwich in front of them and you tell them that it’s actually a cheeseburger deluxe. But when millions of people are insisting they’ve got underpants for lunch, to say otherwise isn’t helping the situation. At all.
Really, any non-Black person dismissing all this as nonsense just doesn’t get it. While I’m not saying every non-Black person has to immediately start marching in the streets, at the very least every non-Black person needs to admit there is a problem and be ready to discuss it, to pressure their elected officials to help to deal with it, to play their own small part in neutralizing the issue. To pretend otherwise, at this point in history, is insane.
This isn’t a pro-cop, anti-cop thing, not a pro-Black, anti-Black thing. It’s an American thing, and we have to deal with it together.