What will we do about racism?

As I write this, we are all once again reminded that racism and bias exist in towns and cities, small and large.Recently, in Georgia, an AfricanAmerican jogger was senselessly shot dead. His assailants were arrested after a significant delay even though they were known to law enforcement.

Locally on social media, a firestorm erupted when a local businessman showed up to quote a price for doing some home improvement, wearing a White Power, White Pride shirt and exposing tatoos which strengthened the racist impressions. Again locally, one of my favorite social media pages showed a fence with spray painted racist graffiti on it.

Thankfully the two local examples did not depict a specific violent act, but the threat and the harm done is real and it is in our very own towns and cities. Acts like these are not new and they are not exceptional, but they definitely are disgusting.

One would hope that by now in our evolution we would have moved on to a higher level of thinking, but that is not the case. Just because no one was physically hurt by the graffiti or the White Power shirt, does not mean no harm was done. People of color are harmed, Native Americans are harmed, our community consciousness is harmed.

The question is, what will we do about it? Will we wait until another violent act takes place?

It is time for us to stop pretending we don’t hear the racist jokes, we don’t see the negative graffiti, and we don’t expose the biases our culture has fostered. It is time we speak up when someone behaves badly. We can’t wait for leaders to show us the way, we have to dig deep into ourselves and produce the society we want. We need to believe kindness must prevail.

#humboldtkindness