Racism, to my understanding is as American as baseball. It is so deeply woven in the fabric of America that to pull on the string would undo the whole tapestry. You have to see when we see the consistencies between your behavior and that of your ancestors that we are employing a survival tactic our environment forces us to master (even still its accuracy is never 100%). We know when we see the white people outside of the school in 1960 screaming at Ruby Bridges as she integrated that elementary school, that their descendants are not anatomically better, and are capable of the same emotion. This emotion, that conveying only confirms what we’ve been told by our elders about the real world.
It’s hard to be anti-Kaepernick and not seem as if you too would hate and the heavyweight boxer from Kentucky who decided he would not go to Vietnam. The lack of caring about these black men and women being shot down harkens back the videos and recordings of white folks speaking on what they thought of black people decades ago. The vile answers given by those people hurt just as much as your silence and sometimes we would even prefer the vocal hate because then it reveals to us exactly where you stand. Even that is more comfortable than the schizophrenia brought on by never being able to be sure. Are you really an ally? Or do you side with me only in my presence? The people in those videos are your ancestors, actually of only 1 generation or 2, and we can’t be so sure that vitriol and hatred that they spoke with just evaporated. It is hard to imagine that at home we don’t come up, and a somewhat overall opinion of us. Even the topic of our killings by the police, that has to come up sometimes doesn’t it? What happens when it comes up? Does someone get angry? Does someone justify it? Doesn’t somebody defend us? Or is it a quick moment of polite sadness and then you move on? Now what if that conversation never comes up? Does that say even more? Racism is so unnatural a thing, that even dealing with it, can never be something we get used to. It becomes like an invisible bully that can reveal itself whenever it likes. It seems that everyone with a solution on how to fix it is murdered or has their character assassinated which leaves us with a rational belief that we will die long before racism does. This can be quite the burden to carry while carrying everything else life throws at us. You must see now why cultural colonialism can be so offensive. You want the rhythm without the blues. It seems you want a piece of all we make but would rather not be forced to see us. Even our neighborhoods are seen in some places as “places you just don’t want to go if you’re in Chicago.” But I should say whether you live in one of those neighborhoods or not. Racism is allowed to play an overarching role in your life. Even in denying racism that privilege we are convincing ourselves that something won’t stop us, not actually acknowledging something that is in fact, there. Our feelings of its presence are more Important even, for our daily survival, than our world view. Racism is one of the cancers our world faces today and like other forms of cancer, its ability to change forms and spread throughout the body, is what makes it more powerful. With our understanding of the human body we must come to a collective agreement that as long as that cancer that is racism exists somewhere, it affects us all the same.