What Will It Take to Acknowledge Racism

By: Jacob Henson 


Even if a police officer comes out and says he’s racist, and acted out of racist beliefs, and admits it straight to the camera, so many people will still continue to change the narrative or conversation to not give credence to the issue of racism that has plagued our nation since before its birth.

 For a lot of white people, there is NO good scenario that could in their mind justify the idea of systematic racism.

White boy enters into a black church and starts a killing spree. General white response, …horrible and tragic but isolated. I would never do something like that. That boy must have been bad in the head?

Black man walking through his neighborhood at night gets cops called on him, just because neighbors think he looks suspicious. White response:

 “Well was he new to the area? Maybe they didn’t know who he was.”
 Black man walks into a store and security starts following him around, but nobody else is being followed. White response:

“Well it is true that black men commit more crimes on average, so maybe they saw him do something suspicious. We will never know his motives.”

Black man resists arrest because he knows enough, has seen enough to know that getting in that car may be the end of him. Even if he is innocent. White response:

“If he just obeys the police, nothing bad will happen to him.”

There is never a good scenario to convince certain people that racism is real and alive.

I’m not asking white people to bend over and receive the spanking that we are deserved… I’m not asking people to hate cops. AT ALL. The Black community is asking for our help. Asking us to partner with them. And we are wasting our breath on arguments…

This does not hang on George Floyd’s death. Nor does it hang just on police brutality. And it is not nullified because of rioting and looting. There is an over 200 year history of racism permeating our society. Since even before the founding of our nation, it was dealt through slavery, and justified constantly by religion, and arguments that today we know are dumb.

So why today are we still making arguments? Why are we deflecting?

 If we don’t step up now, one day it will be us, the enemy in the movie, that children watch at school. When they see us they cringe and think, how could they not see what was happening? 

It was right in front of them.

by Guest Blogger, Jacob Henson

– Musician, Restauranteur, Formerly of Fresno, CA, now living in Madrid, Spain