We Desperately Need To Have An Honest Conversation On Racial Issues In America

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Larry Elder, a lawyer, author, and radio and TV personality who refers to himself as the “Sage of The South,” recently went on a Twitter rant about black Americans. Elder is a black American as well, so I guess that is the reason he feels qualified to lend his critique.   In his rant, he listed the three steps black men and women need to take to make it out of poverty: finish high school, don’t have a child before the age of 20, and to get married first. Phew! Now that I know those fool-proof steps, my life will be super easy. If only Elder knew how problematic his statements were.

His rant started over his belief that racism is no longer a problem in the United States. His indicator was that police killings of black people had gone down 75 percent in 45 years. This is reminiscent of Bill O’Reilly saying the same thing two years ago. Neither gave a source to where their data originated. Both O’Reilly and Elder went on to say that while making up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, crimes are committed more by black people than their white counterparts. Elder’s statements became even more problematic when he mentioned not only the racist rhetoric of “black-on-black crime,” but also the rise in crime among black men is to be blamed on the absence of black fathers.  

  Elder’s statements came in response to the recent killings of two black men at the hands of police. Over the last couple of days, there have been a handful of men killed by police including one white, two Hispanic, three black, and others whose cases have not been discussed in the media. The names we know now are Dylan Noble, Pedro Villanueva, Anthony Nunez, Delrawn Small, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling. The latter two have been the focus of both the media and the Black Lives Matter campaign before the murders of five police officers at a peaceful protest in Dallas.   Whenever these police killings occur, there is always victim blaming, dehumanization of these victims by reporting their criminal records, and others finding ways to justify their lives being taken:   "The police are just doing their jobs and risking their lives in the process."   "He shouldn’t have resisted."   "I heard he had a gun."   "He deserved it."   Regardless of these opinions, these situations could have been handled differently. All of the people killed and the officers involved should’ve been able to go home to their families. Castile was a licensed gun owner who did everything you are taught to do when you have a police encounter and your firearm present. He informed the officer of its presence and where it was located, and he was killed anyway. Diamond Reynolds showed a tremendous amount of strength in making sure the whole country knew what happened as she sat next to her dying boyfriend and her child in the back seat. Her daughter showed a tremendous amount of courage in trying to console her mother saying, "I'm right here with you."   A four-year-old lost her innocence that day.   The NRA became silent on that day.   The only reason poverty has been brought up in these situations is because it is widely associated with black and brown bodies. While walking her dog and speaking to her mom on her cell, Rayne Burse, an aspiring model and new resident of the neighborhood was approached by an angry neighbor who accused her of being a part of South Miami.  

WATCH: 24-Year-Old Woman's Encounter With Racist Neighbor Goes Viral

   For those who do not know, South Miami is an urban area with a high population of black and brown people. Burse may or may not have been born into poverty, but because she is a black woman she was profiled, harassed, attacked, and reported for being seen as an outsider. In context, blacks and Hispanics have a harder time accumulating wealth in America because of a number of factors. Some of those factors are that they are less likely to own their homes, more likely to have crippling debt, less likely to save for retirement nor have high wages to even do so, as well as discrimination in housing and loans.   When Elder implies that the formula to rising above the poverty line is through education, marriage, and avoiding teen pregnancy as well as having children out of wedlock, he forgets that not everyone in this country is standing on an equal playing field. Some people have muddy fields that make it difficult to run through while others have a smooth sailing. He forgets, or just doesn’t care that the children of wealthier parents are much more likely to have resources and to be wealthy themselves. Those born to poorer parents, however, have less than a 10 percent chance of upward mobility and little resources. That is to say, wealthy children start off with higher human capital than poorer children.   Human capital comes with its perks. Think of a person’s human capital starting off as an empty cup. Education is the most important factor in gaining human capital. So, if you were one of those lucky kids who were able to enroll in early education (aka head start), take some Skittles (or M&Ms because they’re better) and put them in your cup. If you made it through elementary school, fill you cup some more. Middle school (a rough period for most of us, appearance-wise), put some more in your cup. If you graduated high school, have some more. If you have you bachelor’s degree, fill it up some more. Masters? More. Ph.D? You’re basically overflowing. This should be what every kid looks forward to unless you find a good-paying career that doesn’t require extra pricey pieces of paper. But it’s never that simple.   Some kids don't have the time to place full focus on school because they're working to help financially support their families. Some people don't have the extra money for tutoring if their child is struggling in math or science. Some kids have parents who are working multiple jobs to pay the rent and can't be there for every parent-teacher conference. Once high school is over, many students cannot afford to go to college without putting themselves into debt. Often these students hold one or more jobs to afford expensive textbooks and tuition when financial aid doesn't cover everything.   139887145-800x500-1-624x390   When the quality of your public school depends on the neighborhood it’s lucky or unlucky enough to fall in, it's minority children that are at a disadvantage because of poverty. Wealthier students aren’t going to go to public schools in Detroit. You can find them out in the suburbs instead or in private schools. Poor students don't even get the option of having a choice.   Those more affluent students are also not subject to being body slammed by police officers present in their school to respond to “delinquent” behaviors in children. The police presence in schools, as well as zero-tolerance policies, have been direct links to the school-to-prison pipeline. I shouldn’t have to explain how hard it is for a child who finds themselves in the pipeline to escape and have upward mobility in this country. Many of these kids have parents who can't take days off work. When they are suspended or expelled, they're latchkey kids. With the lack of community centers in urban neighborhoods, these kids are more prone to getting into trouble. If they can continue their schooling, they usually get left behind and disengage from the learning environment. School just isn’t fun for them anymore, and those Skittles just aren’t enticing enough, and they may drop out. Without education, your cup gets knocked over.   When I moved to Northern Virginia, sex ed in my high school did not even exist. During my sophomore year, it seemed like everyone around me was pregnant, getting pregnant, or already had a kid. Sexual education is important whether it’s being taught in schools or by parents. This may be sidetracking, but hear me (read me?) when I say that abstinence-only education does not work. Having a child at an early age makes everything a bit harder and graduation a feat, but it’s also not impossible. However, teen mothers have been ridiculed in this country as if their pregnancies couldn’t have been prevented with adequate education and access to birth control that politicians are strongly opposed to.   Government policy places these traps. Blaming anyone for the poverty they are in is cruel. Elder’s last step to wait until marriage may be the only claim with some merit because there are many tax, and other program, incentives to being married instead of single, with or without children. For example, the fifty percent spousal benefit as a freebie from your higher-earning wife or husband. The breadwinner still receives 100 percent of their benefits, by the way. After ten years of marriage, you can still get that fifty percent as long as you never remarry (and they never have to know). If gold Skittles existed, you could fill your cup to the brim with it.   However, the bummer is that the money you receive in retirement benefits is determined by your 35 highest earning years. If you're poor, you most likely spent those 35 years making minimum wage. Your benefits are going to be low. Inadequate wages also means that you most likely won’t be saving for retirement at all. Having a 401K is out of the question. Thus, black and brown people are more likely to be reliant only on low social security benefits in retirement age. On top of that, if you’re a Millennial, you’re predicted to put in way more money to social security than you will ever receive in benefits. Remember that the next time a Baby Boomer has something negative to say about you.  

So what does all this have to do with the recent police killings?

   Well, Elder seems be implying that class and crime are connected. Those who commit crimes are more likely to live in poverty. This is true. Yet, Philando Castile had no record other than that he has been pulled over more than 30 times in the last 14 years. Those numbers make a strong case for "driving while black" claims. Castile was a role model for the many children he encountered in the lunch room of a St. Paul Public School. Alton Sterling was the CD man and had charges brought against him for getting a 14-year-old girl pregnant when he was 20, had a history of domestic violence, as well as many other offenses. He still didn’t deserve to die.   Whenever police officers kill a black man, it seems that the media has one procedure: look for a criminal record and go from there. This results in mugshots and dehumanization galore.   The same didn’t happen when Brock Turner was literally caught in the act of raping an unconscious woman. Instead, his swim times were displayed, a flattering picture was shown in the media, and he received six months for being too delicate for prison. Hailey Suder helped murder a homeless man, but her Instagram picture was used in the media, and her status as a cheerleader was plastered across headlines. Murderers and rapists get treated better to victims of police brutality... if they’re white.   In the words of actor and Black Lives Matter's activist Jesse Williams, if you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppressor. "Black-on-black crime" is brought up almost as a justification for black men, women, and children killed by the hands of those charged to serve and protect. People are told to take responsibility for why police brutality happens to black people when we (like other races do to their own) kill each other. Some made the comment that bringing up "black-on-black crime" is like saying that ISIS is justified in killing Americans because Americans kill other Americans all the time. Sounds dumb, doesn't it?   Chicago is called Chiraq. Shootings happen there almost every day. What gets ignored is that there are men and women working every day to stop the violence in their communities. When will we ever see someone in Chicago murder a man in broad daylight, on camera, and not face charges? Never.   The problem here is that there have been no convictions for police officers who use excessive force and brutalize people who look like Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Oscar Grant, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker (case ongoing), Tanisha Anderson (case ongoing), Rumain Brisbon, Darrian Hunt, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Kimani Gray, Kendrec McDade... the list goes on.   An honest conversation needs to happen here instead of deflection and denial. Jesse said it best, "The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander." Let's make this conversation happen now.    
Some images courtesy of iStockphoto
  
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