“It is almost as
important to know what is not serious as to know what is.” John Kenneth
Galbraith
Some many years ago I was walking home from school in
Seattle and, as was my custom, stopped in at the local grocery store to pick up
something to munch on. As I scoured the candy rack for something sweet enough
to keep the family dentist in business, the shop-keeper and a customer were watching
the news on a little black and white television set behind the counter. There
was some sort of report involving the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I wasn’t
paying much attention, but the shop-owner snarled mid-report and said,
“Somebody ought to shoot that (man).”
I was shocked. First, I had always considered the owner of
the store to be a nice guy. Secondly, while I didn’t know much about Dr. King,
I knew that his focus was on improving relations between white people and black
people through just and peaceable means.
I was shocked and wondered why anyone would want to kill a
man of peace. That was insanity and in good conscience I could not and would
not spend another dime in that store ever again.
(1974, Spokane, WA I was part of Spokane PD's
Larceny Squad - patroling from a Vespa)
After I graduated from college and before I went off to
seminary, I was a police officer in the city of Spokane. One night my partner
and I responded to a silent alarm call on the city’s south hill. It was winter;
it was a moonless night (about 1 a.m.), and despite the snow that lay upon the
ground, it was quite dark. We pulled up to the address of an antique shop and
my partner went one way on foot around the building while I went the other.
As I rounded the corner I confronted a man standing at a
window in back. He was dressed in a dark coat and wore a knitted ski-cap pulled
down low. He hadn’t heard my approach, but when I saw him I drew my weapon,
identified myself, and ordered him to freeze.
Startled, he turned and I glimpsed a silver flash in the
beam of my flashlight. I tensed, applied several pounds of pressure to my Smith
and Wesson’s trigger (which takes three pounds of pressure to fire) and ordered
him to drop his gun NOW! I suspect there might have been an expletive or two
thrown in for good measure – and it worked.
He dropped his weapon. It turned out to be a screwdriver he was
using to pry open the window of the shop he was burgling. He came within a
half-pound of trigger pull of being shot.
Looking back, I find myself wondering if I would have
exercised the same level of restraint on my trigger if he had been black. I like
to think I am color blind when it comes to race, but I also know that racism is
not a matter of the intellect, but of the gut. If he had been black, this story
might have ended differently; I cannot dismiss that possibility.
When the adrenaline pumps, humans shift gears from the
intellectual brain to the more primal, ancient, reptilian brain – the
Fight/Flight center. We are afraid of that which we do not know or understand,
and so we react out of that fear. Racism is rooted in xenophobia (fear of the
stranger) and we need to quit denying it exists. If we acknowledge it, we can
begin work needed to overcome it – like most any defect of character.
I don’t know precisely what happened in Ferguson that
fateful day. I hope, pray, and expect the investigators will be thorough and
that justice will prevail, but I hope, too, that each of us will look deep
within ourselves and know just how far we have yet to go.
I am human. I am fearful, and ugliness of thought and deed
are very much alive and well in this soul of mine.
We can overcome our baser instincts, but first we’ve got to
face reality, admit the problem, and then be willing to seek solutions and work
together to achieve them in this, our valley (and beyond).
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