In a recent email sent to several people my best friend, Bill Blackwell, from my hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia, expressed his outrage at the killing of Walter Scott, a 50 year old black man, who was shot in the back several times and killed while running away from police officer Michael Slager, a 33 year old white man, during a traffic stop in North Charleston, S.C. on April 4.
In a city that is the home for more than a few radical conservatives, it was almost predictable that he would receive a reply that required a response.
What Bill wrote was so exceptionally thoughtful and insightful that I asked permission to post it here. It is a powerful reminder that racism today is rooted in a side of American history no one who cares about racial justice can ignore.
First, what the respondent wrote: “He is charged with murder, Bill. The system will make him pay for his crime. And just for the record, there is more black-on-black crime and black-on-white crime than there is white-on-black crime.”
Now Bill’s response.
Dear [anonymous],
Your three sentences are all factual, but we know that truth can often be something more than mere facts. In this case, your last sentence, although accurate, has nothing to do with your first two – or with the matter at hand.
The matter that has recently reared its ugly head (i.e., become more visible due to videos and media focus on startling examples) is the systemic racism found in law enforcement agencies across our country. The “numbers” (facts) in that regard show disproportionate acts of abuse and killing of blacks by white (and black) police officers. Call it stereotyping or justifiable fear. I call it mostly raw racism, a societal ill that continues to plague us.
You may have noticed that over the next several days, tens-of-thousands of people will gather at Appomattox to celebrate the end of our Civil War, a war that sadly had to be fought to end the evil of slavery. It may seem a long time ago, but in perspective for African-Americans, 150 years is not long enough to erase the pain and suffering and lasting effects on their families.
Conservatives decry the “single parent” homes today that are most commonly black, but they don’t bother to reflect on the Negro families that were cruelly separated during slavery – not to mention the emasculation of black men who were subjected to all manner of humiliation, and worse.
Do the math. A black child born this week 150 years ago was the child of a slave – uneducated, down-trodden and terribly poor — and since that time, blacks have endured lynchings, disenfranchisement, degrading segregation, firehoses, mean-spirited harassment, burned churches (with little girls inside), employment discrimination and other indignities/atrocities.
The black child born today is in reality not that far “ahead” of those born 150 years ago. It may take several more generations before full equality and opportunity align with African American pride and responsibility – and the acceptance by “all” whites that the only basic difference in the races of the world are the pigmentation differences based on where one is born relative to the equator!
I’d like to think our grandchildren or great-grandchildren will live in a nation where race and ethnicity and gender are nothing more than boxes checked on a census form.
Bill
linnposts.com 
Thank you, Jan, for posting Bill’s poignant and insightful response. I think this terrible stain on American culture, a thread of its founding fabric, has been elevated again to become more visibly violent against blacks as whites become an ever reduced percentage of the total American population. All non-whites, and growing numbers of poor and middle class whites, threaten the entrenched white plutocrats by their sheer numbers. Those whose world view has always been of an elitist, feudalistic bent usually fear only one thing in society; the “mob”. This is why we have such high incarceration rates, mostly of blacks and Latinos, dismantling or privatization of democratic institutions, de-unionization, militarization of police etc. It’s about mob control! The mob is the general population, beginning with the most marginalized. I heard a talk by Chris Hedges last week wherein he identified Nixon as the last president to actually feel fear of a mass of demonstrators (a mob) outside the White House. That balance needs to be restored.
This country needs more people like Jan and Bill who not only have their hearts in the right place—-but more importantly are willing to speak up!