Uncomfortable as defined by Merriam-Webster is defined as, “Causing discomfort or annoyance, feeling discomfort, uneasy.”
In order to begin this conversation, I will go first. For a very long time I believed that I understood the journey and difficulties of being a marginalized minority. As someone who is blind, I have been ignored, treated as someone who is “less than,” not hired and even fired from jobs. I had the view of being seen not for the content of my character or my capabilities, instead, I was seen only as someone who is blind. I went through the emotion of anger, bitterness and to those who knew me it was obvious I was carrying the weight of the perception of others. These things led me to a life of advocating for the disabled among us. It also provided me with a false sense of awareness.
For someone who is blind, judging someone based on the color of their skin isn’t really a thing. No matter who I meet, in whatever venue, I treat everybody exactly the same and I am known as someone who does not simply shake hands, I hug. It is something I get from my mother who taught me that the handshake came from a time when we used the gesture to show people we met on the road that we were not armed. My mother hugged everybody because it showed a feeling of equality, vulnerability and love. To be honest, it tended to shock most but I never had anyone shy away from a hug. My upbringing was one lived in government housing, the son of very, very young parents living in Washington, DC at a time of turmoil in the early to mid 60’s. Race was something we never talked about because our neighbors spanned all people. So, my view on race relations was that I didn’t recognize a difference. I was a product of my environment. My very first friend was a neighbor and classmate named Kenny, he befriended me, the awkward young Eric. For most of my elementary school education, Kenny and I were inseparable. It wasn’t until much later in life that I learned Kenny was black. I tell you this for one reason only, it isn’t to validate my progressive bona fides as a kid but to make the point that no child is born a racist. Racism sadly is a learned behavior, cultivated by those around the young and if not encouraged openly, it is seen and heard quietly behind closed doors. Sadly, racism in America is not merely a black and white issue. We all have a kind of bigotry that dwells within us. It is a product of the natural man, and has existed since the beginning of humanity. Unfortunately, over time rather than evolving beyond the bigotry of the natural man we have conflated bigotry with blatant racism. If you doubt this I encourage you to read the definitions of the two words. In short, bigotry means an intolerance towards the views of others while racism means the belief in one race’s superiority over the other.
Now comes the awakening. As I got older and witnessed for myself the disparity, the unspoken soft bigotry that turned into outspoken open racism I began to understand. As I grew yet older, I realized that even though I had been discriminated against because I was blind, my reality wasn’t equal to the reality of my black friends. If I ditched my white cane for the blind and my sunglasses and stood in a crowd, nobody would even know that I was blind. In essence I could disappear my disability and the discrimination that went along with it, even if for a moment. My rational mind then forced me to painfully understand that for those who are Black in America, that option isn’t available to them. They can’t take a break by removing selected items of their race if only for a moment.
This realization hit me hard, it forced me to look deep inside myself as well as research history. Not because I was a racist or had racist tendencies, but, to attempt to understand. On this journey I learned the basis of so many of the lessons my parents taught me. I was raised as a God fearing Christian and one of the verses from the Good Book has stuck with me from day one, Exodus 34:7 - “Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear [the guilty]; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth [generation].“ For me, these few words written so very long ago explain where we are even today so many years later. You see, the reality is that generations past are in fact responsible for a dark period in our history. The truth is that our country was in fact shamefully built upon the back of slavery and economic slavery. As we learned from the above quote, their sin falls upon our heads. It has forced me to apologize in word and action because if I am to claim all the goodness handed to me by generations past, I must also accept the distasteful and therefore condemn it. In the words of Malcolm X, “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us.” For the Black community, that is the reality and if you are to call yourself a Christian, it must be seen as our shared reality with an eye keenly focused on the distinct differences of the early American experience.
For me, this put to rest all conversations or arguments with friends and colleagues that contained the common narrative that bygones are bygones and we should just move on. For the Black community who still witness white privilege, educational and socioeconomic inequities and a system that still has the tenants of racism systemically woven into our collective fabric, then the battle is not over. Until we end the practice of pointing out our differences and begin instead to focus on our commonality, our shared hopes and dreams for our children and grandchildren we can never hope to see the sins and inequities of generations past become nothing more than ash on the dust pile of history. The reality is that we are simply not there yet. I know this because there are those among us who will still try and explain away 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Rather than accepting the fact that George Floyd was murdered, there still exists a palpable resistance that in my estimation is deeply rooted in some unwilling to cede the inequities of the past. Until we no longer impulsively and reflexively retreat to respective sides in situations such as the George Floyd killing we can’t remove our generational responsibility and the reality that a killing is a killing and there is no place in our society where that is acceptable.
While the tragedy of George Floyd has provided us with a moment, an opportunity, there have been many before. My hope is that today represents the day that we can begin the journey collectively to the day we can say there were no more. We must resist the narrative that racism does not exist, telling ourselves that because we may not feel it, experience it or we don’t see it that somehow it magically it isn’t there. How many things exist that we all acknowledge are very real yet as an individual we have never witnessed personally, seen it first hand, felt it for yourself? Have you ever sat atop Mount Kilimanjaro, felt the majesty and awe? Have you ever seen or touched a Telescope Octopus? A sea creature that lives over 4000meters or 2.49 miles beneath the surface if the ocean. These are examples of real experiences and real things that we acknowledge as concrete yet things we have not experienced, seen or felt personally. Now is “The Moment” we can begin to readjust our definitions, realign our reality to match the power of progress.
I will leave you with this. I am a huge fan of the NFL. I took particular interest in the events surrounding Colin Kaepernick. It interested me because it touched several social narratives of our time. It dealt with the American Flag, Patriotism, an athlete, in particular a black athlete. It dealt with activism and protests, particularly protests against police misconduct in relation to interactions with black citizens. It dealt with the issue of being white and being black and yes even racism. Taking a knee during the National Anthem became a perfect storm of sorts. The power brokers within our society, the media, politicians, corporations worked diligently to capitalize on the moment. Theirs was an opportunity to seek power through division. Sadly this has been the “modus operandi” for a very long time, only now we are witness to the perfection of creating division. I write this with confidence because all it takes is a quick view of the information we are fed and the constant narrative that tells us that we are a divided nation. Sadly there are too many among us who buy into the divisive narrative and rather than uniting as a nation, we are being driven further and further apart.
So, at the time I decided to create a meme contest. I picked two examples of two people kneeling. One a white man, a famous white man. George Washington kneeling next to his horse, an iconic historical painting from Valley Forge. Below that was what will become a historical picture somewhere in our future. Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the National Anthem. The purpose of the contest was to see how people viewed these two pictures. Many people sent in their entries and the captions varied. Some kind and some not so kind. I announced the winner and displayed the picture on my website. Below this article is the winning meme. I loved it because if was my view of America. It juxtaposed Washington with Kaepernick showing what the flag represented, what the right of being uniquely American meant and transcended race in my mind. The picture of George Washington kneeling represented to me nothing more than a man kneeling in deference to what he believed was a higher power, God. The picture of Collin Kaepernick kneeling represented to me a man kneeling in defiance of a system he believed to be broken. Both represent to me the inalienable rights that this country was founded upon and the rights we have fought so hard to protect. The beauty of our 1st Amendment right is that we are free to express ourselves without fear of reprisal. What has been lost because of the pursuit of those eager to divide us is a very simple explanation my father taught me as a young man. He would always tell me that as a member of this nations armed services, he was in the Navy, “I may not like someone else’s speech or appreciate their view, but I took an oath to defend their right to express it and I would give my life for that right because that is what America was founded upon.” So the winner of the meme contest captured in only two words, Deference and Defiance, my view on this issue. Remember, this issue was used as a cudgel to beat society over the head as the powers that be convinced us that we needed to pick a side. In the end, there is no “Side.” In the end there is only our right to free speech, a belief that we are guaranteed the right to freedom to pursue a life, liberty and happiness. It never stated that we were guaranteed these things outright, simply the promise of the ability to pursue it. Whether or not we get there can only happen if the playing field is level and the rules are equal across the board.
Being blind makes it different for me. Whenever I meet someone, my opinion of them is formed from conversation, blindness brings with it a kind of blessing because a persons skin color, mode of dress, the fact they are clean shaven, are having a good hair day or a bad one, it does not come into play for me. I am simply talking and interacting with another fellow human being. I am not recommending that we blind the world literally, but maybe metaphorically. What I do know is that until there is a day when everybody is blind to skin color and we have built a bridge based on a common love of humanity, we have work to do, fences to mend, truths that need to be acknowledged, accepted and then tossed away never to be seen or felt again. It begins with each of us individually committing to becoming a truly United people. I believe in the promise of a brighter future and I work every day to advocate for those who are marginalized. That is me, that is my commitment, that is the legacy I want to leave. The only question that remains is what legacy do you as the reader want to leave?
**Picture below is the one described in the article above
