As noted in another post, many white people in our media, as well as many of us, seem to think that racism ends when we go to school with bussed in children, or when we choose not to use the "N" word. 

They seem to measure racism as a superficial wound, that can be treated locally with a smile and a handshake, and beyond that--indifference. 

I assume he may think it sufficient and necessary to have a black co-worker or two that he speaks to, that he jokes with.  That he smiles at and laughs at every opportunity to show what a nice and friendly white man he truly is.  That he attends the required social events, and pats and hugs the right people.  That he never uses the "N" word, and that he tells people this.

I will say that when a host of a talk show says that racism was basically over because, after all, he had gone to school with blacks years ago--shows just how well they paid attention.

If he spent a week living as the only white person in an inner city neighborhood, he may begin to see that the discrepancy between that life and his own is much greater than his own apprehension at being the only one who is different. But people like him will never understand that claim, because they are not willing to go find out.

I went to school in an African-American neighborhood while in the Jr Naval Academy. At first, my apprehension was as his probably is; I was the only one different. But years later, when I decided to MOVE TO, and not from, the inner city, I picked the neighborhood of St. Louis's northside. Smack Dab in the so-called "worst neighborhood" in St. Louis. Guess what I found out? It was not the worst because it had a 99.9% black population, but because--for some reason--drugs and propstitution was allowed to sell on the open market, at the gas station, near the doorstep of the ever-present abandoned building, and on any sidewalk one passes in their daily life.

It was the worst neighborhood in spite of who lived there, not because of it.

The fact is that it is allowed to thrive there, despite the many, many law abiding people who have either by choice or by necessity have not yet abandoned their home, and despite their best efforts to change it.

But if it were a white suburb, and the same conditions existed, it would not be tolerated, and would not be allowed to continue in the open life of the community, for all to see.

 
I came to believe that some people want that image seen there. And I was not just taking a vacation there. I lived there for years, and then moved to another equally challenged and crime rampant community, perhaps just to see what truths were out there to learn.

By the time I had lived in my new community two months, also on the city's northside neighborhood--I had half of the neighborhood boys, from age 6 to 16, joining me in a game of baseball almost every day I lived there.  The first day was just me pitching to my son.  At the end of the day, four others had joined us.  Within a month, they began knocking on my door, to see if we were going to play today.

Why?  Was it because I was white, that I had some special gift?  No.  It was because I owned a bat and ball, and not one of them did.  And a field usually frequented by teenage or twenty-something year old groups of men talking loud, doing drugs, and drinking--had instead people starting a game of baseball.

I realized in my move there not the obvious fact that I was the only white in a black community, and not that I should be applauded for forcing a sort of integration process. Instead, I noticed that the same problems followed, that most of the boys I organized from pranks and running the streets to now playing baseball in a nearby field--that only one out of 15 or 16 of them actually lived with their father.

Half of them were in jail for some offense.  A quarter of them were living with a sibling's mother.  The other ones had either never known their father, or had a dead one.

They lived in apartments with plastic furniture, that had come from thrift stores, or new furniture that usually could not be rented for long. Some wore the sme dirty pajamas over and over. Some apartments were trash heaps. But they all went to school every day, they all knew how to act in front of my Mother they all helped me when I arrived home with groceries, and they all played baseball with my children and I when we came outside.

But guess what had to happen first? No, it didn't take a white man to change their focus, or to save them, or to put them on a different path. It wasn't that I was doing anything. It was that I cared. The rest was already there, and was just being used or neglected in so many ways, if it were a white neighborhood, the people would rise up and demand, along with the media, that this must stop. And it would.

They already knew how to play baseball. They could play better than me. It was that no one had ever played with them. They never saw people playing it there. All it took was someone to start doing it, and it caught on.

 
It is a metaphor for the whole problem that exists. If they never see anyone planting, but only uprooting--how can they ever grow anything?

If no one is there to teach the right things, but instead only the wrong things--then why should they be expected to perform as well as those in a gated community?

I think it would surprise many racists to see just how well African-American kids in the inner city can work and learn, and actually have more responsibility in their own homes than the typical white family in a suburb. I never had to do the things these kids had to do, nor was I disciplined so much either.

 
The wrong set of expectations have been set, and the right set of expectations are too low, and too often become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It is not what I brought, but what they did. It is not what I taught, but what I learned.

It is this.

Racism can't just be about the "N" word. It can't just be about stereotypes. It can't just be about history.

It has to be about how a child lives, and about if that child is getting what yours gets unquestionably. It has to be about safety. It has to be about people who put fear aside and help. It has to be about enforcing the law, and opening the eyes, and not allowing things to ruin a child's environment.

It has to be about outrage. If it is lukewarm, and about words that offend people, then the true problem is misdiagnosed; the cause missed, the condition stays the same or worsens. The patient will never recover.

If we don't do anything, no one else will. 

If we want to end racism, then we must end the inequities that really affect people's lives, and their children's.

Everything that  makes man's life worthwhile--family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head--all this depends on  decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which  does not heed the demands of its people. Therefore, the essential  humanity of men can be protected and preserved only where government  must answer--not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, or a particular race, but to all its people...

 

     We have  passed laws prohibiting discrimination in education, in employment, in  housing, but these laws alone cannot overcome the heritage of  centuries--of broken families and stunted children, and poverty and  degradation and pain...

 

     So the road  toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger  march alongside us. We are committed to peaceful and nonviolent  change, and that is important for all to understand--though all change  is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle  is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for  themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others...

 

     And most  important of all, all the panoply of government power has been  committed to the goal of equality before the law, as we are now  committing ourselves to the achievement of equal opportunity in fact...

 

     We must  recognize the full human equality of all of our people before God,  before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this,  not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not  because of the laws of God command it, although they do; not because  people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and  fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do...

Only earthbound man still  clings to the dark and poisoning superstition that his world is  bounded by the nearest hill, his universe ended at river shore, his  common humanity enclosed in the tight circle of those who share his  town and views and the color of his skin...

 

     It is your  job, the task of the young people of this world, to strip the last  remnants of that ancient, cruel belief from the civilization of man...

     It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history  is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve  the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a  tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different  centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can  sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

-Robert F. Kennedy