So, I know my family isn't personally racist. Nobody even blinked when Octavio started gaming with us in high school. Gary spent numerous holidays with my family when we were stationed at Lejeune. I was raised to never act racist. I remember sitting next to Tim in elementary school plotting our wrestling magazine because we were both huge marks he was black, but it didn't matter to me.
But these riots aren't about a single white person dropping an n-bomb at someone. These riots are about systemic, centuries-long oppression. They are about the fact that every single time a black person dies, they are vilified and the officer excused. They are about the fact that educational and employment opportunities are not the same in a country built with "...all men are created equal..." The violence erupts because that anger has to go somewhere.
Instead we get "all lives matter" which ignores the fact that systemically, institutionally, lives of color do not matter. You can not be racist all you want, but when you uphold a racist society, you don't have to be on a personal level; the system does it for you.
I know politics are touchy, politics affect white people's wallets and feelings get hurt. That is white privilege; for others, it is about their lives not their livelihoods. So I ask, what is more disrespectful, kneeling during the anthem of a country with a violent history of racial oppression or kneeling on a man's neck until he dies.
I was raised to not be racist, but it's taken years to learn that the personal is political and inequality is how America operates. I was raised to be better than this, but it isn't easy; it means facing the fact that I can get pulled over and the worst I get is a big ticket. My friend, Irvin cannot do so without fearing he will die with a cop's knee in his back. Jeremy, a man I served with, has the same problem. It is worse for Irvin, his son is autistic; I know the man lives in dread that his son will fail to process a cop's commands properly and wind up dead.
My personal lack of racism doesn't do a goddamn thing in the face of what they live with. And guess what, they can't turn it off, they can't try not being black. It just doesn't work that way. I, if I chose, could get a haircut and pretend to be Christian, and fit in with America like they never can, all because of the color of their skin.
We can be better than this; we must be better than this. So I ask my family to consider the actual, lived-in experiences of the people of color who are saying racism is real and it doesn't need your participation to continue. All it needs is your silent complicity and personally clean hands and conscience.
