White Americans must fix it
To the Editor,
“Don’t come into my community. Your work is in the white community.” Those were the words spoken at Pendle Hill by a black activist to a gathering of white activists for racial justice. I write in the hope that white Americans will do the work that it is ours to do.
As a white man who spent his childhood in North Philadelphia in the 1950s, I remember when Philadelphia police referred to their nightsticks as “n----- knockers.” America has made progress since then, but has never lived up to its promise as a great nation, except in the minds of white heterosexual men with sleepy consciences. After a career that included 20 years of research and publication on the American justice system, I know that system has always been polluted by pervasive racism.
We white Americans can fix it. We must fix it.
Until now it was possible for us to feel sad about police murders of unarmed blacks and go on with our lives. Even for those of us who were horrified by President Trump’s remarks after the white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville suggesting moral equivalence between the nationalists and the protesters it was possible to keep silent and still feel that we were decent people, not racists. No longer.
What is new? For the first time commentators, civic and religious leaders are placing responsibility for systemic racism where it belongs. With us. Racism would not exist in America without our cooperation. The time has come. We must condemn racism or be guilty of it.
All that is necessary for the triumph of racist evil is for good people to keep silent. I once found it easy to justify my silence: “I’m not a racist. I didn’t enslave or lynch anyone. I don’t hate blacks. Some of my best friends….” No more. We white Americans must understand that in failing to publicly, strongly, and unequivocally speak out to condemn white supremacy and systemic racial injustice we have been complicit in the daily indignities and murderous horrors visited upon our black brothers and sisters.
Their blood is on our hands.
Grant Grissom
Media
