Chris Jepson: Dear White America

I’m writing on a touchy subject. No, it’s not whether Jeb Bush is Hispanic. It’s about whether or not you’re capable of change. Seriously. Are you? When presented with irrefutable evidence that challenges your preconceived notions or beliefs, will you adjust your thinking, attitude or behavior? I used to think it was just old white people (my age or older) who had this malady—the inability to reconsider one’s most cherished delusions — but if polling is to be believed young white people appear similarly afflicted.

That “fact” is particularly disillusioning to me because I want the future to be different, to be much better than today’s world.

Here’s the deal: Black Americans justifiably fear the police. I’m not going out on much of a limb here, but all — I mean all — American black men are aware that they are just one car stop away from harassment, intimidation, incarceration or death. Here’s the crux of the problem: America is a racist nation. Our history as a nation is so intertwined with slavery, Jim Crow and discrimination as to make current black pain, suffering and humiliation indistinguishable (by degree only) from the past. It has been one continuous miserable racist slog of human events.

It is at this point in any conversation that whites offer, “Hey now, Jepson, we’ve elected a black president. And look at ‘all’ those rich, successful black entertainers and athletes. Let alone black public officials, some even in the South.” I refute any claims of substantive race improvement as “the exception proving the rule.” That any white person arguing that the last presidential election illustrates how America has moved-on from its racist past (and present) is simply delusional.

The recent South Carolina execution — in the back — of a fleeing black man by a white police officer is exactly the reality and fear black Americans confront on a daily basis. Initial police reports on the execution had it one way, of exonerating the white officer. He was in jeopardy and had no choice but to execute the man. But for the fluke of a passing observer documenting the event, we’d have no “factual” record of the execution. Lo and behold, the black man was running away from the police officer who methodically unloaded eight rounds at the victim.

Once again, whites will interject, “If only he had complied. If only he had assumed the position of on his knees with hands behind his head, he’d be alive today.” I say, if only, if only he’d been Oprah Winfrey, perhaps he’d be alive today.

This now very public execution of a black man begs the question: White America unequivocally practices institutional and societal racism; what are we going to do about it?

Recall my white readers the horrific pictures of Birmingham’s crazed and racist police commissioner Bull Connor unleashing his snarling dogs and fire hoses on peacefully demonstrating blacks in the 1960s. Remember the images of frothing-at-the-mouth white girls shouting racial epithets at the nine black teenagers integrating Little Rock’s Central High in 1957. That was then, yes, but how far — really — have we progressed?

Whatever the circumstances of the death of Charleston’s Walter Scott, the end result is, Officer Slager served as judge, jury and executioner. This is not an isolated experience for black Americans, just a well-documented one in the ongoing sorrowful song of unmitigated racial injustice.

This is shameful. Racism is white America’s tragedy. Change: insist on it.