Of course, the first, and most significant events of late are the deaths of at least two African American men at the hands of white police officers. One case appears so obviously to be due to excessive force, while another is clouded in uncertainty because witnesses from both viewpoints have muddied the waters so much, and there is no unequivocal piece of evidence like a video. After this week, most of us are unsure that a video would be enough anyway.
Aside from the issue of excessive, or lethal force, the other prevalent issue is racial profiling. It's a very difficult one to address, because of so many factors.
White America has historically oppressed, abused, stolen the rights of, and discriminated against African Americans. I think on some very naive and passive level, we as a nation believed that ending slavery, Jim Crow laws and segregation should have tidied everything up.
The problem is that when you only give lip service to ending discriminatory behaviors, nothing really changes. As a liberal Democrat, I believe that African American voters in some places can face more difficulty getting to the polls than whites. And socioeconomics keep segregation in schools alive in many cities. It's difficult to rise above everything when the same behaviors of discrimination, poverty and oppression keep pulling and pushing you down.
When a person cannot find a way out of the dark, they frequently stop looking for a light. In the shadow of that kind of hopeless pain, they turn into the thing they so loudly used to scream that they are not.
As a race, white people will never understand that kind of pain, and they will never be able to fully atone for the history of causing or allowing such pain.
Because of this vicious cycle--the one of pain becoming truth for so many, especially young, African American men--stereotyping and racial profiling are an unfair inevitability. There have been so many reports regarding the percentage of African American men who are incarcerated, that I think everyone knows without sourcing it that the numbers are staggering. The percentage of African Americans who are victims of gun violence also is staggering. There are reasons why the words "black on black crime" exist. It's because all of this pain creates tension and pressure that people living on the outside of it cannot begin to imagine.
As a white woman who grew up in a smaller city, how could I possibly relate to this kind of pain?
It's because of other events in the news that I can relate to profiling.
Profiling happens in multiple spheres, but people don't think about what they're doing as profiling.
Another situation currently attracting a lot of media attention are the Cosby women. Twenty-one women have come forward accusing comedian Bill Cosby of sexual assault and/or molestation. Some of these women claim to have been drugged. At least one claims to have been in her teens.
Occasionally, I read some of the comments about this story as articles turn up on my Facebook newsfeed. When I read through them, it feels like the majority of people believe these women are gold diggers and that they were lucky to have spent time with somebody so famous. Many questioned what the teen was doing with Cosby, and/or what she was doing at the Playboy Mansion. Many expressed doubts that any of the allegations could be true because of how long the accusers waited to come forward.
It seems like the majority of people commenting can't believe that a man like Bill Cosby could have done something so horrible. Most believe in some wrongdoing on the parts of the accusers. It's almost as if an alleged victim of a sex crime is automatically suspect.
I don't know if Bill Cosby did any of these horrible things or not, but I'm pretty sure that just because he played the wholesome Heathcliff Huxtable on the "Cosby Show," he isn't automatically a saint. He has been profiled: he is a rich, famous, upstanding man. It's these women's words against his.
Earlier in the week, two men were arrested for the alleged rape of a sixteen-year-old at a frat party in Baltimore. These two suspects are not rich, famous or upstanding men.k
What I found interesting when I read comments after the article in my newsfeed about this case is that they were surprisingly similar in nature to some of the ones about the Cosby women: What was a sixteen-year-old doing at a frat party? She should have known better than to be drinking under age. She had no business being there.
In reading these kinds of comments about women who have potentially reported the most horrific thing that has ever happened to them, it occurred to me that women who come forward are often profiled too. All of these comments infer guilt on their part. All of these comments seem to imply that what might have happened to them is okay because they did something wrong that encouraged the crime.
When I read comments like these, it is clear that the fight for women's equality is at the same standstill as the fight for racial equality. The undercurrent of societal victim blaming perpetuates the hopelessness so many young African American men feel, and it fosters the hesitation with which women report sex crimes.
I understand this personally. I waited and suffered four years of abuse before coming forward. I was afraid of many things, but at least one of those things was that I wouldn't be believed, and that nothing would be done.
An aunt actually said she wasn't surprised that my step-father thought I might be "interested" in him, because as a child I had always climbed all over any guy she happened to be dating like they were jungle gyms. My mom expressed jealousy over clothes and jewelry my step-father bought for me--almost making me feel as if they had been some kind of payment to me. As I sat on the witness stand recounting all of the horrible things that had happened to me, my stepfather's attorney tried to cast doubt on my credibility because I couldn't remember a date. If I couldn't remember the year something happened, I was probably making everything up.
The reason the victimized so often cry foul is because so often there is foul. If it was normal for a suspect--guilty or not--to be shot at more than six times, we wouldn't be talking about it. If we asked the right questions of and about victims of sex crimes, those crimes may not be so under reported and under prosecuted.
I don't know how we get to a place where we look at each other and just see humans instead of colors and stereotypes. I don't know how we get to a place where justice, fairness and equality are the foregone conclusion instead of the overwhelming cloud of doubt.
Thinking about it makes it very hard to breathe.
