“There are no good guys and bad guys in real life. That’s just the movies.” —Dan Williams, “Grandpa”, to my half-Black, half-Jewish 7-year-old son, circa 2011. Grandpa Dan served for 25 years in the Air Force and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, serving in the Pentagon in the 1980s. He passed in 2013.
My son, my wife and I were watching as the judge prepared to read the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial. Crazy that the judgment was in doubt, but we have 400 years of history of white Americans freely killing Black Americans to justify our nerves—Emmett Till and George Floyd were both victims of state-sponsored murder, if you ask me.
As the guilty verdicts were read, we shed tears and hugged our son. “You are a little bit safer today,” we said.
MORE ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF GEORGE FLOYD’S DEATH
Think about that for a minute. Or for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds of silence, if you can bear it. Safer from the cops. We are more afraid that they will kill our children than protect our children. Or we would not even have bothered to watch the verdict.
“That animal is not getting out,” my wife said. “They are going to all kneel on his neck, and save the big boy for last.” I hope she’s right, and make no apology.
George Floyd’s murder was either the end of America’s beginning, or the beginning of America’s end. Our country will live up to its promise and become a beacon of the best of humanity, or we will descend into the next civil war within 10 years. Call me crazy. You know I’m right.
George Floyd’s murder was either the end of America’s beginning, or the beginning of America’s end. Our country will live up to its promise and become a beacon of the best of humanity, or we will descend into the next civil war within 10 years. Call me crazy. You know I’m right.
America’s treatment of Black and brown people is unequal at best, and inhumane at worst. The people in power in America, white men, we will either fix what we have tolerated or ignore it like a cancer.
Slavery? Not our fault. I do not hold white men alive today accountable for slavery. Jim Crow, not on us. Blaming us for history is as inconceivable as time travel. But demanding that we are part of the solution is simply common sense. We hold the keys to equality; it is time to fully open the door and invite everyone to eat the same meals.
Will Smith said, “Racism isn’t getting worse, it’s just being filmed.” As usual, Will Smith is right.
The cell phone’s ability to instantly capture and spread live images brought the end of racial innocence for many white Americans. We did not want to believe that Black people, specifically men, are treated differently than whites by law enforcement.
Until recently, white people could fool themselves that the differential treatment that Black men receive from law enforcement was an urban legend, pun intended. Today, we are faced with a much more difficult question to answer: The lives of the Black and brown are much harder on a daily basis than the lives of the white.
What are we prepared to do about it?
I am not a believer in the inherent goodness of men and women, nor am I a believer that we are inherently evil. I believe that most people will do what is best for them in the shortest term that matters to them—how they spend their days, how they invest their money, and how they vote.
This was true in ancient Egypt, ancient Rome and it’s true in today’s U.S.A. There are no good guys and bad guys. That’s just the movies.
Grandpa Dan may have been right, but my language is different. I believe in teams. There is “my team”, and “their team.” My team is one that believes that all men and women are created equal, that “race” is an insidious word that should be replaced by “skin color” until such time that “skin color” is no longer a meaningful classification. I want a multi-colored, multi-gender and multi-sexual orientation coalition of voters who believe in equal treatment under the law. If you do not believe in this, you are not on my team and definitely not in my phone.
As Malcolm X wrote, “Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.”
Said differently, we are all biased—white, Black, brown, straight and queer. Being biased does not mean being racist. Being white does not mean being evil.
It also does not mean being responsible for slavery, for the Klan, for the murder of Emmett Till and maybe even for George Floyd. Because before May 25, 2020, most white folks did not actually believe that police harassed, violated and murdered Black people.
That is all over now. The truth has been laid bare. What will we give up for progress?
As voting rights are under attack across the nation, it is fundamentally about one thing: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” But not Black men.
White men are the primary beneficiaries of the fiction of race. This does not mean we are “bad guys.” This is real life. We need to call out bias when we see it. Even our own.
The Republicans consciously chose to pursue the Southern/White Strategy in the 1960s to attract white voters. Ronald Reagan and the welfare queen, George Bush and Willie Horton, and Donald Trump and his entire campaign were about instilling fear in white people that the brown majority was coming. Coming to take their daughters, to take their homes, and to take their “heritage,” whatever a white heritage means.
They made a massive miscalculation: America has browned quickly and irreversibly. The GOP has nowhere left to go other than to be a ruling minority, oppressing the rights of millions of people of color in order to maintain power. This is not about being “conservative” and true to the Constitution, as George Will can surely attest; this is about white people staying on top, and the continued devaluation of Black and brown lives.
If Republicans win the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential campaign, millions of people of color will be disenfranchised and our country will move backwards.
If Democrats are going to survive the 2022 midterms and create a super majority of Americans, these three things need to happen:
- White people need to admit that, today, we have unfair advantages, even if we did not create slavery, Jim Crow or racial discrimination. White men are the primary beneficiaries of the fiction of race. This does not mean we are “bad guys.” This is real life. We need to call out bias when we see it. Even our own. And we need to actively work to broaden the economic and educational opportunity for people of color, even if it means we may have less along the way. This is not surprising and not in any way controversial.
- Black people need to give up the moral high ground and welcome allies into the movement with rights of full participation. People of all colors can be horrified by racism in all forms and can speak, write and sing about it without apology or qualification. White, Black and brown can feel empathy and pain in our country’s failures, and love and happiness in our progress. You can’t be a true team unless everyone gets to cry when we lose and dance when we win. The multi-colored protests all across the world to say that Black Lives Matter were filled with white people—some of whom gave their lives. White people may not be short term victims, but we all lose when our nation is less than it can be. American is founded on the concept of freedom, but there is an underlying sense of empathy. Without it, our social construct will fall apart.
- Equal justice under the law is about power. Power is about elections until power becomes about violence. If we are going to create a super majority, we need to change strategy and take away the Republican’s strongest arrows. Democrats should immediately eliminate the tax increase proposals for anyone that is not in the richest one percent of Americans. Public college and trade schools should be free for all, and school loans should be forgiven up to $100,000. Job retraining for the working class who will be slaughtered by the technological revolution should be free. The richest of the rich are almost all white. They can do with a little bit less, so Americans of all colors have a little bit more.
Combine these proposals with the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, continue to register millions of voters who believe in one nation under God, and let George Floyd’s death mark the end of our nation’s beginning, and the beginning of our next great chapter: THE END OF RACE.
Seth Berger is the head boys basketball coach at The Westtown School. He was founder/CEO of And1 basketball apparel company. He has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from Wharton.
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