Baltimore Is a Symptom of Racism in America

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
Isaiah 1.18-20

Before we go to Baltimore, let’s begin with some background.

Most people are not self-consciously or intentionally racist.

That is good news and bad news at the same time. It is good news because at least there is some understanding that we ought not to be racists. We know that racism is wrong.

An extension of this good news is that there are now people of color in every profession and at every level of government and business leadership. This was not true fifty years ago. This is progress and we should celebrate it.

The bad news is that most people do not seem to understand that in spite of the progress, racism persists. And in part because of the progress we have made, the issue is more difficult to address.

Unconscious racism is more difficult to address than conscious and intentional racism. It is very difficult to convince someone to stop doing what he or she does not believe they are doing in the first place. We are in a bizarre and strange place where the person who points out an instance of racism is labeled a “racist” for “playing the race card.”

Personal racism is still a problem, but institutional and structural racism are much greater problems.

Last week Jon Stewart did an amusing and interesting piece comparing the Atlanta educators sent to jail over a cheating scandal to the numerous Wall Street traders whose cheating drove the world off a fiscal cliff and who largely escaped unscathed. What struck me, as I looked at the news clips he used to tell the story, was that all five of the administrators pictured were black.

Further research revealed that there were actually eleven educators convicted, and yes, still 100% black. The judge was white. So the black educators, whose cheating netted them thousands of dollars in performance bonuses will go to jail and the white Wall Street traders, whose cheating earned them millions of dollars in bonuses and who caused trillions of dollars of damage to the world economy went free.

Make no mistake. The educators in Atlanta violated the trust of the community and of the children they were supposed to be teaching. But would they be going to jail if they were white? Statistics on incarceration tell us that black people are more likely to go to jail than white people, for the same crime. They are likely to get longer sentences, for the same crime.

Last week Alexandra Zayas and Kameel Stanley wrote a story for The Tampa Bay Times about traffic tickets issued to bicyclists. In the past three years, Tampa police have issued over 2,500 tickets to cyclists. That’s more than the number of tickets issued to cyclists in St. Petersburg, Jacksonville, Orlando, and Miami—combined.

But the most interesting and disturbing part of the story is that 80% of the tickets issued to cyclists in Tampa are issued to blacks, who make up only 25% of the population in the city.

This didn’t happen by accident. Zayas and Stanley found that it was intentional. “Officers use these minor violations as an excuse to stop, question and search almost anyone on wheels. The department doesn't just condone these stops, it encourages them, pushing officers who patrol high-crime neighborhoods to do as many as possible.”

They describe the case of a 56 year old man “who rode his bike through a stop sign while pulling a lawnmower. Police handcuffed him while verifying he had, indeed, borrowed the mower from a friend.” They tell of a woman walking her bike home after cooking for an elderly neighbor. She said she was balancing a plate of fish and grits in one hand when an officer flagged her down and issued her a $51 ticket for not having a light. With late fees, it has since ballooned to $90. She doesn't have the money to pay.” And then there was the 54 year old man who had his bike impounded because he was not carrying a receipt to prove that he owned it.

Which brings us to Baltimore.

No sane person would condone the violence. We cannot condone the violence perpetrated by the police against Mr. Gray. And we cannot condone the violence of the demonstrators.

But we will never be able to address these issues until we address the root problems of racism in America. First, we need to acknowledge that it is real and that it is pervasive. Only then will we be able to come together to look for solutions and for common ground.

Just Do What's Right

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Philippians 4:8

Over the years, many of my heroes have disappointed me.

But there are some people for whom my admiration grows with time and I later realize that although I may have thought well of them, maybe even idolized them, I also fundamentally underestimated what they had done.

Dean Smith is in the latter group.

I was always a fan. I admired the way he never got flustered, never seemed to lose his temper. He did not gloat when his teams won. He did not whine when they lost. He was gracious in victory and defeat. He seemed to keep it all in perspective. And when he retired after 36 years of coaching basketball at the University of North Carolina, nobody had won more games. And his players actually graduated.

In a book called, “The Carolina Way,” written with Gerald Bell and John Kilgo, Smith said, “My basketball philosophy boils down to six words. Play hard; play together; play smart.”

But there was a lot more to Dean Smith than basketball.

In an article written for the Washington Post, John Feinstein told of researching a feature on Smith. He writes, “One of the people I interviewed for the story was Rev. Robert Seymour, who had been Smith’s pastor at the Binkley Baptist Church since 1958, when he first arrived in Chapel Hill. Seymour told me a story about how upset Smith was to learn that Chapel Hill’s restaurants were still segregated. He and Seymour came up with an idea: Smith would walk into a restaurant with a black member of the church.”

“You have to remember,” Reverend Seymour told Feinstein, “Back then, he wasn’t Dean Smith. He was an assistant coach. Nothing more.”

So Dean Smith, an assistant coach, not yet 30 years old and a newcomer to Chapel Hill, invited a black member of the church to go to lunch with him at a restaurant where the management knew him because the (all white) basketball team often ate there. They were served without incident, and that was the beginning of desegregation in Chapel Hill.

When Feinstein went back to Smith to ask him for more details on what happened that night, Smith was visibly angry. “Who told you about that?” he demanded.

“Reverend Seymour,” Feinstein answered.

“I wish he hadn’t done that.”

“Why?” asked Feinstein. “You should be proud of doing something like that.”

And then, Feinstein recalled, “He leaned forward in his chair and in a very quiet voice said something I’ve never forgotten: ‘You should never be proud of doing what’s right. You should just do what’s right.’”

In 1988 Smith was part of a delegation of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty in a clemency hearing for a man whom Coach Smith had befriended when he brought members of the UNC basketball team to visit inmates on death row.

Smith led the discussion with the governor. Pointing his finger at him, he said, “You’re a murderer!”

And then, one by one, he pointed to members of the PFADP and the pastors in the delegation and said, “And you’re a murderer! And you’re a murderer! And you’re a murderer!” Then with his finger pointing at himself he said, “The death penalty makes us all murderers.”

In “A Coach’s Life” he wrote: “What do you call the worst human beings you know? Human beings loved by the Creator!”

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hear these words of mine and do them.” Dean Smith was that kind of Christian.

The Apostle Paul followed his message on truth, justice and excellence with a sentence that Dean Smith would have been too modest to speak, but he is one of the few people who could have said it without exaggerating his values and actions, “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”