If not now, when?

Up the street from where I live, a man is shot 19 times because he is black.

This truth is socially unacceptable, so a web of lies immediately forms. He resembles a rape suspect. He acts "suspiciously." He makes threatening moves. Four New York City police officers unload 41 bullets at the man. He is armed with a beeper and a wallet.

Reporters investigate. The four policemen are white. Three are not yet 30 years old. All have altercations on their records. There will be altercations, but there will never be a justification for slaughtering a man because he is black.

Year after year, the black people try to wake up the white people in this community. It's like watering dead trees. We are comfortable. Our children have running water in their schools. We observe the Sabbath. Why such outrage over some freakish mistake? These officers, you see, "did what they had to do." Every time black men are slaughtered, beaten, sodomized or otherwise abused by police, it is something that had to be done. The mayor will say this. The lawyers will say this. The police commissioner will say this. Eventually, those of us living in white skin are lulled back into our indifference by this web of lies. Demanding justice, truth and change from others means we must shine that same light on ourselves, and we all live in discrepancy.

Each and every one of us - in our families, in our work, or in the simple way we ignore the homeless or refuse to relinquish our seats on the subway - we use the same mechanics of justification. We do what we have to do, as if others compel our behavior and we have no control over it, or we do what we have a "right" to do, regardless of how others are affected. We have no sense of our connection as the family of humankind described in every scripture and spiritual teaching laid down before us. Somehow, these, too, have loopholes when it comes to what we "have to do."

Amadou Diallo is a war casualty. Abner Louima, who recounts a brutal tale of sodomy while in police custody, is a war casualty. Anthony Baez, killed by a police officer in New York 1994, is a war casualty. They are casualties in a war of primitive, rabid bigotry that threatens the foundation of our nation, conceived on the principle of unity.

One nation, under God. The grand experiment. The one place on earth where peoples of all heritages and religious beliefs may coexist and thrive in harmony; where moral courage is called forth again and again to alleviate the suffering of others and to bring about peace. A land of sufficient opportunity for every single person to pursue the highest incarnation of themselves.

We are the stewards of this experiment, every one of us. What it is right now and what it becomes reflects who we are as individuals. Right now, we are individuals who persecute others based on their heritage or their religious beliefs. We are individuals whose moral courage is compromised by the price of sneakers. We are individuals who keep masses of people in squalor because we believe it is our God-given right to horde wealth and resources, and not our God-given responsibility to elevate all of humankind. If this is who we are, it's only a matter of time before we are slaughtered in our doorways for being female, or Jewish, or wealthy or fat. If this is who we continue to be, it's only a matter of time before we continue to be no longer.

Monday, February 8, 1999

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.