#NoMore: Racism, Violence and Why the Solution Starts at Home

I just spent a glorious week at the beach celebrating this country’s independence with my husband, in-laws and our two young daughters. They are two and a half and seven months old. They are handfuls for sure. Most days I’m exhausted and covered in spit up, but the joy that I get to experience watching these beings grow and flourish is so worth it. In less than a week, the baby started waving; pulling up to a standing position on her tiny little legs and has two teeth breaking through the surface of her gums. My toddler suddenly turned into a human tape recorder.  She took one look at the landing on the staircase in our vacation rental and deemed it a stage. Completely unprompted, she mounted the three stairs to it, turned to face her audience and recited a phrase all Daniel Tiger fans will recognize. “I am a snowflake, as special as can be. There is nobody else exactly like me.” We watch a lot of Daniel Tiger in our house. And in times like this, I’m thankful that we do given that a recent study showed that children who watch Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood have increased social and emotional skills. Social awareness and empathy is something that is sorely needed now.

According to the study recently published in the Journal of Children and Media, children who watched Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood showed higher levels of empathy, self-efficacy and were better able to recognize emotions than children who did not. While the findings are certainly interesting and inspiring, the caveat is that the benefit of watching the show could only be achieved if their parents had conversations with them about what they watched. The media content over the past 72 hours or so has been nothing but raw, brutal violence. How, as parents and citizens do we make sense of it all and what can we do to bring about change?

Since January, nearly 600 Americans have died at the hands of law enforcement, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile being the latest. From the time I started this draft last night to its printing less than 24 hours later, 11 police officers have been shot and five killed during a police brutality protest. The loss of their lives sickens me.

While I am, like many, unsure of all the answers I do know that more violence gets us nowhere. “Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness,” said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.” There needs to be a national discussion that results in legislative action as it relates to the use of body cameras for police officers and appropriate use of force and community review oversight boards and yes, gun control. There needs to be a cultural shift in the ways we view and interact with one another and how we police our communities. These are all very big and scary problems, but the foundation of the solution is one that we can all impact.

Those of us who are parents, or are actively involved in the lives of young people, have the biggest part of all to play in the solution. We are shaping the next generation and thus the future of our families, communities, this country and the world. Racism is taught and while we work to dismantle the strongholds of systemic racism not just in law enforcement but in every facet of society, we can teach our children the social awareness necessary to bring about acceptance and peace. We have the responsibility to teach our children not to be colorblind, which in itself is a bigoted devaluing of those who are different, but to see color and the beauty and value in the cultures it reflects and not react in hateful, negative stereotyping and exclusionary ways. We can, through our own actions, teach our children to celebrate culture and difference rather than be afraid of them and brush over them with broad strokes of fearful, bigoted language.

If you were never exposed to positive interactions with people who are different from you, how can you ever grow up to see a man selling CDs in a parking lot as just that; a MAN selling CDs in a parking lot and not a scary “thug” that deserves to be executed at point blank range by the tax payer funded public servants charged with keeping him and us all safe.

If you are not as enraged by the senseless killing of Dallas police officers Patrick Zamarripa, Brent Thompson, Michael Krol and two fellow unnamed officers as you are about the nearly 600 American citizens (many of them black) then you are a part of the problem. Likewise, if your automatic response to a declaration that Black Lives Matter, is to counter that all lives matter or blue lives matter then you, too, are part of the problem.

It is possible to not agree with the illegal actions committed by an American citizen who chose to flee the scene of a traffic stop or fly a plane onto the lawn of the White House and at the same time mourn the loss of that life taken while those persons were being apprehended and ultimately killed during the process. Oh wait, the white plane flyer didn’t get mowed down in a hail of bullets. Why is that? Asking that question does not automatically make one anti-police. Most educated, concerned citizens understand and appreciate the enormous sacrifice that police officers make each time they suit up in their uniforms and head out to police often unpredictably dangerous streets to help keep us safe.

Questioning why so many Americans have lost their lives while interacting with law enforcement sworn to protect and serve them does not mean that you hate the police. Things are not, no pun intended, that black and white. It means that you have the utmost respect for the police and seek to hold them to a higher standard. Questioning the use of force in the arrests of Mike Brown or Alton Sterling or Sandra Bland doesn’t mean that you condone lawlessness.

But should a routine traffic stop for failing to signal a lane change result in death? Most reasoned people would say no. Sandra Bland should be sitting at her desk at her new job in Atlanta watching all this madness unfold like the rest of us, not have her whole life reduced to a hashtag because she forgot to turn on her blinker and had the audacity to meet the arresting officer’s attitude with one of her own while questioning the validity of her arrest. Neither of these things is illegal or worthy of death. And if a man armed with a gun and a badge and a bullet proof vest does not understand that, then perhaps he is more suited to desk duty.

My daughters are both are as special as can be; beautiful, boundless balls of energy and light. And it pains me to think that there are those in the world – an alarming number of them – who will never see any of it because of the color of their skin. They are biracial – multi racial really, but in America we tend to view these nuances only in black and white. And depending on the deepness of their tans or whether they are with their dark-skinned black mother or their Caucasian father they will be “seen” as black. Black, which for so many has a deeply bigoted connotation masked by the use of words like “sassy,” “disrespectful,” “ghetto,” “uneducated,” “trashy,” “uppity,” and “dangerous.” And my heart breaks that the melanin that makes my babies skin so beautiful automatically renders their humanity, their snowflake-like uniqueness expendable, dispensable, invisible.

As I hear the stories and watch the videos of these killings I can’t help but think about the mothers burying their sons and daughters and the unfairness of it all. The thought of having to bury either of my gorgeous girls because they failed to signal a lane change while on a cross country drive to relocate for a new job makes me sick and angry. Police officers make thousands of arrests and the majority of those are handled peacefully. But why are a percentage of these arrests that most likely involve white law enforcement and black citizens, ending in these violent outcomes? You can’t tell me that trained law enforcement professionals cannot figure out how to de-escalate these situations before they turn violent. While I admittedly don’t know all the intricacies of policing I do believe that if you have the skills to talk a suicidal person off a ledge, you can certainly subdue someone selling some CDs to try to provide for his family. Or not shoot four bullets into a car occupied by a child and a man who was verbally and physically attempting to comply with your request. If you cannot handle the nuances that come with the gig, then perhaps you need to work at a desk or better yet, seek alternative employment. There are thousands of cops out there that handle very dangerous and scary situations and they are getting it right every day. And those who are bungling things and then hiding behind a blue wall of silence are causing this country to careen near civil war. Our continued silence makes this violence permissible.

So what’s the answer? I believe we must make our voices heard. We cannot sit in our homes and allow our children to watch us watch videos of American citizens gunned down like dogs in the street and say nothing. When you come across racism in any of its insidious forms, speak out against it!  When we’re having coffee with our mom friends and someone makes a seemingly innocuous comment about all black women can’t grow long hair or hate their hair and wear weaves or have big butts, don’t just chuckle nervously – stop that ignorance dead in its tracks! Maybe it’s something more sinister like the fellow police officer you’re patrolling the neighborhood with saying all black men are “thugs.” Speak out! Or the fellow teacher who says to you over lunch that all  black children come from broken homes or are not as smart, you need to stop it each time it bubbles up in our interactions, our places of business and learning and worship and even, most importantly, when it bubbles up within us.

And that doesn’t mean counter #blacklivesmatter with #alllivesmatter or #bluelivesmatter. That’s silly and unnecessary at best and bigoted at its core and adds nothing to the public discourse working to achieve that “more perfect union” that our founding fathers wrote about. It’s like showing up to a Komen Race for the Cure armed with AIDS statistics. While AIDS is important, it would belittle the breast cancer cause to do so. No one would think of doing that. Black people are crying out against injustice. Will they ever be heard? And will you join your voice with theirs or will you remain silent?  As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. so famously said, “A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

If no one listens, keep talking until you get heard. Will you get some heat for it? I’m sure, especially within cohesive, hegemonic organizations like law enforcement. But didn’t Rosa Parks take heat? And Abraham Lincoln? And Dr. King? They have all gone down in the annals of history as worldwide game changers because they refused to sit by in silence as injustice unfolded around them. Your children are watching you. What will you do? Don’t flip the channel or sit in awkward silence! Speak up and show your children how to be understanding and inclusive by your actions. Show your empathy by openly weeping for life lost – black ones blues ones, all lives lost.

The answer to the senseless violence of these citizens and officers is to kill racism. And we kill racism through educating ourselves and our children. What is different is not necessarily bad or dangerous – just different. Seek understanding over stereotyping. All black men aren’t thugs. All police officers are not racist killers. All black women are not angry and mean. All black children aren’t misbehaved or dumb.  In the wake of all the violence and uncertainty gripping our nation and world, your children are watching. What will they see? Your empathy and compassion and demand for justice or your deafening silence and disregard for human suffering and life? Silence in the face of injustice is an agreement with and complicit support of that same injustice. America, what say you?

Outspoken education activist (and wise beyond her almost 19 years) MalalaYousafzai said in 2015 at the launch of her international #booksnotbullets social media awareness campaign, “We cannot stop terrorism just by killing the terrorists and people.” “We need to fight against the ideology of terrorism and extremism, and that can be done successfully only through education. If a child, suffering from poverty and difficulties, is not given a book, he will pick up a gun.”

I think the same applies to racism and bigotry. We can continue to mindlessly kill each other or we can seek to kill the root of the problem through education. As a mother, I am pledging to educate my children to celebrate the magic that is within them while seeking to respect and understand the differences of others. I am vowing to not allow the life of one more mother’s child to be reduced to a hashtag. I decree that I will not raise another bigot to add to the hateful and apathetic minority that holds such disregard for diversity and life. I’m asking you to take that pledge with me for ourselves, our babies, and their future. They can grow up to live in a just society free of racism if we educate them to expect that now. Join me. #nomore.