Writing Sample about Racial Discrimination

North Umpqua, Near Crater Lake, Oregon. Something pretty to look at while contemplating the text.

The first slave to arrive in North America came in 1619. 

The mentality used to justify and continue the practice of using humans for their labor, keeping them under control via intimidation and violence of all kinds has left a legacy of trauma for generations on America’s African Americans.  The truth is, this is just the facts.  Like climate change, it can be debated and denied, but the proof sits right in front of our eyes. 

Racial Discrimination simply stated is ugly.  It is said that people are not getting the essence of the Black Lives Matter Movement. 

Of course, all lives matter.  When a person takes offense at the BLM movement and insists that blue lives matter or all lives matter they are offended because they are missing the issue at hand.  I have not run into a soul out there that says that any souls do not matter.  I have known people out there that were particularly racist and would say such a thing.  I do not associate with those people and have not for years.  But there are folks out there that insist they support the BLM movement in one breath and then in another say that saying BLM is wrong, and then they insist that all lives matter. 

Again, of course, all lives matter.  Many of ourselves have DNA the proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have a heritage where some ancestor out there spent time as indentured slaves, or in other sorts of arrangements.  If we are white people the truth is that the further the generations approach today’s time, the more the people with white skin have been able to climb up and away from any trauma their ancestors may have had.  A trauma takes about 4 generations to work its way out of the family DNA.  Because white people, in general, do not live with day to day discrimination, verbal and/or physical abuse because of the color of their skin for some time now, on the whole, white people have gotten healthier in terms of being able to succeed in society.  This can not be said for blacks.  Even after they were set free by Abraham Lincoln the black people often had to continue to work as sharecroppers, which in reality is another form of slavery.  They had to fight for resources and their rights every step of the way.  After freedom was given it was no time at all before they were having to deal with the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, and voting suppression.  How good would your self-esteem be if you had to deal with that?

This is the point.  The discrimination and abuse have been drawn out for generations now.  It might be getting better, but the death of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor simply proves that the Black community is still dealing with systemic abuse from the parts of the white community that allows and even encourages it.  When it looks like a family might dig themselves out of the mud of racism something new happens.  Having been in an abusive marriage, I happen to know that the fight gets old, some people lose their fight and become frustrated.  Sometimes, they become willing to do what it takes to get whatever it is they are after.  Some even feel they are owed.  I can say in my heart, the Black community is right, they are owed kindness, respect, encouragement, and help with resources so that they can succeed at anything they want to do (so long as it hurts no one else. )

This is when cases like Trayvon Martin happened.  I have a bipolar, autistic son who was abused.  He once had behavior issues so bad that I was concerned I was raising a new Charlie Manson.  No matter what he did – killing him for any reason was never an option.  People should put themselves in this place— if Trayvon was your kid, would you have needed to kill him to defend yourself?!  Probably not!  The worst I ever had to do to control my son was physically sit on him and stay that way until police arrived and took him to the hospital for me.  The abusers in the community need to do some soul searching and learn some new tools for handling confrontation so that they are not the abusers.

Let there be no mistake.  Abuse of any form: racism, discrimination based on anything that might be different from YOUR described norm, violence, intimidation, verbal abuse, manipulations of people, societies, or whatever group or individual is wrong.  It has life long and generational consequences.  That is why it is wrong.  The people who miss the meaning of BLM matter are missing these issues when they decided that all lives matter.  As a whole, white people, have not had to live with the realities that their child, their brother, their father, their mother, sister, cousin may die because someone else sees them as SOMETHING with such little value.  This is why people say BLM.  Because they have been picked on for the entirety of American history and they are tired and trying to make a point.

Live with it.