Policing disparity a 'zero sum game' for racial dinosaurs

"It would seem that the grand jury made every effort to determine the facts of the case. And facts, as John Adams once said, 'are stubborn things'."

With those mere 27 words an acquaintance dismissed all the pain and angst of the black community and their millions of non black supporters demanding justice for senseless police killings of unarmed citizens. Besides refusing to acknowledge a single aspect of this now ear...thshaking domestic issue, there is a snideness in the Adams quote that the whole controversy is made up.

Another person I dialogue with saw the entire Michael Brown killingk as a matter of a ghetto thug who got what he deserved; and an attack on a good cop and established order by a racially cynical president he calls 'ebola', an Attorney General he calls 'placeholder' and a tireless advocate for justice he's tabbed 'race baiter Rev. Al'.

Then there are public figures like former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, who dismissed the Michael Brown case as a diversion from 'black on black' crime, charging that so many white cops wouldn't be needed in the black community if they'd only stop committing crime.

I won't call any of these folks racists but I do view them as racial dinosaurs. They are elderly, white and apparently have no ability to either see or relate to the enormous legacy still suppressing a black community mired in poverty and hopelessness from the lingering effects of institutional racism. These folks are old enough to remember lynchings and poll taxes; even 'white only' signs. But they've never internalized the harm inflicted or the lingering destruction to our entire society.
They act as if racial politics is a 'zero sum game' whereby any effort to alleviate the disparity between black and white policing and governance will be deducted from their comfortable middle class white lifestyle. It will also unnecessarily cause dissonance with and angst that their belief in the infinite equality of the races is not reality.

But it is the millions of young, committed rainbow coalition of black, white and every shade in between, that is the hope of America. Justice and uplift is not a zero sum game for them. We saw the beginnings of this great wave last night, sweeping across American cities from New York to Chicago to San Francisco, peaceably but forcibly demanding justice, but also saying their will be no peace till substantive change is made. The sweep of history to redress the horrific situation regarding racial governance and policing is on the march, both literally and figuratively. But unlike the real dinosaurs who were powerless to stop their demise, the racial dinosaurs I see need only remove the blinders that prevent them living out a full life of peace and justice.

Who knows? Maybe one night we'll see Rudy Giuliani in step with the marchers, shouting and gesturing, "Hands up, don't shoot."