Ask yourself, "Am I Racist?" Just say yes... then do better.

I will not say, "I am not racist." That... is always a mistake.

I'm white, all my life. I am not as racist as many others, more racist perhaps that some. I can only say this...I always try to treat people like I want to be treated. It takes no effort from me.

And I don't feel defensive, or worried about people being better than me. I don't care. If you're better than me, cool for you! And I'd be happy to share a few moments with you to better MY life, if you would allow it. The thing about that is, you can't always tell who is actually better than you are.

I do not feel guilty about racist issues. I didn't do it. I wasn't a slaver and my Irish ancestors weren't either. In fact, they were treated like dogs in coming to America, and in staying in Ireland as the British abused and murdered them. But' that's another story.

I also recognize I'm not 100% NOT racist as I grew up after all, in a racist country. On that matter, allow me to share and highly recommend Robin DiAngelo, PhD, and her book, "White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism".

But first...

Because a certain podcast comes out tomorrow on Tuesday of this week, there are two parts to this blog for this week. First, I just wanted to say a few words ON the podcast. Secondly, and the main part of this blog, the far more important part, I wanted to talk about something in the podcast related to this blog's topic.

So, about the podcast. I want to give a shout out to the, Scene of the Crime. A local Pacific Northwest podcast who is posting an episode with "Gordie" being interviewed from my true crime biopic screenplay, "The Teenage Bodyguard".This story is about a teenage protecting a murder witness, "Sara", from the local mafia crime family after she witnessed a murder. She witnessed the murder of Danny, a bouncer at the place she worked at, run by the mob in Tacoma, WA. In 1974.

 That is about the true story, soon to be produced into a film. True crime films aren't documentaries. Parts are always fictionalized. But the podcast is 100% as accurate as it could be made. Movies, need to be entertaining and follow elements of "story'.

The podcast is about the actual people and events, and what really happened back in 1974 in Tacoma, WA. We are currently looking to produce the film as a 2019 era story. I'm working with "Gordie" (his real name) and Voyage Media producer and head of their Originals Department, Robert Mitas.

The podcast comes out sometime on Tuesday, June 9th, 2020. Check it out!

I contacted the producers of the podcast on the off chance they might be interested in the story. And they were. So, some back and forth, and then they interviewed Gordie. He sent them some follow up emails and then one final one to the podcast producers. And I thought I should share it here because it relates to the blog this week. And, it's interesting in relation to the podcast should you listen to it. It's pretty interesting. Here's his email:

"Quick message. I'm watching Official Secrets (2019). It got me to thinking.

I had said in an email I was just glad to get "Sara's" story out there. I later reflected that this is also Danny's story and even fewer people know about it. The thing is, I have a connection to "Sara". None to Danny.

I really have no feelings about him. But I know he deserves to have his story told too.

And that's all I wanted to say. I suppose in a way, Danny has more right to this story and it being told than anyone. So I'm glad for him too now. If Sara survived, she along with all those women at the venue where she worked, had a rough ride.

But Danny McCormick, didn't get the rest of his life. Like the woman who got to testify and died of a "drug overdose". But her story was at least somewhat told. In court.
Danny got nothing. Now he will.

Thank you.

Hope you have a nice weekend. Don't work too hard!"

The other reason I mention the podcast is the Black Lives Matter issue, which really this blog today is about. Racism was a small part of the podcast interview related to Gordie's years at his high school. Which was anywhere from a third to half black and many of those kids were from the inner city. 1970-72 was a turbulent period. We don't know if the racism issues will be brought up in the podcast, probably not as it's about a murder. Another issue was that of sex, which I'm sure will be dealt with in the podcast.

Gordie just wanted to make it clear that his reason for taking on the protection job in this story, though initially sweetened with the potential for a young guy to get to have free sex with a slightly older woman, really wasn't his primary motivation. Then it grew to be even less important as that week developed in1974.

A comment about "Sara". there was a lot of loose sex, free love, a holdover from the 60s. still some small communes around and though today it may be hard to see this back then as what it was, there wasn't anything sleazy about it. Though some to be sure took advantage and some were abused. Overall it was an experiment that didn't last.

Some would say for good reason. I've seen documentaries about women being abuses in some of these "communes" But that wasn't all of them. I had known some people in a commune or two myself and in one everything seemed pretty equal and happy.

In another, it seemed very clear to me the women were running things. It was interesting to see the men in the group in such an environment. They weren't "wimps" or "gay" or weird even but believed in the equality of each individual. I'm not arguing for them, just saying what I had observed. And that it wasn't for me. Gordie says he feels the same. It was interesting, but not for him either. And I suspect overall, too many women may have been abused in these living situations.

The whole thing, according to Gordie, just started to help a friend out. And then things got weirder and weirder. It went from helping a friend to helping a frightened woman out. But let's face it, a seventeen or eighteen-year-old guy being promised sex when he'd at that time had only one (ex) girlfriend who he had regular sex with? Yeah, it initially held his interest. High hormones and all.

Sure, it was interesting. But he was also highly disciplined (just watch the movie when it comes out, you'll see what I mean). Not like many of the guys he had known, some who would do about anything for sex. Guys who would unquestionably compromise themselves to be a "ladies man", an orientation so popular back then. Hugh Hefner and all.

However, the other issue, considering the race riots downtown Tacoma's hilltop area back then was something Gordie grew up being aware of as a kid. His mother had told him, never to go downtown when he was trowing up. He met his first black kid in junior high. The school had one. Nice kid. Then he entered the big scary high school in tenth grade and couldn't understand why the black kids there all seemed so angry.

It would be good here to share this comment from Gordie.

Back in high school, there were reasons to not like some of the black kids. But though he was intimidated, even harassed some of them, he never felt any animosity against any of them. Actually, most white guys he knew felt that way and when they did have bad feelings it was because a black guy was dating a white girl.

Then things could get a little ugly, verbally and in private. It was the only time he said he saw it come out like that. And even then it was pretty curbed and only happened a few times that he can remember. There didn't seem to be that much racism around. Not overtly anyway. But that could also be chalked up to not wanting a beat down. It was a turbulent time and he eventually understood that by mid-tenth grade. It wasn't just him, it was a turbulent time. Blacks were coming into their own, finally and he felt justified for them. No one, no American should be treated so poorly as they had. The evening news was full of reasons why blacks were so angry.

In all the years since those days, he said he has only met a few blacks (guys mostly) who he did not get along with. But then the overwhelming majority of black people he has met or had contact with, and certainly the ones he knew and worked with in IT jobs, he really liked. The incident of his meeting unlikable back people in his entire life was in fact far below the number of unlikable white people he has met. Some of which, he thoroughly disliked.

There were fears of some of the black students in high school, kids who grouped together for protection, something the white kids didn't do to such a degree but felt like maybe they should at times. A racist reaction against perceived racism created from racism. If you see what I mean.

So he began to pay attention to the news and came to realize these kids had reasons to be pissed off. He just couldn't understand why they were pissed off at him too. Still, he treated everyone the same. Basically, he just didn't care. White, black, whatever, you're just another kid. He just didn't get "racism". His stepfather a few times had used the "N" word and he had always felt disgusted by it. And his mother didn't like it and said so in the moment. So there was that, too.

It may not come up in the podcast, but much of this was in the interview. I would say, Gordie isn't racist, though his step-father was. But then he never really liked him very much. He had reason to become racist in his high school, but it just wasn't how he was raised. His mother had raised her kids to be accepting of others, to always be fair, to know right from wrong, and stand for what is right.

And to deal with each person for who they are, not by some grouping they are included with. That never made any sense. What does it have to do with anything? Not the color of their skin, or their accent or some club they belong to (but then the KKK wasn't prevalent in his town either). In the 1960s his mother was openly accepting of Gays, Blacks, Asians, anyone really.

Gordie had mentioned in the podcast interview about his high school experience, just stating the facts, really. But later wondered how he had come off. Did he appear racist? Would he seem so in the released podcast? He had several run-ins with guys in high school and some of those were black. But he was always able to defuse the situation before it got out of hand. Because he had nothing against them. Black or white. There were a few black guys he was friendly with, but he couldn't say he had any black friends back then. Friendly acquaintances, sure. The few times he tried to be friendly with a black kid, they'd just look at him kind of weird and the group would talk about other things. So perhaps wrongly, he just gave up. But then, some of that is just high school cliquishness. And we try to assign it to racism.

Still, he had always, and I know this for a fact, treated people with respect, as long as they respected others. This past week he was at a Black Lives Matters protest with one of his kids and their spouse and another friend. So was I. We all should be or have been. But then, that also doesn't make us not racist.

Racism is just built into our country, our society sadly. And that's the problem. And why we have to try to understand and learn what the problems really are.There are many videos of blacks being abused. But a few short poignant videos that I liked are from someone who works on Seth Meyers' show, which point out what blacks go through, and whites just don't.

Here's a few fo them. Amber Ruffin 1, Amber Ruffin 2, Amber Ruffin 3.

And that, if anything, was Gordie's problem in high school. As some of the black kids would posture in front of their friends and pick on white kids when the opportunity presented itself, if a white kid stood up to them, a group of the kid's friends would surround the white kid. So it was scary at times. I don't think many of the confused white kids though, realized it was also scary for the black kids. Mostly everyone understood and shied away from one another. Which was too bad. An opportunity missed. Though there was a reason apparently that the school had several plainclothes security people wandering around. But the kids all liked them.

They could have used some kind of bringing them all together sessions, designed just for issues of race. But let's face it, America was pretty ignorant about all this still, at that time. Still is. But ways for very different kids (not so different really) to get to know one another? Because those you do not know, can seem intimidating, when really, we're all just defective and scared too much of the time. Especially in high school? It could have been a great thing.

But those students back then also, luckily, had a great man as their principle, a smart, funny black man named Willie Stewart. He was an amazing educator apparently all loved. It was a period in that school that could have been far worse. But as it turned out, it was all pretty livable and everyone pretty much got along. In great part, because of that man. But there was always that level of tension you would feel concerned over.

It was just a sign of the times, really. And again...still is.

SO NOW we are up to today and what America is suffering through. But also, we are waking up about Black Lives Matters (BLM) and continuing  Police abuse. But really it's about so very much more.

Black people in the late 60, the early 70s were finally finding, coming into their own. Standing up for themselves. Sick and tired of the incessant abuse in their daily lives. And that scared the hell out of many white people. Blacks were protesting, just as we're seeing now, all these decades later.

WHY are we still seeing this need, this inherent racism? Black people being murdered by cops? What IS that? As someone said, racism needs to evolve out of itself, or it cannot end. Which is why we're seeing it again, and again, and again.

Yes, cops murder whites, too. But that's really not the point here and now. Is it? After all, IF we help with Black Lives Matter, to fix the police and this idiotic orientation, isn't that going to help us all?

We are all Americans. Period.

And we ALL deserve respect...specially by those we pay through our taxes. I don't' know why some police don't get that, why some politicians, especially on the right, don't get that. They work for us. Someone please make them understand that because they seem awful high and mighty at times. Why do we feel like they just don't get it?

Because it's a fact! We are all, American. But perhaps even more so for our Black community, as well as our Native American, or First Nations, communities. Who really, were here first.

Now?

It disgusts me people are judged (sometimes at all) by their skin. As someone pointed out, by our largest organ. I have every reasonable reason to be racist from my past. So does Gordie. But it just never really was an issue. For either of us. I can speak for him, but I won't for myself.

We have GOT to end this administration as it is only exacerbating the situation. We have to vote Trump out of office, along with a majority of Republicans in office. And the many Trump-appointed so he'd have plenty of "Yes' people surrounding him. Never a good sign.

I feel I want to say that if you vote for Trump, you're racist.

But let's face it, if you're American, you're racist. Safer to think you're racist than to not. Then just go from there.

IF you think you're not racist, you're not examining your life well enough. See, even if you're not, you work from a foundation that is and so, you kind of are. Get it?

Pretty much black, white, whoever, you have racist elements in your life. Even when you try not to exist within a racist framework you cannot even see. And that is all many Black people are saying.

So DON'T say, "I'm not racist."
Say, "I don't want to be, I try hard not to be.and I want change so I don't have to be."

Some Black people I've known were at least somewhat racist, but it was obvious it was a reaction against racism against them. Since birth. So safer to just assume we're all kind of racist and go from there.

Racism is a defensive mechanism that comes from fear. Sometimes as with white people, also from perceived oppression and not real oppression.

When you are afraid, you naturally seek a reason, a source for that fear and you react in protective ways. Sometimes in oppressive ways. better to oppress than be oppressed? I don't think so.

As with antibodies in our system, sometimes they start to eat you, the good parts, and that has to be systemically stopped in order to save your life.

You may not be able to see it, so just be careful about denying it. Try to see how you are defending yourself, and ask why, and against what and what is the real source of your feelings?.

Because too frequently, we're railing against the wrong people. Just as police are against protesters. Trump and his Republican party are against the American people.

As our society is against minorities. Of all kinds.

We can be better. But first, it's going to hurt. But keep pushing for it. Because if we don't, our children will have to. And their children and their children will have to, on and on, until someone finally stops it.

Let's be the ones to stop it.

Police Serving Justice

Part of the problem with these police shootings we've been seeing has to do with when police stop policing.

In dealing with citizens, you police them. You handle them, you manipulate them for their own and for other's best interests.

You do not just serve justice. You Protect & Serve.

Where does it say serve justice in that? I'd argue there's too much serving justice far too much of the time. When a cop approaches someone and thinks they have a gun, or sees they do and maybe they don't, when the cop stops policing, doesn't take the time, take enough time to verify what they are actually dealing with, when they aren't positioned well enough for there to actually be no doubt as to what is going on, then at that point, they are no longer policing.

Simply yelling at someone is not policing. Yelling at them appropriately, well that's another matter and that's, policing. Though avoiding the yelling is always nice. But once an officer pulls that trigger, they have gone from policing to serving potentially lethal justice.

Now within that realm, one well placed shot is policing on another level. A second shot then approaches (or achieves if not already) serving lethal justice and more shots... definitely is. Typically anyway.

Police need to be safe, to protect themselves. The problem is that police should not protect themselves at all costs. That's a fact. Police rush into firefights to save the innocent. Firefighters enter a blaze to protect and serve and sometimes, both police and fireman, die and they do it willingly.

And therein lay the conundrum. Once you stop policing and shift to serving justice, you cease to be a police officer and become something... more.

A militant, a martial person, a manslaughterer?

Now that's okay. Under certain circumstances, it's necessary, even preferable. But we have to make that distinction, we have to accept that reality. Yet when we do that, we also have to accept the other more important reality, even if by a little bit.

Someone tasked with using lethal force to police, has a higher responsibility to a civilian than to themselves. That's the job. Along with, if and whenever possible, going home at night to get up the next day and start it all over again.

Personally? I wouldn't want the job. Though I admit that at seventeen I did apply to the Tacoma Police Department. I was 350 out of 650 applicants on the testing phase and the fastest time that day on the obstacle course by far, by about fourteen seconds to be exact. That year the six slots went to all minorities.

Which, good for them, just, bad for me. Maybe.

A few years later I went in as Law Enforcement (no, not Security Police, that's another AFSC entirely) in the Air Force. I applied to the OSI and got accepted and got out and went to college. But I've always been, even in high school, on the cop's side (except of course when they were beating in the long haired heads of  my friends over something stupid like pot). I've had a good experience with cops since forever.

My older brother, didn't. He had a bad experience through the 1960s and 70s. But I learned from his mistakes and he told me how to act around cops. I used his suggestions and avoided so many issues. I got thrown in jail once, for an afternoon. I was seventeen and actually didn't do anything. But thirteen of us at a house in Bremerton Washington one day went to jail.

One guy of four of them who lived in the house I was visiting, took responsibility for the six ounces of pot they seized and they let the rest of us go. I was under age anyway. And again, I didn't do anything. I was just sitting down stairs and whatever it was happened upstairs but they took us all in anyway. I'd been visiting my girlfriend waiting at a friend's house who had introduced us. I was in twelfth grade in Tacoma at Lincoln High School. She was twenty at a college in Bremerton.

Cops ruined my day that day, made me miss my last class which I would have been back in time for, and I never did get to see my girlfriend. But I understand the police, from both sides. That's really my point here. Most of them whom I have met under any circumstances, we're okay guys. The one who smacked me around in Wildwood, New Jersey for no apparent reason wasn't such a great guy and when my cousin and I complained at the police station the Sergeant there agreed and said that guy was a bad cop, they all knew it, but no citizens would file a complaint against the fat jerk.

I was sixteen and when my mom, our mom's, found out what had happened, well, they weren't letting us go anywhere back near that police station. We were crushed that night in Cape May. But we got over it.

Yes, I'm white. I was 6'2" most of my life, around 6'1" now for some reason (probably not the sky diving accident years ago though). I have a privileged life, though back int he day with long hair it didn't' always feel like it when cops were dealing with you. But I seemed to have a way to calm them.

One time at about eighteen I got pulled over by a State Trooper late at night, getting into a freeway and really nailing it. The Trooper told me I was speeding, I said it didn't go very much over sixty MPH (speed limit was fifty-five). We disagreed, I disagreed with his assessment of my speed and he said, "Get out of the car!"

My friends shrunk into their seats. It was dark, we were between lights which were very far apart on that new stretch of freeway in Parkland, Washington just of 112th street. We talked, he realized my 1967 Camaro Z28 (it was two years before they used that model designation but that's what it was, then called, an RS\SS), and he told me to get into his Patrol car, while my two guy friends worried for my safety.

But when the cop found I was taking Criminal Evidence for Police (with a classroom full of off duty Tacoma Policeman trying to get promotions, and one other long haired kid like me, both of us at first terrified in that class, I could see it in his eyes when we learned who all these older looking dudes in suits were, detectives mostly) at the local community college and had applied with the police department, he tried to talk me into being a State Trooper. By the way, that turned out to be a great class. Though all the really cool things happened during the day classes and I was at night school.

I have to tell you, taking a class in criminal evidence, saved my butt over my life time more than once in being aware of things others tend not to be. Today because of so many police procedural cop and CSI shows on TV, people are more aware but there is still a lot of ignorance out there about what really is.

My point in all this talk is that I do understand police more than many civilians. I know I'm white and not black and I've had it easy compared to many. I've also experienced what it is like when things go wrong with police to some point anyway, and I can see how badly it could go. Now a days I'm even concerned about getting shot by "friendlies".

I also know how so much can be avoided if the situation is handled better than it gets handled, both by police but also by civilians. We need to recognize the good cops, the ones trying hard, those who make mistakes only someone gets hurt or killed, that we're all human on both sides of the fence but that there does seem to be a systemic problems going on in many jurisdictions.

I believe we're work out way through this. It will take time. The answers are out there. But it's going to hurt before it gets better.

One both sides of the fence. Still.

Protect & Serve.

And, respect your local police. There's no easy answer. We all need to work on it.

Including Congress. Including the NRA. Including Conservative's denials. Including Liberal's shutting out conservatives because their way of thinking is so disconnected with themselves, just as it is the other way around. We need to soften this disparity and disconnection. We need leaders who will do that for us and the country and therefore, themselves.

There is too much of "it's all about me" out there in the world. We need a paradigm shift in our national thinking, about guns, about people, about money, our priorities, about "us" against "them. We need to see guns as what they are, killing tools. And to understand why they are being used indiscriminately.

If we all had the right mindset, if we had a fully functional economy, we could all own guns and not go around killing one another. But that's in a perfect paradigm and humans are anything but perfect. So it just goes to figure that having so many guns is asking for problems. It's what we used to call, common sense. WHY do we have military style weaponry out in public hands. Even in the military when you're off duty (unless you're in a live, active war situation) you turn in your gun. Because, it's common sense. And the law.

When a gun runner was asked on a Vice network show recently what the main reasons were for killings on the street, the illegal firearm entrepreneur said, "Pussy and pride." Someone looks at someone or their woman wrong, and someone ends up dead over it. Issues about self-respect, lack of reasons for self-respect, lack of respect for life and weapons, have led us into a very bad place. Bad economy, little prospect for bettering one's life through education or work, a concept of instant gratification and wealth, we have a lot to fix and atone for.

Until we start up a way of thinking where we all think it's all about us, we'll continue to see this as it is now. With so much hurt and pain. But let's not forget, so much normality, and good things. People walking safely down many streets, crime and murders being down and we have to keep that up, support those doing the good works, fighting the good fights.

Let's just not lose track of reality. We're a strong county. Humans are a strong species. When it pulls together. We can be a stronger country, a stronger world, once we all realize that. But to get there we have to deal with issues as they really are and not how we believe they are. We have to dig and see the facts, even if it goes against our desires, beliefs, understanding or cognitive dissonance.

I do believe we'll get there. Just hang in there with the rest of us. Push for being positive whenever possible. Don't let people push fear on you. Stand up and tell them to sit down! Find the positive solutions. Think outside the box. Do not be led astray by your leaders. When they go off track, even if you love them; dearly, shout it out, let them know. Stand up for people, not just your group, your country, your state, your political party, or your gang.

We're all in this together. Dammit! Okay?