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Thursday, May 18, 2006
Black-on-white racism is just as bad as the reverse
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Why the silence?”
A reader from Lawrenceville asked that question via e-mail. He wanted to know why I hadn’t taken the brass to task for racist shenanigans in the DeKalb County Police Department.
“Racism cuts both ways,” he wrote.
“Unless you raise just as much hell when its black-on-white discrimination, white folks become less inclined to [care] when you write about the reverse.” The reader was referring to the column I wrote last week about my son, Miles.
Somebody called him the n-word at school. He was off-base on one fact. I never gave a racial description of the kid who hurled the epithet. He wasn’t white, though. He was Hispanic.
But I digress.
On May 3, DeKalb Police Chief Louis Graham bowed out from a job he’d held for 18 months. An audio recording led to his resignation. Caught on tape was a frank conversation between the top cop and his assistant chief, R.P. Flemister. The black cops cussed up a storm. Flemister referred to someone as”that white bitch.”
And in a different recording released last week by police union leaders, Flemister espouses his distaste for white employees.
“Have you ever thought about why I ain’t promoted them nine on the list right now … because seven of them are white.”
Flemister retired.
On Tuesday, DeKalb Chief Executive Officer Vernon Jones addressed the incident in an op-ed column. Mr. Jones said DeKalb County wouldn’t tolerate discrimination, and left it at that.
And that’s what irks the AJC Gwinnett News reader from Lawrenceville.
He has seen this scenario play out ad infinitum, and he’s tired of it. He’s sick of the rules society abides by when black racism takes place as opposed to white. It’s a code of conduct applied unevenly. In favor of blacks.
“White people see the all-too-typical double standard — racism is winked at when it’s black on white,” he wrote in a series of e-mails. “White people are crucified when it is reverse.”
He’s right. And the practice is flat-out wrong. It hampers cross-racial dialogue, something we need badly.
Imagine if the situation had been reversed,that a white DeKalb police officer’s racist comments had been digitally preserved. Black activists would have had a field day.
Press conferences. Inflammatory rhetoric. Televised marches and demonstrations. There would have been demands for apologies, sensitivity training and heads on a stake. White guilt would have been milked like a cow.
I suggested the reader from Lawrenceville write a letter to the editor to express what many white observers apparently think, secretly or publicly, about the mess in DeKalb. He didn’t bite.
“White folks screaming about black-on-white racism falls on deaf ears,” he told me. “It’s gotta come from other blacks.”
Well, I’m screaming. Hope you’re listening.
