The Things We Carry

By Geoff Carter

Artwork by Michael DiMilo

America is sick—sick at heart, sick in the mind, and sick in the soul. And the worst thing about it is that we’re in a state of denial about our illness. We know something’s wrong, but we’re like the guy who keeps putting off going to the doctor and doesn’t let himself think about what might happen. We keep hoping it will go away or turn out to simply be the flu or some other minor ailment. The truth is we don’t really want to know. 

I’m not talking about the coronavirus. I’m talking about a chronic illness that’s plagued our country for the past four hundred years, a secondary infection springing from the trauma of slavery. That malignancy was finally removed during a long and draining operation that nearly killed the patient, but the wound has festered since. Lingering effects from the trauma have never left the patient—us. 

Our illness is racism. It is everywhere: overt discrimination, institutional inequities, and mass incarceration of our African American citizens who—even today—earn less, experience shorter lifespans, and are much more likely to die at the hands of police than their white counterparts. And we are still, in the 21^st century, experiencing lynchings. We saw one just the other day.

Like any disease, racism exhibits different symptomatologies. At times it’s overt and obvious, like a lesion; in fact, some racists are proud to show their colors. During Reconstruction, an old boys’ club known as The Ku Klux Klan devoted itself to terrorizing newly freed slaves. Other forms of discrimination are much more subtle. During the sixties and seventies, redlining, the practice of squeezing black homebuyers into segregated neighborhoods, was common practice. Today, in what’s called environmental discrimination, industrial waste sites and toxic brown areas are more often situated near African American or minority communities. Flint, Michigan, still—after two years—does not provide safe drinking to its mostly—you guessed it—African American population. During the Vietnam era, citizens who could afford college (or bone spur) exemptions were able to avoid the draft and did not have to serve overseas. Young black men were disproportionately represented at the front lines. And on and on and on.

About a week ago, George Floyd, an African American man, died at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman. Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, Tamia Rice, Ezell Ford, and Ahmaud Arbery are only a few other people of color who have died at the hands of police during the past few years, resulting in protests, usually peaceful and usually localized. This has not been the case with the Floyd murder. Protests have sprung up all over the country. While most of these events started out as peaceful marches, many have been devolving into violence, including attacks on police, arson, and looting. Minneapolis has been hit particularly hard. As of June 1^st, 270 businesses had been vandalized, burned, or looted. Police were pelted with bottles, rocks, and bags of urine. Police vehicles were set on fire. Luckily—so far—no one has been killed. 

This is happening all over the country. The governor of Minnesota stated that a number of the rioters were not from the state but instead had come into the city in order to deliberately incite violence. He said that he believed some of these rioters had links to white supremacist groups. Of course, within a day, Attorney General Barr insisted these renegades were members of Antifa, an extremist far-left group. 

Several white supremacist groups, have, in fact, been using social media to advocate using these protests as a means to start a race war. The cruelest irony is if the instigators in Minneapolis turn out to be white supremacists and are in fact using these peaceful demonstrations to foment their twisted racist ideologies, then the perversion of peaceful anti-racist sentiments into violence will prove that we have finally succumbed to this awful disease.  

Then there is the symptomatology of the carrier. Like COVID 19, there are those who become ill from the disease and those who only carry it, many of whom are unaware they are infected. Large numbers of Americans do not recognize that systemic racism and discrimination exist in this country. They prefer to think that—despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary—all Americans are born with an equal chance to succeed. These naysayers refuse to acknowledge the effects of poverty (they should get an education and better jobs), or that police brutality is undeserved (they shouldn’t have been committing a crime), or that it’s more difficult for a young black person to get into college (affirmative action isn’t fair) or that most minimum wage jobs cannot support a family (see above).  

This is white privilege. Most white people are born into an easier situation than black people. Period. There are those that refuse to even consider this fact; they believe their lives are just as hard as anyone else’s, and granted, struggles abound in everyone’s existence, but to not acknowledge that racism exists is to be a racist. 

Be considerate of others; help your neighbor. Please do a self-test. If you’re white, look in the mirror, ask yourself if you’ve been profiled, discriminated against, or arrested because of your color. Then ask yourself why. Tell the truth. This will determine whether or not you are a carrier.