I spent some time this weekend listening to the protest song playlist on Apple Music (Yes, there is a protest song playlist). And here are a few thoughts. There is a line from the Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth” and it goes like this, “There’s battle lines being drawn. Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.” We are at that place, almost. When I was raising my children, I would tell them often. You can take a situation where you were right and make it wrong by how you deal with it.
The death of George Floyd was a heinous act of murder. If you are marching in the streets for justice and say that you oppose this kind of vigil ante justice, then you have to let the process play out. We will find out the truth of this crime and the people involved will be brought to justice, but it will take time.
Over the past few days the protests seem to have been taken back over by the peaceful protesters and the outside agitators are less violent. I believe, the violent factions are backed by money and we will be able to see where that money is coming from in time. But the American people, whether you are black, white or brown, do not like the destruction of property. It is not the false choice of money over lives. The building of a business is the livelihood of the people who own it and the people who work there and destroying a neighborhood only hurts the people who live and work there.
But I want to say something about the virtue signalers who are telling you how you must do things and how you must say things. I do not buy it. Free speech is just that. You have the right to say what is on your mind and I have the right to tell you what I think about it. Social media is not the real world. And the virtue signalers cannot tell you how you should post, what you should post, the words you should use, what questions you should ask and then when you try to do all those things, attack you for not doing it the right way. Compassion is not a formula and you can show it in many ways.
I went to early vote and I struck up a conversation with a young woman there. She was taking her voting more seriously but understandably, at a loss on many of the things that were happening. She told me she was going to take a more active part in local elections because they impact her more directly. I think that it a great thing. Find the thing you can do to make the world better and do it. A side note on voting, instead of taking to Twitter to complain about lines, volunteer at your county to help. Elections are a local affair and if there are problems, they are usually at the county level.
I do not need to justify my race credentials, but I will. I am a white woman and I have known discrimination for being fat, loud and for just being a woman who deigned to thing she might have something to say or might be able to make her country a better place. It is not the same as race discrimination, but it gives me empathy.
My parents came from different worlds. My dad was from New Jersey and didn’t have much education. He came of age during the Depression and worked in menial jobs with many different kinds of people. My mother was from a poor South Carolina family and she and her sisters picked cotton in the fields along side sharecroppers and then they baked pies for 35 cents. Her father was lucky enough to have a job with the phone company and his work crew was all black. When he died in the segregated South in 1953, the church was full with white and black people because of the way he treated them, as friends.
Later, my parents would be involved in the desegregation of schools movement in Columbus, Georgia and then in the early 1970s, we lived in the suburbs of Atlanta in what was called a “transitional” neighborhood. We went from having all white neighbors to all black neighbors in a short time and we were all good neighbors and friends together. Our neighbors came to our home when my father died and until my mother’s death, she would hear on a regular basis from the neighborhood friends. It was not a cause for her; it was how she lived her life.
In high school at Columbia High School in Decatur, Georgia, I was on the student council when we desegregated and we had protests and we all made it through. I know it is not PC to say today, but my parents taught me to judge people based on who they were, not what they looked like and I have done that throughout my life.
We cannot solve problems with violence and destruction of property. Allowing the mob to tear down businesses or monuments is not the way to achieve parity for people. It can only be done by working together and we will get there.
