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I've tried to keep quiet since the killing of George Floyd. It’s time to end that silence.
If you know me, you probably know that I'm a fairly private guy. I also believe, in all matters outside my own experience, that I should listen more than I speak. It's too easy to appropriate the pain of others and call it virtue. That said, I want my family and friends who are black to know that I stand with you. I don't want silence to be confused with ambivalence. For my family and friends who are not black, please talk to someone who is. If you're not convinced that you need to, please keep reading.
My years as a journalist — both here and in the Midwest — opened my eyes to how big of a problem racism is. Like many white folks raised in the "new" South, I grew tall and stupid in a culture where racism and oppression were always referred to in the past tense. It was a black-and-white world in more ways than one.
Like many white folks raised in the "new" South, I grew tall and stupid in a culture where racism and oppression were always referred to in the past tense.
Then, I took a job in Arkansas, working in an area where Big Poultry's labor practices had completely upended the racial status quo. The racism I saw there was different — and it was raw. Immigrant laborers lived in ghettos where the police had completely pulled out. Law enforcement officials abducted and tortured people with impunity. Mexican women suffered abuse and murder alone, abandoned by a system that didn't care. The hatred was intense and unfiltered.
When I returned to Florida and took a job at the PNJ, I saw my hometown in a totally different light. In Wedgewood, I met families whose homes had been systematically encroached upon by industry. Local officials for decades failed to enforce the law there. Landfills popped up in people's back yards, next to swing sets, literally across the fence from the neighborhood's middle school. Dump trucks rumbled through the streets at all hours. The stench of methane filled the air to the point where it was impossible to stand outside and breathe. People developed respiratory conditions and cancers at an alarming rate.
In the 20-odd years I'd lived in Pensacola, I had never once heard a white person utter the word "Wedgewood." Most of my family and friends didn't even realize the neighborhood existed.
In the flood of 2014, I saw a sinkhole the size of a car open up on Coyle Street, in West Pensacola, at the foot of a 92-year-old black woman's driveway. She'd lived in that neighborhood all her life, attending church up the road, in one of the city's oldest houses of worship. She couldn't leave her house. That sink hole went unnoticed by city officials for two months. Meanwhile, the mayor's driveway in East Hill was repaved within days.
When the county jail exploded, it should have been a rallying cry for criminal justice reform. I was there that night, and it was a war zone. Hundreds of inmates were injured, as were a number of correctional officers. Two inmates lost their life, and almost all of them suffered severe psychological injuries. Those injuries were real — I interviewed the counselors who diagnosed them — and they destroyed lives.
My story, which took a year to get published, focused on two people: One a white correctional officer and one a black inmate. The inmate wasn't even supposed to be in jail that night. A clerical error kept him detained. Both suffered chronic PTSD that prevented them from being able to work, maintain relationships or enjoy their lives. Both were trying to get relief from the county.
You don't have to be a bad person to be a racist. You just have to be a privileged person who values comfort more than you value justice. And, if you are in a position of privilege, it's easy to underestimate the costs of that comfort and the scarcity of that justice.
I thought that story would make a difference. It did — but only for the CO. The county agreed not to terminate her, as they'd threatened to do before if she didn't return to work. The inmate couldn't even get anyone to return his calls. I got interview requests from radio stations wanting to talk about the CO. No-one even asked about the inmate — or the hundreds of other stories he represented. That conversation about criminal justice reform never happened. We're building another jail — just as big.
How could that be? After nearly three decades living in this town that I love, I've come to accept some pretty stark truths: To too many, if you are a black man, you are a suspect. If you are a suspect, you are a criminal. If you are a criminal, you aren't a citizen. There is no social contract. You are second-class, and you deserve what you get.
It doesn't matter that the affected inmates outnumbered CO's 100 to one. It doesn't matter that most of those inmates were detained for low-level offenses. It doesn't matter that almost NONE of them had been given their day in court yet or that they were still presumed innocent. It doesn't matter that white kids in Gulf Breeze can snort cocaine all day long and end up as bankers while black kids in Brownsville smoke a joint and end up an obituary.
It doesn't matter because that's not what it's about.
You don't have to be a bad person to be a racist. You just have to be a privileged person who values comfort more than you value justice. And, if you are in a position of privilege, it's easy to underestimate the costs of that comfort and the scarcity of that justice.
It's not easy if your daughter was murdered because the police didn't value Mexican lives.
It's not easy if your kids can't play basketball outside the home you worked your whole life to earn because local officials don't value black lives.
It's not easy if the father of your child can't work because his mind was broken by a system that can't even see the problem when it literally blows up in their faces.
In conclusion, if you read this, thank you. If life is as easy for you as it's been for me, let's resolve to value justice more than comfort. If your life has been harder, I'm sorry. I value you, and I want to work together to build a future that values all our children the same.
© 2021 | T.S. Strickland II | All Rights Reserved