R.I.P Damion P. Bouchelion

What color is your mayor, your city council, your local judge, your school administrators and the majority of your business owners? How about your state and your federal elected politicians?What is the difference in economic positions between black vs. white, and what is the difference in life expectancy and healthcare, if they ever did a study in your city. What is the difference in education per same age student, and what is the difference in sentence for same crime/same criminal back ground black versus white.That is where the impact of racism active and passive is measurable, not by how many people you hear called the N word, monkey or [Enter Epithet Here].That is not to discount individual acts of verbal racism which seems for whatever reason the type that most individuals concentrate on. We acknowledge this is negative. The impact of structural racism, and racism held by people in powerful positions who acted racist, past and present is much more harmful. Farmer Joe in the middle of a Nebraska watching Nebraska football yelling at the TV saying, “Look at that nigger run, he is quick as a monkey”, doesn’t harm me to much if at all. However, if that farmer is also that districts Congressman, and he holds to that position, he has the potential to do much harm if he enacts laws and policies based upon that position.For example, and individual once told me much of the racist activity in her town was held by people of a lower white socio-economic class. Well often these are the ones who you generally SEE overtly expressing these sentiments. Typically those of a higher education level are to savvy for this form of overt expression as their potential loss in terms of credibility and image are that much higher.This brings us to the point of the covert nature of modern racism. How do you tell if a white business owner is legitimately hiring and promoting individuals based upon skill as opposed to color? How do you tell if medical establishments are giving the same care and treatment to blacks as they are to whites? How do you tell if the city council and mayor are making decisions in the best interest of the town inclusive of considering the needs of black folk? How do you tell if a business putting out a contract is legitimately going after the best offer and not the best white offer? How can you tell if a teacher isn’t marginally biased against the black student as opposed to the white student leading to inequity in the classroom?You get my point. None of those things are overt or ‘easily’ detectable. So how do you measure ‘racisms impact’? I say by the most empirical way possible, statistics.If we can see (which we can) such HUGE disparities in the black community vis a vi the white community in terms of not just one, but every single last one of the major social and economic health indicators, then we have to acknowledge one of two things:A) Either blacks are born to commit more crime, be less intelligent, and less healthyOrB) There are ’social’ variables that make this behavior, lack of educational performance, and poorer health much greater amongst blacksIf you say (A) then you believe that blacks are genetically inferior based upon race, and therefore fit the text book definition of racism, which is the belief that another race is inferior based upon trait. If you say (B) then you acknowledge that there is a variable(s) external to genetics that creates such a drastic discrepancy between whites and blacks in those social indicators in this nation.I believe most of the people who are reading this hold to position (B) the social variable as opposed to the genetic variable, so I will work off of that assumption.If we hold to the fact that social variables have created such a disparity over time (remember, social development is the process of past events through present situations) then we have to rationalize as to why that was/is. Similar to a doctor performing the etiology of a disease (the root cause) we must to analyze the disparities of blacks versus whites in America today the same way. For example, AIDS doesn’t kill people, it is a different virus or illness that does. AIDS simply weakens the immune system so that the body can’t fight off the viruses or illness that we are subject to every day. So if a doctor misdiagnoses the cause of the sickness, by saying ‘oh it is just a bad cold’ then that person’s death is imminent. However, if the doctor gets to the ‘root cause’ and says yes, that is AIDS it gives him the ability to treat THE CAUSE and not THE SYMPTON.One of the most common and pervasive problems that I find in discussions of race is that people are locking into the symptom and not the cause of black disparity. For example, we see a 50% rate of black men in the prison system as opposed to them being only 6% or so of the population. This is an outstanding disparity by any rationale or measurement. When we discuss this issue, most people will say it is the result of certain ‘variables’, such as poverty, poor family structure, following the wrong role models and lack of personal accountability and responsibility. They will argue these ‘causes’ to the minutia and you know what, they may be correct in certain aspects. There is a correlation between poverty and crime. There is a correlation between single parent homes and crime. There is an over-abundance of negative black stereotypes. These young men most often aren’t holding themselves personally accountability.However, simply stopping the analysis at that point is like the doctor giving the AIDS patient with a cough a cough drop. You may stop the cough, but the cause of the cough that is leading to death is still wreaking havoc on the body. To eliminate the problem, you can not simply treat the problem, but must understand why the problem was there in the first place, then develop a cure based upon the problem and the structure of the problem.