Recognizing a Problem is the First Step

What History Can Teach Us About This Moment

Back in 1901 Teddy Roosevelt took an unprecedented step. He invited a former slave (Booker T. Washington) to the White House to have dinner. While it was a political risk for Roosevelt it very well could have been fatal for Washington. Anyone who is familiar with Teddy Roosevelt knows that he was a bold POTUS. Between facing down Guilded Age titans like Rockefeller and Carnegie through his trust busting actions or taking the first steps towards forming National Parks. He pushed things forward with relentless effort. Like the actions of Roosevelt and Washington back in 1901 we need to come together to move forward. The first step is recognition that there is an issue.

Like many people I’m not a big fan of the news. I feel like there is a lot of disinformation out there. There are a lot of opinion pieces or pundits propagating their thoughts on the front pages of newspapers and websites and displaying them as fact. I find the best information usually comes from digging into numbers and finding out for myself rather than relying on unvetted sources online. I've had the pleasure of serving along side great African American Officers and NCO's and I'm happy to call many of them my friends and would remiss to not address what's happening. I dug around stats as it related to violence against African Americans in the U.S. given our current (and ongoing) situation. I didn’t have to make it very far to know that there is significance here. (Numbers taken from Census.gov and FBI.gov stats on violent crime and hate crime)

·      African Americans make up ~13% of the population but make up ~23% of police shootings. They are the only racial group whose percentage of police shootings is higher than their total population percentage.

·      African Americans while only making up ~13% of the population have (on average) made up about 50% of all hate crime victims between 2016 and 2018. They are the only racial group whose total percentage of hate crimes exceeds their total percentage of population in the United States.

While I wanted to keep this relatively short, there are many more anomalies than these two and there are easily more numbers out there that support and expand on the points above. All Americans will do better when we do better for all Americans. While acknowledging that there is a problem I can certainly say that the Police Officer in Oakland who was murdered and shootings of other Police Officers across the country in retaliation will only escalate the situation further and are reprehensible. I leave this post with a lesser known quote from Teddy Roosevelt's “Man in the Arena” speech or the “Citizenship in a Republic" speech.

“The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter of pride he will see to it that others receive the liberty which he thus claims as his own. Probably the best test of true love of liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so doing he does not wrong his neighbor.”