Been a while. No time for chit chat. There’s a lot going on.
Since the death of George Floyd, there has been a wave of violence throughout the country. We are coming off months of minute by minute news coverage of coronavirus and COVID-19 deaths only to be confronted with a wave of irrational responses to this tragic incident. In some cases, children – yes children – are organizing the protests.
No one thinks George Floyd’s treatment was acceptable. It was so sad and avoidable. Forget the color of his skin, he was a human being and deserved to be treated better. Bad people are using this incident to cause violent clashes between whites and blacks. People refuse to inform themselves and willingly jump on the bandwagon. No one is thinking rationally right now, so it’s up to you and I to do what we can to educate people.
The data does not support the idea that racist white cops are disproportionately killing blacks. The media is deliberately only covering shootings involving white cops and blacks. The data shows that more whites are shot by cops than blacks, that black cops are involved in a proportionate number of incidents of blacks shot by police, and that the population with the highest proportion of police to civilian shootings is the Native American population.
You know my thoughts on turning the other cheek. With that in mind, none of these shootings should have occurred. But the issue for the purposes of this post is that data is being deliberately skewed. Why are these forces deliberately igniting tensions between blacks and whites? Because when you group by physical characteristic, they are the two largest identifiable groups. The easiest way to conduct a domestic war is to make the opposing sides easy to identify. They don’t wear uniforms, so use skin color. Whites are the largest non-black skinned group and blacks are the largest non-white skinned group. Fill them with rage and false information, then set them loose on each other.
The next step is to make sure no one can stop the race war. Get rid of the police. Leave everyone to have at it. If a particular area refuses to disband their police department, demonize the police, make people hate them too. They wear uniforms so it won’t matter what color they are.
What to do…
First, don’t get caught up in the hate. That’s what is fueling the violence. Remember that misinformed people are not necessarily evil. They often believe they are doing the right thing. Adding fuel to the fire doesn’t help.
Second, pray. According to a study by Pew Research, 3.1% of the U.S. population are atheists, 4.0% are agnostic. That means 92.9% of the population is something else. Even if you add all the unaffiliated numbers, a whopping 87.2% of the U.S. population has some sort of spiritual faith. That’s a lot of people. Feel connected to them. Between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, over 73% of the population have the same exact God. (Christians, Jews and Muslims all have the same God, and the same founder – Abraham. They fight over who they consider to be the “real” prophet – Christians believe it to be Jesus Christ, Muslims believe it to be Muhammed, and Jews believe He has not yet been born.) Pray for understanding, pray for peace. Pray that some of the almost 93% of the population will help to educate our brothers and sisters who have been misled. Don’t let fear and ignorance continue to direct this energy.
Third, blog, write, respond, educate. Take any opportunity to help people understand the truth concerning the statistics I presented in this post. If someone really thinks that white cops are killing their families and friends simply for being black, can you blame them for wanting to fight back? Only when they understand that they are being used will they be able to see though the lies and respond with love. I would not advise standing up in the middle of a violent protest to make this point, but spread the word to friends, online, write into newspapers and blogs and find creative ways to get the word out.
Remember, there are a lot of people who are spiritual in this country. Most people are good hearted and want to do the right thing. If they don’t know that most police officers are not racist murderers, they’re going to act according to their beliefs. Let’s help get them back to reason.