Whites Must Stand Up, Confront Racism

Mark Fuhrman is what black folks have been trying to tell white folks all along.

But even this chilling proof will be squandered if whites, after the initial shock, wiggle their way around to dismissing the former Los Angeles police detective as just a rogue cop.

You already can hear that seductive rationalization insinuating itself, and while it may be that Fuhrman is the exception rather than the rule and is, to boot, a weird braggart exaggerating the worst about himself, the brute truth is that he says more about day-to-day policing than most people care to admit.

It is rare to find a white man who has been hassled by police. It is rare to find a black man who has not been.

And the Fuhrmans of every police department can persist in that double standard only at the accommodation of their fellow officers. The police station culture typically closes ranks around them, even if in some distaste, in misplaced self-protectiveness.

Indeed, the Fuhrmans in every field of endeavor can exist and prosper only through the indulgence of their fellow whites.

Few whites have the gumption to confront the racism of their acquaintances and co-workers; fewer still have the knack for it even if they have the inclination.

Instead, they ignore the racist remarks. They laugh, if a bit awkwardly, at the racist jokes. They shrug off the racial epithets of the loading dock and the assembly line and the copy machine klatches.

In short, they let racism slide. And, sliding, it goes on to do its acid evil.

The racism of the Fuhrmans in our police departments is said to matter especially because police have such extraordinary power over the persons they control under legal authority.

Well, yes, but is that harm really so different from other harms?

Is that harm greater than the harm done by the racist loan officer who turns down a new-home mortgage?

Than the damage that will be done by a racist teacher who is deciding what to tell a black kid’s next teacher to expect from the student?

Or the damage that will be done by a racist insurance agent who declines to write a homeowner’s or auto policy?

Or the damage done by a racist store clerk who asks for a second piece of identification before accepting a credit card?

African-American lives are buffeted by a lifelong racial turbulence that whites never feel and can’t see.

No, no, not at every turn, of course. But you need only to have had one or two teachers lower their expectations of you, to have been turned down just once trying to upgrade your housing, to have been surcharged secretly for renter’s insurance, to have heard the click of a car being locked quickly from inside as you neared.

The accumulation of such slights and injuries plays out in a life lived far less well than it could have been.

Black folks can inveigh against Mark Fuhrman; they can demonstrate against him; they can go on TV talk shows and denounce him.

But there’s one thing black folks can’t do about Mark Fuhrman.

They can’t fix him - not him or any of the other like-minded, like-acting whites salted through American life.

That’s white folks’ work.

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