Trayvon Martin. Tamir Rice. Michael Brown.
It has become far too easy to name black teenage boys these days who have been shot to death simply because of the color of their skin.
The worst part is that justice is not served. The death of these children has not brought redemption to our racially polarized society. The blindfolded woman holding a pair of scales is apparently not colorblind because she can still somehow make out a white police officer and a black unarmed youth.
Lately, I have become disinterested in the conflicting stories of who said what and who did what when. Even if there were multiple evidences and eyewitnesses and cellphone recordings of what actually took place, the outcome seems to be the same in these stories — a dead black person and the white person gets off scot-free.
What I am more interested in is how the story began. What kind of a reaction does one expect when one begins an encounter with the words, "Get the f*@# on the sidewalk?"
And what kind of outcome could there possibly be when an officer of the law already decides these must be the cigar thieves even before the case has been tried in court? An awful amount of preconceived notions have been made that eventually led to gunshots being fired.
At the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, we have what we call a "Covenant of Right Relations." It asks us to "Create openness by actively listening and check assumptions by asking questions and verifying facts." Clearly, this was not done in this instance.
Contrast this to the recent story about Lt. Jerry Lohr, another white police officer from St. Louis County whose first words to a black teenager were, "How’ve you been? How’s your mom doing? I saw her out here earlier." Notice the difference when we treat someone like a human being? We get treated like one in return and we earn other people’s trust.
Words and relationships do matter. That is why as a person of faith, I consider racism to be a sin. It is a violation of right relations. As a Unitarian Universalist, I am called to promote and affirm justice, compassion and equity in human relations.
We are all made in God’s image and possess the divine breath or "ha" within us. We cannot pick whom we practice compassion to based on their race, class, gender identity or sexual orientation. Justice means black lives do matter.
Racism is a societal sin and it is an "original sin" because as Americans, we have all inherited it from our ancestors who had the repugnancy to sell and trade people based on their skin color. But we do not have to continue sinning and missing the mark. We can end it now. It begins with how we treat each other. It begins with what words we choose to put together.
What happened in Ferguson, Mo., affects us all, even here in Hawaii. The next time I open a newspaper, I hope I don’t have to read yet another similar plot to the same old story.
