Bias in America

I have been very busy. We had our wood floors refinished and our carpets replaced. Thus, we had to move all the furniture in the house out onto the deck and in the garage. I has been over two weeks, and we are still moving back in. I haven't had time to write, but I hope to get caught up. I started the following essay just before the floor refinisher arrived.

How racist is America?

I have always looked toward professional sports as my inspiration for standards of race relations in America. Professional football has been integrated as far back as I can remember. Jim Thorpe played for the Canton Bulldogs in 1915. Ollie Matson was a superstar in the early 1950s. My Dad and I both cheered when he would break into the open, because we knew no one could catch him. Baseball was totally segregated for over 50 years. They even had a separate had a separate Negro league. In 1947 Branch Ricky broke the color barrier with Jacky Robinson and, within four years the Negro league faded into history and baseball was as diverse as the rest of the country. I support racial integration. I support Martin Luther King’s dream of white kids and black kids playing together in harmony. America should be as color blind as professional sports. Playing time, pay, and prestige are determined by performance and performance alone. Thus, it was a great disappointment this week when the Seattle Mariners followed the NBA and boycotted games. I question what they hope to accomplish.

I had a conversation with a young friend of mine who is a zealous supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement. My young friend knew the disparity of arrests and incarcerations between black Americans and other ethnic groups. I tried to defend our society by pointing out the increasing number of African Americans who have been selected as Mayors of big cities and as chiefs of metropolitan fire and police departments. I even pointed out the ethnicity of our last president. All to no avail. My friend responded, “That’s all well and good, but we have people in America who will cross the street to avoid passing a black person.” My response was, “I don’t do that. Who do you know who does?” No response. So, I asked, “What is it you want our government to do?” We agreed racial discrimination is illegal and additional laws wouldn’t help. “How do you want society to change?” The response was immediate, “Stop systemic discrimination.” I get it, but if discrimination is truly systemic in America, I don’t know how to eliminate it.

I spent an interesting year teaching English in the Japanese public-school system. Neither my wife nor I spoke the national language, and we knew very little about their culture. We were both illiterate and ignorant. Over six feet tall and blond headed, there was no way I could hide or blend in to our human surroundings. We were dependent on the good will of our Japanese hosts. I wish I could say I didn’t experience any discrimination, but that wouldn’t be true. In some cases, I was treated as a novelty. In other cases, I was considered a non-entity. If conversations weren’t translated into English, I simply didn’t exist. I found that to be quite common, as my status was too low to be taken seriously. The word for foreigner, by the way, is gaijin. Literally translated it means, “barbarian”. Mostly, the barbarian was ignored, but there were more than a few times when I would be deliberately bumped in crowds. It was always by young males who thought I shouldn’t be in their country. Was there systemic discrimination in Japan? Absolutely! But the negative encounters were overshadowed by positive experiences. I would have changed some of the way I was treated in Japan, but I wasn’t in charge. I simply took the good with the bad and found that the good dominated. My memories are good ones.

The job description of policemen includes apprehending those who break the law; frequently against their will. Confrontations are inevitable, but are seldom racially motivated. The national media presents isolated instances as if they were routine encounters. America is not a racist nation.

Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free-lance columnist for over 20 years.