4-20-21

I remember the day well. 1999. I was on my way to a consulting gig in Louisiana. As I passed by the TV news on the multitude of monitors that exist in airports, there it was. A mass shooting in a high school in Littleton, CO. Columbine High School. Events were still unfolding. If I hadn’t needed to make a flight I likely would have sat and watched this for hours. I was mortified, as was much of the world.

A few weeks later I was in a local high school meeting with some students about sexual harassment. Of course, that was not the only thing on their mind. I asked if they believed something like what happened at Columbine could happen in their school. Every single one of them said yes.

At that point in my life, I had already been working in violence prevention and intervention for over 15 years. Most of my work was focused on the connections between the social constructs of masculinities and violence. I knew Columbine was not an aberration. I knew it was a “natural” outgrowth of a culture that supported male violence, and particularly, white male violence. This event happened four years and one day after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, in which 168 people were killed by a white man who was an adherent to white supremacist ideologies. The Columbine killers chose April 20 knowing it was Hitler’s birthday. While I am not trying to draw a direct link between these events, there does seem to be a link of mindset, of ideology.

Today is also the day the Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd. A murder so many of us saw repeatedly, and for so many of my Black friends and colleagues (and of course for many folks I don’t know), a trauma being relived over and over. While this verdict is a momentary sigh relief, there is still so much work to do, so much work to create justice.

And to be honest, this feels like an anomaly. In general, that is not how the system typically works. To paraphrase Ijeoma Oluo, the system typically works according to design, meaning patriarchal white supremacy is business as usual.

I was reading recently that the Kenosha police officer who shot Jacob Blake in the back 7 times while Mr. Blake’s children watched has returned to work and will not face disciplinary action. Apparently internal and external reviews of the officer’s actions last August that found he hadn’t broken any rules in the shooting. Apparently, it isn’t against the rules for a white officer to shoot a Black man in the back 7 times. The system working according to design.

The same week I read that the executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association said that the killing of Daunte Wright, in a traffic stop not too far from where George Floyd was murdered, was actually Mr. Wright’s fault as he should have complied with the officers. Victim blaming for not “knowing one’s place.” The system of patriarchal white supremacy working according to design.

Today’s verdict will not undo centuries of horrific damage caused by patriarchal white supremacy. It won’t change the system working as designed. And it is critical that we continue to work to change the design. As a white man, I am humbled by the ongoing efforts of the leaders and other participants in racial justice movements, and continue to pledge to work in collaboration with so many amazing folks engaging in these efforts. It is part of my journey and I hope to travel some of that with you as well.