Norm!

I want to write, I skipped yesterday. I didn’t just skip writing yesterday; I feel like I skipped the entire day. I was going to go shopping but never left the house. I was going to finish writing my final 20 postcards to send to voters who might no longer be registered to vote, and I wrote only eight. I don’t know where the day went. What’s on my mind is still the murder of George Floyd. But what should I write? I want my writing to do some good. Writing is how I address the world. What do I have to say that’s of use? That’s the question I have about the protests, and that’s what I’ll write about.

What are the demands of the protesters? What actions do they want the government to take? They want an end to the death of blacks at the hands of police officers. But how can that be accomplished? There are specific measures that governments can do, they can teach police officers how to deescalate, they can stop the militarization of police forces, they can increase the number of black officers. But those specifics are not what it’s all about. It’s about getting people that aren’t black to see that it’s a problem. We can look and see the Trump’s call for a show of force, to end protests about the excessive use of force, we can look at those taking advantage of the discord to loot and vandalize, we can look at the violence and despair. But we can also look at police officers taking a knee in solidarity with the protesters. We can white faces protesting with blacks, we can see the polls showing that most people see the murder of George Floyd as a murder, and part of a larger pattern of police violence against blacks and take heart. The good that the protest do is getting people to see them as protests, not riots. It’s that whites, Hispanics, and Asians are seeing blacks getting killed as a problem. Most encouraging of all is that police are seeing the killings of blacks by other police officers as a problem.

Whites, especially educated young whites, are coming to see that there’s structural racism in America. I was brought up thinking that, I’ve always thought that, what I’m learning now is that many, even on the left didn’t. But they are now coming around. That’s progress. Even Republicans are seeing that what happened to George Floyd as not an isolated incident.

I’m tempted to see people’s statements on social media as pure virtue signaling. What I have to remind myself is that is a good thing. It means people are seeing it as a virtue. It’s creating a new social norm. There are few things as persuasive as what everyone believes. While legal measures are necessary and will help, nothing will help more than cops considering treating blacks properly as part of who they are, as part of being a good person. Cops are not the enemy; they are the battlefield. There was a story on the news of a cop putting a black man in a choke hold and his partner pulling him off. His partner did not just stand by like the cops with Chauvin did.

What good does my writing this do? It’s part of creating the social norm. It’s just a small drop, but oceans are nothing, but many drops put together.