Wrong Thinking Ruins Lives
After 250 years, we’ve got to consider other motives.
I’d just started placing my groceries on the conveyor belt at Walmart when the man who’d checked out ahead of me came back to the register.
Clearly upset, he practically shouted, “Someone stole my cell phone!”
Before the cashier could respond, he repeated himself more loudly: “Someone stole my cell phone, and if I don’t get it back, I’m calling the police!”
He demanded to speak with the manager. As he spoke, I began looking around to see whether his phone had fallen on the floor or been left on the conveyor belt. But when I glanced up, and our eyes met, I understood immediately.
The “someone” he meant was me. I fixed him with a hard, squinty glare, while feeling anger rising in me. The cashier looked embarrassed and uneasy, fidgeting behind the register. She understood it, too—he believed I’d taken his phone.
He repeated his accusation and threat to the manager. Calmly, she suggested that someone call the phone or that he look through his belongings again to make sure he hadn’t missed it.
He huffed and began digging through his cart.
About ten seconds later, he found the phone in his own grocery cart, wedged between a few items.
“Oh, here it is,” he said quietly as he pulled it out. Then he turned and walked away.
No “oops.” No “my bad.” I said nothing, though I briefly imagined launching a loaf of bread at the back of his head.
He was white. I’m brown. We were in a Walmart in an affluent part of town where few black people shop. In fact, a glance around proved I was the only black or brown person in sight. The optics of the situation might have some people concluding that his behavior was motivated by racism.
Without a shred of evidence, he’d practically convicted me of stealing his phone. I don’t know. Maybe I look like a seasoned pickpocket.
Was he racist or just a jerk? I could argue either case.
Accusing him of racism would have been a quick and easy way to explain his behavior. Except, I have no way of knowing if he was racist.
We’re about to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country. There was a time in our nation’s history when I would not have had to wonder about the motivation behind his behavior. But we no longer live in that America, and it makes sense to consider that there may have been other explanations for the way he acted.
Do racist people exist? Absolutely. But that way of thinking is no longer as widespread and no longer has the impact it once did.
This is evidenced by the recent allegations against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). They are accused of defrauding donors by using donors’ money to fund activities by extremist groups. Simply put, they paid the very people they claimed to oppose to manufacture incidents of racism so they would have something to fight against.
They manufactured hate crimes. My father grew up in the segregated South. He didn’t have to make up hate crimes because they were real and everywhere. Schemes like the one SPLC allegedly perpetrated weren’t necessary.
I don’t need to assign “racist” motives to every unpleasant interaction I have with a white person.
If you expect the worst, you’ll often find it—even when it doesn’t exist.
If I looked for racism in every situation, I would only hurt myself. I’d become suspicious, and risk interpreting people’s actions through a predetermined false narrative.
When a white person is a jerk to a black person, many people immediately call it racism. But what do you call it when a white person is rude to another white person? Or a black person is rude to another black person?
Whether it’s true or not, no one should make “racism” their default response to negative relationships between blacks and whites.
I believe there’s no country less racist to black people than America. As we celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary, we honor the sacrifices of those who helped move the country forward when we resist the urge to assume racism as the knee-jerk explanation for every negative interaction and instead extend the grace to consider other motives.