Living the Dream

This past weekend, as I was on my knees in my suburban neighborhood yard pulling up weeds from the cracks in our sidewalk, a young man and his son came walking by. They stepped off the sidewalk so they would avoid me, and I asked: “How are you doing?” The young man’s reply was simply “Living the dream.”

For the past two weeks, I had been searching my soul about words of wisdom and comfort that I might write, in the midst of all the turmoil that has erupted nation and even world wide following the killing at the hands of a group of four sworn law enforcement officers in Minneapolis of a young African American man named George Floyd. He was but the latest in a string of highly publicized incidents where African American citizens had their lives cut short by either police or private citizens trying to act like police.

But as I was on the ground having my almost 76 year old body remind me that it is no longer comfortable contorting and stretching on hard surfaces, the words “Living the dream” hit me like a freight train. Our little house and yard are seemingly miles away from the protests and the strong police presence. Our lives do not usually involve any type of direct personal contact with big city mean streets, public housing projects, or large concentrations of African Americans.

We live in a middle class community that is part of the cluster of subdivisions that developers created in the mid 1970’s to accommodate “White flight” after Richmond’s African American population finally was able to vote and have an impact on budgets and public policy in our city. Our community is very quiet most of the time. Yards are well maintained, and the police are our neighbors. We have a small number of neighbors who are people of color but they are more or less assimilated into the community culture, are well educated and law abiding.

Are there really two Americas? Is full realization of the American dream only for people like me who are descendants of white European immigrants, who grew up in middle (or higher) class homes with two parents, attending well funded public or private schools, went to college or some type of technical school, earned a good income, saved for retirement, and now are living on social security and IRA distributions?

As the child of a career Army officer, I grew up with kids who were African American, Puerto Rican, Panamanian, Mexican American and Asian American. I lived in Georgia, South Carolina and Texas, and travelled in Alabama and Florida, but was never really conscious of the Jim Crow laws and segregated schools. I will never forget one day in rural Florida when our very well tanned family was escorted to the very back of a local restaurant that was hardly full. I mean, we were dark! Sometimes I wondered if my Australian heritage included Aboriginal blood.

We moved so often and attended so many public schools that I didn’t really notice that people of color were treated differently in many areas. At Baylor University, there were very few African American students. Black or brown students usually were from Nigeria or other countries where Baptist missionaries had served for many decades. I recall the first African American to play on our football team. His first name was John, and he was an ordained Baptist minister. I guess the pill went down easier that way. I also remember a beautiful day in October when Syracuse University came to Waco, with its star running back Floyd Little. I really wanted to see him play. He was a magnificent football player and by reputation a really great young man. On the very first play from scrimmage, when Floyd carried the ball, a Baylor defensive end named Ricky hit Floyd so hard that he had to be carried off the field. As a third culture (military) kid at Baylor, I experienced less violent forms of Baptist “love.”

Our family military tradition rendered it imperative that I serve in our nation’s armed forces, so at Baylor I enrolled in Air Force ROTC. Baylor had no Army or Navy programs at the time. Again, I recall no fellow officer candidates that were black or brown.

When I was commissioned as an Air Force officer, I was granted a delay in going on active duty so I could finish law school. I entered law school after my junior year, attended year round, and graduated from both undergraduate and law school after just five years of study. I was 23 years old when I reported for active duty as a judge advocate at a Strategic Air Command base in Northeast Arkansas. The only African American officer I recall was a physician, a full Colonel, who was not allowed in the local country club. Our enlisted ranks included about 12% African Americans, and I distinctly recall that their share of total disciplinary actions was two or three times that 12% number. As a prosecutor, I had no way of knowing if unit commanders and supervisory enlisted personnel were discriminating against the African American personnel. It would have been difficult to discover at the time.

This was 1968, when both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, and there was rioting and turmoil all over, including a degree of protest within the military. The Vietnam War was hot and heavy, and many minority service members correctly pointed out the fact that they were over in a strange place trying to bring freedom to Asian people while they and their families were targets of racism, still fighting for their own full freedom. Many were not even old enough to vote.

I volunteered for one of the JAG billets in Vietnam, and even tried to trade assignments with a young officer at a nearby base whose wife had just had a baby. But it was not to be. Instead I was assigned to a base in West Germany. I ended up making the Air Force a career, and got to know many African Americans as brothers in arms. They were dedicated Americans, well educated and trained, and there was no such thing as segregation. Gradually, more African Americans achieved senior officer grade, even General Officers. I was a Military Assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense when then Colonel Colin Powell was Senior Military Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

My time in the military taught me that African Americans could be outstanding leaders, and really were no different from me. We were just “Americans.” But off base and out in many communities, discrimination was very real. I gained a degree of understanding and empathy that served me well as a leader, senior military judge, and lawyer.

Fast forward: In 2005, my former wife and I moved to Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. We had served overseas as missionaries until she became ill, and I became General Counsel to the Southern Baptist International Mission Board. This was part of an organization founded before the Civil War, splitting off from other Baptist Mission Agencies on the issue of slavery. The question was whether a person who owned other persons could still qualify as a missionary to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to countries like Nigeria, Brazil and China. The answer of the Southern Baptists was “of course.” Why not? Thankfully, times and minds have changed in that truly impactful organization.

Let me share my wisdom, for whatever it’s worth, about African Americans and structural racism in our country, and what steps we could take to be more in line with our founding principle of equality under the law.

First, African Americans are made in God’s image, just as are all races and ethnic groups. For followers of Jesus, they are our brothers and sisters, and members of that vast multitude gathered from every nation and tribe, worshiping the Lord in Revelation 7:9. They are by nature no better and no worse than me as a Caucasian. At birth, they have the same potential as me. The biblical theology and scientific theory that African Americans are by nature less intelligent, less civilized, more prone to violence and other law breaking, less able to control their sexual impulses, and less patriotic is simply false, and has shamelessly been ingrained into our culture by certain intellectually dishonest and corrupt historians, politicians, and white supremacists.

It is garbage.

Throughout our nation’s history, structural racism has been interwoven into our culture and politics, and laws have been used to justify disparate treatment. I saw this same thing in former Soviet Central Asia, where political leaders who had little respect for the rule of law delighted in using the law to put down members of minority ethnic groups and faith traditions.

I know, many will rightly point to statistics that African Americans are convicted of crimes at rates up to three times their percent of the population. I get it that George Floyd had a long criminal record, as have many others that have been killed by police who tried to arrest them. But even though they resisted, they did not deserve capital punishment at the hands of police. I believe that if I had been born into an African American family and had the negative reinforcement of a George Floyd, I might have ended up in the criminal justice system just as he did. There but for the grace of God go I. Let me add that I have great respect for law enforcement officers. They have a dangerous and difficult job. They have all the fears and doubts we all have. And they often have to make split second decisions on life and death matters. As a civilized society, we cannot afford to demonize our police.

So what shall we do? We have tried social segregation and containing masses of African Americans in poor communities with underfunded schools and strict law enforcement that quickly shifts violent offenders to juvenile and adult prison warehouses. We tried hard to keep their misery and hopelessness from spilling over and disturbing the tranquility of “our” American dream. It seemed to work for a long while, but in reality, it really never worked, and like a pressure cooker left on high far too long, it has burst out into mainstream America. Our young people, those millennials that some in my generation like to disparage, they know injustice when they see it. They are out in the streets, marching and protesting in a beautiful demonstration of brotherly love and true empathy.

I suggest we dig down deep into our root structure, and make a series of fundamental changes. We need to identify the structural inequities that are producing the social cancer that we now recognize, call them out for what they are (and their actual harmful impact, regardless of whether such impact was intended), and make reasonable changes.

Let’s focus on just a few changes in our structure:

Establish national standards for excellence in public school education, and have all public schools funded at the same high level, regardless of the economic status of the communities they serve. End the inherently unfair practice of funding schools by local real estate taxes, and replace it with a national funding system. Require or provide strong incentives for all children from age four to sixteen to attend public schools. Parents can teach their children faith and religion at home. Do whatever is necessary to enable children of all races and creeds to grow and learn together. Young children learn hate from their parents; when they are allowed to play together, they get along very well.

Use all available resources to rehabilitate and restore order to areas in our communities that are controlled by gangs, that are crime ridden, that are islands of hopelessness and unrest. We should no longer tolerate the continued existence of areas where even the police are hesitant to enter. We do not need to do all of this by force. We can use the forces of love, empathy and good will to take our neighborhoods back, one by one. Law abiding citizens in these areas are literally hostages in such neighborhoods.

Develop a national health care service that will provide health care to all our citizens and lawful permanent residents who elect to be covered. Include preventive care and develop affordable costs based on family income. Standards for access to quality health care need to be uniform across the nation. Those who wish to retain their private health insurance may do so. I have lived under public health care systems my entire life. My health care was always first class.

Phase out generational welfare dependence and provide job training to all able unemployed, including all who are incarcerated. Stop paying young girls who use pregnancy to secure welfare funds. Churches and communities can help fill the gap. Combine the job training with skills certification and participation in massive infrastructure projects to repair or upgrade aging and unsafe roads, bridges, tunnels and other public facilities. Get our people to work.

Restore the draft, but do not limit it to military service. Require all able bodied young adults to perform two years of national service. Forgive all or part of the student loans of those who successfully complete such service. Bringing together people of all races, all economic levels, and all parts of the country to work side by side in a disciplined environment will build bridges of mutual understanding and help cut through layers of prejudice, fear and ignorance.

Identify and provide punitive civil penalties for all forms of systemic unlawful discrimination in housing, financing, voting, use of public accommodations, and access to retail goods and services. Revoke licenses for all who willfully engage in patterns of unlawful discrimination. Publicly shame them by including their names and photos in a national registry. Finally, disable all such persons from holding any public office or serving on juries.

Finally, reform our emergency response systems so that armed police are not called upon to respond to situations better handled by mental health or other qualified professionals, and institute national policing standards that embody community policing by qualified men and women who actually live in the neighborhoods they serve. De-militarize our police, and pursue other reforms that will minimize use of deadly force, de-escalate confrontations, and weed out those who evidence racial animus.

As a man who loves the Lord and believes He is still in control of events on this broken planet, I plead with my brothers and sisters of all the Abrahamic religions to do whatever they can to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God. Micah 6:8. I am amazed that many of our most egregious forms of systemic racism and subjugation of minorities and refugees have been supported and abetted by people who claim to worship the God of the Bible. May the Lord forgive me and all of us for looking the other way, of turning a blind eye to the suffering of others. God forgive us, please. Show us the path to restoration and revival. Amen.