Recognizing racism shouldn’t be tough

I want to start with a confession. I have never been Black. I have also never been a WASP. I am not a descendant of a founding father or of Chuck Grassley, who, I believe, was their contemporary. But I have lived all over our country for a long time. I have walked around with my eyes open. I have looked beyond my white nose. In a bloody spasm of democracy, we did abolish slavery, but today I see a disgraceful racist society. Not everyone agrees with me.

When pollsters recently asked, “Is America racist?” 38 percent of respondents said no. My reaction is a question. Are you out of your bloody minds, are you blind, can you read? Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? You shouldn’t have to be Black to acknowledge the obvious truth which 58 percent of us do understand.

The reason they do is that it is obvious to anyone who is not a bigot. Black Americans are 13 percent of our population. On any misery index they rank higher than other groups. Start with police bullets in the back. Check incarceration, hurdles in buying a home, homelessness. In the Olympics of misery, Black Americans are gold medalists.

If you don’t acknowledge a problem exists, it is unlikely it will go away, or even get better. Black and brown people do not have as good a life as whites. Millions do not share the American dream. In 2021, 72.7 percent of white Americans owned their homes; only 44 percent of Blacks Americans do. The disparity is not new or surprising. Blacks were forced to live in ghettos. Banks wouldn’t lend them money to buy, Realtors, even if they wanted, couldn’t be seen with a couple of color in many places.

The Black prison population is larger than it should be because they are targeted, followed and picked up when a white would not be. Police killing covers the color front, brown, Black, and white, but Black Americans, die more frequently than their population numbers would predict.

It is hard to believe that there is a single one who believes there is no racism here who is going to vote for Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as his running and a possible president. I think they are all Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Green, Ron DeSantis voters. I’d rather lose than have any one of them with us.

I haven’t been able to find the circumstances of whites killed by police so I can’t compare Black lives snuffed out. But racial prejudice is beyond argument: a kid under 10 with a toy gun shot multiple times, a woman without a gun arguing at home, to a bipolar person acting strangely. In Sacramento, the district attorney refused to bring charges against a cop, but the county settled a case brought by the family for $2.7 million. Innocence is costly, I guess.

Most cops are good cops, doing a tough job that makes our white lives safer and better. But there are also bad cops, bullies with a bullet as part of a racist society. Denying they are there is a crime itself, but a natural part of a racist society.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary, and authored a memoir “From Nowhere to Somewhere.”