The mysterious Race Card

I wonder who coined the term "Race Card." My money, if I were betting on it, would be on a middle-aged American white man living soon after racial segregation became illegal in the United States. With slavery and segregation over, perhaps he was convinced that racism was a thing of the past.

I'm imagining this same man, after a long day's work, sitting down to read his newspaper. As he turns through the pages, he comes across a story of a black man who's been jailed and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The black man is protesting the charges on the grounds of racism. The black man claims he was driving home when two police officers, who were white, pulled him over for no reason. The black man's version of the story is that, when asking the cops for an explanation of why he was being pulled over, one officer sprayed his eyes with mace, dragged him out of his car, and both officers proceeded to beat him. In the newspaper article, the captain of the police force explains that the officers pulled the black man over because his car had crossed the center line of the road three times. The captain explains that the police officers detected alcohol on the black man's breath after pulling him over and asked the man to step out of his vehicle. When the man became defiant, the officers used reasonable force to achieve necessary cooperation.

Our middle-aged white man who is reading about the incident in his newspaper isn't sure what to make of all this. With slavery and segregation now over he's concluded racism has become a thing of the past. Yet the black man in the newspaper article is claiming he is a victim of racism. The captain of the police force seems to have given a good explanation as to why the black man was pulled over and then arrested. The newspaper reader doesn't see a reason why a police captain would lie to the public; afterall, the police have always been very kind and supportive of our middle-age white man. He recalls many times in his life when police have been helpful to him, so it makes no sense to him that two police officers would beat another civilian for no legitimate reason.

The man sets his newspaper down on his lap. He ponders the issue for a moment. He has the following thoughts: if racism doesn't exist anymore, and the local police are not likely to treat their citizens unfairly, then the police officers must have had a good reason for pulling the black man over. It does make sense that they would pull him over if the car was swerving, and it makes sense they would want the man to get out of his car if they detected alcohol on his breath. It also makes sense that the man would not want to get out of the car because he wouldn't want to be arrested and charged with a DWI. It makes sense, then, even if it was bad judgment, that the man would resist getting out of his car. It then makes sense that the police officers would resort to using mace. And if the man became aggressive (because drinking too much alcohol can lead to lowered inhibitions), it would make sense that the police officers may have needed to resort to using force.

The middle-aged, newspaper-reading white man concludes the police officers must have been justified. He finds it easier to accept the account of two police officers and their captain than a man who's been arrested. He therefore concludes the incident was not a matter of racism. But, he wonders, why would the black man claim to be the victim of racism if he really wasn't? Maybe, he concludes, the black man just didn't want to go to jail. Maybe he didn't want to take responsibility for his actions. Maybe he's hoping the claim of racism will get him set free and the charges against him will be dropped. Brilliant plan, the middle-aged white man thinks, as a smile comes across his face and he chuckles. "So he was playing the race card," he says under his breath.

Sadly, our imaginary middle-aged white man chose a very unreliable route for coming to his conclusion. Being far removed from the actual chain of events that led to the black man's arrest, he relied heavily on his own experiences to come to his conclusion. This is problematic because he likely had never been treated badly by police officers, making it difficult for him to believe it could happen to another innocent person. He also likely had never observed police officers doing harm to innocent citizens. The problem here is that just because we never experience something doesn't mean it never happens to others. It made no sense to this man that the police could have actually pulled the black man over because of the color of his skin, or that they beat him for the same reason. The man reading the newspaper didn't consider the fact that he had always interacted with police officers who were the same race as him. He never needed to consider this because, to him, it was very normal to always interact with people who were the same race as him. This man would have no idea how he might be treated by police officers had he lived in a society that was predominantly black, in which the vast majority of the police force was black, and in which whites had a long history of being enslaved, segregated, lynched, denied the right to vote, and deemed to be less than human by blacks.

The man likely didn't consider that, if police really did discriminate against black citizens, he wouldn't be likely to observe it because he lived and worked in predominantly white areas. He likely wouldn't think about this because, in his mind, America was no longer segregated. So it wouldn't make sense for him to think about the "white parts of town" and the "black parts of town."

I am a white American man. I live in a predominantly white neighborhood, which exists in a predominantly white city in a predominantly white state in a predominantly white country. I live in a very segregated country. I know where the white neighborhoods are in the Twin Cities. I know where the Hmong neighborhoods are; the black neighborhoods; the hispanic neighborhoods, etc. Based only on my own experiences living in white neighborhoods, I would have to conclude that police officers are almost always polite and helpful. Even when I commit a driving violation police officers can be easily influenced to let me off with nothing more than a warning. (This reminds me of a story Dave Chappelle shares in one of his standup comedy routines. He talks about how dumbfounded he was when he was a passenger in his friend Skip's car. Skip, who is white, was easily able to talk his way out of a ticket even though he was speeding and drinking. It's implied that a black man would never get away with this.) In the vastly white world in which I have lived I have never observed overt incidents of racism by cops.

But I have learned not to make general conclusions about the world based only on my own experiences. They are too limited. I need also to rely on the experiences of others. And it's important that I not just rely on the experiences of other white people. Most white people I know would agree with this statement but many of them don't realize that they struggle to apply this principle.

Many whites believe (whether they say it out loud or not) that the significant income gap between blacks and whites in our country has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with the motivation levels and self-discipline of the poor. They believe that America is a country of equal opportunity and that those who work hard and have self-discipline will do well. Our country's inner-cities are predominantly occupied by racial minorities and are plagued by poverty and high crime rates. Blacks are pulled over by police officers in America at a much higher rate than whites and are prosecuted for crimes at a much higher rate than whites. White America finds it hard to believe these facts are the result of racism because they do not see the racism occurring. They see only the end result. They're too far removed, in their predominantly white worlds, to see the details of what is happening.

Imagine seeing a woman, approximately 200 yards away from you, walking toward you with nobody near her. You've got your ipod playing, so you can't hear much other than your music. You can't see her very clearly because of the distance factor. Suddenly you see her collapse. You know something's not right, but you're too far away to know exactly what's going on. Did she have a heart attack? A stroke? A seizure? Did she go into diabetic shock? You turn the music off and call 911 on your cell phone. They ask you what the emergency is. You explain that you saw the woman collapse and that she must have had a heart attack, stroke, seizure, or gone into diabetic shock. What you don't know is that 300 yards away from you and 100 yards behind the woman, from an old abandoned building window, a sniper shot the woman in the back. Because of your distance you could not see this and because of your ipod music you could not hear the shot. You also could not see the wound. You only saw the end result, which was the woman collapsing. Your conclusion was errant because it was based on your limited exposure to the event.

This, I believe, is part of the reason blacks are too often accused by whites of "playing the Race Card." Racism certainly occurs in our society but the majority of whites are oblivious to it. They may notice some of the results of racism, such as higher poverty and unemployment rates in the black community or a prison system with a disproportionately higher rate of black prisoners, but their inability to recognize the actual events leading to this disparity distorts their overall interpretation of what is going on. Whites are usually not going to be sitting in the passenger seat when a black man is being pulled over for bogus reasons and his car is searched for no legitimate reason. When a white man's application for an apartment is accepted, he will likely not know that the previous applicant was denied the apartment because of the color of his skin.

Without having the experience of these events, whites too often jump to the wrong conclusions. They conclude that racism is not the real problem and that the victim is "playing the race card" to avoid taking responsibility for their words or actions. What's very disturbing about this is (a) how it must feel for the victims to not be taken seriously when they're being discriminated against, and (b) that the refusal by whites to validate the victims' experiences is itself a veiled (and sometimes unintended) act of racism. It implies that the white person has the "real" perspective on the issue and the victim is either lying or misguided in their belief that racism is occurring. How insulting!