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Imagine another way forward

The protests and marches since the death of George Floyd are about more than police brutality.

The killing of George Floyd sparked outrage over even deeper issues that permeate our culture. Institutional racism, systemic inequality, implicit bias – these are all complex problems that negatively affect black people; they also negatively affect the rest of us.

Let’s look at a few concrete examples. Photo by🇨🇭 Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaumonUnsplash


My friend recently retold the story of when she, a white woman, took two black toddlers to the doctor because they were ill. The doctor made a diagnosis without even listening to one child’s breathing. When asked to do so, the doctor listened briefly to the child’s chest. Only with further prompting did the doctor listen to the child’s back. On leaving the mother requested copies of the children’s medical reports and found the doctor had made numerous mistakes putting information about the boy onto the girl’s chart and vise versa. In 18 years of caring for her biological (white) children, she never encountered this blatant substandard care that she experienced while caring for her foster children. When institutional racism in healthcare diminishes the value of a black child’s life, what hope can we have that all children will grow up with equal chances in life?

In the most recent primary election in Pennsylvania, a candidate running against the incumbent for a state house seat filed a complaint with the elections board regarding voting place improprieties. The Elections Judge is reported to have spoken to voters in favor of the incumbent in addition to other claims of inappropriate poll management behaviors. The Elections Judge “Bickford also denied filling out any blank ballots. Voting machines couldn’t read ballots with bubbles lightly filled in, Bickford said, so they were darkening bubbles on such ballots”. Yet, darkening bubbles on ballots would appear to be “assisting” voters, and Lehigh County’s Poll Workers Manual indicates that any voter requesting assistance must do so in writing using a form available at the polling location. While this incident is under investigation, it suggests a misuse of institutional power and that misuse of power leads to systemic inequality.

Also this week, the hashtag #BlackintheIvory garnered countless examples of implicit bias in higher education including one by @ravenscimaven describing her first day as a faculty member when “someone from the chemistry department physically blocked me from getting my mail in the faculty mailroom. Threatened to call the police because they thought I was a student trying to steal mail.”

We all need to be aware of injustices that permeate our culture. Racism and bias diminish our capacity thrive. Until we can see everyone as fully human, fully deserving of high quality health care, equal protections and equitable access to the benefits of our democratic system, and fully respected as valued contributors in every field of academics and employment we will not eliminate the attitudes, assumptions and actions that got us to this point.

The protests began as a reaction to the killing of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer – one who is supposed to serve and protect all of us, especially the most vulnerable among us. But the protests are about more than police brutality. Millions of people around the world have come out to march in support of an end to brutality, racism, bias and the misuse of power that breed inequality and threaten our democracy. These threats to democracy affect every single American.

It is time to reimagine how democracy and democratic institutions in America can (must!) work for all. When you imagine another way forward, what does it look like?


 

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