Community: It’s what we have in common
“Why is it that we always have to go to race on these blogs instead of looking for answers together as a community to try and make changes?” Limey wrote this week on QCTimes.com. “Please think before you automatically assume the worst in everyone. It just makes us a poorer community.”
Every shooting, stabbing, fight and arrest this month has brought out ignorant stereotypes and hateful statements in the QCTimes.com comment streams. Editors shut down more than one stream because of rampant violation of our Rules of the Road.
Limey is correct. We are a poorer community when we throw up our hands and refuse to discuss the violence as a community, preferring to assign the guilt to “them” or “those people.” All the laws and law enforcement in the world cannot change the patterns of behavior that have caused such unrest here lately. It’s up to us to define our common interests and act in ways that benefit them, not destroy them. But in order to even see what those common interests are, we have to get past the idea that we have nothing in common with people whose skin color differs from our own.
Take this comment under a story about a fight Sunday night in Davenport:
“I’m glad I’m white,” Justpondering wrote. “I do not need to engage in fights. I have a job and am a productive member of society. ... I can walk on a sidewalk and not block traffic by walking down a street. I own a belt and can wear my pants around my waist. My ballcap faces forward and doesn’t lay on my head sideways. I do not need to be a poser and pretend I am something I am not. ...”
There’s more, but you get the idea.
Rk1069 responded: “I’m black, and I’m glad I’m black. Everyone should be proud of what they are. However, it is comments like yours that make people so defensive. I’m black and none of the ridiculous stereotypes you mentioned apply to me and many others. I would be just as ignorant to make comments like, ‘I’m glad I don’t smoke meth. I’m glad I don’t live in a religious sect and have babies with 13-year-olds. I’m glad I don’t run around college campuses shooting innocent people.”
Dec2004 sympathized with Rk1069’s frustration. “The sad part about it is someone will likely respond and say you are ‘one of the few’ or you are one of the ‘good ones’ which is so untrue,” Dec2004 wrote.
Every time I hear something like, “My neighbors are black, but they’re real good people,” I cringe. It’s no comfort to Rk1069 and others to be patted on the back as exceptions to a rule that is unfounded.
Mom pitched in with this: “Justpondering, my white teenage sons walk around with their pants around their knees, and their white friends wear their baseball caps sideways, and their white friends from Windsor Crest come to the ‘hood’ to ‘pose’ as bad asses.”
Our differences are not just racial. They are cultural, generational, financial, sexual, ecumenical and, above all, surmountable. We can get past them if we take the time and the risk to know each other. We can start, as Limey suggests, by withholding judgment and looking for answers together, rather than leaping to conclusions, then looking the other way.
Melissa Coulter writes on the comments posted online at qctimes.com. Contact her at (563) 383-2243 or at mcoulter@qctimes.com.