David Broadwater
OPINION By DAVID BROADWATER,
Salty waves burn my cheeks – boiled by the seething rage in my gut.
I was 16 years old when four black girls were blown to bits in their Birmingham church. On the day I became a citizen at 21, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Today, at 68, I see nine more massacred in their Charleston church.
Although I’m horrified by such barbaric acts, I’m more dejected and enraged by the frantic scramble of white politicians, pundits and media blowhards trying to rationalize this latest massacre as anything other than a KKK-style racist terror attack.
But, what burns the deepest and hottest is my utter disdain for my white brothers and sisters who adamantly and ardently refuse to acknowledge and rectify the chronic, systemic and corrosive racism that permeates our society.
The day-to-day, year-in-year-out degradation and exclusion meted out upon non-whites in our country in the employment, scholastic, criminal-justice, housing and health-care spheres inflict a level of pain and suffering I, as a white man, have never had to endure.
I’d like us to stop doing this before I die. Let’s really live up to our creed of “liberty and justice for all.” Please.
David Broadwater is an activist who has lived in Atascadero for 43 years.
Like every other race in this world, African Americans are manipulative, self-serving, and playing the angles and they need to wake up. Shootings and racist flags and rampant use of the n-word are all very provocative and distracting but are nothing compared to the outlooks and practices of the powerful, white-male-run structures in our society, toying with you at this moment, even in beautiful, happy places like SLO County.
How about we just stop name-calling, period. Weren’t we all supposed to grow out of that shit by the sixth grade and leave it on the playground?