Tacoma must confront white moderate fear of protesters. That’s what MLK would want
Re: “Protesters have no right to scare my kids at home,” (TNT op-ed, 9/13).
In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote:
“The Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.’”
As much as we like and respect Kathryn McCarthy, the author of this recent TNT op-ed, we must call attention to the fact that justice for Manny Ellis and his family has not been served, these many months after his death at the hands of Tacoma police.
When residents are frustrated in their attempts to be heard and they resort to peaceful protest and a request to talk about their concerns to an elected official whose attention and support they feel they’ve been unable to get through the usual channels, we believe that is antiracism at work.
Listening and talking are the foundation of how we must resolve the racist issues that plague our criminal justice system.
In participant videos of the conversation between Tacoma City Councilman Conor McCarthy (Kathryn’s husband) and the protesters in front of the McCarthys’ house, most protesters were sitting in the street from the very beginning.
When the councilman sat down too, after a few tense minutes, a dialogue was had.
A devotion to order over justice is an old devotion. And in this season, though its struggle is not convenient for anyone, justice is long overdue.
The vague fear Mrs. McCarthy expresses in her op-ed (”I don’t know why really, but in the moment, it felt safer” to take her children upstairs) is an all-too-familiar sentiment that white people express when they find themselves in proximity to perceived black anger.
We encourage an examination of that fear — in all of us. And we urge a reconsideration of that moment as one for dialogue, listening and seizing the opportunity to understand each other.
We encourage a pause and a reflection in all white people who feel vaguely afraid of Black and Brown people seeking justice— or who are just walking down the street, minding their own business.
Mrs. McCarthy’s reaction to the protest that evening, we believe, is less troublesome than her decision to broadcast white fragility through her op-ed.
We wish that instead of choosing to center her fear of perceived danger and to suggest — even though the protesters were peaceful from the beginning— that “next time” they may resort to violence, Mrs. McCarthy had examined the roots of her fear.
To not be racist is one thing. To be antiracist is to actively work toward dislodging racist attitudes, policies and systems wherever they exist, and to rebuild something better.
The antiracist work being done throughout this city at this historic and fraught moment is encouraging and focused — and uncomfortable!
It demands our attention so that we may all live free of fear and of being feared, with an expectation that we will be heard and that Dr. Martin Luther King’s “positive peace”will prevail.
Kristy Gledhill of Gig Harbor and Kelly McDonald of Tacoma belong to the South Sound Antiracist Project. The group can be reached at SouthSoundAntiracist@gmail.com
This story was originally published September 19, 2020 at 12:00 PM.