Thread by @MacWBishop

In 1992, all the kids I knew took to the streets when the KKK came to town to confront a peaceful march through downtown Denver on Martin Luther King Day. It ended in riots. That was my first experience of street violence.

All through my high school years, gang violence was common: drive-bys a regular occurrence. North Side Mafia and a hodgepodge chicano gangs on the West-side; Bloods and Crips on East Colfax and biker gangs downtown… you could pick and choose your flavor.

1993 was a bad year; they called it the “Summer of Violence.” I saw my first gun “in the wild” that year.

There were also a lot of white supremacists and neo-nazi skinheads in Denver in the early 90s.

I'd been raised full of admiration for the courage of the Civil Rights movement; with the history of the Civil War; I was raised with MLK’s speeches ringing in my ears and the belief that Lincoln was the finest president in US history because he led the fight to free the slaves.

I also grew up watching Han Solo punch out nazis because ‘it belongs in a museum’; seeing Malcolm X wave the Stars & Stripes over the body of Ferris Bueller as they charged Fort Wagner; hearing that kid from Dead Poets Society try to convince Batman to stop being a Hitler Youth.

I was never into gangs, but I ran with a rowdy bunch of kids. So my friends and I fought the skinheads. All the time. We sought them out. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. But we always fought them.

Because it was right and natural for men to fight evil.

I remember in 1997, shortly before I joined the Marines, the quivering rage I felt when some old man started cursing and screaming at my older sister and her four-year-old son, because her son's skin color was darker than his mom’s...

...and how the employees at Taco Bell on Colfax came out and made him leave, because even a minimum-wage fast-food employee knows: Racists Ain’t Welcome.

(Might be why I’ve always had a soft-spot for Taco Bell, but that’s a different story)

I remember in 2007 when the police followed my brother-in-law to his house for no reason, then beat him like a dog in the driveway while he just lay there and took it, despite the fact that he’s one of the strongest and toughest men I’ve ever met.

He could’ve taken any one of those cops in a fair fight, but as a black man he had the wisdom and discipline to know he didn’t want to get killed for “resisting.”

When he sued the police later, they said they had probable cause because he “fit the profile of a suspect,” which we all know - despite its obvious bullshit - is the only true thing they said about the incident.

I remember all through the early twenty-teens, when I’d go to parties in Brooklyn and Manhattan with my ex-wife, how people would walk up to us and randomly start talking about how “they liked hip hop, too."

Which I guess was marginally better than just walking up and saying “Hey! You’re black!” to her.

Or calling her something else. That happened, too.

I remember in 2014 when my daughter was born, how the nurses at NYU Langone handed me a form for the birth certificate, and it asked me to choose my daughter’s “race.”

I wrote “HUMAN” under “Other,” because she’s my daughter and I’ll be goddamned if she isn’t given the space to decide for herself who and what she is.

On her dad’s side, my daughter has ancestors who came to America with the pilgrims: Roger Goodspeed literally landed at Plymouth Rock more than 450 years ago.

On her mom’s side, my daughter has ancestors who were stolen from Africa and brought to America on a slave ship more than 400 years ago.

I was raised and educated in the realities of American history.

I know that America was built on profound ideals of liberty and equality.

But I also know that America was built on slavery; on stolen lives and brutal inhumanity.

I know that America was built on courage and sacrifice; by men and women who gave everything to free the slaves; to liberate Europe; to stand against tyranny.

But I also know that America was built on genocide; on the stolen land of the First Nations and from the profits of imperial follies abroad, from the Philippines to Iraq.

These contradictions about America are facts. The truth of them cannot be denied; to do so is to deny our heritage and our promise.

Not every American has immediate family who are black. I have not seen the world through black eyes, but I have tried to open my own eyes to that reality.

We don’t have to sit around trying to score cheap points on social media to reaffirm our partisan tribalism and wallow in our own ignorance.

I’m not here to speak for the experience of others, only my own. I’m not here to tell anyone what to do, or prescribe solutions, or police the anger and actions of others.

There are a lot of people who are angry, who are hurt and who are heartbroken today.

Some have felt that way their entire lives.

I’m here to ask my fellow Americans to at least try to reach out, listen to and help your neighbors.

And we are all your neighbors.

Thanks for reading.

PS: I won’t keep boring people with all this.

But I’d add that my grandfather was a game warden in rural Wisconsin. That’s a pretty important law enforcement role in that kind of community...

There weren’t exactly a lot of black people around Tomahawk, and I don’t think he had much experience with people of other races.

But he was casually racist nonetheless.

I remember him yelling at my sister for half an hour when he saw a picture of her with her black boyfriend, using words I will not utter or repeat.

She cried for days about it. But she’s a strong woman, and after her son was born she made it her mission to change things

She took her infant son to Wisconsin, and the first time my grandfather held him he melted and there were tears of joy in his eyes.

People can change. They can be educated and break free of their ignorance and their prejudices.

That’s all.