Scott Taylor: Watching the Ferguson Riots with My Black Friend

Tuesday, December 02, 2014

B. Scott Taylor, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

When news came down that the grand jury investigating of the Michael Brown shooting was going to announce their findings, I called my friend. I knew he would be anxiously awaiting the news like most Americans.

It is important to mention that after parking my car and walking to his house, I glanced into the glowing windows I passed. I expected everyone would be glued to the coverage of this racially, controversial bombshell about to be dropped.

Nope.

Without exception, the three televisions I could see without being arrested were airing sitcoms and what I assumed was a Netfix movie. WOW.

I rang the doorbell and was quickly greeted by my friend. He was pretty fired up, agitated and visibly disturbed. I could hear the TV upstairs in the living room reflecting sounds of crowd noise and reporters speaking quickly and in bursts of rushed sentences.

We marched up the wooden stairs of his rented eastside Victorian apartment.

As we ascended we passed the large canvassed artwork that hangs on the walls of his place. My buddy owned an art gallery in LA and has an eye for talent and what looks right. He graduated from the London School of Economics. He’s smart and a great conversationalist. He’s a good friend.

We sit down on the couch turning our heads towards the TV and see burning buildings and teenage kids looting stores. We laugh for an awkward second watching someone running out of a store with bags of Cheetos in their hand, fire burning, broken glass everywhere.

“I am so mad right now I can’t even find the words,” my friend says, inching forward on the couch staring and listening to the CNN coverage.

At that very moment I know that we are processing this information in a very personal, authentic, yet drastically different way. It’s obvious.

I watch my friend and listen. He can’t believe that a young black unarmed boy has been gunned down in cold blood in this country. That the police could get away with what to him was such an obvious, senseless murder of an innocent young black man.

As I watched along, I was trying to understand why people would want to destroy their neighborhood. How was that a good idea at any level, I wondered?

Burn cop cars, brake windows at the courthouse I thought, that made more sense if anything does. Blocking traffic on major highways would have an impact and get attention. These were things that came to my mind at that moment. It doesn’t occur to me that destroying my neighbors businesses is an option to show my outrage at the people that I blame for this perceived injustice.

The undeniable difference in processing the information comes from the fact that some of us are born black and some of us are born white. Even if we are half white and half black we are still considered black. I still can’t figure that out. Obama is just as white as he is black, yet he is considered our first back President.

The point is, that if the color of your skin is darker than Caucasian skin, you get treated as Black, African American ect.. I almost think that’s where we start to get sideways.

The fact that we keep track of colors is a big problem.

Why do we keep track in the first place? Why does it matter if we are all absolutely complete human beings at any measurement?

The fact that some of us are good and some of us are bad will always be the case. Why brake it down to what color skin represents more good or bad.

I think the cop did what he did to protect himself and that if he saw a white kid fitting the same description acting the same way with the exception of being white, he would have done the same thing. That’s just how I feel. I don’t know the cop nor does my buddy. We only read what we can and then go with our gut. Our personal experience gives us perspective and judgment. That alters our perspective.

That is called emotional honesty.

I hope it is safe to say that rational human beings don’t want to see innocent people die, white or black, young or old.

If one thinks that black citizens in this country experience life the same as white citizens do, that would be an irrational observation.

I grab my coat and head out the door, give him a hug and start down the stairs.

Before I leave the apartment my buddy makes a pretty interesting comment that sends me off thinking.

He asks me “What is it that is primal in human beings that causes us to be reductive and not grant the same humanity and sentience to things or others that are foreign to us.”

I will now leave you all with that.

Originally from New York, Scott Taylor moved to Portland in 1996. He's an entrepreneur, Internet millionaire, former MadMan, author, eco-industrialist and disruptive force.