America Needs A Racial Detente

America is caught in a cultural crossfire that’s decades in the making. From Rodney King to Amadou Diallo to the latest deaths – there has been far too much tone deafness with how we treat civilian and police lives.

The death of Philando Castile brought forth posts that started to discuss the deaths of whites as well as the deaths of blacks. The question raised? Why do black deaths get coverage and protested when white police related deaths barely get a mention?

Further, a general lack of dialogue and compassion between average America and activist America has lead to rhetoric that isn’t followed up with conversation. If you were looking at America as an outsider, you would be inclined to think that police, blacks and whites only interacted with each other in conflict.

#AllLivesMatter has been pushed out as a counter to #BlackLivesMatter, but it largely ends in a flame war rather than a conversation. In responding with a hashtag war rather than a conversation, we now have isolated silos of Americans standing in the Black Lives, All Lives and Blue Lives camps angrily pointing fingers at one another.

Calling #AllLivesMatter the generational equivalent of Marie Antionette’s “Let them eat cake” is telling.

With roughly 50% of this country earning $50,000 a year or less, there’s as much brewing conflict about race as there is about class.

White America is angry that their sons and daughters die in police altercations, and that’s completely ignored by mainstream media and the left. Black America is just tired of seeing their sons and daughters die with nothing being done in regards to reform or reviving community policing. Our police, on the other hand, are faced with an insurmountable task of pivoting to fit the needs of a changing America when they do not have the support of their politicians or leaders.

Newt Gingrich and Redstate added to the conversation with Newt calling out the Million dollar issue “White America doesn’t understand what it means to be Black in America” while Redstate pointed out policing and societal issues that need to be addressed.

Americans need to wake up and realize that what is at stake here is American lives. You can be pro-BLM and also pro-cop – but you have to be pro-change. You can be pro-white and pro-black, that’s just called being American. Standing in your pulpit and having a one-sided conversation or yelling on social media or protesting without pushing policy only leads to riots and death.

America is at stake this election and it’s not just a conversation of race that needs to start taking place. We need sensible body cam legislation, a return to sensible community based policing, an end to using police as revenue centers by putting them on ticket quotas, an investigation into the violation of Philando Castile’s 2nd amendment rights and his untimely death, and more importantly, some racial détente.

Détente is going to take having a conversation that started in 1968 and one that has started mending fences between blacks, whites and law enforcement – because at this point, ignoring minority issues in the name of some PC blame washing is putting all lives at stake.