How Well Do We Listen?

Learning to Listen———————————–

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                There has been much written of late in the opinion columns and letters to the editor pages in the print media regarding the importance of listening to what the demonstrators against racial injustice are saying. It’s a topic well worth discussing because there are a number of variables that may affect how well one listens or whether one listens at all. One of these is where and how one was raised and socialized. For example, I grew up in a multi-ethnic, working class neighborhood in a mid-sized northeastern city where blacks were a sizeable percent of the population and I attended an inner city public high school where there was a lot of racial interaction. Believe me, there was plenty of opportunity for conversations about racial inequities, probably a lot more opportunity for such discussions than one might have had growing up in, say, an affluent town like Coronado, at least until the brutal murder of George Floyd delivered a wake-up call to just about everyone in America with a TV.

I’ve been listening, in fact, since high school days in the 1940’s and college in the early 1950’s and trying, at least in a small way, to do something about racial injustice during 30 years in the navy, much of it in ships with racially-integrated crews living together in very close quarters while at sea for months at a time. There was plenty of opportunity to listen to each other in that environment. That was followed by eleven years as a human resources executive trying to maintain a diverse workforce and, in retirement, volunteering with community service organizations like the Lions Club of San Diego and the Boys and Girls Foundation which have provided many thousands of dollars in grants to organizations including those providing services to underprivileged adults and children of color.

I lived through the riots of the 1960’s following the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy and I listened then, unlike younger generations who may just be awakening to these issues for the first time. Some changes resulting from the events of the 1960’s and 1990’s were made but they weren’t nearly enough to stamp out racial injustice. Younger people who weren’t alive back then ask me what it was like and I tell them it was a lot like what we’re experiencing today. Back then there was a huge income gap between whites and blacks. There still is. Median white households today have a net worth of just over $170,000, about 10 time that of blacks. There are many reasons, perhaps, but racial injustice is one of them. This time, things have to change and they have to be sufficient. This time I hope everyone is listening.

There are, however, impediments to effective listening. One of them is background noise. Sometimes people shout so loudly at one another or at everyone in general that nobody can really understand them. Sometimes the language is so filthy and vulgar that you may not even want to. Sometimes the slogans are a turnoff like “Silence is Violence”. There are a lot of people out there willing to help that may not do a lot of talking about it. Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. Some people who shout slogans and carry signs have little in the way of ideas or solutions except to defund the police which would turn cities into disaster zones and impact minority neighborhoods hardest.

Some apparently feel that to condemn the violence including the looting, arson and vicious attacks, some fatal, against innocent persons is evidence of failure to listen. But the victims of these crimes, many of them blacks, deserve to be listened to, also. And these actions do need to be condemned because they subvert the purpose of the demonstrations which is righteous. And the notion that violence is a form of speech, necessary to shock people into action, a popular notion on some college campuses, is simply wrong. For the first time in my eight decades of living, this movement actually has the attention of everyone with a working brain who isn’t living in a cave. Finally, violence does not work to promote a cause. Dr. King taught us that. It hardens hearts. It promotes fear. Behavioral scientists know that the resultant stress often produces a “fight or flight” response where people fight change or just run away from the problem. We’re already seeing an exodus from many large cities.

There are huge problems facing African Americans including insufficient job opportunities, poverty, lack of affordable housing in safe communities, health care and inadequate schools to mention only some. If you are not in a position to help in these areas, consider donating to organizations that can. Join a service club like the Lions, a great way to give back to the community and those who are underserved. Consider mentoring black youth or contributing to scholarship funds. It is indeed important to listen but even more important to act.

Dr. Kelly is a freelance writer living in Coronado. A retired Navy Captain, he commanded three San Diego-based ships and a research and development center and taught ship handling, seamanship and navigation at Naval Base San Diego. He earned his doctorate in education at USD, taught graduate students and was a senior vice-president and director of training and development at Great American Bank. He has written over 1500 newspaper and journal articles and has been a regular contributor to the Eagle&Journal since 2001.

June 26, 2020

Time for Change

Seize the Moment———————–

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                The tragic death of George Floyd has focused the entire nation on the still-festering problem of racial injustice and prejudice infecting us. Now, while the outrage is still fresh, is the time, especially with a national election less than five months away, for American leaders to come together to somehow find ways to cure this national disease. We must seize this moment and begin by acknowledging the failures of many past programs no matter how well-intentioned.

The challenge will not be coming up with ideas. There will be plenty of them. The first challenge will be putting aside political biases long enough to avoid wasting precious time on nutty ideas that will make matters worse such as defunding or disbanding police departments. While there are multiple versions of what that would entail, the need is for reform, not defunding or disbanding. Big city public school systems have failed blacks also but the solution would certainly not be to defund them.

Reforming police departments will require much better recruitment practices to include effective testing to help screen out applicants with a history of intolerance, bias or anger management issues. It will include more training before young men and women are permitted to wear a badge, detain and restrain people, carry and use weapons and make life or death decisions. This will require larger, not smaller, budgets.

In seeking the transformational change required, the devil will be not so much in the details as in implementing the changes. There are many reasons for this but one is that politicians tend to leave the implementation part to others while they turn back to their main priority of getting re-elected. I’d like to see presidents and governors limited to one, five-year term, but that’s a subject for another day.

Proponents of change need to understand that actions speak much louder than words. When I served as a member of a county commission on the prevention of drug and alcohol abuse in the workplace and chair of its business council, I was disappointed to find some of the members seemed to believe that just by meeting periodically and talking about the problems that they were actually solving them. As we look for ways to eliminate racial injustice, actions which will actually create more opportunities for blacks will mean a lot more than just spending a few hours marching and chanting slogans.

Consider two small examples from my own limited but lengthy life experience. Over half a century ago while serving as communications officer in a navy destroyer, I was dealing with a shortage of radiomen necessitating that they stand 8 hours on watch each day in addition to other duties. I spent several hours reviewing personnel records of crew members to find non-rated sailors with an ARI/GCT average high enough to predict success in graduating from Class A Radioman School. I found two who were serving as stewards in the officers’ wardroom. In those days, black sailors were mostly relegated to duty as stewards or cooks and their career opportunities were limited to put it mildly. I asked them if they would be willing to attend the school and they were. I was then summoned by the ship’s executive officer who asked me if I was planning to implement a social experiment on board. I said my motivation wasn’t nearly that noble. I just needed radiomen and I didn’t care what color they were. Both men graduated. One made it to Chief Radioman, the other to Radioman First Class.

Years later, as commanding officer of a research and development center, with the largest group of research psychologists at the Ph.D level west of the Mississippi River at the time, a position became available. We advertised it and dozens applied and were screened by a board established for that purpose in accordance with civil service requirements. Among them was a newly-graduated black female Ph.D from a prestigious university. The requirements for the position included significant research experience and a record of published research. Being newly graduated, her resume didn’t match those of most of the other applicants and she was not selected. Her husband wrote to me expressing amazement that a young black female Ph.D research psychologist with an outstanding academic record from a prestigious university was deemed not qualified to fill our position. His reaction was totally understandable. I hired her (along with the top-rated candidate). We found the funding to create a position for her and she became a valuable addition to the research staff.

I cite these small examples of what we referred to then as affirmative action because I believe that we need to return to affirmative action. Equal opportunity programs just weren’t enough to make up for all the racial injustice that has occurred for decades. Many successful black professionals say they have had to work twice as hard as whites to get to where they are today. That is not suggestive of a level playing field.

Some day we may achieve Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision of a colorblind society. We’re not there yet, so in this short period remaining before the election let’s hear some specific ideas from the candidates on how to get there soon. No more platitudes, please. What do you plan to actually do to make things better and how do you plan to get it done? Start by realizing that some of the old ideas just didn’t work or weren’t enough. It’s a tough challenge, but you candidates are asking for the job. Are you up to it or do you need to step aside in favor, perhaps, of younger candidates with bolder ideas?

(Dr. Kelly is a freelance writer living in Coronado. A retired Navy Captain, he commanded three San Diego-based ships and a research and development center and taught ship handling, seamanship and navigation at Naval Base San Diego. He earned his doctorate in education at USD, taught graduate students and was a senior vice-president and director of training and development at Great American Bank. He has written over 1500 newspaper and journal articles and has been a regular contributor to the Eagle&Journal since 2001.)

June 18, 2020

 

A Nation in Crisis

Angry Nation——————————-

                Commentary    

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                The act of a policeman snuffing the life out of a helpless human being pinned under his knee pleading that he couldn’t breathe while three other policemen stood by and watched without intervening, has sickened and disgusted Americans of all races. It took just nine minutes to plunge our nation, already enduring one grave crisis, into yet another. This was more than just an act of homicide against George Floyd. In the violence that followed peaceful demonstrations and protests, others died and many more may die until order can be restored. Businesses, some just preparing to reopen after the pandemic shutdown, employing and serving thousands, many in minority neighborhoods, were burned and looted. Hundreds of innocent people were injured, some seriously. For those that committed murder or attempted murder and those that watched without acting, and for the damage they caused to our cities and nation, no punishment can be too severe.

Property can usually be replaced and so, eventually, can jobs but lives cannot. Anyone who willfully takes the life of another human being of any race except in self-defense or in defense of another innocent life or in battle commits the gravest of sins against God and man and there can be no justification for it. Every life is precious in the sight of God and we are commanded by Him to love all persons, even those who abuse us. So as we mourn the tragic death of George Floyd, we must mourn as well the equally-tragic deaths of the victims of the violence that followed, including the policemen trying to maintain order amid chaos and the people trying to protect their property and livelihoods.

Among those whose murders we must mourn is an African-American officer in the Homeland Security Department’s Protective Service who was shot and killed while standing guard outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Oakland. And let’s offer a prayer for retired St. Louis police captain David Dorn, a black man gunned down and killed during the looting sparked by the rioting. Also in St. Louis, four other officers were shot. Why aren’t the demonstrators demanding justice for them? Are their lives less important? In Brooklyn, a policeman was stabbed in the neck and two others shot trying to assist him. Elsewhere, a Molitov cocktail was thrown into a police car containing police. Numerous other attacks on policemen have been reported each night since the riots began. Where is the outrage? Violence begets violence. It is never, ever justified.

The anger and rage which the murder of Mr. Floyd provoked is understandable. There is racial injustice in America and only a fool would deny it. It must forever end and we all must do what we can to help end it. But rage is not constructive and as former president Barack Obama recently suggested, the energy expended is better spent by political action rather than demonstrating. Acting out rage solves nothing and when it provokes action that harms the innocent it is simply wrong. If you don’t think that arson, looting, destroying someone’s means of livelihood, and assaulting innocent people in the streets is wrong and sinful, then you are part of the problem. It you rationalize and excuse it and believe in an eye for an eye, then you are also part of the problem. And if you are afraid to condemn such violence when you know it is wrong because of fear of offending those who excuse it, you are probably also one who just keeps silent when you hear racial slurs or witness racial injustice.

While racial injustice still exists and we all have a responsibility to do what we can to eliminate it, it is simply wrong to blame the entire white race for it. People need to be judged for their character, not their skin color, as Dr. Martin Luther King famously said. They need to be judged as individuals, not as a race, and they are not responsible for the sins of their ancestors that they had no part in.

Property and jobs can usually be replaced but not always businesses. Some owners who had put everything they had into their businesses only to see them destroyed in one night just give up. The urban riots of the 1960s destroyed huge sections of many of our cities and half a century later, some scars still remain. It took over a decade to fully recover. Those who suffered most from the arson, looting and other violence that attended those riots were blacks. From 2011 until February of this year, black unemployment finally fell from 16% to 5.8%, an historic low. But then the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the economy tanked and unemployment reached an all- time high, especially among blacks. Now, with the riots damaging an already fragile economy, blacks will once again suffer the most. Have we learned nothing from the urban riots of the last century?

Finally, while the right to public assembly and protest is a constitutional right, organizers need to understand the risks involved when emotions are running high and that their events can be easily highjacked by those intent, not on honoring the memory of victims like George Floyd, but on seeking revenge, promoting chaos and stealing goods. That means organizers taking some responsibility when peaceful demonstrations start to morph into violence. They need to observe curfews and show some respect and sympathy for the police, the great majority of whom are not racially biased and are, in fact, genuine heroes, putting their safety at risk to defend all the people including those who are in their faces shouting obscenities at them. They are often the thin blue line between order and chaos. They should not be judged by the actions of a small percentage and they deserve our respect and support.

                Dr. Kelly, a freelance writer living in Coronado is a retired Navy Captain. He commanded three San Diego-based ships and a research and development center and taught ship handling, seamanship and navigation at Naval Base San Diego. He earned his doctorate in education at USD, taught graduate students and was a senior vice-president and director of training and development at Great American Bank. He has written over 1500 newspaper and journal articles and has been a regular contributor to the Eagle&Journal newspapers since 2001.

June 6, 2020