My struggle with my own racism

I feel compelled to write something about the terrible (some call it horrific) rioting that following the death of George Floyd, the black man whose life was snuffed out by the knee across his throat by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Now, another black man has been killed in a police action. The images have my emotions going many ways at once. On one hand, they make my heart race as I realize the devastation caused by the rioters and looters in so many cities around the United States. (United States? Really?) Then I think about the racism that had led to these protests. I hope that the black people who are engaged in peaceful protests are doing so out of a sincere belief that justice will prevail. I hope that the fires and looting have come from the efforts of professional agitators who seek to destroy not to bring about justice. I saw a hopeful report on TV. Two groups of protestors turned over two people who were inciting a riot to police. George Floyd's brother called for peaceful expressions of protest by voting for people who will bring about the change black people seek. But I have doubts that anything but repentance on the part of millions of individuals will bring peace. Then, I have to look at myself. I hate to admit it but it seems I have racism deep inside me. I am a child of the 1960s. I remember going to high school the morning after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. I remember going to school the morning after a white police officer killed a black man at a local fast food restaurant and listening to Walter Cronkite and CBS Evening News report that the shooting death of the black man in Niles, Michigan, was the first time such a thing had happened that far north. You could cut the tension with a knife when I walked the halls of Niles Senior High School that morning. But racism is within me. I recall our gym teacher in 8th grade was a Negro named White. I accidentally called him Mr. Black before I caught myself and then apologized the next day. H quickly dismissed it and I wished I hadn't said it much less brought it up again. I would have been friends with Frankie Williams, a black boy my age. We went to elementary school together. One spring day the gym teacher chose me to be a captain on a basketball team. We were doing a tournament in the last few days of school in the spring. I picked Frankie to be on my team after watching him play. There were other, more popular boys who were picked first to play on other teams. Some were taller but I didn't care what color was Frankie's skin. I wanted to win the tournament. But because of rampant racism Frankie and I could not be friends. And some of that racism came from his black friends, not my white schoolmates. I am not the only person who needs to fight racism from within. I look at a black person on the street and a white person in different ways. I can't help it. God help us. We are doomed to continue our racist ways unless we find it within ourselves to change.