It’s always best to lead by example, and so I’m glad to be able to make an example of myself, with the help of a reader who called out my recent call-out.

Last month, I urged the Village of Homewood and the Homewood Police Department to treat a social media joke gone wrong as a learning opportunity. The police department posted a very brief video in December that officials said in an apology was an attempt to lighten the mood regarding community fears of immigration enforcement coming to town.

Residents who have reason to fear the violence of immigration enforcement did not find the joke funny or reassuring. Quite the opposite.

In calling out HPD, though, I made a comment that was equally tone deaf. Here’s where I screwed up:

“I do not assume anyone in HPD who was involved in creating the video meant to cause any harm or intended to offend anyone. Based on my interactions with officers and leaders, HPD is a professional team dedicated to serving our community.”

Helpful Reader (who prefers not to be named) said, rightly, that I was speaking from a position of unacknowledged privilege. As a white man, I’m among the least vulnerable groups when it comes to police violence. My assumption that the officers involved in the video meant no harm nor offense was less likely to be shared by people who have reason to feel less safe around police.

The critique reminded me of an encounter I had with a police officer about 20 years ago, when we lived in a small Missouri town. I was a reporter for the local paper and was biking across town late at night, I think to check out a report of a house fire, when I was pulled over by an officer. She questioned what I was doing out so late and asked where I was going. She said she stopped me because I resembled a crime suspect officers were looking for. Then she let me go.

I went on my way. At no point in that interaction did I have the slightest concern for my safety. It never occurred to me I might be arrested, much less anything worse. I implicitly assumed it was just a misunderstanding and that it would have no impact on my life other than causing a 15-minute delay in my journey.

That’s white privilege. That’s male privilege. Those two characteristics are not impregnable armor against harm, but they allowed me to move through the world as though I was safe. I have since read about the history of violence in maintaining the U.S. caste system, and I’ve talked to Black people in our community who have no such feeling of safety when pulled over by police officers. Whether from personal experience or caution inherited from generations of trauma, they feel fear during encounters with police. They are not sure police officers intend them no harm.

So it was easy for me to absolve Homewood police officers of any ill intent, which softened my call for accountability. Such calls need to be more direct (like the response from Helpful Reader).

I mentioned last month that the ill-fated attempt at humor in the HPD video looked like the work of a blindspot, those implicit biases that we don’t know we have and find difficult to identify much less address. Learning how blindspots operate and learning lessons from the blindspots we discover is essential work for everyone, but especially for white people with power in society, like police officers and journalists.

The process starts with listening but it doesn’t end there. We have to both learn and do better. In this case, for me, that means critiquing my own words before publishing them, checking to see if my writing is informed by privilege that effectively protects my power from accountability.

Books Without Borders

At the Homewood board meeting on Feb. 10, Books Without Borders founder Jackie Riffice reported on the community book club’s January meeting, which focused on “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson. The book, Riffice said, “helps us understand that the root causes of systemic inequality that shape American life are not based on color specifically, but on social order and hierarchy as well. We shared thoughts and opinions about how race functions as a system to keep white people in an upper cast and Black people at the bottom.”

The next meeting will be at 6:45 p.m. March 24 at the Rock Shop, 18109 Dixie Highway in Homewood. She said the discussion will not be on a new book but on lessons learned from the three books the club has read so far. In addition to “Caste,” the group has discussed “So You Want To Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds.

I want to give a shout-out to two Flossmoor trustees who attended Books Without Borders in January, Gary Daggett and Rosalind Mustafa. Both offered their thoughts on the club and its mission.

“I am thrilled to have any group or organization in our community who’s mission is to have a positive impact on racial issues, our community’s differences or to help build an even more actively inclusive community than we already are,” Daggett said. “From what I have seen, this book club and it’s discussions really are aiming to do exactly that. My experience so far has been that this group of residents are willing to explore what are often very sensitive, complex and nuanced cultural and racial topics and they do so with a mutual respect, open mindedness and willingness to have our sometimes very established thoughts and ideas challenged. It is refreshing and such an important undertaking.”

“Jackie Riffice believes that when we learn more, we do better. So, she started Books Without Borders,” Mustafa said. “I am so glad she is brave enough and committed enough to facilitate difficult discussions about race and experiences that connect and divide us. Flossmoor is not different in this regard from any other place I’ve lived as an adult. These discussions are hard ones. But those who have attended Books without Borders have been willing to share, admit not knowing, and many times, surprise each other with personal stories. It’s been a good experience. Flossmoor has experienced racially charged events that, to me, have never been fully discussed for solutions or understanding. Maybe we’re on the right track, using good reads as the vehicle to move forward. I hope you will join us.”

Anti-racism library

I’m about half way through Michael Harriot’s “Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America.” He looks at the familiar stories and trajectories of U.S. history but from an unapologetically Black perspective.

Here’s an illustrative quote: “The Union army never intended to free the slaves. Lincoln didn’t want to free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation couldn’t free the slaves. Black people freed themselves. And in doing so, they defeated the Confederacy and freed America from its most undemocratic institution. They were less concerned with flags, taxation, or saving the Union than they were with saving their people.”

For white people of a certain age, this book will usefully complicate and contradict everything you learned in school about U.S. history. It’s liberating to realize that the story we were were taught was one version, not the immutable truth it was presented to be. Other versions tell us things about our country that we really need to know.