DO NOT AVERT YOUR EYES!

In high school and college, I became very passionate about issues of diversity and inclusion, but for about fifteen years following law school, as my personal life became consumed with my career, marriage, children, and then divorce, I rarely thought about these issues beyond training my own children and contradicting the rare family member or acquaintance who was bold enough to utter a blatantly racist remark in my presence. As a white, able-bodied, cis-gender, heterosexual, middleclass woman living in Farragut in the 21st century, I lived relatively free from experiencing bias or prejudice – for years. I only recall one episode of discriminatory maltreatment during those years – by a white male lawyer about twenty years older than me. During a contested probate hearing, in the midst of my argument, with his face flushed with anger, opposing counsel leapt to his feet, and screamed, “You are a liar!” I am still unsure whether it was my gender or my youthfulness - or both - that allowed him to believe that behavior was appropriate. As the judge barely responded, I was stunned and humiliated, but the impact on my life was fleeting; the only casualty was my respect for that lawyer, to whom I had previously referred some business.

During those self-absorbed years, as I watched the news, I kept seeing stories of black men killed by police or alleged “concerned citizens,” and there were so many: Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Ahmaud Arbery, and then, George Floyd.1 On Facebook, I saw post after post from friends with brown or black skin anguishing about having to admonish their teens about how a traffic stop could be a life and death encounter and how the teens should behave in such situations. I saw a candidate for President of the United States mocking disabled people and making blatantly racist comments about

Mexicans as a large crowds cheered. I felt like racism was suddenly becoming more ordinary and blatant. Then, in the midst of a pandemic, when the world slowed a bit and the news seemed overwhelmingly negative every day, it hit me like a ton of bricks: America’s “race problems” had been here (and throughout the U.S.) the whole time, but I had turned away. Since law school, my local community – the people with whom I interacted on a regular basis, both professionally and personally – had shrunk and become extremely homogeneous. I had unconsciously become segregated from diverse perspectives and experiences and insulated from the microaggressions, disadvantages and oppression that people with darker skin cannot escape because American society (as a whole) sees the color of their skin before recognizing their humanity. I vowed to change course and again work to make a difference on these issues, even if I felt alone and powerless.

Real societal change – to the point where each human has value for simply being a human - will require all of us who claim to be decent, hard-working, proud Americans to show up, work together, keep listening and learning and continue speaking up and pressing on - even when the conversations are tough, or we feel uncomfortable, hopeless, burned out, or vulnerable. And I mean ALL OF US! Together, we are stronger than we imagine, but we must look at (not beyond) cruelty and acknowledge injustice, both in our past and our present, to drive such vices from American culture and keep doing so.

1 This is not an exhaustive list of casualties who have suffered such a fate. These are merely the names I still recall today from those television news stories, but there were others during that period and since.

By: Christine Knott Knott Law