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There’s a sinkhole in my chest

June 28, 2015
David Broadwater

David Broadwater

OPINION By DAVID BROADWATER,

Salty waves burn my cheeks – boiled by the seething rage in my gut.

I was 16 years old when four black girls were blown to bits in their Birmingham church. On the day I became a citizen at 21, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Today, at 68, I see nine more massacred in their Charleston church.

Although I’m horrified by such barbaric acts, I’m more dejected and enraged by the frantic scramble of white politicians, pundits and media blowhards trying to rationalize this latest massacre as anything other than a KKK-style racist terror attack.

But, what burns the deepest and hottest is my utter disdain for my white brothers and sisters who adamantly and ardently refuse to acknowledge and rectify the chronic, systemic and corrosive racism that permeates our society.

The day-to-day, year-in-year-out degradation and exclusion meted out upon non-whites in our country in the employment, scholastic, criminal-justice, housing and health-care spheres inflict a level of pain and suffering I, as a white man, have never had to endure.

I’d like us to stop doing this before I die. Let’s really live up to our creed of “liberty and justice for all.” Please.

David Broadwater is an activist who has lived in Atascadero for 43 years.


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Like every other race in this world, African Americans are manipulative, self-serving, and playing the angles and they need to wake up. Shootings and racist flags and rampant use of the n-word are all very provocative and distracting but are nothing compared to the outlooks and practices of the powerful, white-male-run structures in our society, toying with you at this moment, even in beautiful, happy places like SLO County.


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How about we just stop name-calling, period. Weren’t we all supposed to grow out of that shit by the sixth grade and leave it on the playground?


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Cherry-pickin’ media


If you look around, most people don’t give a flying hoot about someone’s race and furthermore are friends with people from different backgrounds.


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Very naive.


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David, I wonder what your perspective is on the killings that take place every singe weekend in this country? Weirdly, they are mostly in liberal controlled cities with very tight restrictions on gun control, and are mostly carried out by “people of color” and sadly most victims are as well. Here is just one city, Chicago, run by Rahm Emmanual and a bunch of other corrupt politicians…link to follow. 15 killed last week alone!


http://homicides.redeyechicago.com


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There is a sinkhole in thousands of young black men’s chests each year due to bullets put their by other young, fatherless black men.


Don’t invite society due to 1 incident in a country of 300M. Intelligent people look to what is occurring daily, patterns repeating over and over to conclude that there are systemic problems.


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It’s not racist to point out the obvious truth that you have written.


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Bob,

I could not agree with you more on the impressions our kids and ourselves are receiving every day. We are desensitizing our brains. Why do companies advertise on TV? Impressions work- negative and positive. Horse crap lyrics in many songs, tv shows that glorify stupidity, ( Tosh O, jackass etc) raunchy shows all around. We expect our kids to not emulate some of this stuff. Guess again. My wife and I raised 5 kids and watching the junk on tv now and all the crime shows like CSi etc. I bet the average tv person witnesses 300 murders/assaults a year. We are still working our way out of the influence of all the above. Anyway thanks for your great articulation of what many of us feel today. Rome went down hard and it started with the decadent behavior of people who influence others. Think our society is immune to failing, guess again. When we become desensitized to certain behaviors being wrong we fail to care when they occur. We don’t voice our concerns, political leaders don’t react. It snowballs to the point there is no conscience, no feelings to say “no that’s not right”. At least not on a grand enough scale. Enter the scourge to terrorize those who are passive and unable to recognize the danger they are in before it is too late. It’s making its way to our shores, through our borders and into our society. We are too passive, too political, too naive to see what threats are ahead of us. When we are not outraged at what is taking place in Middle East, we have been desensitized. Bob, you called it first. Hope your wrong, doubt you are.


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you forgot to mention cable news — don’t underestimate the lengths they go to to promote prejudice and divisiveness in order to both drive ratings higher and perpetuate the status quo. Its the black man, the mexican, the native, or the white man — not the people who are using corrupt backdoor means to really rob us blind.


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Yeah here we go again, white people are evil and everyone else is as pure as the wind driven snow. Give me a break. Did Mr. Broadwater write a sappy opinion when 9 troops were killed at fort Hood by a racist terrorist?

How about when 5 black youths dam near beat a white man to death last year while shouting racial epithets? (the DA’s office is still trying to decide if that incident was a hate crime)

How about when two cops were shot by a black man in NY while they were eating lunch? Did that cause Mr. Broadwater to weep?

Racist and evil haters come in all colors. The constant accusations of racism and white supremacy from people that seem to hate white skin is beginning to close in on insulting. Whether they hate their own white skin or mine. Knock it off.


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