“The Race Card”

Dear Future President,

There have been multiple police shootings over the past couple of years, many of which people consider “Racist.” Many of these shootings are being falsely labeled. This is what I call “The Race Card.” According to http://racisminamerica.org/why-racists-and-the-privilege-believe-in-playing-the-race-card/, “Playing the race card is a saying used to describe race-based opportunism. The accuser is alleging that the “player” has “deliberately and falsely accused another person of being a racist in order to gain some sort of advantage.”

The basic idea of The Race Card is that people use “Racism” to falsely label an incident or get their way. Back to the police shootings, all of the major news shootings have had the same story. “White police officer kills/shoots black man.” They say that this is racist, but it’s really not. They could have a good reason to shoot, whether if they feel violated or if they won’t live if they don’t shoot. People blow up these incidences, when in reality, according to https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/07/18/police-shootings-and-race/?utm_term=.3bde33239307 , as of July 9, whites were 54 percent of the 440 police shooting victims this year whose race was known, blacks were 28 percent and Hispanics were 18 percent.” There are more white shootings than black shootings! Why make such a big deal over the smaller percent?!

In 5th grade, I had an interesting experience with The Race Card. One of my friends was asking me who someone was, and I started describing them. “They’re tall, glasses, brown hair, black.” Well, for some reason, to that, my friend freaked out. “You racist! You can’t just call someone that! Mrs. Davis? Jason called someone black!” For some reason, simply describing someone got me a week of silent lunch. A few days later, the SAME EXACT PERSON said the N-word, and got nothing. The weird part is, he was black himself. He and the school both played the race card. I found this to be extremely discomforting.

People could say “Oh, sure the race card is overused. Get over it!” I believe that racism should be taken seriously. God created us all equal, so we should try to stop it, not ignore it. Stopping racism can never happen too much. We have used skin color as a way to have priorities and minorities, but really, what we look like isn’t even important. It shouldn’t even matter, but for some reason, everyone thinks it does.

There are tons of incidences over the years where people have falsely misused racism. If decisions are made to stop it, everyone would have less to worry about and a whole lot less violence. I believe that you, our future president, should stop this.

Sincerely,

Jason , Creekland Middle School