San Francisco Anchor Admits Racial Bias Despite...
/
KTVU Anchor Frank Somerville says that one night he was walking past a bus stop. A white woman sitting alone on a the bus bench, and a Black man heading in her direction.
Right then, Somerville decided to “keep an eye” on the situation. Suspecting this Black man was surely up to no good.
Then, out of nowhere, a young boy ran up and grabbed the man’s hand. Somerville felt like a complete ass; changing his whole perspective once he realized the man was a father.
“I have a confession to make. It’s embarrassing.” He wrote, the man did absolutely nothing wrong and yet I saw him as a possible threat. The main reason was because of his skin color.
Somerville didn't consider himself as having a racist bias. He has a black daughter, he grew up in Berkeley.
He writes on the way home that night, he was thinking to himself, “I have a Black daughter and yet I still have that #$%&*^$ bias. What the $%^$&$*^#@ is wrong with me?”
He further chides himself saying he had just had a conversation with that daughter, telling her she will probably be treated differently than her “white sister” due to people’s attitudes. “And here I am doing the EXACT same thing,” he adds.
Just call it what it is man, institutionalized racism, and yes, its ugly.
Somerville is sharing his story for a reason. The same reason many Black folk say white people seemingly ignore. He says the only way to eliminate these biases “is to realize they exist in the first place.”
Food for thought indeed.
H/T Eur ThisNThat
