'The Dignity of Being Black or Hispanic in America'

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These things happen and I have been thinking of them more after the Philando Castile verdict, which I, like David French, think was a miscarriage of justice. Mr. Castile was an innocent man gunned down for no cause by an overly tense police officer giving Mr. Castile conflicting orders. Mr. Castile did his best to comply with conflicting orders and was killed for doing so. That’s not right.

The verdict came around the time a friend sent me an email. He has an older, small pickup truck with an Our Lady of Guadalupe bumper sticker in Spanish on the back window of the truck. He is as white, if not whiter, than I am. But ever since he has had that truck he randomly gets pulled over. More often than not, the police officer is visibly shocked when he approaches the truck to see a white guy at the driver’s seat. The truck is a magnet for the police.

There is a pastor where I live who was once pulled over, doing the speed limit, in Texas. His wife is white and the police just wanted to make sure she was okay.

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Most of you reading this along with myself cannot relate to that. But I have a question — what does it do to the dignity and soul of a person who follows the law and still gets treated like a second class citizen? What about the equal dignity of all people? Given the Philando Castile injustice, we as a nation really need to think more about this.

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There is one last point I want to make and it is one some of you are probably making right now. You are probably thinking that if there were not so many young black men committing crime or Mexican men joining gangs or coming over as illegal aliens that the police would stop doing this. They brought it on themselves because of the behavior of so many others in their community and until they clean up their community they cannot expect otherwise.

I bet you are thinking that. I thought it too for a long time.

But I am a conservative and I oppose judging any person based on a group. Each man is entitled to his own dignity, not the dignity he gets by virtue of being a part of some group. To think otherwise is not conservative. To constantly badger an innocent man because of the behavior of those who might share his race or ethnicity is a rejection of our founding creed and the ideals of conservatism.

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