Brian Mittge Commentary: To Help Heal Our Land, Walk a Mile in Another Man’s Skin

Posted

Last weekend, as the black-and-white scenes of “To Kill a Mockingbird” flickered on the Fox Theatre screen, I thought about the long sweep of America’s history with racial strife and reconciliation — dark days of loss and what each of us can do to create hope.

The dramatic climax of the film is a courtroom scene in which soft-spoken southern attorney Atticus Finch, played by Gregory Peck, calls on the jury to acquit a black man unjustly accused of a crime he clearly did not commit.

“For the love of God,” Atticus implores the blank-faced jurors, “do your duty.”

(Spoiler alert: They don’t.)

The rest of us, though, are filled with a desire to do something noble and grand in the face of injustice. Our nation’s ancient racial wounds are still inflamed. What is our duty?

The answer, I think, comes in a quiet moment in the film (and the bestselling novel by Harper Lee on which it is based). 

Atticus is talking to his daughter, 6-year-old Scout, who is angry at an injustice she suffered at school. Atticus, in a moment of fatherly tenderness, says, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Ah, there’s a job for us in 2015 and beyond. 

We watch the news and see fire, fear and fury as racial tensions flare over police shootings of unarmed men, with race being a big part of the confrontation before, during and after.

Sadly, while America is still a land of remarkable opportunity, it is equally true that many people have a steeper hill to climb, a path with more obstacles. It’s uncomfortable to acknowledge that the color of a person’s skin can create barriers. So does the economic class in which a person was raised. For people of color — especially those living in poverty — the path is often much more difficult. 

It’s easier to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when those straps are longer and stronger, and if you get second, third and fourth chances because of the advantages that accrue to you from the circumstances of your birth.



We who are white are the beneficiaries of hundreds of years of a stacked deck. Much of the obvious framework of that system has been dismantled over the past 150 years, but many of its impacts are still largely in place. That’s a difficult fact to face, but an important one. 

The issue is deep and complex. What I wish for, what we need, is empathy, humility and an ongoing effort to see these issues from others’ point of view. As much as we wish that skin color still didn’t make a difference, it does. All of us would benefit from climbing into another person’s skin and walking around in it. 

That begins with friendships and relationships, but for us in Lewis County, that is difficult. The latest U.S. Census figures show that our county is 93.1 percent white and 0.8 percent black. 

That’s neither good nor bad, but it does create a regrettable limitation on our experience. It’s important for us to understand the perspective of others. When a black man is shot by a white police officer, we who are white must try to understand the perspective of a person of color whose shared community experience might have created reason to fear for his life during an interaction with a police officer. 

Of course individual choice matters. Someone who talks back to a police officer or runs from a cop is putting his or her life in danger. Still, many people — of all races, but especially people of color — have historic reasons to not instinctively see all law enforcement officers as universal defenders of life and safety. 

In the same way, we should understand the perspective of law enforcement officers, men and women who also legitimately fear for their lives. With every traffic stop, every knock on the door, every 911 call, these vital public servants know they could be met with bullets and malice.

What if we all reminded ourselves that life is different for others, difficult in ways that we have never experienced? What if we all tried to put on another man’s skin and walk around in it? Perhaps we would have a little more of the wise compassion that our country needs and that each of us, no matter our skin color, craves. 

•••

Brian Mittge and his family live outside Chehalis. He thinks it’s high time to start reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” to his kids at bedtime. Reach him at brianmittge@hotmail.com.