Don’t think Lexington has a racism problem? Online trolls gave council, all of us, a reality check
Anyone who thinks Lexington doesn’t have a race problem clearly wasn’t listening to the Urban County Council meeting Wednesday night.
The meeting convened to get public comment on police brutality and much needed change to police discipline, but it soon devolved into a series of anonymous speakers shouting racial epithets, along with homophobic and anti-Semitic remarks, and writing the n-word in the comments. In between them, many of the speakers defended the police, squawked without understanding about “defunding the police,” and gave more gently cloaked racism in complaints about looting and riots that have not happened in peaceful protests downtown.
Police are investigating the callers, who may have been coordinated.
Council members, clearly shocked and upset at the words and their inability to control the technology, pondered whether to continue, when Angela Evans, who’s quickly becoming a leader in this discussion, turned on her microphone.
“It’s not a shocker to me that we’ve heard the words we’ve heard,” she said. “I think you all need to hear this more than me and James (Brown, the only two Black members on council). Quite honestly, some of those voices sounded like children or younger people which means they have parents who think that’s ok ...You all wouldn’t hear this any other way. You all wouldn’t know this is what people do, that this is what I get called walking down the street just because.”
There’s been a lot of talk about how Lexington is different from Louisville and Minneapolis, where Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were killed by police. Our police are different, we’re different, nicer, kinder.
But last night, Lexington showed us exactly why we shouldn’t be quite so complacent. We don’t know for sure the trolls are from Lexington, but this pathology certainly exists here. We just like to pretend it doesn’t. We live in a beautiful place, and it’s easy to think it’s beautiful inside and out. But that’s because many of us don’t have to face comments like this or police who think we’re criminals because of the color of our skin. Black and brown people know this underbelly better, which is why they’re out there marching.
There’s been a lot of talk about the protesters being too extreme or too loud or too demanding. It’s true that sisters Sarah Williams and April Taylor are not interested in being quiet or in compromising, but they have also kept the protesters largely in line as they make demands they’ve been talking about for more than a year. Evans made another good point last night.
“Sarah and April would never come to this council saying these things,” Evans said. “They have some anger, they speak strongly, I don’t advocate for a lot of their behavior, but this is something the public does need to see ... They would never come in here calling you any racial epithet, anything negative in that sense. I think this is time to have real conversations about what’s in our hearts and attitudes about what’s going on.”
Right now, police reform is on the table, and the Urban County Council needs to take some concrete steps to improve it. But Evans is right, we need to look at our hearts and attitudes, we need to look at our schools, our segregation, our souls. We need to listen a little more closely to what Sarah and April and all the protesters have to say. They were out for the 20th night in a row last night, frustrated and angry by a meeting that only reinforced what they’ve been saying all along.
Maybe we should also thank the trolls. They showed us what’s really going on.
This story was originally published June 18, 2020 at 10:06 AM.
