If you want to be treated right, it helps to act right

Your Virginia Tech Politics and Religion source
Forum rules
Be Civil. Go Hokies.
Post Reply
133743Hokie
Posts: 11220
Joined: Thu Aug 22, 2013 12:29 am

If you want to be treated right, it helps to act right

Post by 133743Hokie »

Good column by RT-D's Mark Holmberg. I've always liked his folksy, conversational style of writing.
====================================

On Thursday, with tongue somewhat in cheek, I launched a movement on social media:

The Act Right Movement.

All are welcome!
It doesn’t matter your age, your race, your sex, orientation, creed or political beliefs.
You can act right!
You can obey the law, take care of your family, earn your way, live honorably, be a positive — not a negative — lookout for those who struggle, stand up for those who can’t, don’t make excuses.
The Act Right Movement is for every soul who cares and truly believes that we are all equal in our ability to act right.


Too often, we celebrate those who don’t. We find excuses for acting wrong.
Please act right — for your sake, your family’s sake, for the health and security of this nation.
It can save you from arrest and incarceration, greatly reduce your chances of being shot by police, help avoid confusion about how to be respectful to others, make it easier not to feel like a victim.

It’s really that simple.
I believe, regardless of religious or political affiliations, we all know in our hearts what it means to act right.
Please join today if you haven’t already!


The response has been good — dozens of Facebook shares, tons of views, lots of likes — but not exactly viral.
No surprise there.

Those acting wrong get most of the attention in our politically and racially divided society, which is why it seems we are teetering on the brink of national disaster.
But most humans of all types have long been members of the Act Right Movement.
We see and feel it every day.

A little later Thursday, I was at the Pick & Pull auto salvage yard in Wilmington, N.C. (my part-time hometown), pulling a driver’s-side door for a friend and neighbor who was in the midst of a health crisis and whose car had been hit. The bulky door was a handful, and another customer — an African-American gentleman — dropped what he was doing and unlatched the junkyard’s big door, held it open for me, and made sure I got to my truck all right. “Thank you so much!” I said. “That’s what it’s all about!” he replied. “It is!”

I’m guessing he also had been watching the disturbing news reports of the protests, looting and riots in Charlotte, N.C., after Tuesday’s fatal shooting of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott by a police officer there. Gov. Pat McCrory had declared a state of emergency. One protester was mysteriously shot in the head and killed. Bystanders were beaten and kicked by rioters. One man had his pants pulled off while being assaulted by a mob.

Acting right? Hardly.

And this was a case of a black officer shooting a black man who, according to the Charlotte police chief, was armed with a pistol that he refused to put down despite clear orders from the officer. The victim’s daughter said he was holding a book — a claim that did go viral but is disputed by police. (Charlotte authorities have not yet released videos of the fatal confrontation but have shown them to Scott’s family.) And all this in a famously progressive and inclusive city. Charlotte is Harmonytown compared with places like Ferguson, Mo., Chicago or Richmond.

Of course, four days before the Charlotte shooting, a white police officer in Tulsa, Okla., fatally shot an unarmed black motorist who had left his vehicle beside the road and had been acting erratically, according to 911 calls triggering the confrontation. That officer, Betty Shelby, has been charged with first-degree manslaughter in the case. There has been no unrest in Tulsa.

As Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler said Thursday while announcing the manslaughter charge: “It is important to note, that despite the heightened tensions felt by all, which seemingly beg for an emotional response and reaction, our community has consistently demonstrated a willingness to respect the judicial process. It is the shared responsibility of all who have the ability to control their reactions to do just that.”

Amen, brother. We all have the responsibility to act right. Protest, yes. Riot, no.

Friends, here’s the hard part for some of you to digest: The victims in Charlotte and in Tulsa had long histories of acting wrong. Public court and arrest records obtained by reporters in those cities show almost mirror-image criminal histories and incarcerations for substance abuse, weapons charges and violent confrontations. Does that mean they deserved to be shot? Of course not. We must remain vigilant for police brutality and poor training. But consistently acting wrong increases the likelihood of a risky encounter with police.

And we have generations-old, segregated pockets of concentrated poverty where most of our violent crime festers, where most of these confrontations occur.

Isn’t it about time for all of us to act right and finally do something real about these parts of our cities? I know, I know ... I’m repeating myself. But it’s absolutely amazing to me how everyone shouts about police brutality while ignoring the bedrock situations that produce a never-ending flood of hard-to-handle humans who just don’t know how to act right.
It’s like criticizing how firefighters hold their hoses while ignoring the inferno we all keep feeding.

Yes, it’s a daunting task, to deconcentrate poverty and reverse the ridiculously high rates of illegitimacy and illiteracy in our poorest neighborhoods and cities. But we’re not acting right if we don’t try; if we don’t recognize that’s where the root of the problem lies.

We can have police who arrest perfectly and gently, and we’ll still have hellholes consuming our poorest citizens by the millions. Don’t they matter?!

Yes, I hear the voices of some of you rattling your newspaper right now: It’s easy for a white-privileged fool to say! Acting right to you means acting white! No, friends, it doesn’t. There are basic standards of decency, honor and kindness that apply to anyone with a beating heart.

The rioting in Charlotte — like Ferguson, Baltimore and Milwaukee — is just not right.
Kids of one race being told that police are hunting them gives them an out. And that’s not right — not for them, not for anyone. They and the rest of us should know the truth: that there’s a much smaller risk of a deadly encounter with police if you just act right.

And we should all know that we are not the reflection of what we often see on the news or in social media.
We hold doors for one another, we smile and show warmth and kindness, and we try our best to make things better.
We know in our hearts that it’s crucial to act right, not just for our fellow humans but also for ourselves.
Because we know if you want to be treated right, you have to act right.

Mark Holmberg’s work can be seen at Richmond.com and WTVR.com. He can be reached at mholmberg@tribunemedia.com.
Post Reply