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Blindsided by Racism

Recently, Cody Goodnight walked into a Family Dollar store in east Fort Worth to buy a couple of sodas for his five-year-old son and himself. The clerk, Ricky Young, had some difficulty with the scanner and attempted to make small talk while handling the register. Cody did not respond.

Once the sodas rang up, Cody paid in cash. Ricky felt insulted for being ignored, so he threw the change at Cody, scattering it on the floor. The 31-year-old father bent down to pick it up and at that point, Ricky later told police, muttered a racial slur and threatened him. So Ricky did what any decent discount store clerk would do: he picked up then handy-dandy, anti-racism crowbar from behind the register and clubbed the apparent KKK frontman behind the ear.

Cody left the store dazed, but without a word, and went home. Stunned and in pain, he reported the incident to his mother. She and her husband contacted the police. When officers arrived at the discount store, Ricky was still working. "Is this about what happened earlier?" he asked innocently.

The police checked the surveillance video, but it had mysteriously been erased. They took Ricky's statement claiming racism and self-defense and then informed him of one significant fact.

Cody Goodnight is deaf. When Cody was a toddler, high fever robbed him of his ability to hear. He can make guttural noises, but tries to maintain silence because people have made fun of him. He communicates via sign language.

"When you're deaf, you don't make a point of starting conversations with people," Cody's mother said. Yet at least one person took offense at this deaf man's behavior, misconstruing it for disrespect and racism.

White America lives life much in the way Cody Goodnight does: oblivious to daily incidents of supposed racism. Sure, we know it's out there. It's ugly, it's horrible and we wish it never happened. But we don't experience in our daily lives.

But much of black America lives life like Ricky Young. Racism pops up everywhere, disrespectful and threatening...even when it's not really there.

When blacks strike back, many white people are stunned. We don't understand the anger and we don't see it coming. Cody Goodnight will undoubtedly be much more careful around black people from now on, lest they misconstrue his words (or lack of words) and actions as racist. Likewise, sensitive whites tend to overcompensate for a fear of being misunderstood.

White it is incumbent upon whites, as the majority and as the descendents of a racist history (civil rights activists notwithstanding), to do their part to make sure racism is dead and buried, it is also incumbent upon blacks to avoid the temptation to carry on a legacy of victimization and reject the anger that rises from an oppressed worldview. Whites must not act like slaveholders, nor must blacks act like slaves.

To read about Cody Goodnight's progress since his attack, visit www.codyg.info. To read the original news story (if it's still posted), visit the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.