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Finding A Cure For This 'Cancer'

Cancer is known as the silent killer, since people don’t always feel sick when diagnosed. But doctors can run tests and inform the patient that -- despite how she feels -- she is sick and needs to undergo treatment and change her lifestyle, lest the cancer spread.

Like cancer, racism is a silent killer and also has been studied in great detail by experts for decades. Like cancer it is complex, appearing in many forms and requiring challenging cures.

For more than a century, legitimate research on racism ensued across disciplines: economics, psychology, sociology, political science, law, history, and on. Doctors have examined the evidence in countless ways, and it is virtually impossible to not admit that racism is a societal problem often misunderstood.

Despite all that research, some still refuse to believe the realities which many are protesting in the streets of Charlotte, Dallas, Milwaukee, etc., and on college campuses across the country.

We can continue to avoid real conversations about race. We can dismiss the concerns of an interracial coalition of concerned, frustrated citizens. We can dismiss acts of protest as simple vandalism and violence, even though the root causes of current protests mirror those from the 90s, 60s, and before. We can pretend that none of this would be a problem if some people would just quit bringing it up or just be compliant.

Or, we can listen to the doctors and the folks who experience the ravages of institutional and systemic racism and learn new ways for our society, lest this cancer eat away at our body politic.

I am Joseph Flynn, and that is my perspective.

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