On Tuesday evening, I was in a car accident. (This is why I didn't post on Wednesday or Thursday). No one was hurt and both vehicles received only minor damage. However, minor damage to a rusting out seventeen year old car with close to a quarter million miles on it that just barely passed inspection last time around was enough to render it beyond repairing.

We moved our vehicles off to the side of the highway and waited for the police to come. They made it about as quickly as you would expect during rush hour traffic and quickly and courteously made their report.

I am grateful for the job these policemen do. It is a difficult subject to talk about right now, in light of what has been going on in Ferguson, MO. Would things have been different if I were a young black man in Missouri? Perhaps.

I also don’t want to get into a variant of the Not All Men Meme. We should all know that not all cops are bad. Not all cops are racists. Not all cops are involved in police brutality. In fact, I believe that most law enforcement officers are good honest caring people that are trained to avoid escalation of the use of force and to examine their racial assumptions.

These days, politics and social media seems to be stuck with a focus on all that is messed up. I believe that we need to change our focus, to focus on gratitude for people who are doing the right thing, and helping making doing the right thing more of the social norm.

We need to focus on supporting young college men who confront their peers and tell that that it is just plain wrong to get a woman drunk so you can take advantage of her. We need to focus on law enforcement officers who stand up to racism and police brutality and who know that any racism or police brutality by law enforcement officer hurts all law enforcement officers.

So, I’ve been very interested in learning more about Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson. A picture of him showing a Kappa Alpha Psi greeting, being mistaken as a gang sign illustrates so many things. It illustrates the racism that many hold onto, immediately assuming a hand signal by a black man is a gang sign, instead of a sign of being a member of a college fraternity. It illustrates the good that can come from a good man getting involved with a good organization.