[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYgXNGEJR3k[/youtube]
Around the time of the Sandra Bland death, I was at a car repair shop, waiting in the sitting room, watching a show on Netflix on my phone at eye level. Directly in front of me, at the counter, was a police officer. As a black man around law enforcement, I was wary of this officer. Not tremendously — I mean, I didn’t have anything to be afraid of. But slightly on guard. This feeling grew when he began looking my way furtively, somewhat nervously, on guard.
It took me a couple seconds for me to realize that he thought I was recording him with my phone camera. I shifted the camera away, and we looked each other in the eyes. He nodded, understanding, and I nodded back, understanding, as we looked each other dead in the eyes. We never said a word, and it lasted about half a second, but I learned more in that half-second than I have in hundreds of arguments on the Internet and articles I’ve read. Because I saw his life in his eyes, and he seemed to see my life in his.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.
A few days ago, I saw a video taken by Lavish Reynolds of a man shot several times in the chest, bleeding. The man was black, like me. He was 32, like me, and his birthday would have been less than a month before mine. Like me, he was respectful to police and had no felonies on his record.
Unlike him I’m not shot, yet. But seeing the blood soak through his clothes as his body lay there, increasingly limp, as the police pointed the gun inside and Lavish Reynolds begged for the dying man to stay alive…it did something to me.
And still, later that day, when I saw Lavish Reynolds talking about how she had been thrown in jail for no reason, without food and water, and how she broke down in tears saying, “That officer’s going to be able to go home to his family and say, ‘Killed another nigger today. I just shot another nigger today.’”
It was powerful. Y’know…I saw the people around her, comforting her, crying with her, and praying for her. I’m an atheist, and I was touched.
What got to me is that we only knew this because there was a video rolling. If there hadn’t have been, people wouldn’t have believed her. Many would question, “Did that really happen, or are you just making it up?” Except, maybe, for her family and other black individuals in the area who knew the way things went down between themselves and law enforcement there. More anger, as had been stored many times before. More people saying, “Fuck the police” because they had seen loved ones silenced by those who were supposed to protect them. Can you imagine that? Your worst enemy being the ones who are supposed to protect you.
Later, in Downtown Dallas, about an hour from where I live, a lone gunman, an army reservist, opened fire on police, saying he wanted to kill white people. He fatally shot five.
My first thought was that it would send this country into a racial tailspin. And sure enough, those who had been mum abut Philando Castile suddenly began talking about police officers, as if the police officers’ death somehow justified Philando Castile’s shooting.
I’ve been thinking about my response to this incident quite a bit. I identify with Philando Castile, a lot. If I get pulled over for a broken taillight, I will be scared as the officer walks up to my car window. I will say, “yes, sir” and “no, sir” as respectfully and nonthreateningly as I can manage. I will follow all his instructions carefully. And I may still get shot.
And I say I’m afraid knowing that the police is afraid, too. We’re looking at each other, trapped in our worlds of fear, and the slightest tweak on either side could lead to a bomb going off.
The way to break it is to have moments like that half-second, where we look at each other in the eyes and understand each other. We have to have serious, honest conversations about race relations in this country.
Or, at least, that’s how the surgeon who treated the police officers felt.
Like me, he understood “the anger and the frustration and the distrust of law enforcement.” The same as I felt. The same as the man who shot the police officers felt.
And what I liked is that he didn’t think the solution was to stop talking about it. The solution was not to close off discourse. The solution, instead, was to start a conversation.
Because as militant as I often appear to be regarding race-related issues, I know that if I don’t talk to people with other viewpoints I will be trapped in my bubble, and if they don’t talk to people of other viewpoints they will be trapped in theirs. We will grow up to be even more segregated as a society, arenas of every-increasing anger.
If you want us to take American society back, we will need to have a conversation. We will need to build understanding. It will not happen overnight. But gradually, maybe we can build trust.
It’s going to take tough conversations. It will take anger and tears. It will take brutal honesty and vulnerability. It will take love, and sometimes even the honest expression of hate so that it can be understood, exposed, and healed.
And it will also take caution. It will take vigilance in keeping the vulnerable safe. It will take careful consideration. It will take an awareness of heritages and histories. It will take respect — especially regarding people we have been told for hundreds of years we should not respect. For many of us black people, that may be the face we see in the mirror.
Because if we don’t do this work, we will fear each other more, we will hate each other more, and eventually angry words will become fights in the streets. We have to talk about this. But we have to talk about it on an equal playing field. We have to respect views we may not be used to respecting. We have to understand and empathize with communities that have been long neglected and thus shielded from understanding. If we don’t, we’ll tear each other apart.
One thing you have to know, to some extent, is that many of us are scared. As the surgeon stated:
“I want the police officers to see me, a black man, and understand that I support you, I will defend you, and I will care for you. That doesn’t mean that I do not fear you. That doesn’t mean that if you approach me, I will not immediately have a visceral reaction and start worrying for my personal safety. But I’ll control that the best I can, and not let that impact how I deal with law enforcement.”
Friday night, I marched through a Fort Worth street shouting with a crowd of 40 to the surrounding police, “Protect us. Serve us. Don’t shoot us.” That’s still our plea. We want the police to protect us. We don’t want the police to be there to disproportionately protect one skin tone. We want to trust and to be trusted. It’s just not very easy right now, for either side.
And it’s really not fair for police to be the only ones to avoid racism and bridge the divide. It’s going to take a bigger conversation. As the surgeon said, “The problem is the lack of open discussions about the race relations in this country.”
It’s not about police. It’s about our entire generation, every ethnicity and profession. No, we are not our parents’ generation. But our parents’ generation had racial tension because their parents had racial tension that they passed down. And we have racial tension because our parents had racial tension that they passed down. We inherit many of their problems. And until we admit that and talk about it, we won’t heal.
That’s just a fact. Do we have to do it? No more than someone with cancer has to go through chemo. But if we don’t, our nation won’t heal.
I hear anxiously from some who ask about a quick fix. This reminds me of a spouse asking for advice on how to get their partner back after 350 years of being unreliable. Think about it.
We thought that slavery’s end would be the answer, and got segregation. We thought voting would be the answer, and got voting tests. We thought segregation’s end would be the answer, and got the war on drugs as an excuse to throw us in prison. We got education, and got segregation — and then when we got rid of segregation in law the continued inequities gave us de facto segregation. We are still, according to every study we have available, second-class citizens. American society has been courting a relationship with us for hundreds of years, brigning flowers each time, only for us to see repeated abuse and betrayal.
I see a lot of resentment from white people who think all black people want is a big present — like flowers. But the fact is that flowers won’t solve the problem of 350 years of unreliability. What will is patience, understanding, empathy, and a track record that grows into a mutual love across the divide, and eventually becomes trust. As Obama said recently, this may not happen in his lifetime or mine or even our children’s. But we can make things better now, and we can make things better a hundred years from now. Or we can keep things the same, or worse.
The difference is in whether we talk about it, instead of ignoring it. Ignoring it will make the problem worse; it won’t go away. We need to have open, honest discussion. We can start here. What do you think the state of race relations is in the United States?
Thank you for reading.
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