I am a former business financial auditor and as a result have many friends on the police department, I am an African American man. I respect the job the police are tasked with and respect the struggles of the people I have been lucky enough to be a part. These two things are not mutually exclusive.
We have reached a point in America where if you protest a culture of young Black men and women being unjustifiably killed by law enforcement officers, you’re a cop hater. If you express support for the hard working beat cop and you are a Black man or woman you are a sellout, both points of view are stupid. I can only speak from an African American’s point of view, I have lived in this skin all my life. I have been pulled over for driving in White neighborhoods, I have been followed in department stores with my pockets bulging with money. It is infuriating and humiliating. Walking through your day with an assumption of guilt is hard to take and hard to swallow.
I have two sons and nine male grandchildren, I inhale when my sons leave their homes for work and don’t take a breath of relief until I hear their voices again at night. If I live long enough, I have to live with the specter of nine more of my flesh and blood surviving life with the Sword of Damocles hovering above them, less the power. Before the commenters and white-splainers begin, and castigate my description as melodramatic and tell me how complying will save my life and the life of my children, my personal history tells me otherwise. Five police officers were murdered by a gunmen last night in Dallas and the horrific nature of the man responsible is glaringly evident. It would not only be foolish but insulting for me to try and explain away the violence and senselessness of his actions.
We have been so removed from reasonable discourse, maybe we should try accepting the experiences of others. When I was twenty-eight years old I was stopped by a white police officer leaving my sister-in-law’s home at ten o’clock at night. My crime was, I had worked hard enough to buy a nice car and my in law lived near a drug invested neighborhood. I am not going to fall into the trap of presenting my life’s history to pre-prove my innocence that should not matter. I am an American citizen my innocence should be assumed, not my guilt. The policeman approached me with gun drawn, addressed me as “sporty” and made me exit my vehicle and searched my car. I was too young and too scared to realize he had no right to do so, so I submitted. In the shameful light of current events, maybe that decision kept me alive.
I felt the humiliation of that incident for weeks. I was made to feel guilty for living while Black. To this day, the dripping arrogance and assumption of my guilt in the eyes of that officer still haunts me. When you watch the video of Philando Castile’s shooting aftermath, listen to the abject terror in the voice of the police officer. Even mortally wounded, Mr. Castile was still not human enough to the officer on the scene and receiving medical aid was out of the question, until Mr. Castile was dead. When you hear these stories from people of color, instead of explaining, “things have changed” or denouncing it as an “exaggeration,” just listen, there really is a problem.