Use of excessive force product of stagnant views on race
As a 21-year-old white woman from a suburban town in Upstate New York, I could tell you of very few racist experiences in my own life.
This isn’t because no such experiences existed, but because I lived in a place where I seldom saw them. Looking through my high school yearbook is like the Kanye lyric, “Domino, domino. Only spot a few blacks the higher I go.”
The reason I start my article disclosing this evident whiteness is because, though you can see it in my picture, you don’t know how it shapes my thoughts and actions.
With all the recent media around Ferguson Missouri — and other racially-ignited police incidents around the country — I have a choice: I can choose to believe such incidences are real, or believe that, because they don’t happen to me, they aren’t. But that’s just not the case; I can see that it’s happening.
Videos are posted almost daily of police using excessive force, all in the defense of fearing for their safety during trivial traffic stops.
Close to home, Levar Jones of South Carolina was recently shot multiple times when he reached in the cab of his truck “too quickly” for requested documentation. He was pulled over for a seat belt infraction.
There was a recent spat between CNN anchors when reporting about a black man who was a passenger in his friend’s car with her two children. When he refused to give documentation (which wasn’t necessary, as he wasn’t driving) his window was broken and he was pulled from the car and tasered.
The anchors were legal analysts Paul Callan, a white man, and Sunny Hostin, a black woman. After Callan notes that the law will favor and protect the white officers who used excessive force, Hostin goes on to ask a necessary question: “As a woman of color, I don’t know what to do because this could happen to me … to my child … to my father … to my husband. What do we do about the inherent racism that we’re seeing over and over again in these United States in these traffic stops?”
When I started driving, my dad addressed safety issues: no texting, no drinking and no drugs. Nowhere did he have to add what to do to protect myself when a cop pulls me over because I don’t have to do anything special.
I’m not inherently threatening to a police officer because of the color of my skin.
Recently, my landlord was doing repairs for us. When he was going to leave, I needed a ride and he generously offered to take me. His cousin was with him, and when I climbed into the middle of the truck he told me to buckle up and watched to make sure I did.
Then he explained why he was so adamant. He said that as two black men in a car, they were likely to get pulled over. Having a white girl in the truck and our old refrigerator strapped in the back made it even more likely, so he was taking every precaution.
I said that I understood, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t. I would never have to be so cautious before pulling out of the driveway. Seeing flashing lights in my rear view will never mean a potential brush with death.
We are all products of our environments, but we are also able to see different perspectives if we try. This is one way that we are all the same.
This logic, if employed by our police officers, could mean a radical change in our country’s ongoing battle with racism.