America. Black and Blue

Thursday July 7, 2016 I turned on CNN and saw my friend Christina's block in downtown Dallas on TV.  There was a Black Lives Matter protest which both CNN and Fox News agreed was "peaceful." The event had been peaceful UNTIL a sniper decided to open fire on the Dallas Police and Dallas Area Rapid Transit Police from a parking garage. I sat there trying not to cry and feeling as if I'd been kicked in the gut.
        

Let's back up. For as long as there have been black communities there have been police in them.  Richard Penniman who is better known as the self proclaimed "Architect of rock and Roll" Little Richard's father ran a bar in Macon Georgia and was shot and killed by one of the bar's patrons. The police detained the murderer but released him and explained that one black man killing another wasn't a crime worth wasting "tax payer money" to bring to court. Richard was infuriated but there was nothing that could or would be done.
       In 1955, Chicago teen Emmet Til was kidnapped at gun point from his cousin's home in rural Mississippi where he was tortured and killed for being "fresh" with a woman whose husband owned a local store. Two men were arrested and tried for the teen's murder but were found not guilty. The reason? Til was black and the two men who killed him were white.

      The Ku Klux Klan once used as a major selling point in recruiting that none of its members had ever been convicted of killing a black man. When John Lewis (now an elderly congressman) was one of the "Freedom Riders" who attempted to integrate interstate buses in the 60s was traveling across the South, J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation called local sheriff's departments and let them know when bus loads of "agitators" and "trouble makers" were to arrive.  The result was usually the sheriff letting local hotheads know when the buses would arrive and then when the sheriffs department would arrive.  Essentially the sheriff's departments were giving the local thugs a good 10 minutes to crack skulls and leave before they arrived. In the minds of many people of color the police were the guys who kept you in line and who protected those who brutalized and slaughtered you. Luckily the 60s brought about laws that enabled persons of color to integrate universities, vote, become civil servants (like police officers and elected officials) and to sit on juries.

          Let's put things into context here.  During the 1960s black cops were as rare as four leaf clovers. In many cities and states the idea of a black police officer male or female seemed laughable. Things have changed. Police randomly placing a random black man in jail because a crime was committed are over, but generations of this occurring have lead to a degree of distrust that has been passed along like a horrible disease.  Police brutality at one point WAS rampant in this country no matter what  your race. Blacks (in my opinion) probably felt more "victimized" because the criminal justice system more often than not gives them harsher sentences than whites accused of similar crimes.  The criminal justice system is harsher on defendants who can't afford good legal representation and as many of the impoverished are persons of color this creates the appearance of a bias. 

        Being a cop is like being president of the United States. There are those who love you and in whose eyes you can do no wrong, some who can be objective to you and what you do and those who vilify everything you do. Your actions have an impact and you have to make decisions upon which the lives of others hang in the balance.  It's not a job any geek of the street could do. The great thigns you do will often be ignored and your every error will be hung around your neck like an albatross.
    
       I can't claim to be an expert in the "black experience". My "black experience" was growing up with both parents in a working class neighborhood. I can't speak for someone who grew up in a much poorer neighborhood with a single parent. I can't speak for someone who grew up literally afraid to cross a street in the North or Midwest for fear of entering an Irish or Italian neighborhood because I have no idea what that's like. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said last week according to Time Magazine:  “If you are a normal, white American, the truth is you don’t understand being black in America and you instinctively under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.” If I said the exact same thing I'd be called a whiner or simply ignored or dismissed.  I do however know what it's like to be unfairly stereotyped and judged by the actions of others OR by the preconceptions of others and to that end I'll wager most cops do too.
      Cops and men of color have much in common. Entirely too many people are quick to assume the very worst about both us to be true. Many make snap judgements about both of us based on the actions of a handful of sociopaths who in no way represent all of us. Both groups have to deal with stereotypes and prejudice from people who have limited (if any interaction) with us.  Sadly both groups have detractors who wouldn't lose a wink of sleep if large numbers of us were brutally killed.

Oh and we have one other thing in common,  neither of us seems to want to listen to the other.  There are serious similarities between men of color and the cops and differences. What needs to happen is a dialogue in which we take a good look at the common ground we share and stop looking at our ugly history.  We should think about where this country is headed and make sure that one day when or if we hear about a man being shot by police, we don't ask his race but rather what events lead to the confrontation between he and local police.