Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
‘THEY’RE SCARED OF US’
Lavel White was a junior in high school, living in public housing in a predominantly black, historically impoverished neighborhood in Louisville, when he turned on the news and saw that a police officer was acquitted for shooting a young black man in the back.
Next time, he thought, it might be me.
The 2004 killing of 19-year-old Michael Newby propelled White to activism. He’s now a documentary filmmaker and a community outreach coordinator for the Louisville mayor’s office.
Still, he knows if he got pulled over and made a wrong move, he could die.
He’s had his own frightening run-ins with police, treated like a criminal for a broken taillight and another time in a case of mistaken identity. There are the smaller slights, too, such as white women clutching their purses when he passes them on the street.
“They fear people’s black skin. They’re scared of us. They see every black male as a thug, as a criminal,” he said. “The vigilantes, the cops. People keep killing us and it’s got to stop.”
He’s been at the protests in his neighborhood almost every night, and worries his neighbors will live with the trauma the rest of their lives: the military truck on city streets, the tear gas, the boom of flashbangs, soldiers with assault rifles, police in riot gear.
He and his wife have a 2-year-old daughter and a son, born just three months ago.
“Just because of the color of his skin, he’s going to be set back by the oppression of 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow Laws and injustice, inequalities, racism, he’s going to have to walk and live that life,” he said.
They want him to grow up tough enough to stand up for his rights and his community.
So they named him Brave.