Silent no longer
For years, I have wondered if I was living in a sort of alternate universe. Many fellow whites may identify. You hear the occasional story from the black friend who feels comfortable enough with you to share it. It's the stories about how they take precautions. “Wes, when the speed limit is 55, you drive five miles over it, I drive five under.” Huh? “Wes, my son wanted to go for a run but when I saw it was getting dark and he was in a hoodie, I wouldn't let him.” Huh? “Wes, you don't have to think about the color of your skin — I do. If I go for a run, I think `black man running'.” Huh?
There seemed a shared common wound in all these friends, and I couldn't even begin to identify. In fact, I really didn't like to hear about it. It made me uncomfortable. I wanted them to get over it. Stop talking about this race stuff. Yet, secretly, I knew there was a time in which when I saw a young black man driving a Mercedes I wondered if he might be a drug dealer. How could he otherwise afford that? I never thought that seeing a white kid doing the same. I can't explain why such an assumption was etched in my brain, but it was.
And then there's all the deaths. “Black lives matter!”, they'd shout. I would think “but all lives matter!” I couldn't get what they were talking about. I also knew, as a former prosecutor making use-of-force prosecution decisions, that not all police shooting scenarios were alike. But it didn't matter. With every black demise, it was like that
great and gnarly wound was reopened in my black friends.
My avoidance attitude was melting away as the stories gathered like connected dots of evidence in a jury trial, slowly revealing the shocking face of the perpetrator. The deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and now George Floyd. Of the black delivery truck driver cornered in an Edmond neighborhood by residents — seeing that man break down in tears telling his story, finally broke my avoiding heart. In his face, I could see the collective fear of all my black friends who have shared their stories over the past 30 years.
This isn't a police thing. It's an “us” thing. We polite white people want to be “friends” to black people but not if we must share their pain. We become the perpetrators because our avoidance perpetuates a system we would not tolerate for our own children. It's not the Jim Crow era, but something deeply ugly is still going on.
May God forgive my avoiding heart. My failure to love my neighbor. I will be silent no longer.