America Is Awakening To What It Means To Be Black. Will We Also Awaken To What It Means To Be American?
Today’s outcry over violence and injustice against Black Americans feels different. The videotapes of police in Los Angeles beating Rodney King senseless in 1991 and of police in New York choking Eric Garner to death in 2014 were each met by shock. But after protests and even a riot, the officers in both cases were exonerated, and we all seemed to settle again into an uneasy truce. Official violence against unarmed Black men continued. Yet the video of police nonchalantly killing George Floyd, handcuffed and crying for his mother, has generated both genuine widespread disgust and sustained demands for change. Or so I hope.
The crime against Floyd has unleashed a torrent of truth-telling about both excessive police force and why we have excused it for so long. We are reminded of Rodney King and Eric Garner, yes, but also Amidou Diallo, Abner Louima, Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott and many more. Two college students driving away from a protest were tasered by Atlanta police two weeks ago, apparently for following a police order to drive away. Just three days ago, in the midst of America’s heightened awareness, Rayshard Brooks was shot in the back and killed by Atlanta police for running away, after being awakened for sleeping in his own car in a Wendy’s parking lot. These brutalizations and killings are a ghostly indictment of a system long in need of repair.
Folks’ stories have been told before but not heard. We hear now about the anxiety parents experience, regardless of their economic and social station or where they live, whenever their Black sons and daughters leave the house. We hear from the famous and the accomplished how their fame and accomplishment has not immunized them from the presumption of dangerousness by police. And, we are challenged to stop accepting official violence against Black men and women as the price society must pay for police to do their job.
I am grateful for the protesters demanding that we reconsider just what the job of the police should be. I am grateful for police leaders willing to engage the topic seriously, and for the many rank and file patrol officers who — despite a culture of excess — model restraint and respect in their work already. I am hopeful too that policymakers and political leaders at all levels will resist the tendency to focus on the few vandals, instead of on the urgent call of the overwhelmingly peaceful marchers for action to modernize policing in America.
Most of all, I welcome the challenge underlying the marchers’ demands and the issue of police violence: America’s long, stubborn habit of devaluing Black life.
The men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery while he was jogging were not police. The man who confronted and killed Trayvon Martin while he walked home snacking on a bag of Skittles was not a cop. Amy Cooper, inconvenienced perhaps but clearly not “threatened,” called the police on a Black man for asking her to leash her dog in Central Park, knowing that even pretending to be threatened could rain hell down on him. The presumption that Black men and women are dangerous reflects an even more insidious view about the value of Black lives in America. Reforming policing is a critical first step. It is hardly the only one needed.
Like every other Black trial lawyer I know, I have been mistaken for a defendant awaiting trial and directed elsewhere when I came to sit with other attorneys near the bench.
If the video of George Floyd’s killing has shocked America, the personal accounts of how Black lives are otherwise regularly, even systematically devalued seems to have produced surprise.
“Driving while black” may be generally familiar today, especially if it involves a high-end car in a white neighborhood. (I had to deal with that even while I was Governor of Massachusetts riding in an official car.) Less well appreciated is “shopping while Black,” “grilling while Black,” “mowing the lawn while Black,” “studying while Black,” to name just a few other of what my wife calls the “indignities du jour” that make otherwise mundane aspects of life a lot less so for Black people. I gave up going to baseball or football games long ago because I got tired of having to overhear drunken fans at Fenway Park or Gillette Stadium shout “nigger” or “ape” at players on the field.
Like every other Black trial lawyer I know, I have been mistaken for a defendant awaiting trial and directed elsewhere when I came to sit with other attorneys near the bench. The cut of my suit or the quality of my briefcase has never mattered.
There is a common theme in the experiences I have been reading from Black business leaders, Black students, Black pro athletes, from Black doctors, from Black college presidents, and many Black friends. It’s all pouring out, with special force from the fortunate few who have become experts at ignoring our fear and swallowing our rage so as not to make white colleagues and friends uncomfortable.
Racism in our public policy and politics is often subtle, but pervasive. Even before Donald Trump took matters to new lows, we were losing our ability to achieve comprehensive reform of our immigration laws because we cannot have the debate without racism.
Racism is at the root of the wealth and income gaps between Blacks and whites, of disparities in health outcomes and wellness, of persistent housing segregation, of the deterioration of our public schools, of food deserts, of environmental impacts, and of criminal sentencing discrepancies. The chances of being sentenced to death are exponentially higher in the case of a Black assailant and a white victim.
In the decades since the protests of the 1950s and ’60s, Black Americans made meaningful gains in access to public accommodations, transportation and voting as well as in business, government, not for profits, and the arts. It is also true that when it comes to dealing with the impact of America’s stubborn habit of devaluing Black lives, we have either stalled out or lost ground. From school segregation to affirmative action in hiring and promotion, legislation, litigation and political advocacy have left the lived experience for many much as it was before. Being “colorblind,” legitimizing claims of “reverse discrimination,” or deeming only intent, not impact, “discriminatory” became the pathways of society’s retreat, as if justice is in limited supply so that every gain by Black people takes something away from whites.
In academic testing, in college or graduate school admissions, in jobs and professional advancement, we are presumed unprepared, unqualified or otherwise unworthy. Every Black professional I know has had the experience of working twice as hard for half the recognition — just to overcome the unflattering or unhelpful presumptions of white superiors or colleagues.
In fact, racist presumptions about what Black citizens will do with their ballot is explicitly and unapologetically behind current widespread Republican efforts to make registration harder, gerrymander legislative districts, limit access to registration, reimpose poll taxes, make polling hours and locations less convenient, and purge voting lists of voters who have chosen to skip past elections.
We need the marchers to keep marching. We need leaders in government and in business to start listening.
The young Black people taking to the streets today are demanding simple justice. They are joined by people of every background, age and station. They have put their collective foot down, demanding for Black people what every American is taught to believe is our birthright — the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
What may be different today is that realities in the lives of Black Americans for generations — the economic uncertainty and social marginalization, the barriers to moving up and forward, the retreat from public education, the way these issues become urgent at election time and then vanish in between — are now shared by Americans everywhere. Whether because of the coronavirus, the culmination of “trickle down economics,” or the general incompetence of the current administration, America’s unfinished business is exposed.
We need the marchers to keep marching. We need leaders in government and in business to start listening. We need bold action to reinvent not only the systems that keep us safe but also the ones that help us flourish. For in America, where freedom was the point from the start, only equality, opportunity and fair play make freedom possible. The marchers remind us that when one group makes a claim on a more just and prosperous future, every American has a stake in their success.
