Black Lives Matter

I’m tired.  Of all of it.

I’m tired of worrying daily about whether one of my children will one day come up against a police officer and wind up dead. Before you think I’m overreacting, I have something to say about all of this and I’ve been holding it in for a while.

Last week, a teenage girl in South Carolina was caught on video as a police officer forcibly ripped her out of her chair, dragging her entire desk with her, and threw her to the ground where he proceeded to sit on her.  Yes, I’ve read the reports that she was disrespectful.  Yes, I realize she disobeyed a direct request from her teacher and then the officer.  Yes, she had a history of being a trouble maker.  Yes, the officer was a person the children in that high school liked, for the most part.  Here’s the thing:

I don’t care.

The question is not whether someone is a trouble maker or whether they behaved badly.  The question is how we treat people AFTER they behave badly.  Suppose I’m pulled over while driving and instead of respectfully responding to the officer, I sigh and swear and hesitate to obey and behave badly.  The fact is, very little is likely to happen to me.  I certainly wouldn’t fear for my life and I likely wouldn’t even be ticketed, much less arrested.  Imagine the same scenario with a driver who is black and the results could be deadly.  Because here’s the thing: we have a race problem.  We just do.

Indeed, many of the people who are complaining that these children who have been assaulted by police in the last six months deserved it because they had “attitude” or were disrespectful are the same people who are supporting the most loud-mouthed, disrespectful, bombastic presidential candidate we have ever seen in this country.  Respect?  Yes, we have a problem.

But respect is not the problem when it comes to disparate treatment.  Someone asked me on Facebook how I would suggest that the officer handle the obstinate teenager in South Carolina.  Um, first, that assumes that I agree the police should solve nonviolent problems in the schools.  I do not.  Second, I can think of dozens of solutions.  Call her parents and ask them to come get her.  Start packing her bags.  Call the school social worker and psychologist who are trained to deal with situations with children.  If you must call the police, handcuff her to the chair.  Calmly, calmly, read her Miranda warnings placing her under arrest.  {For what?  Unclear.}  Who is the adult in this situation?  And I’m confident there are more options.  Those of us who are parents know that we often don’t get compliance the first time we ask our children to do something.  Do we solve that by throwing our children to the ground and tackling them, military style?  I sure hope not.

No, the question isn’t respect.  There will be plenty of times when people fail to act respectfully and fail to behave appropriately in the face of authorities.  We are broken humans; none of us is perfect every day, all day long.  Police officers included.  The problem with the recent confrontations is the outcome when you react imperfectly.  So when I see videos or blogs or Facebook testimonials discussing how “this would never happen to me” because of how respectful I am and because my parents “raised me right,” I want to scream that they are missing the point.

 The point is that there will be disrespect; there will be bad choices; there will be obstinate teenagers.  And those people do not deserve to be manhandled and beat up because of the color of their skin.  {Before you freak out, show me one example of a white child being thrown from her chair; or a blond haired, blue eyed girl being tossed around in her bikini and then sat on; or a grown white woman being ordered out of her car and then placed under arrest for failing to turn on her turn signal.  Doesn’t happen.  And it’s certainly not because all white people are so extraordinarily respectful and obedient.  See, again, recent presidential race.}

 Even the phrase “all lives matter” bothers me.  Not because it’s untrue… duh… but when it is used in response to the hashtag #blacklivesmatter you are failing to realize that we are screaming BLACK LIVES MATTER precisely because ALL lives matter and people in this country are acting like black lives are less valuable.  As soon as we treat black people and white people alike, I can dream, we can stop screaming that #blacklivesmatter.  Until then, I will not participate in the #alllivesmatter movement.  It’s a non-sequitur that heaps further harm onto people who are just looking for us to acknowledge their value and worth.

 Hear me:  this is personal for me.  I have {at least} one child who will not behave perfectly when approached by authorities in the future.  I know this.  I can pour my heart and soul into raising him and pray the heck out of his little self, but the reality is, God made him different.  And if he gets harmed or killed because he didn’t respond the way some officer thought he should, it won’t be because he never learned respect and it won’t be because he wasn’t raised right.  It just will not.

It’s way past time for us to acknowledge that there is a difference between how people in authority treat white people and black people.  The evidence of this fact is deep and long.

Black lives matter.

Going There

I haven’t wanted to say anything . . . mostly because I don’t know what to say.  Instead, I find myself sitting alone at night, wondering how in the world I can raise three children with beautiful brown skin – two of them boys – in a world where we so clearly judge people based on the color of their skin, sometimes even “to death.”

I have heard from some African-American believers that they are angry over the relatively few Christian white people who are willing to “go there” in discussions about race in this country:  Michael Brown, Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, and a host of other facially racial issues have been widely reported by the media in the last couple of years but resulted in painfully little Christian discourse.  I’m writing in solidarity with many other believers who are now #goingthere.

As a parent of nonwhite children, I am tired of hearing that racism against black people in this country has been eradicated.  It’s simply not true.  Yes, we have a black president – more specifically, about 50% of Americans who voted cast a vote for a black man.  Does that fact mean that we are “beyond” race as an issue in this country?  Not even close. 

Michael Brown is dead.  I have no idea what was in the mind of the officer who shot him.  I don’t know him; I haven’t interviewed him.  But there are some known facts around this situation that we can discuss. Michael Brown is a black man; the shooting officer is a white man.  Five witnesses with no relationship to one another (and only one of whom was with Michael Brown) have provided witness statements to the press.  Every single one of them said that Michael Brown was running away from the officer after the initial exchange by the officer’s car.  Every single one of them reports that Michael Brown turned around and put his hands in the air when he realized the officer was in pursuit.  It is undisputed that Michael Brown was not armed.  It’s hard to imagine what could have happened (even in the worst case scenario) for an officer to chase down and kill a surrendering suspect who was running away, unarmed, and then put his hands in the air.  I just can’t swallow it.

Some of my white brethren have asked why “we” {presumably, people who see this as potentially a racially motivated shooting} refuse to give the white officer the benefit of the doubt.  I’ll respond to that more below, but before I do, I’d like to ask the other {unasked} question which is this:  Why are we unwilling to give five independent eye witnesses the benefit of the doubt?  Or even {heaven forbid} believe them without question?  Could it be because all five of the witnesses are black?  Amidst the cries for us not to assume too much about the officer before the investigation is complete, where is the support of numerous witnesses who have clearly stated that Michael Brown was in a surrender position when he was killed?  I believe that as much of the outrage over his death is about Michael Brown, it may well be equally about our refusal to listen to people who are telling us – clearly – that this was an unwarranted shooting.  Instead, we question and we wring our hands and we search for {nonexistent} inconsistencies within the eye witness stories.  Sigh.  I’d be angry too.  I am angry.  #goingthere

Here’s what I am not saying.  I am not saying that the officer had some deep seeded anger against or hatred toward black people or black men.  {Maybe he did; more likely he didn’t}  I am not saying that he woke up that day and decided to kill someone.  I am not even saying that the officer had a conscious thought about the color of Mr. Brown’s skin when he encountered him.  It is quite possible that the officer saw two men on the road and approached them as he would have any other person.  What I am saying is that racism is insidious.  It can operate without us knowing or being aware of it.  At its root, racism is fear.  Fear of the difference.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of what might be or could be.  Perhaps that fear (without even being a conscious fear) drove the officer to react more strongly than he otherwise would have.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that it isn’t very often we hear about police officers killing unarmed white men while walking down the street.  And that concerns me.

It doesn’t really matter whether the Michael Brown shooting was race-based.  Let me explain.  What we have learned since his death is that people who live in the community where he was shot feel racism in their lives, every day.  And that’s where the discourse needs to take place.  We have a problem in this country with people who don’t have white skin.  We have to own that reality before we will be able to get anywhere in this “debate.” 

We view beauty as light {white}, straight hair, small features, and scrawny thin bodies.  That description leaves out a huge number of our {beautiful} fellow Americans with brown skin, pronounced features, and curvy bodies.  What a shame!  What would happen if we started to talk with our children openly about the beauty of all of God’s creation:  sizes, shapes, and colors.  Just like we are quick to tell our little girls that they “can be anything when they grow up,” what if we stopped being afraid to talk about race and instead embraced that our differences are our strength and make us more beautiful and powerful?

I have resisted writing about the topic of race very often because I know the opposition is strong.  Most of us don’t want to hear about it and many more don’t want to read about it.  But until we are unafraid to have the hard conversations, nothing in this country will change.  Today I’m faced with the prospect of talking to my children about the current state of race relations in this country and I have no idea what I will say.  It kills me to have to tell them about slavery or worse, that judgments are still made based on the color of their skin.  What do I tell them about being followed in a store?  Or about interactions with police?  Or about their beauty in the face of constant messaging to the contrary {even as my daughter tries desperately to straighten her hair}?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that I’m ready to go there and have the difficult conversations about race that will ultimately make our country stronger.  Are you going with me?  #GoingThere

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#goingthere is a trending hashtag related to Christians speaking out about race