Two nights ago, my black friend, Doc Chris, was stopped by the police around Washington, D.C. Yeah, you know where this is going. Chris can share the details if he likes but suffice it to say that he feared for his life in a way that I never have. I want to say something different.

When I hear my fellow white people deny that there is a "white privilege"... when white people say "if you've done nothing wrong, you don't have anything to worry about"... when white people say "if you're respectful to the police, you'll be ok"... When white people say those things, and more, they denying the daily lived experience of every black person in America. It takes a cold heart, a lot of gall, and a whole lot of ignorance to say that you know better than the people who are being terrified by the police, and then blame them for the experience.

Who is Doc Chris? He's a Marine Corps veteran. He's earned a Ph.D. He's a college professor. Do those facts make you feel better, more outraged at the experience? If so, you should examine those feelings because you're tangled in the roots of your own racism. He has every drop of virtue that even the most racist white people should grudgingly admire but, in the end, Chris is black, and no amount military service, education, hard work, and position can save him on a dark street from the terror of an encounter with a police office who believes that every Person of Color is bomb about to explode.

This has to stop. It just has to stop.

This is a white people problem. Better said, this is a problem caused by white people. How do I know? Because I have never heard a fellow white person punctuate a story of a routine traffic stop with "thank God I lived". Never. Chris is a better man than I and yet I know my experience in his place would have been entirely different. Period. I'd have been irked at the sloppiness of the Motor Vehicle Department. I'd have been peeved at the delay and the inconvenience. And I would have driven off without once worrying about if I was going to die. Hell, I might have even gone full "Karen" and written a strongly worded letter to someone's manager over the kerfuffle. But there wouldn't have been a shaky bedside prayer to thank the Lord for living that night.

You and you and you. What are you going to do about this? How are you make this change come that is LONG overdue?

This has to stop.

Jonathan Cornwell  (c) 2021