What’s going on?

[MsVee]

My heart is so heavy as I woke to the news of rioting across our country. As a citizen of this great nation my heart weeps as I see the pain of my people. Each time there is a news account the names are like bullets to my heart. Each time I hear George Floyd, Emmit Till, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Abner Louima, Amadou Dialto, Aubrey, and so many others I cannot possibly list them. I think this is the time our citizens will say enough and things will get better.

Each time I think surely the good people will rise up and do “something“ I do not know what that something is but I know “something“must be done to stop the senseless slaughter of black men.

It is personal for me because each time I see those faces on the news I think it could be my Father, my Brothers, and I thank God I have no children because I don’t know how to explain to them they are less safe than wild game. Hunters have seasons when they are allowed to kill their prey. It seems like everyday in America is open season on black men.

I remember my Father teaching my brothers how to drive. Explaining that their hands must be visible at all times so they would not be shot. We thought Pop was eccentric later on we realized he was trying to save their lives. I am tired of living like this. I am a good citizen. I pay taxes. I was gainfully employed. I am Recently retired. I have never been arrested. Never received a parking ticket let alone a moving violation and yet I fear the police.

I fear them because I know they see me and people who look like me as less than. Less than human, less worthy of their protection, undeserving of equal protection under the laws of this nation.

I watched the news and saw Amy Cooper threaten a black man with violence by cop. The racism is so systemic you can use the police as your “weapon”.
People are so frustrated and angry that even a wildly contagious pandemic cannot stop the protests.

I am afraid because this is a time when we need leadership and we have in the White House a president who stood shoulder to shoulder with his father and said “ We will never allow niggers to live in our buildings”. Yet the people elected him.

I am sad because it all looks hopeless. I pray because now more then ever I need to believe in a higher power. I pray God grants us all the strength and the courage to face what is ahead.

I am sorry if those posts offends anyone but this is just how I feel!

 

[LorettaLynn]

Well said, Ms. Vee.

 

[DianaCox]

I am a white woman, who tans fairly darkly. When I was in my teens/early 20s in Los Angeles in the early-mid ‘70s, I had a short shag haircut, brown hair, and drove a ‘65 Ford Galaxie with peeling silver paint - a favorite of Mexican-Americans at the time. Besides speeding (I’m not talking 100 mph, more like 73 in a 55 zone), for which I was stopped and ticketed several times, I was pulled over twice for things that I very much doubt I would have been stopped for had I not apparently fit a profile:

* I flipped someone off who honked at me while I was trying to turn left in the middle of a block. I was pulled over, and the cop looked quite surprised that I was a white woman and not a Mexican-American male. I got a lecture about putting myself at risk of someone “breaking that finger for me” and let go.

* I got pulled over supposedly for “having a dirty license plate” and got the whole examination of license, registration and insurance, and the cop insisted that I open the trunk. I was terrified because a friend had had pot in the car, and the way I was being treated, I was afraid that the cop was going to plant something. But after scaring the crap out of me, he let me go.

In both cases, I felt profiled because of mistaken “identity.” And it was terrifying.

 

[Larra]

Dear MsVee please know that there are many white people who are deeply affected by what we are seeing yet again, and have seen far too many times. I realize that we can't possibly feel the same as you at this time, as we are not the ones being targeted, but that doesn't mean we don't care. My hope is that now that we have so many people with cameras and these awful episodes are being filmed and widely seen, there will be more accountability and change. I certainly agree about the racist we have as our "leader" right now, and hope that will change as well, for all our sakes.

 

[k9ophile]

I don't know what sickens me more: the reality of your life or the people who don't believe it. As Larra said, I cannot truly know what it's like to be targeted for my skin color. I personally dislike the ubiquitous presence of cell phones in our lives. I dislike them so much that I have mine turned off 80-90 % of the time. Yet never have I been more grateful for a single thing more than the video feature that allows us to see what others would like to stay hidden.

(A very clever salesman sold me by first phone by using fear tactics: when a woman is alone, she can improve her safety by carrying a gun or a phone. I opted for a phone. My first phone was a Motorola that was the size of the hand set on a land line. Fear, or at least dread, eventually caused me to abandon a simpler cell and upgrade to a smart phone. I thought it wise to get used to one before my preferred technology becomes totally obsolete. Maybe I need learn to use the video feature lest I be in a situation that needs recording rather than hidden.)

 

[JackieOnLine]

very well-written post, Ms Vee, I wish it wasn't necessary.

I'm embarassed to say I have avoided news so much I needed to google Amy Cooper to see what she did.

racists deny and deny, but she was obviously aware that race was what would matter to the police - that they would come and protect her from a man who dared to asked her to obey the law. while he was recording her, that's the mind blowing thing. she is wildly racist and also really stupid.

so, yes, the presence of cell phones everywhere documents where we are as a country and that's in our favor. it won't matter to the hard core racists, but there is a large portion of our country that still (incredibly, STILL) needs to be shown this reality.

but you are so right. we should have learned better long ago.

 

[hilary1617]

Thank you for sharing your perspective MsVee.

I'm so sorry. The injustice is real, systemic, and abominable. It both breaks my heart and fills it with rage - and I know that can't even compare to how you feel.

Our society is broken. It is bizarre that even in this day we should even have to want simply for every person to be treated with the dignity and respect due to all human beings. How is it that any acts of violence or hatred can be dispensed casually?

I don't know what to do. Whatever I write from the comfort and safety of my white-privileged life will ring hollow.

We care. We will vote, protest, speak up. It's not enough. You deserve better.

I'm so sorry.

 

[hilary1617]

One small action we can take, in communities where the police department does not wear body-worn cameras, is to send an email to the local police chief, mayor, senators, etc. calling for adoption of their mandatory use. It's not enough, but it is at least something.

***

Dear (RECIPIENT NAMES HERE)

I’m writing to express my support for mandatory body-worn camera usage for our police department. Given the current state of affairs, I’d like to urge you to take action to address this matter immediately.

Body-worn cameras protect both citizens and officers. I join my neighbors in this effort to urge you to improve safety for everyone living and working in our fine city by providing this essential equipment and requiring its use.

Thank you for your service to our wonderful community,

(YOUR NAME HERE)

Resident of (COMMUNITY NAME HERE)

 

[Spiky Bugger]

This made both MrSue and me get all teary-eyed:

 

[Webmommy]

I feel the same and I have kids. I can’t remember a time where I ever felt perfectly safe with police or in public. My parents taught my brother and I how to act a certain way with the police so we would have a better chance of surviving the encounter and we did have to use it. Will I be teaching these same things to my kids too? It hasn’t kept some of us safe.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

Well, at least all four of the cops who participated in the murder are now charged.

Chavin’s 3d degree murder was upped to 2nd degree. (Carries a maximum 40 years.)

And the other three cops are now charged with aiding and abetting a murder.

Any of those charges can be moved up as more info...even more videos...are located. They coukd also be reduced...but that’s not likely.

 

[JackieOnLine]

“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

[k9ophile]

I cannot fathom how the other officers could not be charged. I saw the video from the other side of the car. Sickening.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

There are times when I’m sure I’m David Duke and other times I’m sure that I’m the incarnation of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Mostly have no idea who I am and how I’m behaving.

The most hated, by white students, class at my hippie college, was the Social and Political Contexts of Human Development, during which most everyone screamed at most everyone else as we discovered that racism was so very baked in to our society that we didn’t even see it.

So, while my intellect (such as it is) thoroughly comprehends that there is an huge additional responsibility to parenting a Black child in this country, my gut has no idea what that feels like. I can TRY to understand it; I can think about how exhausting it must be to worry about all the stuff I worried about and then have to add in that in any altercation or situation that involves Blacks and Whites—or even alone with a flat tire—MY KID will almost always be presumed to be the criminal...every single time my kid leaves the house*. But I know I really don’t get it.




*And anymore, he/she wouldn’t actually have to leave the house. Innocent Black Americans can accidentally get killed in their own homes.

 

[DianaCox]

This might give you a sense.