I'm so glad that we are living in an age of video and social media. For years many people rationalized or eschewed racial/ gender/ age/ orientation biases as being untrue or unfounded. We have seen over the last 16 months an onslaught of media evidence that can NO LONGER be ignored. There are biases in this country. Biases which are baked into the bedrock of our nation. Now that's not to say those biases make you a bad person because we all have them; but acting on those biases can lead to dire and even deadly consequences.
So as the story begins to unfold apparently a white teenager confronted a white adult over their racially denigrating remarks about some Black kids that had been invited to a high school graduation pool party in a Dallas suburb. Allegedly this argument between the teen and an adult escalated to the point a fist-fight between some kids broke out. Residents of the mostly white community who had already been calling to complain about the infiltration of Black kids alerted the police. ONE cruiser came out initially and tried to disburse the ever growing crowd to no success. The kids didn't leave. There was no distinction between race at this point. ALL the kids were unruly. The police officer called for back-up and the dispatcher sent eight (8) more units.
The next set of police arrive and start rounding up ONLY the Blacks kids. Making them lie face down on the ground, handcuffing them, chastising them for "running" away. Cursing at many of the kids who seem in the video to be upset, angry and frightened. One officer seemed to be the most aggressive; cursing, running around discombobulated, wrestling teenage boys the ground. There's a point he even yanks one bikini-clad young Black teenage girl to the ground by her braids then pulls a gun on her friends when they rush to her aid. Had it not been for two (2) other officers who grabbed him to deescalate the situation he may have fired his weapon on unarmed kids. He then returns to the young girl and knees her in the back to force her into handcuffs, all the while she screaming for her mother. Her crime? Having a attitude and speaking out like most teenagers.
I am so glad we now have images that can back up the stories that I (from my own dealings with police as a youth) and others have been telling for years. That this problem is systemic and not anecdotal. To be Black in America is to be constantly surveilled. Not because of your actions but because you present a perception of criminality and danger. Black people are constantly being told where we need to be, what we need to wear, how we need to act, what we need to say and how we need to say it unlike ANY ethnic group in this country. Instead of us as Americans addressing this very fact we love to point fingers and blame the other.
I have a prescription to help this country but most people will never use it. To confront the problems of race we have to admit we live in a society that is deeply flawed. That there is a holistic problem of discrimination that; no individual be they a successful Black man or a poor white man can escape. That there is racial disparity in every aspect of American life. Now we can pretend racism ended in 1968 or that everything was fine until President Obama brought it back. But we love to lie to ourselves in this country. The young white teenager who recorded the video remarked that he just stood by and watched as the police rounded up the Black kids and only handcuffed the one white teen. He said he was largely ignored. That's what we do with racism. It is the huge, invisible elephant in the room pressing us back against the walls.
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