The crime of living while Black Baratunde Thurston
It’s December 2018.
I’m with my fiance in the suburbs of Wisconsin.
We’re visiting her parents, both of whom are
white,
which makes her white.
That’s how it works.
I don’t make the rules.
And we get pulled over by the police.
I’m scared.
I pull over slowly under the brightest street
light I can find
in case I need witnesses or dashcam footage.
We get out my identification, the car registration,
lay it out in the open, roll down the windows.
My hands are placed on the steering wheel,
all before the officer exits the vehicle.
This is how to stay alive.
As we wait, I think about these headlines.
“Police Shoot Another Unarmed Black Person.”
The good news is our officer was friendly.
She told us our tags were expired,
so to all the white parents out there,
if your child is involved with a person whose
skin tone is rated
Dwayne-The-Rock-Johnson or darker,
you need to get that car inspected,
update the paperwork every time we visit —
that’s just common courtesy.
I survived something that should not require
survival,
and I think about this series of stories —
“Police Shoot Another Unarmed Black Person”
—
and that season when those stories popped
up everywhere.
In 2018, those stories got changed out for
a different type of story.
Stories like, “White Woman Calls Cops on Black
Woman Waiting for an Uber.”
“White Woman Calls Police On Eight-Year-Old
Black Girl Selling Water.”
“Woman Calls Police On Black Family BBQing
At Lake in Oakland.”
That was the now-infamous #BBQBecky.
A subject takes an action against the target
engaged in some activity.
“California Safeway Calls Cops On Black Woman
Donating Food To The Homeless.”
“Golf Club Twice Calls Cops On Black Women
For Playing Too Slow.”
In all these cases, the subject is usually
white.
The target is usually black, and the activities
are anything
from sitting in a Starbucks,
to using the wrong type of barbecue, to napping,
to walking agitated on the way to work,
which I just call walking to work.
Now, this is the obligatory moment in the
presentation
where I have to say not everything is about
race.
Crime is a thing — should be reported.
But ask yourself, do we need armed men
to show up and resolve this situation?
Because when they show up for me, it’s different.
We know that police officers use force more
with black people
than with white people,
and we are learning the role of 911 calls
in this,
which forces me and people like me to police
ourselves.
We maybe pull over to the side of the road
under the brightest light we can find so that
our murder
might be caught cleanly on camera.
And we do this because we live in a system
in which white people
can too easily call on deadly force to ensure
their comfort.
This is weaponized discomfort, and it is not
new.
From 1877 to 1950 there were at least 4,400
documented
racial terror lynchings of black people in
the United States.
They had headlines as well.
Reverend T.A. Allen was lynched in Hernando,
Mississippi,
for organizing local sharecroppers.
Oliver Moore was lynched in Edgecomb County,
North Carolina,
for frightening a white girl.
Nathan Bird was lynched near Luling, Texas,
for refusing to turn his son over to a mob.
We need to change the action, whether that
action is “lynches”
or “calls police.”
I’m asking people here to see the structure,
where the power is in it, and even more importantly,
to see the humanity of those of us made targets
by this structure.
I am tired of carrying this invisible burden
of other people’s fears.
And many of us are, and we shouldn’t have
to,
because we can change this.
Because we can change the action,
which changes the story, which changes the
system
that allows those stories to happen.
Systems are just collective stories we all
buy into.
When we change them, we write a better reality
for us all to be a part of.