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I found out that Rodney King died a few days ago.
Given his history, sadly, it wasn’t a surprise. No matter what else he did he was a father and there are several children who have lost their father too young. But he was bigger than that. His choices led to a beating that shook some fruit out of the race relations tree in this country that we’re still trying to choke down.
For those who don’t remember. A drunken Rodney King got into high speed chase with a couple of policemen, going up to 80mh in residential neighborhoods and posing a mortal danger. When the chase ended, his two passengers laid on the ground as per the policemen’s request. A combative Rodney King did not comply and effort to subdue him resulted in a beating by police that skull fractures, permanent brain damage, broken bones and teeth, and damage to some internal organs.
Rodney King became the realization of a black man’s nightmare in different ways.
First there is the palpable fear blacks have when stopped by law enforcement. I get that *everyone* gets nervous when a policeman flashes his lights to stop us. You get a little sweaty, your hands tremble a little. If you are black, and if you are a black man, there’s a whole ‘nother dimension that gets added to that. That’s because shit can go wrong, very wrong.
A man is coming home after midnight and 4 men yell at him. Thinking he is being mugged he reaches for his wallet, he gets shot 50+ times. They say later that he matched the description of a rape suspect.
A bunch of kids returning from a basketball tournament are pulled over for speeding on a highway. When the driver puts the parking brake on the car lurches and the policemen open fire.
A local policeman is speeding in an unmarked car, late to work. He is stopped by a state policeman and in incident ends in him being hit on the head multiple times and maced. (This guy is the husband of an old friend of mine)
To be black in America is to always be mindful. No matter who you are the first thing people see is your black skin and you never know what that may hold for you. This goes doubly if the encounter involves law enforcement. In our DNA are the stories of institutionalized racial violence (whether they went by the moniker of the KKK or not) and law enforcement turning a blind eye, or even worse, being part of the wolf pack. Every time those police lights flash and you pull over you’ve got to hope it’s one of the good guys who’ll just give you a ticket and send you on your way. You hope that he’s not nervous or jumpy or angry.
This is not a law enforcement thing. I respect and appreciate law enforcement and support them in doing their job. It's a scary shitty world out there and they really are that thin blue line who protect us even when we don't know it. What I've talked about above reflects a minority of policemen.
This is a motherfucking societal standard.
It is no coincidence that Susan Smith blamed the kidnapping of her sons on a black man. We know a lot of them are criminals anyway.
It’s no coincidence that Bethany Storro claimed a black woman threw acid in her face with the words, “Hey pretty girl, do you want to drink this?". I remember at the time the rumor on the Internet was the assailant said to her "Hey *white* girl, do you want to drink this?"; driving home the idea that it was an act of racial jealousy.
After all everyone knows that black woman are angry and jealous of white women. And what about Charles Stuart? Driving through a bad neighborhood one night his wife and unborn child are shot and killed by a black man. You know you shouldn't be in their neighborhoods after dark.
While we know how all of these stories turned out, what isn’t talked about nearly as much is that in each of those cases there were multiple people taken in for questioning and eventually one who was identified as a suspect. IIRC, the woman in the Washington State case was an ad executive or something along those lines. All that education, all of her hard work and because she resembled a sketch she was held in a police station and considered the suspect of an ugly crime. I wonder how many of her acquaintances and co-workers wondered for a moment if it could be true.
That is what it means to be black in this country; at any moment the word of a white person can cancel out any good will you may have built up in life.
But if you say it out loud, people get very uncomfortable or angry or apologetic or they want to draw comparisons about the way their great great grandfather was treated in Russia or how everyone thought their grandfather was a mobster because of his last name or some other fact that they think will be equalizing or comforting.
Please stop doing that. Just. Stop. To do that is as disrespectful as me trying to draw parallels between the Black experience and the Holocaust. I don't need...wait, no, *Black people* do not need your sympathy, empathy, apologies or explanations.
Does it make you uncomfortable? Good, just sit with it. Does it make you aware of your own thoughts and assumptions? Good, just sit with it. You’re not sure how you feel? Good just sit with it. Pisses you off? Good, just sit with it.
Thanks.
Every kid regardless of color is taught to obey a policeman who stops them. My nephew is being taught how to move in such a way that that he doesn't get shot or maced. He's a nic boy who plays football, baseball, and is an actual boy scouts. He lives in nice suburban town 30 minutes or more from the nearest city. He is very obedient and polite. But all it takes is one girl to cry rape (look up why comedian Patrice O’Neal went to jail as a teen-anger) or one policeman to be nervous and none of that matters anymore.
And it’s not just men. When I was a child, my mother drilled into us that we were never to leave a store without having a receipt for everything we purchased. If we came out of convenience store without one, she’d make us march back in and get one. Her reason: If someone accuses you of stealing you have proof you didn’t. I was about 20 before I found out that not everyone’s parent’s taught them that. I thought it was my mother being crazy until the day I got stopped leaving a department. It seems a large woman was shoplifting and as I walked out someone must have thought I matched the description. Yay me. The plainclothes detective asked to see my receipt and took a look inside my bag. Yay receipts. Yay Mother.
A couple of years later I went to Ikea with man I was dating. This guy was successful; he owned a comfortable house with real art on the walls and had a brand new Audi in his driveway. We had gone shopping with friends who were unfamiliar with the area so they followed us until they found the on ramp they were looking for. They flashed their lights to say “good bye” and went on their way. Less than a minute later there were police lights lighting up the inside of his car so he pulled over. When the policeman approached the car we could see that him undo the snap on his holster that would give him easier access to his gun. It’s after midnight, we’re on a dark stretch of highway. He looked at my friend and the first thing he said was, “Is this your car?” before he asked for any ID, he asked him if the new, pricy car was his. Afterward he asked about the Ikea bags in the backseat (mine, of course) and asked about the butter knife sitting in CD slot (Ikea has huge spools of twine that you can use to tie stuff down. Why one of grabbed a butter knife I can’t remember). The whole thing ended when the policemen confiscated the butter knife because it was a deadly weapon.
The house, the art, the car and he was still just a black guy who might have been a car thief.
Welcome to our world.
I think Rodney King deserved something of an ass kicking that night. If he didn’t comply with the police request, the police on the scene were right to take swift and tough action to subdue him. But there is a line between strong, maybe even harsh, action and a brutal beating. I’ve seen the clip, almost all of us probably have. If you analyze the phases of the beating, there is a moment when it goes from a team of policeman subduing a prisoner and crosses the line into group think and the beating turns brutal. Yes, Rodney King was a low level criminal, yes he was causing a public hazard behind the wheel of his car and yes, IMO, the police were justified in using physical force to get compliance. However, this is *America*, we do not torture or physically abuse our prisoners; there is no valid reason I can see for beating a man into brain and internal organ damage.
I walk through the world with a mindfulness white people don’t need to. I think that mindfulness makes one wary and if not less trusting at least a bit slower to give full trust. That wariness is the source of my belief that the truth almost always lies somewhere in the middle (did Rodney King merit and ass kicking? Yes. Did he merit that beating? No). When you live with the understanding buried inside that at any moment, if I am in the wrong place at the wrong time, I can be publicly shamed because I fit some amorphous profile, you learn to be a bit more vigilant than other people.
Not a good or bad thing, it just is. But I think in a perverse way it makes me a better person.
(ETA: I meant that it makes me a better person than I would otherwise be, not that I am better than other people. Sorry if I left that impression)
I found out that Rodney King died a few days ago.
Given his history, sadly, it wasn’t a surprise. No matter what else he did he was a father and there are several children who have lost their father too young. But he was bigger than that. His choices led to a beating that shook some fruit out of the race relations tree in this country that we’re still trying to choke down.
For those who don’t remember. A drunken Rodney King got into high speed chase with a couple of policemen, going up to 80mh in residential neighborhoods and posing a mortal danger. When the chase ended, his two passengers laid on the ground as per the policemen’s request. A combative Rodney King did not comply and effort to subdue him resulted in a beating by police that skull fractures, permanent brain damage, broken bones and teeth, and damage to some internal organs.
Rodney King became the realization of a black man’s nightmare in different ways.
First there is the palpable fear blacks have when stopped by law enforcement. I get that *everyone* gets nervous when a policeman flashes his lights to stop us. You get a little sweaty, your hands tremble a little. If you are black, and if you are a black man, there’s a whole ‘nother dimension that gets added to that. That’s because shit can go wrong, very wrong.
A man is coming home after midnight and 4 men yell at him. Thinking he is being mugged he reaches for his wallet, he gets shot 50+ times. They say later that he matched the description of a rape suspect.
A bunch of kids returning from a basketball tournament are pulled over for speeding on a highway. When the driver puts the parking brake on the car lurches and the policemen open fire.
A local policeman is speeding in an unmarked car, late to work. He is stopped by a state policeman and in incident ends in him being hit on the head multiple times and maced. (This guy is the husband of an old friend of mine)
To be black in America is to always be mindful. No matter who you are the first thing people see is your black skin and you never know what that may hold for you. This goes doubly if the encounter involves law enforcement. In our DNA are the stories of institutionalized racial violence (whether they went by the moniker of the KKK or not) and law enforcement turning a blind eye, or even worse, being part of the wolf pack. Every time those police lights flash and you pull over you’ve got to hope it’s one of the good guys who’ll just give you a ticket and send you on your way. You hope that he’s not nervous or jumpy or angry.
This is not a law enforcement thing. I respect and appreciate law enforcement and support them in doing their job. It's a scary shitty world out there and they really are that thin blue line who protect us even when we don't know it. What I've talked about above reflects a minority of policemen.
This is a motherfucking societal standard.
It is no coincidence that Susan Smith blamed the kidnapping of her sons on a black man. We know a lot of them are criminals anyway.
It’s no coincidence that Bethany Storro claimed a black woman threw acid in her face with the words, “Hey pretty girl, do you want to drink this?". I remember at the time the rumor on the Internet was the assailant said to her "Hey *white* girl, do you want to drink this?"; driving home the idea that it was an act of racial jealousy.
After all everyone knows that black woman are angry and jealous of white women. And what about Charles Stuart? Driving through a bad neighborhood one night his wife and unborn child are shot and killed by a black man. You know you shouldn't be in their neighborhoods after dark.
While we know how all of these stories turned out, what isn’t talked about nearly as much is that in each of those cases there were multiple people taken in for questioning and eventually one who was identified as a suspect. IIRC, the woman in the Washington State case was an ad executive or something along those lines. All that education, all of her hard work and because she resembled a sketch she was held in a police station and considered the suspect of an ugly crime. I wonder how many of her acquaintances and co-workers wondered for a moment if it could be true.
That is what it means to be black in this country; at any moment the word of a white person can cancel out any good will you may have built up in life.
But if you say it out loud, people get very uncomfortable or angry or apologetic or they want to draw comparisons about the way their great great grandfather was treated in Russia or how everyone thought their grandfather was a mobster because of his last name or some other fact that they think will be equalizing or comforting.
Please stop doing that. Just. Stop. To do that is as disrespectful as me trying to draw parallels between the Black experience and the Holocaust. I don't need...wait, no, *Black people* do not need your sympathy, empathy, apologies or explanations.
Does it make you uncomfortable? Good, just sit with it. Does it make you aware of your own thoughts and assumptions? Good, just sit with it. You’re not sure how you feel? Good just sit with it. Pisses you off? Good, just sit with it.
Thanks.
Every kid regardless of color is taught to obey a policeman who stops them. My nephew is being taught how to move in such a way that that he doesn't get shot or maced. He's a nic boy who plays football, baseball, and is an actual boy scouts. He lives in nice suburban town 30 minutes or more from the nearest city. He is very obedient and polite. But all it takes is one girl to cry rape (look up why comedian Patrice O’Neal went to jail as a teen-anger) or one policeman to be nervous and none of that matters anymore.
And it’s not just men. When I was a child, my mother drilled into us that we were never to leave a store without having a receipt for everything we purchased. If we came out of convenience store without one, she’d make us march back in and get one. Her reason: If someone accuses you of stealing you have proof you didn’t. I was about 20 before I found out that not everyone’s parent’s taught them that. I thought it was my mother being crazy until the day I got stopped leaving a department. It seems a large woman was shoplifting and as I walked out someone must have thought I matched the description. Yay me. The plainclothes detective asked to see my receipt and took a look inside my bag. Yay receipts. Yay Mother.
A couple of years later I went to Ikea with man I was dating. This guy was successful; he owned a comfortable house with real art on the walls and had a brand new Audi in his driveway. We had gone shopping with friends who were unfamiliar with the area so they followed us until they found the on ramp they were looking for. They flashed their lights to say “good bye” and went on their way. Less than a minute later there were police lights lighting up the inside of his car so he pulled over. When the policeman approached the car we could see that him undo the snap on his holster that would give him easier access to his gun. It’s after midnight, we’re on a dark stretch of highway. He looked at my friend and the first thing he said was, “Is this your car?” before he asked for any ID, he asked him if the new, pricy car was his. Afterward he asked about the Ikea bags in the backseat (mine, of course) and asked about the butter knife sitting in CD slot (Ikea has huge spools of twine that you can use to tie stuff down. Why one of grabbed a butter knife I can’t remember). The whole thing ended when the policemen confiscated the butter knife because it was a deadly weapon.
The house, the art, the car and he was still just a black guy who might have been a car thief.
Welcome to our world.
I think Rodney King deserved something of an ass kicking that night. If he didn’t comply with the police request, the police on the scene were right to take swift and tough action to subdue him. But there is a line between strong, maybe even harsh, action and a brutal beating. I’ve seen the clip, almost all of us probably have. If you analyze the phases of the beating, there is a moment when it goes from a team of policeman subduing a prisoner and crosses the line into group think and the beating turns brutal. Yes, Rodney King was a low level criminal, yes he was causing a public hazard behind the wheel of his car and yes, IMO, the police were justified in using physical force to get compliance. However, this is *America*, we do not torture or physically abuse our prisoners; there is no valid reason I can see for beating a man into brain and internal organ damage.
I walk through the world with a mindfulness white people don’t need to. I think that mindfulness makes one wary and if not less trusting at least a bit slower to give full trust. That wariness is the source of my belief that the truth almost always lies somewhere in the middle (did Rodney King merit and ass kicking? Yes. Did he merit that beating? No). When you live with the understanding buried inside that at any moment, if I am in the wrong place at the wrong time, I can be publicly shamed because I fit some amorphous profile, you learn to be a bit more vigilant than other people.
Not a good or bad thing, it just is. But I think in a perverse way it makes me a better person.
(ETA: I meant that it makes me a better person than I would otherwise be, not that I am better than other people. Sorry if I left that impression)
