In 2012, I wrote an article titled “Proper Negro Fatigue,” in which I outlined the exhaustion many Black people feel from constantly having to code-switch and appeal to Caucasian sensitives in how we dress, act, talk and behave, just to avoid being stereotyped and coming off as angry or scary. That article was inspired by Charles M. Blow and his brilliant New York Times piece, The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin,” in which he attacked racial profiling and how upsetting it is for Black folks to play the game of respectability politics and yet still find themselves victims of racial oppression. As a socially-conscious Black man in America raising three Black children, I’m sure Blow feared for his children’s safety from the day they were born, but I doubt he could have ever predicted that only three years later his eldest son, a third-year chemistry student at Yale University, would be staring down the barrel of a police officer’s gun.
According to Blow, on Saturday, Jan. 24th, his son left the campus library at around 5:45 p.m. when he spotted an officer jogging across the school grounds who eventually ended up following him. Blow’s son heard the officer say, “I got him,” into a shoulder-mounted radio before instructing him to turn around, which he did, only to find a loaded gun pointed directly at him. The boy raised his hands, got down on his knees, and laid on his stomach. The officer interrogated him, and then another officer, moments later, detained him and grilled him about his I.D. According to Blow, the police stopped his son because he “fit the description” of a burglary suspect.
What enraged Blow about the entire incident was the immediate use of deadly force, and the highly unprovoked escalation that led a police officer to push a gun into the face of a possible suspect, his son. He then went on a lengthy Twitter rampage that excoriated unnecessary police force and lauded the Black Lives Matter movement, followed by a New York Times article that further explained his rightful anger. Blow mentioned a great point about how any less poise exhibited by his son during that incident could have resulted in his murder, right there on the spot.
Police pointing a gun at you, as I unfortunately know from first-hand experience, is incredibly alarming — especially the first time. The feeling to run, or dodge, or just leave the entire situation is natural when a loaded weapon is pointed at you. It’s more than understandable why Blow, or any parent for that matter, would be infuriated at their child being that precarious situation.
Some white conservative writers have openly criticized Blow for being a race-baiter because be didn’t mention that the police officer, who pointed the gun at his son, was also a Black man. And therein lies the confusion white America has with the African-American experience with state sanctioned brutality and overreach. There is a prevalent desire amongst factions from both sides of this debate to paint this as a simplistic racial divide, where Black citizens are being openly oppressed by white cops. The truth is, the blue wall is comprised of many different races, religions, and ethnic identities, so believing that this issue can be framed as one race against the other is inherently wrong. Hell, anyone who has seen Boyz n the Hood knows that.
The real problem with this situation is that incidents like this occur every day in America — only to Black men and women who don’t go to prestigious schools like Yale, or have a father who is an award-winning author and journalist for the New York Times. Oppressive and unnerving events like this occur far too often, and, for many different reasons, they all do not end with just emotional scars. We fight for Mike Brown, Yvette Smith, John Crawford III, and the many other men and women extrajudicially murdered by police mainly because they don’t have high-level advocates as family members. But, as Charles Blow so eloquently wrote, “There is no amount of respectability that can bend a gun’s barrel. All of our boys are bound together.”
LAB
Lincoln Anthony Blades blogs daily on his site ThisIsYourConscience.com, he’s an author of the book “You’re Not A Victim, You’re A Volunteer” and a weekly contributor for UPTOWN Magazine. He can be reached via Twitter @lincolnablades and on Facebook at This Is Your Conscience.
[Image: Shutterstock]