I was listening to the audio version of Austin Channing Brown’s I Am Still Here in which she writes about being pregnant during the course of her book. She knows she is having a son, a black son, and is overjoyed. As I did and I’m sure many other mothers, she loved him before she knew him. It is inevitable that parents have hopes and dreams and wonders about their children, who they will become, how the world will embrace them, and how they will change it back.
No parent likes to think about how the world won’t embrace them.
Channing-Brown writes about how she and her husband avoid talking about fear, avoid talking about when they will have “the talk” with their son, when they will have to hold him because someone called him the N word. I didn’t know before I married Josh about “the talk.” I didn’t know that almost ritual like, black parents sit their children down (and not just once) to teach them how to engage with police. “Hands on the wheel. Do not reach for anything. Yes sir. No sir. Announce your every move. No hands in pockets. Stay calm. And pray. Just pray that it works and you come home in tact.” Josh had to school me in this ritual, one he first remembers at age 11 when he was presented with photos of a family friend who had been beaten unrecognizeable by a cop for “a busted tail light” on his way home from a DJ gig. My kids first heard it when they were 5, 6, and 7, when my youngest pointed a water gun at a security guard and made “pew pew pew” sounds. He thought it was so funny, then.
There are two stories in America. 1) The cops guarantee your safety. 2) The cops won’t guarantee your safety. Josh and I were given different narratives.
I have had many parents, white parents, say to me, “Shouldn’t we all reach our kids to respect authority?” Yes, sure. But I don’t know a single white parent who teaches this respect so that their sons come home alive. They teach it out of reverence, not fear.
I did not know this before I married Josh. I thought the beating of Rodney King in 1991 was unusual, a single occurrence. It was the first televised assault I had seen in my lifetime. I was 15, just learning to drive. No one ever said to me, “Here’s how you engage with police” because there was no expectation I would have to. I have since had roughly 15 encounters with police, during none of which I felt afraid, even on the one or two times I became defensive and threw my hands up. I have never had a gun trained on me as I reached for my glove compartment. I have never had to walk a cop through my every move. I have been laughed at by a cop for acting “smart.” But I was not perceived as a threat. If Josh has acted this way to a cop, he might not have been given the same grace. Even if he behaves perfectly, he might not be given the same grace.
I thought the grainy photos of cops pulling out their billy clubs and fire hoses and tear gas were a thing that got solved by the civil rights movement. I thought that got fixed. I was wrong. The same year of the Rodney King beating was the year Josh was shown in another state, in another month, at another dining room table photos of his family friend with deep purple bruises on his back side, his arms, his ribs. Bruises darker than the color of his skin. This beating was not televised.
I write this not to dismiss the difficult job of the police. I write this because we need to know that there are two narratives. We all need to talk to our children about the reality of why, and we need to work to build a single system that prizes everyone’s safety. Everyone’s.
As I’ve been re-reading James Baldwin, diving into Buddhist ideas of Interbeing, I agree completely with the principle that we are wedded, each one of us to everyone else. I agree completely that harm done to one is harm done to all. I agree completely that white America on the whole needs a soul examine. We need not turn away from suffering and claim innocence. We need to understand that suffering inflicted, permitted, or denied damages both parties. Suffering acknowledged, held, and healed is a balm to both parties.