Empathy and Charlottesville
I was watching CNN the other day when a White commentator, reluctant to criticize Trump for his rather tepid remarks against White nationalists and supremacists, made an interesting comment.
“I’m not a Black motorist, so I won’t know what it is like to be a Black man driving in this country. I can’t relate. So when liberal groups say that I’ll never understand what it’s like, people tune out and shut down.”
He made a very interesting point on this matter. How can you say that you want people to understand where you’re coming from but then temper your remarks by saying that they won’t understand in the first place?
Well, both statements are true. You won’t understand what it’s like to be a disabled Black mother in America if you’re not one. I am. I use a wheelchair, pop chemo pills, and spend a lot of my time in the hospital. No one knows what it’s like to be me, just as I don’t know what it’s like to be them.
However, the commentator may not know what it’s like to be a “Black” motorist, but he drives a car. He knows what it’s like to be on the road like the millions of Americans who own and drive cars.
The first rule of understanding where a person is coming from is this; What would I accept for myself? Where would I draw the line for myself in this situation?
When Black motorists complain about being pulled over for DWB or Driving White Black, a phenonmenon that is so widespread it has its own acronym, some Whites roll their eyes and suck their teeth.
If you aren’t doing anything wrong then what are you worried about?
True. However, what if it were YOU that was pulled over three times a week for a month straight? You are about to lose your job and is on probation because you keep showing up to work late, thanks to being pulled over for absolutely no reason. This actually happened to a good friend of mine and many Black people know others that this has happened to, if not themselves.
My friend worked hard and drove a nice car. He was pulled over every single day for a week, as they berated him, called him names, and told him that they were going to get him on drugs. My friend has never sold a drug, took a drug, nor does he intend on doing so. He comes from a respectable family on the South Side of Chicago, is educated, and never joined a gang. He just happened to work three jobs and could afford a really nice car. It got to the point where he went to a lot and purchased a piece of junk for $600 that we affectionately called the “chick-mobile”. The harassment slowed. Note that I didn’t say it stopped.
Would you stand for that? Being pulled over nearly every day, held for twenty to thirty minutes at a time?
I was once driving my daughter to school, which was only half a mile away when suddenly I was rear eneded. I got out of the car and this White woman ran up to me hysterically crying. She saw my seven year old in the backseat and began to cry even harder. The police showed up quickly and assessed the situation in three minutes. He then told the White woman, who rear ended me, to go and have a nice day. She did so and drove off. Meanwhile, the officer told me to pull to the side and detained me for twenty minutes, looking for something…anything to lock me up for. My seven year old was crying hysterically now, belieiving I was going to jail and pleading with the officer to not take Mommy to jail.
The officer accused me of stealing my license plate sticker. That did it for me. I blew my top and told the officer that it was nonsense. He looked at me and let me go with a threat. If he “caught me out there again, he was going to take me to jail”. I got in my car and took my hysterical daughter to school, where she was taken straight to the principal’s office because she wasn’t able to calm down.
I was threatened with jail if he “caught me” even though my plate sticker was not stolen and I’d committed no crime. This is the kind of intimidation that many Black people complain about, but the country tunes us out.
So ask yourself, “Is this something that I would tolerate for myself? My children? Would I get out there and do something about it? Write letters? Sue? Get politically involved?”
Of course you would. I don’t think after recieving a warning from your boss, you would accept further harassment from the same people who you’re paying with your tax dollars.
So why ask our community to accept standards that are antithical to your own?
