White People…Stop Calling the Police On Black People…PLEASE!
Hillary Clinton had just lost in November of 2016. I was hanging out at Pantsuit Nation Facebook page just before everyone started losing their mind about the owner trying to take the stories and making it into a book.
I digress.
As I nursed my wounds, I began reading the stories. There was a growing disconnect from women of color and white women on the site, that didn’t always seem to understand the things that their sisters of color that were going through. The following story illustrates just one of them….
There was a young man complaining that he worked for a cable installation company. When he went into all white neighborhoods to give people a good deal on cable, the police was always called on him. The calls coming through the 911 Center were scared men and women believing that this black man was suspicious and was looking to break into homes. When the police went to investigate, the only thing they found was a black man trying to give people a deal on their cable. In other words, it was legitimate.
The cable company saw that there were many complaints and then replaced the black guy with a white guy. The company told the black guy the next week that there were no calls on the white guy and he actually got a sale here and there. The person telling the story believed that they were in a safe place telling the story.
He was wrong.
Almost immediately, there were white people defending the actions of the other white people in the neighborhood.
“Well I would have done the same thing…..why would he knock door to door? What was he doing? People can put on a shirt and decorate a van, and boom! They are in your house. You can’t trust these people! How do you know he’s a real cable salesman?”
Then, there was my favorite.
“Why would he want that job in the first place? Why not get a REAL job?”
They ended most of these sentiments believing that the right thing to do was to call the police. Many believed that this was the right course of action, based on a multitude of reasons.
Just recently, we learned that Sisters of the Fairway, a group of Black women that love to golf, had the police called on them because the owner of the golf course said “they were playing entirely too slow.” Because no crime was committed, the police didn’t make an arrest.
We also know about the two Black men waititng for a friend in Starbucks. Within two minutes, the store manager had called the police, and these two men were outrageously arrested. Many White people on Twitter did have a problem with this arrest and called this an example of “real racism”. As if they didn’t see a problem with the countless, numerous examples that happen every day. These events they like to excuse away in their brains and pretend that they never happpened or that we’re just pretending to be victims.
As if somehow being a victim has made a difference to any Black person…ever.
We’ve tried to tell you. We’ve been telling you this for over a hundred years. We’ve tried to tell you that the police is a force that Whites use to put Black people in their place. We’ve tried to tell you that Black people are treated unfairly. We’ve tried to tell you that racism is still an issue. However, some of you like to listen to people like Candace Owens and how she doesn’t like to be a victim. You try to tell us to ignore this but it’s hard when it affects your every day life. How do you “ignore” being arrested at Starbucks for waiting? How do you ignore your child being called a nigger at Olive Garden just because someone wrote it in pen on her kids menu that she colored on? (happened to me when my daughter was five) No harm no foul? Really?
Some of you have the audacity to believe that because no charges were filed in these cases, then everything is okay. The indignity has been suffered. You’ve lost time that you can never get back. You’ve lost money that you won’t ever recieve. You’ve lost a bit of yourself because you know that this should have never happened and that no matter how bad this is, there will be a group of people that will see no big deal.
It’s hard to live in a country where people are more outraged about lions being killed in a country in Africa than they are Black men being arrested, shot at, or killed in their own country. It’s hard to stomach the fact that your fellow Americans will shed a tear for Cecil the Lion but will shrug at Dionte the Black real estate broker being shot and killed by the police.
Stop calling the police on Black people. Please stop. You may believe that in your world, calling the police will right wrongs. In our communities, we have the belief that the police will make things much worse than they were before. We don’t see the police the same way that you do, and many of the police don’t see us the same way you think they should.
We’re Always Guilty
To a police officer, the black person is always the guilty party. I’ve seen situations where the police have rolled up on the scene and just grabbed the first Black person they saw. They ignored the protests of all the Black people there trying to tell them that they had the wrong person. It took one White woman walking right up to them (something a Black person would never do…walk up to a cop) and telling them they had the wrong guy. At that point, they grabbed the guilty White person, but the Black guy was still detained and handcuffed for an additional twenty minutes for the police safety.
If you think that’s reasonable, you have some biases against Black people that you may not want to admit.
If The Police Approach You, You Must Be Guilty
This is a big one. My daughter was once stopped by a security guard in the store for stealing. Of course she didn’t steal a thing, however as people passed by, they believed that she had done something wrong. One woman shook her head at my daughter. She did nothing. The guard had to admit that he didn’t actually see her steal something. She had a bottle of shampoo one minute and then she didn’t. He thought, “Well she stole it!” He didn’t think to believe that perhaps she put it back. It was right where she said it was. She put the shampoo back after I told her that I wouldn’t pay for it.
Of course, he told me to “Shut up” at first but when I told him that I was her mother and that he was talking to a minor child and that he had no permission to speak to her, his tune changed with me.
It didn’t matter that he was wrong. Fifty people just saw a guilty girl, coming in their neighborhood, stealing. I doubt that even one saw an innocent girl. Racist beliefs.
When you call the police, you’re making a situation worse in many situations. A young woman was wrestled to the ground and had her breasts exposed by a police officer. He even grabbed her by the neck in the middle of trying to arrest her. There is conflicting information coming out against what really happened. However, even if she deserved to be arrested, she didn’t deserve to have her dress pulled down nor did she deserve for the officer to ever put his hand around her neck. That’s ridiculous. She wasn’t wildly fighting back against the officer. She thought she was waiting for a card with the corporate number on it. What she got was the police walking into the establishment minutes later.
Why? What is the police going to help you accomplish? Ask yourself why? What are you hoping to prove? I remember a woman got upset that I blew my horn at her. She got so upset at me for doing so, she lied and said that I tried to hit her son as he walked in front of my car. She grabbed her cell phone and then proceeded to call them with a lie that I had tried to run her son over.
A man stopped the entire argument by telling her to get in her car and just leave. She did so after a moment. Knowing that my car was so close to her car, there was no way I could have run over her child, nor nearly tried to do so. But the smile on her face showed me that she knew what she was doing. She knew that when the police got there, the police wouldn’t have believed a damn thing I said. That chances are great I could have got in trouble for that. It was all over her face; I’ve got you and you know it. Stupidly, I had a bunch of witnesses that knew that I hadn’t moved my car. But the fact that she wanted me to go to jail possibly was enough for her to try it. She was going to hold up the entire line of people just to see me go to jail.
When John Crawford was killed in a Walmart, a fake veteran of the Marines named Ronald Ritchie, told the police that he was pointing the weapon at people. Due to his exact words, John Crawford is not on this Earth raising his children. Later, he regretted his actions but it’s too late for that. A woman had a heart attack when everyone took off running away from the scene. All because this man called the police and told a lie. A lie snowballed into two people losing their lives that day. Can he live with himself?
Ronald Ritchie was never charged with his “crank call” even after it resulted in the deaths of two people. I’m sure he doesn’t feel an ounce of remorse, nor will he ever be called in account of his crime. He made a decision to lie about John Crawford and it cost a life. We know that Mr. Ritchie would have never done that to a White man carrying a weapon in an open carry state. It says a lot that when people think “open carry” they almost never mean it for people of color.
Just know that the next time you see a Black man minding his own business, while out for a walk in your neighborhood, or a Black woman in front of you on the golf course, or at the Waffle House making too much noise in your book, know that you hold power. The Bible says that the power of life and death is in the tongue. The fact that you hold that power and continue to use it so irresponsibly, know that one day you may to answer for someone losing their life.
And then, what do you say?
