Two black men with two very different perspectives on race and policing in United States
Over the past few days, I saw two articles dealing with how two African-American men responded to the ongoing controversy over the relationship between African-Americans and the police - and their place in the American society in general. And their perspectives couldn’t be more different.
On July 14, BBC Trending spotlighted a Facebook post by police officer Jay Stalien. As he sees it, the Black Lives Matter movement is misguided
It was his arguments about black-on-black violence that seemed to get the most attention. Drawing on his own experience, Stalien said he chose a career in law enforcement because:
"I watched and lived through the crime that took place in the hood. My own black people killing others over nothing. Crack heads and heroin addicts lined the lobby of my building as I shuffled around them to make my way to our 1 bedroom apartment with 6 of us living inside. I wanted to help my community and stop watching the blood of African Americans spilled on the street at the hands of a fellow black man."
But Stalien expressed his frustration that his efforts to investigate black-on-black violence and bring the culprits to justice had met with outright hostility from the very community he sought to protect.
"They called me 'Uncle Tom', and 'wanna be white boy', and I couldn't understand why," he wrote.
"My own fellow black men and women attacking me, wishing for my death, wishing for the death of my family. I was so confused, so torn, I couldn't understand why my own black people would turn against me, when every time they called …I was there. Every time someone died….I was there. Every time they were going through one of the worst moments in their lives…I was there. So why was I the enemy?"
Stallen’s post also complained that African-Americans don’t speak out against violence in majority-black communities - which, as I mentioned before, simply isn’t true. Now, the people who protest there aren’t necessarily part of the groups that make up the Black Lives Matter movement (though, in my experience, there is some overlap), but that’s another matter.
The very same day, Naperville Sun newspaper republished portions of a Facebook post by Chicago area resident Brian Crooks, where he talked about what it was like to grow up in Naperville, the fourth largest city in Illinois. If you live in Chicagoland, you can probably already imagine where this is going, but for everyone else - there is a reason why the name is a shorthand of “wealthy and white.”
When I was going through driver's ed, my behind the wheel instructor was a football coach at one of the other Naperville high schools. He asked what kind of car I wanted one time, and I told him I was gonna get my dad's Dodge Intrepid, but that I really liked my brother's Mazda. He looked at me like I was nuts and said he figured I'd want an Impala so I could put some hydraulics on it and "hit dem switchezzzzz." When we got back to my house at the end of my last behind the wheel session, he shook my hand and said it was a pleasure teaching me how to drive. Then, he said, "You're a Black kid, but you're pretty cool, you know? Like, you're not like one of THOSE Black people, you know?"
What’s striking about Crooks’ post is that, while he talks about incidents of racism and incidents of cops who basically wouldn’t believe that he really lived in a white neighborhood, in a lot of the incidents were like what he described in the paragraph about. The while people he interacted with honestly thought they were being nice and helpful without realizing what they actually sounded like.
Crooks didn’t write “everyone in Naperville was racist.” What he ultimately said was that there was a bunch of incidents, large and small, that made him feel like he never quite belonged. Like he was never viewed quite the same way as an average Naperville resident.
Which, I think, touches on something that has come up a lot ever since groups that were part of the Black Lives Matter movement talked about white racism. There are inevitably white people who protest “I’m not racist - I don’t hate black people.” And they don’t. But, as I’ve written many times before, it’s easy to fall into stereotypes and assumptions. They are insidious little things that can affect you in surprising ways.
Anyway… I recommend reading both articles in whole. The parts I quoted only scratch the surface, and I would strongly recommend that you judge them for yourself.