photo by Noah Stewart
I knew the video was going to be bad. In all honesty, I was afraid to click on it. On my Facebook feed, I saw the now-infamous image of now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd at least 20 times before I mustered the courage to click. I watched as Chauvin drove his knee into Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 43 seconds as Chauvin’s brothers-in-arms held down Floyd’s arms and legs, not responding to his cries of pain or pleas that he couldn’t breathe.
Tears were streaming down my face. I hadn’t realized that I had started crying. I did what I always do when I’m upset. I called my mom. She picked up after the first ring.
“It’s really bad, Mom.”
“I know.”
Two days after the videos showing police brutality at protests began to surface, I decided to venture out of my Midtown apartment. Up until this point I had resigned myself to staying indoors and keeping my head down, but I did not want to let fear rule. I grabbed a backpack and started towards Overton Park. That is when the white Ford pulled up beside me on the street. I tightened my grip on my bag and tried to speed up but there was nowhere to go. I looked over my shoulder at the man eyeing me from the driver’s seat and my heart began to dip. I didn’t have a way to protect myself but more importantly, I was on a public street. There was no video camera here. I can pull out my phone, I thought, but if I do, will he think I’m reaching for something? In the time it took me to ask these questions, he pulled into his driveway and shut off his car. I hate watching myself make these assumptions. But less than 3 months earlier someone in a similar vehicle yelled racial epithets at me as I made the same walk. I have been conditioned to fear.
I have fond childhood memories of playing football in my friend Johnathan’s yard as his dad would roll up to their house in his patrol car. The way he carried himself and walked with his badge on display made me feel safe. Cops don’t do that for me anymore. I have spent my entire life watching men and women that look like me be killed without repercussions.
I was 14 when Trayvon Martin was killed. I had just begun walking home from school alone, but after Martin’s death, my mom left work two hours early for an entire month to pick me up from school. When I was 16, I watched as Chicago police riddled Laquan McDonald's lifeless body with hate. That was the same year I was stopped by cops while I walked home because I looked like “a thug.” I was 18 in my dorm room as I watched the video of Stephon Clark being killed with his phone in his hands in his backyard. That same year I had campus safety tell me to stop trespassing while I was standing outside my dorm room. Two weeks ago, I sat in my apartment watching the video of Ahmaud Arbery being murdered during his daily run in his own neighborhood. I couldn’t help but put myself in his shoes.
The actions of Derek Chauvin are a symptom of a systemic policing problem in the United States. George Floyd did not have to die. In a sane world, an officer recognizes that the life of the man beneath him is worth something and that the laws that we all follow mean that that officer could just as easily be the man pinned on the ground with a knee on his neck. But we do not live in a sane world and time after time, African Americans have been forced to watch as brothers, mothers, and community leaders are murdered. I have been conditioned to believe that I can be murdered without rhyme or reason, and without consequences.
I’m so tired of being scared. There’s a weight on my shoulders that follows me around the house. I shouldn’t have to walk to the park while on the phone with someone because I’m afraid that something is going to happen to me. When I go to the store, I shouldn’t feel the need to go the other way because I’m afraid the white woman in front of me thinks I’m following her. When I go for a run, I shouldn’t have to spend time contemplating whether or not it’s safe for me to wear a mask or not. I don’t want to see my friends on Facebook change their picture to a Black Lives Matter photo frame for two weeks to show solidarity.
I, like many African Americans in the country, want meaningful change. I want to feel that in the eyes of a cop, my life matters. In the past decade, I was told that “all lives matter” when I tried to argue that “Black lives matter” enough to be protected and respected. I watched Colin Kaepernick kneel during the national anthems before football games, in peaceful and quiet protest, and be told to “Shut up and play the game.” I watched a cop kneel on the neck of a black man for 8 minutes 43 seconds, killing him, and heard people tell me, “If he can complain about not being able to breathe, he can breathe.” Across the country when African Americans rose up in protests, calling for solidarity and for our voices to be heard, we have been labeled as “thugs” and met with tear gas.
Despite the dark actions of officers nationwide this past weekend, there were glimpses of mercy that gave me hope. Protestors and cops walking hand-in-hand in Camden, NJ and Flint, MI; protestors in Washington, D.C. working together to restrain a looter and hand them over to police (who then checked on the protestors to ensure they were not hurt); a Fort Lauderdale police officer confronting another officer in the middle of assaulting a protestor and dismissing him from duty.
Change can happen, but we need to stop pretending like America is a bastion of morality first. I hope my future children will look back on us and be disappointed. I want them to compare their society to ours and comment on our mistakes and missteps. I hope that one day those same children will ask me why we made the choices that we did, and I can give them a concrete answer. I want to grow up in a world in which they see a police car, and feel safe.
