I’ve been reading posts in a Facebook group called Woke and Aware, which discusses “current racial injustices, while sharing information that will SUPPORT the overall well being (mind, body, & spirit) of Black people & Black communities.”
In my sincere desire to learn, understand, and become actively supportive, I combined conversations from Woke and Aware about the Amber Guyger case with comments about racial issues from deeply admired friends and work-teammates. In the case, Guyger, a white off-duty police officer, walked into the wrong apartment and shot its Black resident, Botham Shem Jean, and claimed that she thought he was an intruder in her apartment. Botham was a father, husband, brother, son, a church leader known for his singing voice and an accountant. He was 27 years old.
I was pondering what happened and people’s reaction to it and suddenly it all clashed together in my head at 2 a.m. after I’d fallen asleep before 9 p.m. The iconic image from the 2014 Ferguson protests lingered in my semi-conscious mind. “Twelve-year-old Devonte Hart was holding a sign offering “free hugs” during a protest in Portland, Oregon against a grand jury’s decision not to charge white officer Darren Wilson for killing unarmed black teen Michael Brown. The image, shot by freelance photographer Johnny Nguyen and published by The Oregonian, showed a man identified as Portland Police Sgt. Bret Barnum hugging Devonte as tears streamed down his face,” according to the British online newspaper the Independent.
Some 18 months before the Guyger case, a colleague told me he never went out in less that business casual. I had prompted this conversation by telling him my husband worried about police encounters after seeing all the press because he’s an Asian person of color with imperfect English. My colleague suggested I give my husband the same advice he raised his son with, that is never to leave home wearing less than business casual clothing to avoid ugly incidents. In the 18 months since that conversation, I think about his words every time I run out to get milk or gas the car in jogging shorts and Tevas. But suddenly, at 2 a.m., I pondered what exactly defined an ugly incident and the Mwende “FreeQuency” Katwiwa TED talk had the answers. Maybe it’s just someone looks at you as a criminal rather than a child, in the case of my colleague’s son. Maybe someone is just rude or suspicious. But maybe … a family member doesn’t come home … ever.
During the discussions of Guyger trial, I had a private conversation with a mother of three sons whose young adult nephew had been living with her family when he was killed a month earlier in a senseless act of violence. I realized during our conversations that her family wasn’t simply mourning the loss of a family member, but I worried and wondered if her children believed they could be next. She told me she had been diagnosed with PTSD. We discussed whether maybe her children might be struggling as well.
I suddenly realized the Guyger case, independent from the facts of the case, is part of a greater social reality for People of Color in which there is a general sense of lack of physical safety. A sense of physical safety is one of the most important elements to human development after food, clothing and shelter. An Army special forces medic once explained to me that people can get PTSD not only from experiencing violence or witnessing it, but from the pervasive fear that violence is a constant threat.
Now we leave the battle fields of Iraq/Afghanistan and come to the U.S. Here, we view the perception of physical safety in communities of Non-Whites after the string of videos showing random violence, police brutality, unarmed Black people killed by police, added to the senseless death of Botham and the end result is unquestionably a sense the world is not safe in the poetry of Mwende “FreeQuency” Katwiwa, “if you’re Black in America.”
Unlike the battle fields of foreign lands, the fear here isn’t only that sudden, senseless death might come to an individual or someone they know, but here it could be a family member, loved one or in the worst case of fear, a child.
We not only need a justice system that actually treats everyone equally with equal time for equal crime; we not only need police forces that engender trust among all; we need a sense of physical safety for everyone, including and especially People of Color. We need a sense that we are all physically safe in our homes. This is the underlying meta reality of Guyger shooting Botham. People of Color are not even physically safe in their own homes.
I know we all live in our own skin and we can only know the lived experiences of others by listening. I’m trying to listen, process, learn and understand.
35-Year Public Affairs & IT Professional 