as you can tell by the opening paragraph of his column in today's New York Times:
Saturday evening, I got a call that no parent wants to get. It was my son calling from college — he’s a third-year student at Yale. He had been accosted by a campus police officer, at gunpoint!
I have been waiting for this column for several days, ever since Blow began tweeting about the incident.
Like some other prominent black columnists, he has often written about how young men of color are treated by police.
Like the President of the United States, as recent events have occurred, from Trayvon Martin on, he has written from a point of view that far too many cannot grasp, because they have never been subjected to the indignity of disparate treatment merely because of the color of their skin.
My normal procedure in writing about one of Blow's columns is to go through the material of the column as I comment upon it. I will not follow that procedure for this column. You need to read the narrative portion directly. After you have read the paragraph that begins "Now don't get me wrong" you can join me below the cheese-doodle.
And yes, I know the Times has a limit on the number of articles. This column is worth using one of your ten.
Because Blow tweeted about the incident beginning as soon as he learned about it, there has been a lot of news coverage.
But the coverage does not do the story justice.
You can go to @CharlesMBlow on Twitter and scroll down to find the tweets as he posted them.
Returning to the column, several things jump out at me. Blow does not have a problem with his son, if he matched the description of a suspect, being stopped and questioned. He does strongly challenge how his son was stopped., that a gun was drawn and pointed at his son.
The heart of the column are these paragraphs:
This is the scenario I have always dreaded: my son at the wrong end of a gun barrel, face down on the concrete. I had always dreaded the moment that we would share stories about encounters with the police in which our lives hung in the balance, intergenerational stories of joining the inglorious “club.”
When that moment came, I was exceedingly happy I had talked to him about how to conduct himself if a situation like this ever occurred. Yet I was brewing with sadness and anger that he had to use that advice.
I am reminded of what I have always known, but what some would choose to deny: that there is no way to work your way out — earn your way out — of this sort of crisis. In these moments, what you’ve done matters less than how you look.
Too many who are not of color have commented negatively when Black parents talk about having "the conversation" with their children, especially their boys.
This kind of incident, upon which many have commented since Trayvon Martin was killed, is unfortunately not all of the indignity.
Perhaps you think that I as a senior citizen white man who grew up in upper middle class privilege should not be writing about this? Here I disagree, for two reasons.
First, as a teacher of adolescents many of whom have skin that is dark, I have heard too many tales of their experience, ranging from being followed around stores, to stopped for driving or walking while black, to a few even more severe encounters with law enforcement, severe primarily because of the hue of their skin. I note that I have seen a number of such incidents, and perhaps because I am aware of the experience of my students I have more often than not spoken up.
Second, because this is NOT just a problem for Black families. It is a problem for our society. While the legal construction of Jim Crow under the separate but equal doctrine of Plessy may be gone, the disparate treatment and the willingness of too many to tolerate or even praise it is an indication of our continue problem with race as a society. While it may no longer be acceptable to be openly racist the use of code words and rationalizations has exactly the same impact when the disparate treatment falls negatively on those who are men of color, from adolescence through adulthood - think of the recent incident of a licensed concealed carry 62 year old Black Man.
Oh, and you might remember that the incident that led to some gun control in California was when Huey Newton and the Black Panthers walked into the state capitol legally carrying weapons. Now consider the lack of arrests on people at the Bundy ranch who illegally trained weapons on Federal law enforcement5.
Let me not stray too far.
This incident was personal for Charles M. Blow. He writes as a parent.
But he also writes as an astute and articulate social commentator. And thus we should read carefully, one at a time, his final two paragraphs.
There is no amount of respectability that can bend a gun’s barrel. All of our boys are bound together.
When you have had a law enforcement officer point a gun at you, you never forget it.
I have had that experience once, in a situation far more justifiable from the point of view of the officer than what confronted the Yale police officer with Blow's son. I don't often think about it, but when I remember it I shudder. Note the second sentence of what I have just quoted, and perhaps you will begin to grasp the concern Blow has, that all parents of Black boys have, including the Mayor of our largest city.
The dean of Yale College and the campus police chief have apologized and promised an internal investigation, and I appreciate that. But the scars cannot be unmade. My son will always carry the memory of the day he left his college library and an officer trained a gun on him.
Blow is prominent. His column and his more than 120,000 Twitter followers gives him a very loud megaphone. It is not out of line to wonder whether Yale would have responded so quickly had the young man not had such an important father. Blow appreciates the response he got.
But again, read the final sentence of that paragraph.
Why should any of our young people ever have to carry such memories?
Why is almost exclusively young men of color who do?
This was personal for Blow.
His column was written as a father to be sure.
But it is also a powerful expression that those of us who are not Black need to understand, so that we can do our share to try to change a society that allows this to continue to happen in such a disparate fashion.