First, let me say that the enthusiastic response from this community to my intro diary was fantastic and, indeed, as encouraging as I could have asked. Thank you all.
I've already learned a couple things:
#1: I've been a "lurker" for several years, and I take no offense! I've also been an occasional donor (the occasion being a little extra financial confidence) and petition signer (when my futility meter is in the green zone). Once a lurker, now I'm here. May the future grant no grounds for remorse on my part or the community's!
#2: "Pooties" and "woozles". There was some ambiguity here. Do the terms refer to the dog/cat devoté or to the dog/cat? If the former, I accept that appellation, too! I'm a Pootie! If the latter, well, I still accept. Sometimes I'd rather be a dog. Humans can be so frustrating!
On that note, to the subject of this diary heading, and I hope it's not too wordy. Context matters:
Our news cycle has rolled a bit past Ferguson and its implications, but the issue has not gone away. The prime topic it properly raised is the prevailing sense of harassment, intimidation and inequity in the daily lives of black Americans.
The other side of that coin is white denial; the invalidation of chronic injustice by the white majority, which I am part of. If we don’t live it we won’t understand it; if we don’t experience it we can’t feel it; if we don’t see it every day, or even once in your lives, we might be persuaded that it’s not real.
A privileged white man such as myself rarely, if ever, personally bears witness to a flagrant act of injustice toward a person of color. We have few opportunities to look into the eye of authority when it decides that an act of oppression is in order.
But I looked into that eye. I’ve seen it. I’d like to share here my particular witness to it,
below the famous Kos Kurlicue...
Dive in, they say... Splash...!
This happened years ago, in the mid ‘80s, which may open me to the attack of “that was then, this is now”, but I don’t accept that “post racial” BS. Thirty years might seem a long time on a personal level. In generational terms it was yesterday. It happens today and it will keep happening until... who knows?
My story takes place in a small suburban town in southern California, an upscale area of gated neighborhoods and million dollar homes. Plenty of places just like it in this rich nation, so names don’t really matter. Besides, after 30 years it wouldn’t be fair to single it out. It’s not an exception.
The residents of one of the mansions in this town were relocating to another state. My task was to drive a truck to the site and start the packing. One of my crew elected to follow in his personal vehicle because there wasn’t room in the cab for all of us. He was a black man in his early twenties named Dave,and he drove an older car, a faded red four-door sedan, as I recall. Whatever the make of the car, it was no match for the kind of cars you would see in a place like that.
I didn’t know the man well. He hadn’t been with the company very long, but he was a good guy, cooperative and energetic. Not a lot of experience, but he was eager to learn the ropes. Good potential, I thought.
As we drove through town, we came to a four-way stop and turned right. On completing the turn I saw a police car parked about 50 yards ahead on the wide right shoulder. I could also see the officer standing behind his car, intent on paperwork, facing our direction. He had evidently just completed a traffic stop, and the subject car was pulling away as we approached.
I was minding my speed, of course, as we all do when there’s a patrolman visible, and I was watching the officer’s face as I drove by. He continued to write on his pad, head down, as I came abreast of him.
At that moment he glanced up, not at me, but at the car following behind. The look that came over his face was extraordinary, and is still etched in my memory. His eyebrows shot up, a little head shake, open mouth as he caught sight of my coworker and his car. I could almost see the lights and hear alarm bells go off in his head.
Continuing down the road, I watched in my rear view mirror as he waved my partner to the shoulder.
I knew immediately there was no cause here. We had done nothing wrong, and even if we had, the cop could not have seen it because he wasn’t aware of us until that moment. But I don’t believe I thought it through at the time, either. My own alarms were going off. We had a job to do and one of my men had a problem.
The look on the cop’s face was still with me as I pulled the truck onto the shoulder, got out and started walking back. The officer already had his ticket book out. Dave was clearly upset, a mix of anger, fear and frustration, I suppose, playing across his face, but he was not arguing or making a scene. Speechless, I’d say.
The cop was young, too, probably in his late twenties, white and fair-haired. He didn’t even notice me or my truck until I was almost up to them, and when he did he quickly sized up the situation, paused in his writing, glanced between the two of us and said, “Is he with you?” “Yes,” I said. “We’re on our way to...” such and such, etc. He went back to writing and said, “Your friend failed to stop at that intersection back there.”
Now I was speechless.
If I could go back in time...
Dave signed the ticket with clenched teeth and fairly snatched it from the officer’s hand after it was torn from the book, turned on his heel and headed back to his car. I well remember his face, too, as he strode away: narrowed eyes, clenched jaw, fairly shaking with rage.
We talked about it briefly, later, and I offered to help him fight the ticket but he refused, so that was the end of it. I would so like to go back in time.
This incident has haunted me ever since, because it cannot have been some isolated event. The only rare thing is that I got to see the face of injustice, point blank, in real life, not in a book or movie. I’m a professional driver and I know what it means to get a traffic violation on my record. Millions of such incidents slide under our privileged noses year after year among the black community, damaging job prospects, insurance rates, credit reports, dignity. The ramifications of inequality.
I’ll confess to be unsure if my partner's was really Dave, by the way. I don’t remember. It was too long ago. I do remember he soon quit coming to work.
I most vividly recall that police officer’s face, the alarm bells clanging. I see it every time I hear of a black kid shot, a conviction overturned, every time I hear some apologist for the law claim that, if it happened, it must be because they deserved it.
My witness was such a rare, brief, flickering moment in time. How many millions of other such moments have occurred outside the ken of us privileged white folks, adding up to a continuum of injustice that whittles the less privileged into submission and constant fear? How many tiny cuts before the next explosion?
Equal justice before the law.
How long before a cop can look up and only see another motorist lawfully minding his business while on the way to a lousy job...?
“Privilege” is a relative condition, of course. My own status is blue collar working poor, son of the blue collar working poor and far from affluent. Still, “benefit of the doubt” is a grant I’ve enjoyed all my life. A white man of any class in America enjoys at least a modicum of deference and forbearance from law enforcement that I might easily take for granted if not for this thing I witnessed. If what I’m trying to convey here means anything, it’s that this “privilege” is commonly withheld from “others”, and I know it, beyond denial...