I don’t know with any certainty why Rayshard Brooks ran. But I do know I probably would have run if I had been him.
Of course I’m not him; not really anything much like him. I’m an old white Southerner who lives in a one of the better parts of Atlanta. And my life has been pretty much middle class with all the privileges and opportunities that go with that.
Not so for most young black men, whose mothers and wives worry every time they go out the door — to school, or to work, or to see friends. They wonder if they’ll ever come back through that door, or if some encounter with a policeman will end with a funeral.
I can’t imagine that Rayshard Brooks didn’t know about George Floyd’s murder. Or Ahmund Aubrey’s, or Brienna Taylor’s, or the countless other deaths at the hands of “the law,” going back to the days of slave patrols and lynchings. No, you can bet he knew all about this nation’s history of racism. And that the police and justice system are a part of it. And that all of us white folks are a part of it, too, whether we want to admit it or even recognise it in ourselves.
So, he got arrested because he fell asleep in his car. And the police were going to handcuff him and put him in a patrol car and take him — where? Was this going to be a “rough ride” to some deserted place where they would beat him up before charging him with resisting arrest? Or plant drugs or a gun on him? Or would it be just an out and out “justifiable” homicide?
Don’t say these things don’t happen because they do. It’s just that only recently have we begun to see the evidence with our own eyes. And knowing that, as Rayshard Brooks must have, I would have been terrified, and I would have fought, and I would have run. I would have done all those things because it is better to die fighting, than be led like a sheep to the slaughter.
People of color have been crying out for real justice for a very long time. And those of us lucky enough to be white have been pretty much ignoring their cries. Perhaps not any more. The streets are filled with protestors of all descriptions and colors. There is hope in that; that finally the nation has started to listen.
Let us hope, and pray, and work hard to make real justice happen — including police forces that are the real guardians of the communities they serve. We cannot have any more of this terror and still claim to be the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.