Growing Up Black in America, A Conversation with my Son-in-Law #blacklivesmatter #policeshootings

Some months ago, I asked my son-in-law what it was like to grow up black in America.

I had recently watched the following video about this question, and I wanted to know more about his own experience growing up in the mid-west.  Did his parents have similar talks with him?  Please watch:

“Yes,” he said. “They did.”

“My mother would never let me go out in anything but my best cloths.  She told me that I was always representing my people, and I had to be careful that I made a good impression.  I couldn’t let others get the wrong idea about me, to think that I was a trouble-maker because of the way I dressed.

“As I became older, she would remind me to always be polite and cooperative when the police stopped me while driving.  I had to be careful not to give them a reason to feel threatened or make them nervous.”

I now know that his mother waited nervously for him to return home every time he went out, praying that her son was safe, that he had not been pulled over or arrested, detained or questioned for the crime of being a black youth  in a white neighborhood.

When I was a growing up, my mother never once warned me about behaving myself because I was a representative of my people.

She never made me wear my nice clothes when I went out to play for fear that someone might see me as a trouble-maker or criminal-wanna-be simply because of the way I dressed.

I never gave a second thought to “being friendly and polite” to the police when I was driving, no matter the neighborhood I was passing through.

But then, I am white.

And that, my friends, whether you are willing to believe it or not, makes all the difference in this country of ours.  There ain’t no such thing as a post-racial America.

When I first posted the above video on my Facebook page, an old acquaintance angrily commented that she found it highly offensive!  Why?  Because these black folks were complaining about the way police officers treated them…

Of course, my friend was a church-going, white woman.

Yes, folks. Black lives do not count for much in white America.  Discrimination is alive and well. Racism lives, to some degree or another, in all our hearts.  Simply recall the very abbreviated list of recent incidents listed below:

Starbucks closed 8,000 of its stores earlier this week as it provided racial sensitivity training seminars for all its employees.  This after employees in a Philadelphia store called the police on two black men sitting at a table waiting for a friend.

The two young men were taken away in handcuffs for the crime of waiting at a table without first buying a cup of coffee.  Honestly, would that ever have happened to a white customer — who wasn’t filthy, drug-addled and brandishing a weapon?

We all know the answer.

MSNBC recently hosted a televised forum called “Everyday Racism in America” where average black Americans told their stories of coping with everyday racism as a matter of survival.

Black men, women and children continue to be needlessly assaulted, shot, wounded and killed by police officers across this country.  31% of the people killed by police in America are black, even though they only compose 13% of the population.

According to the national data base Fatal Encounters, “black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.”

Perhaps you were as shocked as I was to learn about Gregory Hill, the father of 3 now-orphaned children.  Mr. Hill was killed by Florida police when they shot at him through his garage door. Someone passing through the neighborhood, picking up their child from school, called the police to complain that his music was too loud.

If Mr. Hill had been white would he be dead today, shot and killed for drinking a beer and listening to loud music inside his own garage? We all know the answer to that question.

In 2014, the Bundy family staged an armed standoff after commandeering a public lands facility.  Brandish high-powered rifles, they threatened to shoot any law enforcement officers called to the scene. Not only were none of the Bundys or their armed supporters ever shot, but early this year their case was dismissed from court.

Compare that to what happened in a Florida court’s treatment of Mr. Hill’s family.

When Mr. Hill’s widow filed a civil suit against the police, not only were the police officers who killed her husband found not guilty, but she was awarded a whopping settlement of $4.  1 dollar per life (counting the 3 children), which was later reduced to 4 cents because 99% of the blame, according to the court, belonged to Mr. Hill.

For those who have the eyes to see, the brutal evidence is self-evident every single day. Black lives do not matter in this country.  Well, in Florida, they are worth something.  About 1 cent each.

Every Christian in this country, but especially every white Christian in this country, must make it our duty to stand with our brothers and sisters of color and do whatever we can to speak out and oppose this ingrained, systematic, unreflective wickedness that sees the other as less than themselves.

The multi-ethnic, inter-racial church of Jesus Christ ought to be in the front lines of this struggle.