I feel like the country I love is bleeding out. Words are
poor bandages, but still I am compelled to write and so I offer this brief
reflection on privilege in the hopes it may lead others to similarly reflect.
I was stopped by the police—twice—on a walk from the strip
mall where I’d eaten lunch back to the hotel where I was staying for a business
trip. The stops occurred just a few weeks before Covid-19 shut down most of the
country, in a commercial sector filled with upscale strip malls, chain stores,
and mid-priced business class hotels like the one where I was staying. I was
wearing a gray hoodie, jeans, and gray sneakers. I was on the sidewalk; the
walk was maybe a block long, point-to-point. I was happy. I’d found a local
falafel place with comfortable seating so I was able to write a few pages while
enjoying my food, and when I left I popped my earbuds in and was listening to
music on an iPod as old as my children. I may have even been singing as I strolled down the sidewalk.
And then the first policeman stopped
me.
He pulled his cruiser over to the shoulder of the road and
was smiling when he got out of the car. He was still smiling while he waited patiently
for me to take out my earbuds so I could hear him.
“Are you Joe?” he asked.
“No,” I told him, supposing I did look a little suspicious
in my hoodie—the little yellow “Life is Good” logo over my heart would have
been hard to read from a distance. “I’m not Joe. I’m Dan Waters.”
“Okay,” he said, and then he got back in his cruiser. I
watched him drive away. I hadn’t felt afraid or even irritated. If anything, I
felt amused that saying “I’m not Joe” was enough to send him on his way. It was like I'd cast "Dispel Policemen" with that short incantation. I was singing again in moments.
I was approaching the stoplight at the intersection of the
hotel access road no more than a minute later when I spotted the second cruiser.
It was waiting on the other side of the red light and somehow looked expectant.
Even before the light turned green, and before the cruiser’s flashers came on,
I knew this other vehicle was also going to stop me.
I proactively removed my
earbuds. Sure enough, lights still flashing, the cruiser rolled to an abrupt stop
on the shoulder in front of me. This time two policemen got out. One, the
driver, had his hand on the holster at his back hip.
I still was not afraid. Unnerved, maybe, but I really didn’t
think his gun was going to leave the holster.
“Hey there,” he said, smiling. I thought it was a “we gotcha”
kind of smile, smirky.
“Hi,” I replied. No fear. “I’m still not Joe. Your colleague
stopped me down the road just a moment ago.”
He looked at his partner, eyes narrowing as he tried to get
that cop telepathy going.
“Would it help if I gave you my drivers license?” I said, hoping
to cut through the confusion. The offer surprised him, just a little. “I’m staying at the Hampton down this
street.”
“It might,” he said, and his hand came off his hip and he
dropped the smirk, exchanging it for a pleasant smile.. “I’m really sorry for
the hassle.”
“No worries.” I replied, because truly, there weren’t any.
I gave him my license; he glanced at it and gave it back. He
apologized a second time and before driving away he turned to his partner and
said, “The guy we’re looking for looks exactly like him.”
I thought it was a funny thing to say, because the cop and I
looked similar. We were both white and bald; he was a few years younger than me
and a bit bigger—swole, my son might say--but it would be hard for a casual
witness to differentiate us in a line-up.
I walked the short distance back to the hotel thinking
primarily about two questions, questions I’d be turning over in my head the
rest of the day and on into night as I waited for the sleep that so often
eludes me when I’m on the road for business. The questions still haunt me.
How would I have felt in and after that situation if I
had been a person of color?
Would that situation had even gone the same way if I had
been a person of color?
Despite being confronted by the police twice in five
minutes, I did not have a single moment of doubt where I thought that maybe—just
maybe—things wouldn’t go my way. I was abundantly certain the confusion would
be cleared up with a few words and an ID card. I never thought the police would
find my earbuds, my hoodie, or my general demeanor disrespectful. I never
thought speaking to them before being asked a question would be a strike
against me, and I never once thought that the brief exchange around a mistaken
identity or false accusation would end with me in handcuffs or with a knee on
my neck.
Not everyone in our country has the freedom—the privilege—to
be that confident and fearless in interactions with the police.
Innocence is not enough, by the way. The fact that I wasn’t “Joe”
alone wasn’t enough to ensure I could speak freely and act under the assumption
there could be no possible negative repercussions for my actions. Even though I
apparently was a dead ringer for this miscreant “Joe”, in the first instance
all I had to do was boldly declare I was not Joe and the encounter was over.
Does it work the same way for everyone?
Is a simple
declaration of innocence, without any tangible proof, all that is needed to
peaceably end confrontations with the police?
Not for everyone, it seems.
Over the next few hours as I replayed the event in my mind,
I realized that I’d stepped toward the second cruiser before the police had
fully exited their vehicle. Could that have been construed as a hostile
approach? Were my hands visible? Did my smile appear friendly, or insolent? Did
I reach for my back pocket—where I had my wallet, not a gun—too quickly?
It doesn't take a narrative genius to imagine several different outcomes for these two interactions. No creativity is required to paint a tragic ending when society has provided plenty of them in similar situations. Change mine and Joe's ethnicity and perhaps the story gets told in exactly the same manner--but probably not.
Is it fair to say, that of the many benefits I enjoy as a
middle-aged white man, one of them is the benefit of doubt? I have fifty years
on the planet enjoying that benefit, that confidence, that lack of fear. My
childhood in the seventies, my adolescence and young adulthood in the eighties,
my life here in 2020—are likely to have been very, very different than another
person’s. Society and culture spent those decades teaching me not to be afraid;
society and culture taught many other people over the same time period that
they have every reason to be afraid.
Privilege results in many things, but one of the most
prevalent—and most polarizing for people who don’t take the time to try to
understand it—is the ability to move and interact in society without fear. The
realization that many, many people we live, love, work, and interact with every
day do not enjoy that very basic freedom should be both sobering and actually
terrifying to all of us. The reality that the freedoms we consider to be
inalienable rights are routinely denied to people simply because of who they
are flies in the face of the things we think we believe in and stand for.
Until we live in a world where people can live without that fear,
we live in a broken world.
In the end, I was grateful I was stopped by twice by the
police that day. It led me to think deeply about a disease our society must
cure. It led me to have more empathy for those who don’t have the freedoms I
enjoy; empathy is a path to understanding and understanding is a path to
action.
But then again, it is my privilege to be grateful. All I had
to do was say my name.
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