Imagine, if you will, that Eric Garner, who died from an illegal choke hold applied by a White Staten Island police officer, had been White.
Imagine also that the officers who swarmed Garner, the down-on-his luck husband and father guilty only of selling loose cigarettes, on that fateful summer day in 2014 — including the one who choked the life out of Garner, handcuffed and on the pavement being heard saying, “I can’t breathe” — were Black and were never brought to trial.
Imagine also, if you will, that the 4-year-old girl forced to comfort her mother, Diamond Reynolds, who had just captured video footage of boyfriend Philando Castille being shot seven times during a routine traffic stop, all had been White on that fateful 2016 day in suburban St. Paul. Imagine the public witnessing a little White baby forced to plead with her inconsolable mother to stop cursing and crying because she didn’t want her “to get shooted,” too?
Imagine, also, that the officer who shot Castile, a legal gun owner reportedly reaching for his wallet to present his license and registration — had been African American.
Lastly, imagine that Alton Sterling, pinned to the ground in 2016 in front of a Baton Rouge convenience store by two police officers, was White. Imagine what the reaction to the images of pooling blood spreading across his upper torso would have been after one of the officers that shot him multiple times at point blank range, killing Sterling, would have been Black.
The officers were never charged. The 911 call said Sterling had a gun in the open-carry state, but multiple videos prove that Sterling never brandished the firearm, which never left his right front pocket.
One has to at least consider in these hyper-racialized times what the reaction would be to these randomly selected videos and the others like them seen by millions if Whites were the ones always dying and African Americans were the policemen, always beating the charges in the rare instances that charges were even brought. Charges were never brought in the cases of Garner and Sterling. The officer in the the Castile shooting was acquitted.
These incidents, had they happened as described above, would be viewed, understandably so, as outliers. After all, Black cops captured on video shooting unarmed White citizens under highly questionable circumstances never happen — they are unicorns.
But what if the horror of Garner, Reynolds’ daughter and Sterling actually occurred the way they are laid in this column and not as we know they transpired? Would we be tangled in this debate — which is really not a debate at all — about whether NFL players are unpatriotic for kneeling or raising a fist during the national anthem? Or would we be having an honest and very necessary discussion about serial police brutality?
I’m going with the latter. You know what they say about things getting a little too close to home.
People see what they want to when it comes to the third rail that is race. And rare are folks who have lived under the comfortable protection afforded by American White supremacy that will willingly admit that the police might be overreaching when it comes to Black folks, especially when they can always turn to the anti-patriotism card.
Last week, NFL owners agreed to fine teams whose players protest during the playing of the national anthem beginning next season. Players who do not wish to stand will be allowed to stay in the locker room during the anthem — out of sight, out of mind — and then come onto the field.
Coincidentally, this came down on the same day that a bunch of Milwaukee police officers were admonished and disciplined for the January tasing of NBA player Sterling Brown, who is Black — over a parking violation. Watching Brown suffer in the video isn’t pleasant — he was knocked to the ground violently — but it beats what we’ve become accustomed to seeing.
Here you had a bunch of police officers escalating a simple procedural incident — something a kid in the police academy would be expected to be able to handle — taking it from 0 to 100 in a matter of moments and proving how differently Blacks and whites are policed and how protesting this treatment is legit.
But as we’ve seen, this is about patriotism, the flag and the military — all of them conveniently lies to keep us running away from what we really need to be talking about.
https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/john-mitchell-if-eric-garner-philando-castile-and-alton-sterling/article_425eb5ab-1911-5c7f-bfda-2dd79d5fdbba.html
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