But They’re So Nice to Me…

Many of my white family and friends are reading, hearing, and seeing the accounts of black people and find themselves in a state of disbelief. The experiences that a typical middle class or wealthy white person has with police are SO far removed from what they’re hearing from the black community that the confusion you feel is understandable.

Many of you might be asking yourselves “How could the same police who have always treated me so well behave in such a cruel, violent, and inhuman manner towards black people?”

First, I hope that at this point you have heard similar stories of violence, suspicion, and oppression from enough black people that you are starting to be able to move past your disbelief and realize that the reports that you’re hearing from black communities about their treatment at the hands of police are real and deserve your attention. I do not know of a black American adult who does not have at least one (and often many) police horror stories.

I feel confident that virtually every one of your black friends, coworkers, and acquaintances has stories of their interactions with police that would make you sad, angry, or both. Some of us don’t talk about these stories very often (or at all). Sometimes it’s because they are too painful to talk about. Sometimes it’s because we feel embarrassed the same way victims of domestic violence often do. Sometimes it’s because we are afraid of the judgement we’ll get from white people... that you might think that we must have been doing something terrible to deserve that treatment. And sometimes it’s simply because these are private moments and they’re none of your business. But whether or not you’ve heard from every black person you know, I assume that by now you’ve heard from a big enough critical mass of us to start to convince you of the severity of the situation.

Assuming that you’ve made it that far... that you are starting to believe that despite the fact that you may not have had personal experience with these kinds of incidents, they are real, ubiquitous, and hugely problematic, I imagine you’re trying to figure out why this is happening and how it has been allowed to continue all this time.

This article was written by a former police officer and sheds a huge amount of light on how and why police behave this way and how they continue to get away with it. Reading it will give you incredible insight and clarity into the typically extremely opaque system which creates and supports these kinds of behaviors. If you’re trying to make sense of what you’re seeing and hearing, please read this article. I promise that it will help.