Police

In the car on the way home from school yesterday, at a confusing intersection, a police officer pleasantly waved for us to go in front of him.

Jordan: Police officers are really nice. You think about them chasing criminals or whatever but whenever I see one, I am really glad they are there. I feel safe. I feel secure.
Rachel: I love that you feel that way. That’s how it should be, because police officers should be some of the most important helpers, and they can do the best job being helpers if we trust them and they trust us. But I want to tell you that part of the reason you feel safe and secure with police officers is an unfair reason.
Jordan: What is that?
Rachel: It’s because you are white.
Jordan: That is horribly unfair.
Rachel: I know. It’s terrible. And the fact is that there have been a lot of very bad things that have happened, where police officers have hurt or even killed Black people who they thought were doing something wrong, only the police were mistaken. Sometimes the police were unfairly suspicious of someone because of their prejudices. Sometimes they shot someone instead of only arresting them. Terrible things have happened.
Aaron: Like that guy that was a woodcarver and the police said he was attacking them with a knife but really it was his woodcarving knife and he was just walking across the street. And they shot him and they killed him for basically no reason.
Rachel: Right. Like that. That was incredibly sad, and completely unfair. And that man was Native American.
Jordan: That should not happen.
Rachel: I know. And I am really sorry to tell you that it happens, not just one or two times but over and over. I bet you can imagine that if you were a Black person, knowing about these terrible things, you might not feel safe or secure with the police.
Jordan: I think the police should protect everyone and be fair to everyone.
Rachel: I would like our family to try and help with the way things are so that that could come true.

I am not very hopeful that conversations like this make a lot of difference; there is so much that is wrong, and talk is cheap, and I am very far from being any kind of effective activist against police brutality. But talking about it has got to be better than not talking about it. I am trying to keep taking advantage of moments that come up, like when this picture understandably caught the kids' attention.

The protester Ieshia Evans being detained in Baton Rouge, La., on July 9, 2016.
Photo by Jonathan Bachman.

And of course the more I learn, the more I see the awful effects of racism (and other systems of unfairness) everywhere, so there are more opportunities to talk.