Day 13
I was alone and pulling out of my parking space at Barnes & Noble in Rancho Cucamonga, where my parents live, when this older, Asian man stopped me and asked to see my Driver’s License. How old are you? He didn’t believe I was old enough to be driving. Or, he didn’t believe I should be driving a luxury car (which belonged to my dad). I was twenty-six-years-old. I wish that I could be one of those quippy people in these kinds of situations. Either blowing him off or saying something like, old enough. But I’m not. I don’t even remember exactly how I responded. But it was probably something like a polite laugh and a wave of the hand.
I was in Home Depot in St. Louis a few months later, getting some supplies for an art project, when this white lady looked at me, with disgust, and said, that looks weird. She was talking about my hair. I just stared at her. Surprised. But also not. We ran into each other a few aisles later and she put her hand in front of her face, like a child would, so that I couldn’t see her. Or maybe so she didn’t have to look at me. I was incensed. But, again, I said nothing.
It was the first month of my first year in college when a campus police officer came up to a group of us standing outside of our dorm. He wanted to know what we were doing there. A half dozen black kids laughing and talking after the sun had gone down. I still don’t know how he knew we were gathered there. If someone had called the campus police on us. But I remember the what the fuck feeling of someone assuming we didn’t belong there. Of someone wanting to exercise some control over how we moved in the world.
I was listening to a podcast earlier this week with Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a historian at Harvard, when something about the life I have been handed shifted into focus. He was on the podcast to speak about the history of American Police. Following the abolition of slavery, he said, Southern states created slave patrols which were “explicit in their design to empower the white population.” White men were required to serve on these patrols. But when it came to controlling black folks, it was an all hands on deck effort; not just about “police'' power, but about the duty, as a white person, to police black people. For centuries, then, we have created societies with this expectation as our foundation: that black folks must be policed. Watched. Guarded against. And that it is the duty of white folks especially, but all non-black folks widely, to comment upon our living and to keep us in line. The lines are imaginary of course. And ever-moving, depending on their level of comfort for the day.
This is how I have moved through the world, then. With white and non-black folks believing it is their birthright, their duty, to police me. To assume I’m not old enough or wealthy enough to be driving the car I am in. To decide it’s appropriate to comment upon how I look. To use whatever means necessary to intimidate and disperse a group of us, should we have the audacity to gather.
It is not only the institution of police that black folks have been taught to be wary of. It is the white woman that we walked too close to. Or her child whose eye contact we avoid, so as not to be read as threatening. It is the random man in the parking lot who believes he has a right to see your identification or the neighborhood watch man with a gun.
A Practice for Today:
How have you internalized the belief that it is the duty of non-black folks to police black folks? From whom did you learn these lessons? And how were they communicated?
In what ways do you see this playing out in your world? Have you ever been a player in the unfolding of this dynamic - either policing or being policed? What do your instincts tell you to do in these situations? How do you act on that information?
