LAist is in Los Angeles
Over the next year, we look forward to hearing your stories about how race and ethnicity shape your life and publish as many of those stories as possible, so that we can all continue to talk.We call this effort Race in LA. Click here for more data and key points on how to participate.
By Keith Taylor
It’s a smart day on June 25, 2020.
I had taken a motorbike ride in the early morning, my energy was rising and I had come into appetite, my wife had to sleep late and I was staying in the solitude of the house, I was at peace when I started preparing my breakfast.
I turned on the radio in the kitchen to pay attention to KPCC and NPR, as I do almost every morning.Morning Edition underway and Attorney General William Barr being interviewed.Towards the end, the theme of race was introduced.
I will say immediately that I am not a fan of Barr, I questioned his judgment and character, but nevertheless, I am eager to hear the tone that would be set by the leading lawyer of our country.
I had never heard Barr talk about racism, so I listened to Carecomplete. I let my oatmeal and my special fruit combine to give my full attention to their responses.
Second, he asked in this regard: Why are black men in the United States statistically much more likely to be shot through the police than other groups?
In the hope that Barr would comment on some causal factors, he may be offering a concept of how to paint seriously to combat this widespread problem.Instead, I heard in Barr’s reaction an insensitivity and a general lack of preference to recognize that the disproportionate killing of black men through law enforcement is even a problem.
And I was surprised by my naivety in waiting for Barr to show a minimum of sensitivity to the existing social climate that put the Black Lives Matter Movement at the forefront.
Barr cited statistics I have interviewed, based on other recent reports I have noticed and experts I have heard on this subject.He began by saying that 8,000 blacks are killed a year and that of the 8,000, eighty-five consistent with percent are shot dead.He went on to say, “Almost everyone is black about black people.”
He went on to say that “there are many other white people who are shot unarmed by the police.” (The rate at which blacks are killed by police in the United States is more than twice that of whites.) Barr Back spoke of the 8,000 deaths of blacks, but added that this occurs “due to delinquency in the areas of highest crime” and criticized the media for not paying attention to this fact.
Its main theme is that blacks, not police practices, are the etiology of the rate of violence against blacks.
Well, your comments had a direct effect on my smart day.
Now, instead of my endorphins coming into play to energize me, they reminded me of my encounters with the police when I was a young black man in Los Angeles, which created a feeling I used to have every time I had dates with the police.- a feeling of us against them.
Momentarily, I felt bad.
MORE OF OUR CAREER IN THE SERIES
The U.S. Attorney General seemed to reject above all the police violence opposed to blacks.I was disgusted by the presumption and, in general, the suffering of black people in their response, an attitude that unfortunately has become familiar to me.
This hit home, because for the most part of my adult life, I was subjected to police movements firmly rooted in the same kind of systemic racism I heard in Barr’s response.Listening to his words caused me pain and sadness, because it forced me to think about how two generations have reached adulthood since my challenges with the police began, and the challenge continues.
Those old emotions I would have at the time – anger, helplessness, getting up and hoping to win – came back here and beat me like a bloodless shower.
It’s anything you feel to the bone. I started thinking about those two generations after me and the previous ones, countless men and women, all having to deal with the attitudes of agents like Barr.Here at the convenience of my own home, however, the emotions escaped me.
Now believe me how they amplify me, and for those who are like me, when we have to deal with those oppressive attitudes every time we face the police on the streets.
Barr talked about black-black crime as if it were the only way of life black people live.It is not my delight in my community, nor for the maximum of friends, affiliates and black families in the orbit of my life.
My challenge to the police, not the.
DRIVING TO WORK, 1978
When I was a graduate student, I had to earn clinical hours for my paintings in psychology.I painted the overdue shift in a hospital that turned out to be a domain where the police didn’t seem to think black people belonged.
During the time I was running there, I seemed to be arrested at least once a week.It’s not that common, but it is. All I was looking for was getting to the paintings on time.I had to make sure I left my house early.every day, so in case I was arrested, I wouldn’t be late.
My mom cared about me and told me that if I was arrested, to keep my mouth shut, I knew I was a user who would protect me, that’s how she raised me.
This particular sweater, the precept I avoided because one of my tailmates left.After the white cop who approached me told me why I had been arrested, I started asking about prevention and asked if I could see how soft it was.
The officer told me to close. He told me that they had to pass on to my call the formula of court orders, violations, etc.Now I never raised my voice, I just asked for an explanation of why so many measures were being taken for a soft light bulb.
At that moment, I asked to get out of the car.
Now I am on the sidewalk, standing next to one of the officers, I am talking and I ask again to see that, in fact, I had an inoperative light.
Sometimes, when I talk, I use my hands. Once again, the officer told me to shut up and keep my hands still, I replied that I had the right to express myself herbal, then he put his hand on his gun and moved as if he were going to take it off.Cover.
He told me if I had to tell him not to move my hands and shut me up, he’d burn my brain.Eventually, the other officer came back from the patrol and informed the officer that he was with me that there was nothing about me.To my surprise, when I nevertheless asked the other officer to show me the tailgentle, it was off.I touched the gentile and he came in here. He was just a coward. They still wrote me a quote so I can go to their inspection site for examination.
I did not mention to the other officer that I, an unarmed man, had been threatened through his spouse for asking who he was going to.
I called this a police harassment habit at the time.The word “harassment” is now soft and insufficient as a descriptor.This tends to recommend to a user who can take remote steps outdoors with appropriate behavior.But in the years that the years since I was young as an adult, I see that the disproportionate mistreatment of blacks through the police has become deeply rooted in law enforcement as a holistic approach.
At least after this harassment of my youth, I had some hope, I hoped that at some point the renegade policeman would be treated and fired, I can no longer expect this, or dismiss this as the action of some renegade policemen, which Barr also insinued in the interview as a component of his response.
I still had that hope after another time, I stopped with what I called a dishonest cop for driving while Black.It wasn’t called that in the 1970s, but that’s what it is.
It was early in the afternoon. I was driving to a house, which some might call an old car, a 1958 Cadillac Coupe, and I wasn’t doing anything to get this officer to arrest me, other than being black.
I’m driving west. He’s heading east. As I pass by, I can see on the outer edge that I had caught his attention.I knew right away that he’d turn around and come after me.In fact, I temporarily saw the red lights in my rearview mirror.. I asked why he was arrested, his answer?Because he sought to arrest me, ” he said.
I asked him, “What law did I violate?” Then he demanded me get out of the vehicle, checked me for guns and then told me to stop on the sidewalk, took his flashlight, lit it in my vehicle and looked under my seats and in the glove compartment.nothing and told me I could leave.
I told him I knew what I had just done illegal.That summer night in the moonlight, he looked me in the eye and pointed the flashlight at his badge number so I could see him clearly.
He said with impunity steeped in his words: “If you don’t like it, here’s my badge number.”
Then he left at night.
BLACKS AND HUMANITY
At the time, I might not have imagined that the kind of unrest I and others had with the police would continue, relentlessly, for each and every successive generation of black after me.
Black people have had to strengthen themselves to protect themselves because, apparently, with each successive generation of police, the government becomes more militaristic and blacks continue to be a huge success as a result.Hearing his words on the radio, Barr showed For Me, he may no longer have any explanation for why systemic racism as the overwhelming explanation for why these inequalities are proliferating towards us, generation after generation.
He is the newest police leader to enact the theory that black people are the cause of his challenge with the police.
His answer deviated from the question of racial disparity, lacked the popularity of black humanity, rejected our individuality, and demonized us by manipulating hard-to-understand statistics. And he never answered the question of why other blacks are more likely to be shot by the police than others consistent with the capita.
I can answer for Barr: most of my interactions with the police had no explanation other than the color of my skin, it was me in a community where they had that they didn’t belong, or I was driving a car that I may not legitimately own and that’s how they were trained in the black police.
Like millions of blacks, I come from a decent and supportive extended family, whether maternal or fraternal, who received education, served in the army, participated in the Olympic Games and achieved executive degrees in government and business.
We have achieved what is good fortune when measured through any standard in the American circle of relatives.Yes, some members of our circle of relatives have derailed.But what circle of relatives doesn’t have that?
However, my laudable circle of family inheritance, my school education, my successful career, my determination as a parent and husband and my contributions to my network mean nothing once I am arrested by the police.
What I learned many years ago: never that any of this is considered an option even through the police when I’m arrested.I’m never wrong to say that they’ll see me as a kind of circle of relatives or just as a citizen.Stay in my psyche in each and every traffic impediment that I can also be the next to lose my life or get injured.The option that I would possibly be a law-abiding citizen rarely turns out to be a component of the equation in my meetings.with the police.
In 1965, I was a child who could not perceive what was going on in Watts when citizens rebelled and the city caught fire.I’m afraid what I saw will be reported on television.
Years later, as a child, my daughter had the same concern as the town that caught fire in 1992, after the four cops who beat Rodney King were acquitted, that concern is e wrapped up in the feelings that begin to emerge when, for the first time, a boy learns that the police can hurt him rather than help him.
Black people are perceived as a threat, or as something less than others, or rarely like both.In relations with the police, the humanity of the black individual is virtually non-existent.We don’t feel like we’re seen as the daughter, mother, brother, sister, son, or father.
Not all of them, but most of my exchanges with the police felt this way, I can hear it in their tone.I can see it in his eyes. I’m a user but, at that moment, just a mass of darkness.I’m just fitting in an inferiority symbol for this officer.
In the years since Watts, I went from boy to boy, from single boy to father, leading law enforcement officers such as William Parker, Ed Davis and Darryl Gates, three Los Angeles police chiefs with highly questionable positions on race.
Keep in mind that I didn’t make them racist. There’s enough documentation of public movements and racist statements from them for anyone to draw their own conclusions, so I leave it to others.However, like Barr, they were the main advocates of how systemic racism can simply develop.
Under Parker, we had the Watts lift as a result of a traffic prevention gone wrong.This was the turning point of what I discussed earlier: that blacks learned that they had to be more powerful and get up.Under Gates, the 1992 Los Angeles uprising was also directly connected to traffic prevention and systemic racism in the paramilitary police force.
We want more law enforcement officials like Parker, Davis, Gates or Barr.We deserve more so that young people have the kind of concern for our network that my daughter or I have felt.
These police arrests, driving while I was black, continued for me for many years, as I went from being a young man to a mature man, they were so young that I don’t even make them all.The good news is that I can say that even though sweaters didn’t completely prevent, the frequency decreased with age.But if my impairments were less frequent, when I was in a position that didn’t suit me, it was just like 30 years ago.The officer just saw Black.
I saw the same look in my eyes. Same tone of voice.Occasionally, I controlled to overcome that and get them to communicate with me as an individual.
The challenge is that I’ve had to paint so hard to get there.Actually, I have to paint at all.
” COMMON TO A SYSTEM, WHICH AFFECTS THE BODY IN GENERAL ”
Barr had finished talking. The screen had another segment.I took a deep breath.
I was exhausted by my intellectual excursion into the past. I hadn’t even had breakfast.I started looking back to locate that smart day that had begun.It’s time to focus on this combination of oatmeal to feed my day.
When I started eating, I felt some satisfaction at thinking how lucky it was to have survived so many negative encounters with the police.In his interview, Barr criticized the media and activists for demonizing all police officers as racists.That’s how I understood other people, asking for systemic racism.However, I have experienced it and know it better.
To perceive systemic racism, we will first have to perceive that it is not a query to characterize Americans as racist, but shows how ill-conceived concepts, ideals and assumptions can have a negative influence on the way Americans are treated. another human being. This occurs in many social settings. However, I’m only talking about the police so Barr has woken me up.
There’s something about my darkness, and being connected to a story of other people who have been enslaved, which allows for a law enforcement technique in which an officer thinks it’s almost okay to threaten me, unarmed, blow my ass off by a taillight.or arrest me because they need it, as if it were their right.
Systemic racism is the explanation for why our Attorney General, in the interview I heard, chose to answer a question about the tragic and unnecessary loss of life or harm among black people through statistics, rather than seeming compassion or perhaps just a little decency in the indu violence factor, against those compatriots.
Systemic racism in the police means that the formula does not allow for consistent equivalent remedy and coverage of blacks in the communities in which they live.
Barr suggests we shouldn’t blame all the police for a few rotten apples.For me, it’s just another way to use the “renegade police” replaced excuse that I’m no longer valid.Now it’s a tree that’s rotted, as I see it.In the end, all apples can be affected. Smart and bad will be contaminated to varying degrees.
The Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines the formula this way: Common to a formula, affecting the overall framework.In this case, the framework is the police department.
I think Barr is probably most blind to the fact that his comments were rooted in systemic racism.Systemic racism puts other black people as the enemy, they don’t deserve just attention or respect.When I hear someone looking to reduce us to statistical shadows, Full of guilt as Barr did in this interview, I think of the thousands of occasions that other people like me have with the police – disrespectful, oppressive and suspicious interactions.
In the end, too often, a day of paintings as usual, this will result in unwarranted shootings and/or murders.Shooting a black user is most likely due to the disease of systemic racism, directly.Barr’s interview has only reinforced my determination that he is the main cause of the bad police.
From what I, my circle of relatives and friends have experienced over the years, it would possibly seem, cumulatively, that the police are not there to protect enough to occupy our communities.Manage like troops in a foreign country. Attorney General William Barr’s choice not to answer a question about a very genuine phenomenon involving violence against blacks is an excellent example of how the disease of systemic racism works.
Whether knowingly or not, contempt for black humanity is what drives it.For the police, some are more inflamed than others.For black people, any illegal or unfair action taken against us is under the precept that we deserve nothing better.
This year, tragic deaths at the hands of law enforcement in Minneapolis, Louisville, Kenosha, locally in Pasadena and at most recently in South Los Angeles have provoked and continue to raise awareness of the long-term disruptions my network has had with the police.It turns out that a newly discovered understanding of the action the United States will have to take against systemic racism.
So I’m going to hold the same hope I had after the rogue cop softened his badge so many years ago, or my recent hope that Barr would give a considered answer about racism and black deaths at the hands of police.
I hope that one day those memories of my own police abuse will be only historic.I’m sure we’ll get better answers and answers than Barr provides, and the reports I’ve told will no longer be an appropriate legacy for more generations..
Maybe we’re on the right track for the next few days.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Keith Taylor worked hard to be a son, husband, father and network contributor.With this as his northern star, related to his faith, guided him in his way of life.When he did well, everything else got here.
Keith was fortunate to have been able to make professional efforts as a human resources director, communications specialist, psychotherapist, educator, executive coach and music promoter.More recently, he returned to artistic creation, a pastime of his university studies that he had set aside.Just a little while.