My Take on #Ferguson

I debated writing this...went back and forth with myself but I had to write it.

Tell me if this has ever happened to you: One night on my way home I was pulled over. This female Fairfax County Police officer proceeded to ask me "Is this your car?" not "Do you know why i pulled you over?" (which is the usual line of questioning) and not "License and Registration" but "Is this your car?" Maybe she forgot herself, maybe she was having a bad day but last I checked that is not a proper question to ask someone.

Tell me if this has ever happened to you: One night, as a friend drove me home, he got pulled over. He was Jewish, I am mixed with a darker skin tone. There was no reason for the police officer (again Fairfax County) to come to my side of the car, I was not driving. There was no reason for the police officer to ask me any questions (like my ID and such) and yet I was the one being asked all the questions. I WAS NOT DRIVING.

I am not a black man but I have had my share of racial profiling too and at the hands of police officers. Those situations above are MY personal experiences. I have never been in trouble with the law, I am an upstanding citizen, I will soon have a Master's degree. Regardless of all these things, my experience in the country has and for the foreseeable future will always be different from that of my white counter part. I will be seen just like any other member of the black community no matter what letters come behind my name. Its something I grew up understanding that the world would always be a different experience for me as a woman, and as a Black woman.

If one thinks that everyone's experience is the same....they really need to take a better look...

Knowing this difference exists makes me fearful for my son, makes me fearful for my brothers, makes me scared for all black men in this country. What is a black man's life worth in this country? The answer in what I see in today's world scares me beyond belief. What do I tell my son, my cousins, our family, our community, our progeny? Do I tell my son to immediately lie on the ground with hands behind his head in order to not be shot? Do I tell him that in a situation where he is the only black man, that if something goes wrong he will have the worse punishment? Do I teach him that his mere being is considered a crime?  I want this world to be better when I leave it in his hands but....how do I do that? How do we all achieve this?

I do not condone the actions of the rioters in the community. Martin Luther King, Jr. wouldn't either. Gandhi wouldn't either.

Nothing is ever achieved by responding to violence with more violence.

Also, if one is to get angry, don't mess up your own neighborhood. All that does is prove to those that seek to oppress that they were right about you. That you are an animal that needs to be controlled and contained.

Prove those folks that would say otherwise wrong, that you can conduct yourself as a civilized human being. Turn the other cheek. Greet thy neighbor and thy enemy with love not with anger and hate. Like will always attract like so....do you want to attract peace, understanding, positivity, a positive cultural change? Then one needs to be and project those things first.

I don't pretend to know all the answers, I don't. I know the problems, racial privilege, comfort with the status quo, inhumanity. I am not sure where we go from here but I will say that if not now, then when will we start to work together as AMERICANS, not as African Americans, White Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Hispanics, and so forth, when as AMERICANS with out the added prefix of heritage will we work together to CHANGE what treats some of us as less that human while others are treated as having more VALUE. When?

The time needs to be now.

I want to be able at the end of my life to say that the world I leave to my children and my grandchildren was better than the world handed to me by my parents and grandparents. I think that is something every human being should and can strive for in this lifetime.