#whileblack

One night when I was around 12yrs old, two police cars rushed up on me and stopped me while I was riding my bicycle home from a part time job. The police said they stopped me because, in their words, as “a young black male,” I fit the description of a burglar who had broken into a house earlier that night. It was late, but there were literally dozens of other kids riding their bikes through the neighborhood, but I was the only black kid. The cops roughed me up a little and held me until the homeowner arrived in the back of another cruiser. A white woman. I could hear her yelling at the police, “No, I said he was A WHITE MAN.” Turned out that the only description I matched was we were both wearing blue jeans. Other than that, I don’t see how I possibly could have matched the description of someone who I later learned was a much older, short, blonde-haired, blue eyed white man. I was his exact opposite in every possible way. Obviously, there was no way I met his description. The police used “police work” and deduced that the only black kid riding through a white neighborhood must have been guilty of something.

That was the night I finally realized that everything my parents told me about the police---every warning from their repeated black-parent-talks---was all true.

Even when the police are called on white people, black people still aren’t safe.

Looking back, I’m lucky to be alive. I got home trembling, angry and sad all at the same time, but I never told my mom about that night until a few years ago. It happened almost 20yrs ago, but when I told my mom she started crying as if it happened to me yesterday. That’s the first “While Black” experience that popped into my memory, but there are more.